BioShock 2

PUBLISHER: 2k Games
DEVELOPER: 2k Games
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Would you kindly have more fun in Rapture?

Liked:
- Story
- Environment/Art Style
- Plasmid Upgrades

Disliked:
- Length
- Some glitches



On The Fence:
- New Hacking system
- New Research Camera
- Trophies

Liked
Honestly, for everything I liked about BioShock 2, see what I said about BioShock. It would be nearly identical. The story is different but I found it every bit as entertaining.

Sequel or Prequel?
I see a lot of people talking about this being a prequel because you play as the first Big Daddy, and that's half true. Without spoiling much of anything, you play as Delta, the 4th Big Daddy (if my Greek alphabet is correct) but the first successful bonded guardian of a Little Sister. The game starts in 1958, before the events of BioShock 1 but it isn't too long into the game that an event causes you to go into a sort of suspended animation until 1968 - nine years after the events of the first game.

There are new enemies like a Brute Splicer and the Big Sister - who will attack you after so many Little Sister interactions. She was interesting, and later in the game when you get to see them a bit better you can really appreciate the style.

Disliked
To say I'm not pleased with the length is somewhat a double edged sword. It was short. I just started playing this game on Friday evening, and now, the following Sunday, approximately 15 hours of game play later I am done. I find that both disappointing yet rewarding. Another game I can equate that to is Portal.

I think what I dislike the most about the length is that it seems the game got nipped a bit to make room for multiplayer. I haven't fired that up yet but I can tell you I'm at about 40% of the trophies because I haven't touched MP.

Some glitches I found are strange. I was fighting a Big Sister and nearly had her dead when she disappeared. I don't mean she ran off - I mean she vanished. The fight music (which sounds like it was written by Bernard Hermann) kept playing until I finished the level. Another glitch comes from using an awesome tonic called "Fountain of Youth" that allows you to regain health and Eve when standing in puddles of water. It didn't always work, and sometimes the meters refilled really fast while other times it went gut-wrenchingly slow.

On The Fence
The old hacking system in BS1 was pretty much Pipe Dream. You have x# of seconds to connect point A to point B before the liquid fills the pipe. This time it was a strange meter where the needle sweeps left to right and back again about 3 times before you instantly fail. You have to stop the needle in the green or blue zone on the meter's face. Sometimes I had this not register correctly and hit a red zone, setting off the alarm.

The new Research Camera is good because it does four awesome new things:

1. Starts recording video and instantly switches to your last used weapon
2. Makes the tagged enemy glow gold.
3. Has a running meter to show you how well you're doing on gathering research
4. Keeps a total of how much you've researched every enemy.

What didn't I like about it? Oh, same old thing... I kept forgetting to use it. I think I managed 100% on almost all of the types of enemies. I know I missed some of the basic splicers.

The trophies for BS2 are good and bad. Good because they throw one at you for doing good things - there is a moral choice to be made in a few sections and they give you a trophy for that. They're bad because you'll get some just for doing story-mandated tasks (really? A trophy for completing an area you have to complete to advance the plot?) as well as the aforementioned reliance on exploring multiplayer.

All in all I think this is an awesome follow-up to BS. If you weren't sure about it but loved #1, at the very least rent this one. Biblical and Philosophical overtones aren't as heavy-handed as the original, and that's not really a bad thing.

8/10

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

What: DLC for RDR 
Cost: $20, or $30 bundled with the other 2 DLC offerings.

PUBLISHER: Rockstar
DEVELOPER: Rockstar
Played on: PS3

Initial Impression: Old West 4 Dead



I knew I was in for a good time when I started. It was a separate storyline starring the one and only John Marsten. (Love that guy!) It starts out at the time in the main storyline where John has finished his government business and returns home. There's a wicked storm rolling in and 'Uncle' isn't back from his errands. Everyone's getting concerned but figure he's old enough to take care of himself. They all go to sleep, figuring they'd see him in the morning. Oh, he comes back a bit earlier... and a lot less alive than when he left. He attacks John's wife, then she attacks her son. You kill Uncle, tie up the other two and go searching for answers with only your Cattleman Revolver, a Double Barrel Shotgun, your lasso and enough ammo to reload those weapons about 5 times.

The UN story missions, much like the RDR story missions, send you all over the place in search of whatever the current NPC you're dealing with is after. There are side quests, challenges and random encounters just like the main game, and all with their own undead twist. Every town, post or fort you encounter is under attack and saving them comes in the form of finding and providing ammo as well as fighting off the horde. Once saved, they'll be stable for a while but keep your eyes peeled because they may get overrun at any point. You also acquire a new weapon each time you save a new town, though ammo is severely short.

Nearly every story-based NPC from the original game is encountered, and it's interesting to see how they are dealing with the zombie apocalypse. Speaking of Apocalypse...

There are Four Horses you can find and break. Pestilence. War. Famine. Death. Each has its own rare ability that proves rather invaluable when facing flesh-eating monstrosities. Pestilence is nearly impossible to kill (except when you slide casually down a short slope, apparently). War is on fire, and sets enemies on fire if they come in contact with it (handy to plow through groups of undead!). Famine has unlimited stamina (which is actually useless... all these horses have that). Death leaves a trail of - well - death in its path. A blue spectral haze travels behind the horse, detonating the heads of every zombie it passes.

The horse called "War" being captured.

There are new weapons - a blunderbuss that uses corpse parts as ammo, holy water that erupts in a blue flame when thrown at undead, undead bait and boom bait - the latter being the same as the former with the addition of a stick of dynamite.

Dislikes
The only things I can say I didn't like were the lifespan of Pestilence and the somewhat wonky aiming at times. The only way to stop an undead is to get a headshot. I had SEVERAL times when I've made perfect headshots (even while in Dead Eye) and it registers as either a miss or a body shot. I read that most people just put on the auto-aim because it goes right for the head, but I prefer to just scream at the TV.

Also - There were a few moments where I had to clear graveyards and got overrun, died and had to start over a few times in a row. That was frustrating. At least when you're clearing a town there's an indicator to let you know how much more you have to endure.

For paid DLC I kind of expected a tad more play-time, but overall it was fun and worth the basic $10 I ended up paying. I wouldn't purchase it any other way than as the bundled 3-pack.

9/10 - Worth Playing.

Post #102010-2

I'm not sure what to call this post. It's mostly mental vomit about games.

LOTRO

• It went free to play and I've met up with at least one person I know. It's a lot of fun helping people again.
• I reconnected with someone who I was very angry with for a long time. We resolved our differences nearly a year and a half after 'the incident' that drove us apart. It feels good to put that to rest.
• I started a new character - a burglar. The name is one I've used before, and it's not a dwarf.
• Harvestmath - the harvest festival - is active. I tried to get the horse last night ant the game glitched me out of a token. I was pissed, but I'll try again tonight.
• I'm working on my Return to Thorin's Hall skill. I am Kindred with the dwarves of Ered Luin and have 50/100 Dourhand crests. After this I'm working on Moria reputation.
• I'd like to max out all reputation, though some areas are difficult.
• I'm trying to get every horse, though some require meta-deeds. These are a specific combination of completed deeds and it's a pain in the ass.

L4D/L4D2/Alien Swarm/Borderlands

• All three need more attention. Need to play more MP games with friends. Too bad one is in a radically different time zone...

PS3

• I want to finish off the trophies for Dead Space, inFamous and Red Dead Redemption. I'm close to the end of all three.
• Beatles Rock Band needs more attention. Some group attention would be nice too.
• Fallout 3 needs to be completed. So does God of War and Heavenly Sword. And Tomb Raider Underworld. And Little Big Planet.
• Fallout New Vegas is getting a lot of hate lately but I still want to play it.
• I need to catalog and evaluate the games I have. Put them in some sort of order of status... whether I'll play them again or if I'm completely done with them.

Back In the Saddle

This week I decided to revisit Red Dead Redemption, mostly because I like to wander around in the environment and not have to worry about story elements sucking away all my precious time. When I first fired it up I was reminded about the one thing I didn't like -- I finished the story mode.

***SPOILER ALERT***

This means I was stuck playing as Jack. I don't like Jack. His voice and repeated phrases annoy me.

*** END SPOILER ALERT ***

Thanks to an update that brought in two new outfits to acquire, I also remembered I had a few outstanding trophies to try to claim. The first one I went for seemed easy. Manifest Destiny: Kill all the buffalo in the game on Single Player. I'd already shot one for the other trophy where you need to shoot one of every species, and though I felt bad about it I finally gave in to the fact that it's only a game. I got out my trusty Buffalo Rifle and went looking for the herd. No sooner did I resolve to accomplish this task that I ran into them. Every remaining buffalo stood before me. I raise the rifle and took aim. As I let one shot ring out, instantly killing the animal, I went into Dead Eye and took out another. The group started to scatter so I threw it into Dead Eye as fast as I could and took out another five. Since the Buffalo Rifle is a single shot weapon, the game drops you out of Dead Eye after every kill. I managed to get ten total from this initial run-in, and I made sure to skin each one.

The next half hour I spent looking for the rest of the herd. In this time I decided to terrorize Blackwater citizens a bit in hopes of raising my bounty amount. For one of the trophies you have to use a pardon letter to remove a $5,000 bounty. Having completed the game, this is difficult since all crimes are reduced by half. Shooting a lawman, for example, will only add about $50 to my bounty. I rode up to a heavily populated area and tossed a Molotov cocktail into the crowd. This not only set a dozen people on fire but caused the cops to take notice rather fast. I rode hard and fast away from town and waited for them to catch up, Buffalo Rifile in hand. If a gun can kill a 3,000 pound animal in one shot, just imagine what it'll do to a 180 pound man riding a horse. Distance helped a bit to knock a few off their mounts before they got anywhere near me, but then the posse was rounded up and started to close in from all sides. I took out my trusty High Powered Pistol and went to town.

Another of the trophies involves getting something like 1,000 kills with one weapon. Any weapon will do, but you need all the kills to come from using the same one. Seems I already have about 300 kills with the HPP, so I use it as much as I can now in an effort to speed that up. Its name is appropriate - one to two shots per target. By the end of the night I racked up $1,200 on my wanted poster. Things were going great as far as the trophies were concerned - I found the rest of the buffalo and sadly earned that one. I had amassed a bounty that I could easy triple the next night if I devoted myself to it. It was late and I was tired, so that's the only excuse I have for what happened next.

I was headed back home, riding along at a slow pace, taking in the scenery and planning my steps for the next session, when out of nowhere I was being chased by the law. Someone on the road recognized me? I have no idea - I think that's what happened... All I know is I was being chased. I shot up some deputies, took out some horses just to keep them at bay when I was hit with an ambush. A few appeared in front of my path and blasted away. I had no chance to react because I had the camera swung around behind me. 

DEAD.

My bounty was reset as the game loaded. I was pissed but vowed that the next night I'd start it again, only this time I'd wreak havoc on Mexico.

Free Time, Claptrap Rebellion & RDR DLC

I haven't purchased any of this, but I am interested in them...

Borderlands: Claptrap Rebellion

I'm too lazy to look up the correct title, but that's the jist of it. Frankly I found the Claptrap character funny at first but quickly became obnoxious and I never wanted to kill an NPC as badly as I did the Claptrap in New Haven. It just got really annoying, really fast.

The new expansion turns Claptrap(s) into the enemy. Apparently some previous bosses make an appearance in the form of special claptrap models. No level cap elevation, so aside from just having more stuff to shoot at there isn't a great reason to get this one - not yet anyway.

RDR Expansions

Briefly, there are 3 expansions - 2 out there already and one coming. I think most of them are Multiplayer geared, giving avatars and new activities for MP. The only one that holds the majority of my interest is the zombie one. Shocker, right? As someone online has already said, the appeal (for me) is that all this time, zombie games have been you and your modern weapons and gear versus the undead. RDR is set in 1910, in the old west. It's you and your six-shooter. Dead Eye will be helpful.

Other Junk - Rock Band

I played some Rock Band 1 yesterday. I never made it through the official campaign because I got bored. I'm now in London, don't know any of the songs left to play at the venue and am back to being bored. I played the Coheed and Cambria song in Tokyo -- why do people like that band?

Anyway that leads me to Rock Band 3. The tracklist has been shuffled around the 'net a lot recently and, again, I groan in disgust. At least they aren't being totally fake like Guitar Hero III was; You can't call your game "Legends of Rock" with a track list like that, idiots.

Going back to RB3, something about the track list that pisses me off is that it seems like they go out of their way to throw on unknown bands or totally obscure (which doesn't always mean GOOD) songs. 20th Century Boy by T-Rex? Echo & the Bunnymen? They lose me in the 2000's. I only know "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age.

My point? Dunno. I just rant about RB tracks. I'm a jerk when it comes to music.

Speaking of Rock Band - they need to add more Beatles RB albums. Let It Be (Naked), Magical Mystery Tour, Past Masters 2 and The Beatles (aka the white album) need to be there.

Other Junk - Valkyria Chronicles

A fellow Kotakuite suggested I give the game a shot after I commented how much I liked a figurine featured on the site. It took me a couple weeks to locate a copy, and about a week more before I popped it in the machine. Long story short - it's great fun! Expect a review... when I get to it.

It's Been A While...

I apologize to my followers. All two of them.

It's been a while since I have said anything here. Truth is I haven't been playing anything new. Tried Alien Swarm - it's awesome, but I only played it once. Playing a few Facebook games but those don't count.

Lord of the Rings Online has gone Free To Play, meaning people can get in for nothing. They can't get far, but they can get a taste of the game without any money spent. If they like what they see they can purchase upgrades. Increased level cap, storage and zones are all just a few dollars away - all with no monthly fee. For me - a lifetime subscriber (meaning I put up $200 early on) the game stays exactly as it was as long as I log in at least once a month. That's easy to do since there are a number of horses I want to obtain. Getting those will keep me busy. I can think of 5 right now that I don't have that are obtainable through regular game play. Others are festival only horses that I will have to wait until next summer before they become available.

I've also been delving into PvMP (Player versus Monster Play - real people control the orcs, spiders and wargs). Honestly I just want to get Rank 9 so I can buy the horse. I'm at Rank 4 currently. What sucks is that you need to get tens of thousands of Renown Points to go up a level and one PvMP kill yields between 1 and 30 points - average being 15. It's a lot of grueling work and the Ettenmoors aren't always accommodating. Currently the area is bugged and there's no real safe place for the Free People to hide from the evils of Angmar. Whenever that gets fixed I'll head back into the zone and work on that horse.

I still have a massive backlog of PS3 titles to get to, but on top of that I've picked up Dante's Inferno ($20 new at GameStop last month) and Valkyria Chronicles ($17 used). VC was a suggestion from someone on Kotaku and just based on screen shots I think I might really like it. I'm tying up loose ends on RDR, trying to get all the trophies. I want to start BioShock 2, but might wait until the dark of winter - I have a thing about those kind of games and that time of year.

Speaking of which I might go for my December Dead Space play through sometime around the 11th. This will be purely a trophy run. I need all those "kill x necromorphs with x weapon/skill" trophies, and with the best suit in the game coupled with the completely spec'd out weapons it should be a breeze.

So - what's on the menu? Well a whole lot of LotRO to get those 5 horses (Lorien, Mirkwood, Dunedain and the 2 new ones from Endewaith). I really want the Dunedain one the most because it matches my current armor choice. Silly, I know, but I like to look like a complete character.

Maybe some scheduled PS3 love is in order.

Borderlands (and the 3 expansions)

PUBLISHER: 2k Games
DEVELOPER: 2k Games
Played on: PC
Initial impression: FPSRPG.

Liked:
- Story (Main/Exp 1: Dr. Ned)
- Environment
- Art Style

Disliked:
- Randomized Weapons
- Expansion #2: (Mad Moxxi)

On The Fence:
- Expansion #3: (General Knoxx)

Main story has you take the role of one of four mercenary treasure hunters. Recently landing on the planet of Pandora, you're greeted by a little obnoxious robot and a whole lot of enemies. You fight your way to the first town and gain a few quests... Rinse and repeat. You're eventually bestowed with the need to find the legendary "Vault" - which most claim is full of untold riches and equipment. The ending was somewhat of a let down, but at least the game didn't have to end there.

Expansion #1: Island of Dr. Ned has an interesting and funny tale about a zombie outbreak. I can't go into detail or else there's not much point in playing. Let me just say it was entertaining, sometimes even more so than the main game.

There's not a whole lot to the mechanics of this game. If you've played a First Person Shooter, you're half-way there. If you've ever played any Role-Playing Game where you allocate points to improve your stats, you get the gist of this game. The four roles are essentially Fighter, Cleric, Mage and Ranger from D&D, except you use guns and the skills are tailored around guns.


The guns are a bit of a love/hate relationship. There's a bit of a randomization with them, in that the stats of the gun could be better or worse even for one named the same. There are a number of different manufacturers, and each has their own personal perks (and color/design schemes). The part that bugs me is that they claim your chances of finding better gear INCREASE when you play along with 3 other real people -- and they don't. We've found nothing but crap while going as a four-person group, while one guy found significantly better weapons playing solo.

Expansion #2 pretty much sucks other than the addition of a storage box. Now the guns you don't want to sell off but dont need to carry all the time can go in a box. This is best for those rare weapons you get where you aren't high enough level yet. Other than that you're looking at arena combat. Wave after wave of enemies come at you, topping off with a "boss" fight which revives a former end boss from various missions in the main game. It's rather boring after a while.

Expansion #3 - we're in the middle of it right now - is OK so far but seems to be way too vehicle heavy. I'm not a fan of when you're forced into any sort of single game mechanic, and so far Knoxx seems to be all about the cars. Granted, the cars are awesome, but I'm kind of shrugging at the insistance of us using 2-3 different car types based on the mission. If it does it more often it'll just be annoying.

This game gets the following ratings:

Main: 8/10
Exp 1: 8/10
Exp 2: 4/10
Exp 3: 7/10 (so far)

Biggest tip: Don't play this game alone. It'll be dull and get difficult very fast. You may or may not get better loot.