Tag Archives: Gearbox

Fall of video games 2012

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The year 2012 had quite a terrible start with video game releases. I almost thought that I’ll stick to games I bought in 2011 and 2010, because there was nothing on the market that could catch my attention. Luckily, the situation has changed and with autumn 2012 some very nice release hit stores.

There’s this brutally hardcore RPG called “Dark Souls” that finally made it to the petition, thanks to a petition of dedicated fans of the game series. The port to the PC itself was horrible when it comes to technical realization. “Dark Souls” itself is a game that splits the gamer community. The reason for this is the extreme skill level or in other words, you die pretty often in this game. But this what RPGs were about back in the days. Avatars were not slaughtered through hordes of enemies without even taking one single scratch. And that’s what makes this game so special, because it’s a relic from the past that has made it to the present.

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuG4FZNnuBA’]

Even though it was already in the first quarter of 2012, “The Darkness II” is a game I put my hands on just a few month ago because I was skeptical about it and did not want to pay full price on release day. To a certain degree I was wrong. The game is cool, pretty brutal and catches the flair of the comics very well. It’s worth playing, but I still wouldn’t consider this game an absolute blockbuster or something I would recommend to almost everyone. It’s basically the same like it is with “Dark Souls”, it’s a game for a special gamer audience with a special background. So if you’re into the comics or these type of comics you should get, otherwise you’ll find yourself soaked into an average everyday shooter with a nice demon arm gimmick.

I stick with the word dark, because “Darksiders II” came out in September (if I remember that right) and it served the PC gaming community with solid jump’n’run RPG. Not much has changed in comparison to “Darksiders I”, but that’s not a show stopper, because the predecessor was decently mellow. I personally think, that the controls are much better than the ones you have in “Devil May Cry IV”, but it can’t compete storywise. It’s a fine, solid game that you want to play to leave the day behind and just slaughter. It’s also the complete difference to “Dark Souls”. It’s easy to learn and also easy to handle and weak spots in boss encounters are found quick and you don’t step into an almost frustration like mood like you may find in “Dark Souls”.

Just in case that you find even “Darksiders II” too scary and dark the only option left is a game called “XBlades” that came out a couple of years ago. Bright environments and a very nice looking avatar, if you know what I mean.

 [youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERe3wZdIAtc’]

Also in September the sequel to my beloved “Borderlands” came out. I’ve to admit I absolutely love “Borderlands” and I had pretty high expectations on “Borderlands 2” and I did not get disappointed. But what could have Gearbox Software done wrong if not totally changing everything? They kept everything from “Borderlands 1” that was good and made some fine tuning in “Borderlands 2”. Most importantly, different environments and not only deserts and deserts and deserts. In my opinion, the interface is still a little bit grumpy, but at the end of the day it’s okay and does what it was meant for.

If you’re not into shooting things in the head the yearly update for “Pro Evolution Soccer” and “NBA 2K” stood around the corner. “Pro Evolution Soccer 2013” is a solid development and once again Konami got rid of many bugs I’d to suffer from in “PES 2012”, like many, many, many offsides and weird acting goal keepers. Football itself feel much more fluently in “PES 2013” and the aim assists are very welcome.

With “NBA 2K12” my beloved Seattle Super Sonics made it back to the game without any need for doing unlock games. The menu system is rather confusing than useful and Justin Bieber and his all-star team are, for me personally, a pain in the arse but aside from that “NBA 2K13” looks great, plays very nicely and it simply feels like a good NBA broadcast on TV and transports the atmosphere very well. Slight changes were made to the control, like the two-stick shooting controls, but after a few minutes into the game you get used to it and it does make sense.

As you can see 2012 is no longer that bad as originally expected by me and weird disappointment are barely to find. Even more important, the release of good games does not end. We’ve got the fabulous “Sleeping Dogs”, the return of #47 in “Hitman Absolution” and additionally “Far Cry” is coming out next week and the previews are very promising. I’ll give a short impression on these games in another post that will be up in the near future. In the meantime, game and enjoy!

Game of the week #5/2011 – Borderlands

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Actually, this week’s game of the week is not as “indy-ish” as the games before and one could say that this is mainstream. Well, it may be mainstream and it was very succesful in 2009 and 2010, but I still know a lot of people saying, “Yes, I heard of this game before, is it truely that good?” and I can answer “Yes it is, try it, you’ll love it”. I’m talking about “Borderlands” by Gearbox Software that delivered a great piece of software and a brilliant mixture of first-person shooter, RPG and brawler. The story of the game is simple too, but nevertheless  really entertaining. You play one out of four characters that land on the planet Pandora to unveil the secret of the “Vault” that grants wealth, fame and honour to its owner. These four character have different abilities and skills, like “sniper”, “rogue”, “soldier” and melee fighter, so you can play this basicly in a FPS style that suits you the most. I personally decided to play the hunter which is the previously mentioned “sniper”, he can also control a pet that can attack enemies. The pet control is pretty basic and only available for the hunter, all three other classes have different special skills like a phase walk, gaining more bullets for you and your team, just to mention a few.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwxiAGWJa-o[/youtube]

Team? Yes, and here’s the thing, you can play “Borderlands” completely in a single player mode, but you can also switch to cooperative online play at any time. The coop is a lot of fun, even though it lacks a few features like an interface for simply sharing loot or a roll mask to decide who’s going to get the loot. When it comes to booties of the prey, “Borderlands” has got a lot to. The developers can’t to mention it as often as they can, that they have included a “bazillion” of guns and tons of other goodies, like shields, grenade kits, class mods, to improve your character. This is also a positive catch of the game, you can’t stop playing, because you always want to get new guns and new guns and new guns and new guns. And of course new guns. Urm, and you also want to reach the next level to spend a skill point in your skill tree.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86WpLFOIYjw[/youtube]

The AI in “Borderlands” is not the smartest one, but does its job and that is what counts, I mean, this is not a high intelligent tactical shooter, this is a fun shooter with a couple of RPG elements and a nice taste of humour. The characters in the game are developed very well and the bosses you meet in your encounters are challenging and not this standard meal you have to choke on in every other game. It’s also not a game with lots of moments of frustration, when you die in the game you can revive by simply killing an enemy in your phase of dying, which is about 15 seconds, and if you die anyway, you revive at a spawn point next to the fight not too far away. I enjoy “Borderlands” for more than a year now, I also bought the GOTY edition of the game, that includes all four DLCs. The DLCs are worth every penny, except “Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot”, which feels a little like a hoax compared to the rest of the game. So if you like FPS, a little of amount of RPG and have some friends to join you in coop, then “Borderlands” is the game of your choice and why it’s my “Game of the week”.

Links:

Official website

Wikipedia

Bring me the guts!!!

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Finally my conclusion was made that all my colleagues are braindead zombies and remote controlled. Maybe this conclusion was made because the amount of oxygen in my bureau reached a point far beyond point zero and my brain’s dead, too. It’s a heck to share a room with a bunch of freaks that are afraid of opening the fucking window wide open to get the mentioned oxygen. Damn it, my head hurts. So whatever, I wanted to talk about something completely different.

Over the past few years the genre of zombie games gained much popularity and me too is a big fan boy when it comes to brainless hordes of human being that wants to be hacked and slayed and get their bloody head chopped off. A liked “Stubbs the zombie” a lot though the gameplay was a little bit boring but the sense of humor in this game was totally mine. Right after this “Left 4 Dead” got released by Valve and I fell in love with a game for the bazillions time. Yap, I am getting pretty emotional when it comes to games sometimes. Sooo, hopefully my new love will come to visit me by the end of this month, which is called “Dead Rising 2”. Unfortunately did they not release part one for the PC and I don’t want to buy a stupid Xbox 360 for just one game. I’ve seen nearly every trailer, preview and developer diary that was released over the past few month. Yaaaaaarrrrr, zombies, come get some!!!

-Zombie-

Which leads me to my next topic and reason for a lot of excitement. The Duke’s acoming!!!! I couldn’t actually believe it when I read the first announcement made by the new publisher Gearbox Software. I’ve heard a lot of yelling in the forums and comments of different articles that this is not going to be a real Duke Nukem because it’s not a 3D Realms game, but who the hell cares? Those whiners are simply a good inspiration for birth control. For me personally it’s so glad and nice to see that another vaporware is finally going to be released and that it’s hopefully not wasted. If anyone remembers “Prey” it was declared to be dead too but then it finally returned, got released and was a great game, though. I bet on Duke.

One little foot note at last, after playing a paladin to level 80 in WoW I’m currently working on a death knight which at level 65 at the moment and will hopefully enter Northrend.