Off Topic: The End of LOST.

50% of you won't give a rat's ass about this post, and 25% of you don't want to be spoiled because you are slugging it out through Season 2. So I've created a separate page to give my VERY SPOILERIFIC thoughts on a show that I've followed since the very first episode aired, trough this past Sunday's conclusion.

My Thoughts on The End of LOST.

Why I am still playing Borderlands.

Flashback to October of 2009. We were just a few weeks away from the largest game launch in Video Game history, and not much attention was paid to anything else in anticipation of Modern Warfare 2. And then one of my friends picked up a copy of Borderlands, and convinced me to drop on it too. I was rather hesitant at first, because I really wasn't in the mood to drop sixty bucks 2 weeks before I was about to spend seventy, but it turned out to be a pretty damn good investment in the end. The game was played pretty much non stop until that Veteran's Day week.

We are now into the second week of May, and I was up until three in the morning last night playing Borderlands. Granted there were three DLC packs that I was looking to complete which has extended the life of the game, but there are a good combination of things that keep me coming back and a few of my friends that have never left.

Clearance Boddicker Said It Best: "Guns, Guns, Guns". There are tons of 'em, and there is quite a variety. We here in 'Merica love to hold our guns in our cold dead hands, and when you come across a stash of weapons that you can meticulously sift through, the search for the perfect weapon can be down right addicting. Take the "Armory of General Knoxx" downloadable add-on pack. You can go through the mother lode of all mother lodes of weapons. You can also kill a nearly invincible enemy that literally scatters goodies like a mutated piñata. I'm currently at the level 61 cap with my main character, with tons of pimp weapons with heavy damage, and I'm still not satisfied. I'm convinced that the greatest weapon ever is still out there, waiting for me to discover and lay waste to all the other inhabitants of this outworld wasteland.

The Call of Duty control scheme is in tact. This may be as petty as petty can be, but the Modern Warfare games pretty much laid the groundwork for the best FPS control scheme around: Shooting is the right trigger, and aiming is the left trigger. Couch is B button, Jump is A. All the controls you use the most are in the four most conveniently accessible spots for your hands. I hate HATE games like Halo and Bad Company 2 that make almost no use of th B button, but something like zooming in or crouching requires one to click the right thumbsick. 

Borderlands is still FUNNY. "Don't hurt your girl parts" still gets me. Also the ending of Dr. Ned's Zombie island campaign pretty much had me rolling. Very brilliantly executed, Gearbox never really took this game so serious, and that is what is best when you inject subtle humor whether it be something an NPC character says or background chatter when you're in co-op. Also, Nine Toes has three balls. I laughed for like 5 minutes after that animation.

Four Player jump-in jump-out Co-Op. This really needs to become standard; no "special Co-Op mode" *cough*SplinterCellConviction*cough*. You can play on your own, but also if you see a buddy hop on, you can save, go into multiplayer, continue right where you left off, and have a buddy join in. No problems, just enjoy a night of gaming. The more people in your party, the more difficult the bad guys are. You can also have your friends help you level up much faster. My friend starts a level 1 Siren, I can take him up to the last level of the main game on the second play-though and he is level 25 in 10 minutes. I don't even think that is cheap, I think that adds to the fun of the games. I don't mind helping a friend level up, or complete quests, or help kill General Knoxx, Dr. Ned, or Crawermax.

More Expansion is Possible. In the four months after the release of the initial game, Gearbox released three Downloadable Add-On packs, in which two were downright entertaining, and one was decent. I had a lot of fun with Dr. Ned's Zombie Island, which you actually get a quest requiring you to collect a ridiculous amount of zombie brains. I've Armory of General Knoxx for weeks now and have provided hours upon hours of entertainment, even though I've played through some sections over again to help friends get their quests completed, its still fun. Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot is a little tedious, but allows you access to a bank in which you can store all your kickass finds. 

Back in March, Take Two's CEO said that more DLC is possible for this game. You can go in so many directions, you don't even have to adhere to a main storyline. Borderlands in space. Borderlands on a Battleship. Its been hours upon hours of fun, and there, and each little vignette can be its own search for elite weaponry. 

Borderlands is something that completely took me by surprise to be one of the best games of 2009, and the game from last year I am playing the most. You should do the same (although if you read this blog, you likely already are). 

TL;DR - Humorous, control friendly, Weapon-whoring that all your friends can enjoy. 

Wednesday Commentary, Joint Outsourced and In House Edition.

Before I begin, I just want to say I'm a big fan of Roger Ebert. So, when he came out a few weeks ago and declared that Video Games Aren't Art, I didn't go apeshit and burn every copy of his books I've ever owned. Because I've never owned any but that's really not the point. There has been a lot of hubub about his remarks, and a few people have weighed in, or been asked to weigh in on the statement. I wasn't one of those people who were asked but I wanted to give a few thoughts. First, I'm going to let Ben Croshaw take the mic and give his two cents.

"Yahtzee", as he is more affectionately known, does Zero Punctuation reviews for The Escapist. His game review videos typically run about four minutes long, are crude at times, bitterly truthful at times, a little overly critical at times, and lacking dead air all the time  (hence, "zero punctuation"). He actually takes a pause this time and takes to the written word to comment on Ebert's piece.

Here it is: Extra Punctuation.

Not to be a total conformist, but Yahtzee is, for the most part, correct. Is it really a big deal if Roger Ebert thinks games cannot be art? One shouldn't take someone's opinion as gospel, especially when there is so much room for interpretation and exception. Also his opinion on video games would be about as relevant as me challenging him on why Harold and Kumar is one of the better movies of the last decade.

I guess Ebert may have jogged some insecurity in the games industry and gamers in general. Can an industry that has been competing with film, television, music and print for the hearts (and wallets) of entertainment-thirsty-ADD-ridden consumers actually claim that the product they put out is on the level artistically? Is there a poetic symmetry to me dropping a tea-bag on the face of a vanquished enemy that I smited with Akimbo P-90's?


Yahtzee is dead-on when he says "art is something that provokes emotional attachment". For something so personal and subjective, that means that what constitutes art can be open to interpretation. Thats why someone can drop a crucifix in a jar of piss and then ask the National Endowment of the Arts to fund the follow-up. That's why I can think this song is a masterpiece and you may think its just clambering of loud noises (in which you would be wrong because At the Gates fucking rules). 


The fact of the matter is, as an entertainment medium, video games have proven they can holdtheir own against cinema and music. If you are going to claim that the latter can be art and games aren't, consider that computers are just an integral part in creating what makes those forms art as well as video games (i.e. Avatar). Also consider that like cinema and music, 95% of what is out there sucks. Those that are the cream of the crop can truly inspire great emotion, and make you feel not that you've "won", but that you've completed the journey the story tellers or artists have set forth in front of you. The industry is too new to set along side great poets or painters, but I wouldn't be surprised that 50 years from now there may be some games that are still discussed for their beauty in presentation, and intrigue in gameplay. 


TL;DR- Check the end of Yahtzee's piece. Motherfucker stole my shtick!!!

Monday Commentary, Outsourced Edition.

Today's outsourced commentary is actually a bit of old news. Originally published on April 7th, this come from the New York Times Online Edition, and further weighs in on the Bad Company 2/ Modern Warfare 2 battle. While I do plan on posting a Bad Company 2 review soon, its going to be difficult for anyone to review the game or discuss the game without comparing it to the juggernaut in the room which is Call of Duty.

Prior to this year, the whole battle between Activision and EA for what company has the better FPS military shooter franchise was pretty decisively one way.  However, recent developments at Activision (more specifically Call of Duty's developer, Infinity Ward) and EA's release of Bad Company 2 have brought things more in balance by way of gameplay even though the sales figures tend to tell a different story. I have noticed that while Modern Warfare 2 has a solid following, more and more gamers are beginning to defect to Bad Company 2. Now the New York Times is weighing in as well:

In the Electronic War, Momentum Shifts to the Underdog.

To be honest, this article isn't very well written, and doesn't give a lot of insight into what may make Bad Company 2 a better game. Lord Bling actually wrote a more thought out piece in the commentary I posted a few weeks ago. However, I wanted to show the world that the tide may be changing, and maybe also to help set up my review of Bad Company 2, expected toward the end of the week. (I actually have another review coming before that so stay tuned.)

TL:DR - NYT: Hire me as your Video Game blogger.

A Quick Note about Reviews.

I'm almost at the point to start rolling out some reviews in the next few days. I will also try and keep the blog up to date on current events in the gaming world. Before we get to that, a few words regarding reviews and the site in general.

There will be no distinct format when it comes to reviews. As we add contributors to the site, each person will have their own distinct style of writing and judging how a game is reviewed. Personally, I am going to take the approach of not giving a game a distinct score or letter grade or things like that. I do that for a few reasons: a.) There is no perfect game, no unicorn, no "10" or A++ out there. Therefore, I don't see a need to rate a game based on how it can be relative to that unattainable number. b.) giving a game a quantitative score can bite me in the ass later when games are compared to one another. Say I would have given a game 8.5 and another 8.1, but I liked the 8.1 game better and put it higher on a 'best of' list. Does that make me hypocritical? No, because I'm not going to give a game a rating. And finally, c.) I just don't want to.

I like how Kotaku does their reviews. They say what they liked, what they didn't like and leave the reader to determine on their own based on whether more pros than cons or vice versa were mentions on how the tone of the review went. I haven't quite decided yet if my reviews are going to parallel that style or just go straight forward and summarize the game, and give critiques along the way.

I also want to take a bit and talk about reviewer bias. I want this to be the one post where I explain where I come from in the world of gaming and not after every review or commentary made. It is up to the other now and future contributors whether or not to identify their biases for your amusement; I'm not going to ask them one way or another. The world of gaming appears to have many factions, many divisions. Sometimes, these divisions can be contentious, and like the political climate in this country, people are quick to be labeled and more so dismissed when they appear to favor one division over another. Having said that, I'm going to clarify where I come from, so that you will know where I'm going.

First off, I am in that small divide between the casual gamer and the hard core gamer. I have been playing video games for over 20 years, I've worked on the retail side in the past selling games, determining what the market is looking for, what sells, and what doesn't. This is not my life, it is a hobby (and an expensive one at that).

I own a lot of both current and past generations of gaming consoles. I grew up a Sega kid, owning the Master System, Genesis, and Game Gear handheld. I was always envious of the Nintendo kids, but I didn't own an NES of my own until I was out of high school. In college I was a hard core Playstation guy up until my mid twenties where a good buddy of mine convinced me that the original X-Box was a superior system. Since the release of the current generation of consoles, I am primarily an Xbox 360 gamer. I own a PS3, but the extent of my gaming collection, and gaming networking has been done on the 360. I purposefully do not own a Nintendo Wii because my kids are too small to play one and I am not a fan of 99% of the games out there. Therefore, you will not see a ton of Wii reviews here from me. I will most likely leave that to other contributors or outsource that all together. Now, I'm not saying this to incite a flame-war between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft fanboys, but most of the multi-platform reviews I will do will be on the 360 version of the title.

My promise to you is this; regardless of the gaming platform I use, I will focus on reviewing the game, and not make any commentaries about why this console is better than that in the course of a given review. There are many positive things to be said about every next gen console out there, and there are a lot of negatives. But I will be honest with you, and sometimes the truth hurts.

TL;DR - We're going to be subjective. Not a surprise.

Sunday Commentary, Outsourced Edition.

Today's commentary comes from my main man Lord Bling over at Ryan the Angry Midget and Friends. Lord Bling and I have been friends for at least six years. A hardcore gamer who works in the gaming industry, he posted a good op-ed about the state of Modern Warfare 2. You can read it here:

Why I've Stopped Playing Call of Duty.

I agree with him on all points, especially that Multiplayer is a total glitch fest. While the news regarding MW2 lately has involved drama between Infinity Ward and Activision, what needs to be addressed is the fact that the biggest entertainment release of all time and standard bearer for contemporary military FPS is pretty much being ruined by retards like this. While I did break down and download the DLC last week (peer pressure is a bitch), it definitely has proven not worth the $15, nor has it brought me back to MW2 at all. Lord Bling explains it all for you.

TL; DR- Click the link.