The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

It’s been a while friends, but I’ve been busy with work so haven’t found much time for playing games or writing about them. But here’s a quick review of one that I played a month or so ago.

I found Escape from Butcher Bay in CeX (a game/film/music exchange shop here in the UK) for the princely sum of £3 and, considering my love of Riddick, thought I’d give it a bash.

I’d read some brief reviews before and understood that it was meant to be pretty difficult, but it won plenty of awards and was generally well received by critics. The xBox 360 edition was remastered (so bad 2004 graphics were upgraded to still pretty naff 2009 graphics) and included the sequel Assault on Dark Athena which was even better received than the first, with more multiplayer options.

You begin as Riddick and you have to, as the title suggests, escape from Butcher Bay – a high security prison. It’s a first person shooter primarily, with major elements of stealth. Most of the time you’re in the dark,but later in the game you acquire ‘eyeshine’ which allows you to see (a reference to Riddick’s shined eyes in the films) but you are blinded by light. I didn’t make it far enough through the game to acquire eyeshine, and let me tell you why.

It’s bloody awful. This game isn’t just difficult, is damn near impossible to play.

The mechanisms are clunky and illogical, so you’re less sneaky-sneaky and more map-gun-melee-crouch-standup when you try and do anything. Most of the time you’re in the pitch black and as I wasn’t far enough into it to have the eyeshine I simply couldn’t see anything; I was bumping into guards, hitting against boxes and as most of the game is meant to be stealthy I was just getting slaughtered every few minutes.

If I wasn’t getting slaughtered I was getting lost. I appreciate open world games as much as the next person, but give me some slight hint of where I’m meant to be going. Your HUD has no information on it, not your health, your objective, anything. Most of the time you’re just wandering around hoping to find something that might tell you what you’re meant to be doing.

This lack of info along with the speed with which you are killed means that I spent the majority of my time looking at walkthroughs on the Internet, trying to work out what I was meant to be doing. A certain room that has human guards and a robot in it had me stumped for about three days, even with the walkthrough to help me. It isn’t enjoyable to play, not the relaxing escape from work that xBox playing should be, it’s a gruelling eye-straining affair that really just wasn’t for me.

I’ll admit that when you do manage to pull off a stealth attack it is very satisfying, and Riddick’s dialogue is of course as clever and blunt as Vin Diesel makes it in the films.

If you had the eyeshine from the beginning I’d be more open to playing it, because you might actually be able to see stuff, but even then the lack of objective markers or generally anything helpful on your display really starts to wear you down. I wonder if games have become too easy – I remember in Morrowind when you would get no indication whatsoever of where you were meant to be going and so ended up wandering around the countryside looking for something to do. But at least that was an entire world to explore, Riddick isn’t a big enough game to have that luxury.

I wanted to enjoy it, I really did. The storyline, from looking at Wikipedia, looks entertaining enough and the parts where I actually knew what I was doing were enjoyable. But I don’t have the time nor patience to continue with this, so unfortunately it will get donated to some other poor unsuspecting person.

Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm is a 2011 first person shooter, from People Can Fly and Epic Games, who are the people behind the Gear of War games. Taking place in the 26th century, you play black ops leader turned mercenary Grayson Hunt – incidentally voiced by Steve Blum who also voices Marcus Fenix in GoW, Bender in Futurama and Wolverine in pretty much any X-Men cartoon. Seriously, check out his wiki page, he’s in pretty much everything ever.

You can definitely tell that this is from the makers of GoW, the mechanisms, the guns, the characters are all very similar, and in no way is that a bad thing. There are three distinct ways in which this is different from GoW:

The storyline itself. You’re a drunk merc who, in a misguided attempt at revenge, ends up crash landing on a planet where a toxic waste leak has mutated the tourists that used to visit there. You, along with a companion or two, have to make your way across this world in order to find a ship to get back into space. Unfortunately the person you were trying to kill in the earlier revenge act hasn’t died, and is roaming the planet as well.

The melee. In GoW you don’t really have a melee – you can sort of punch but usually you rely on the execution moves to do damage. In Bulletstorm your melee weapon is your FOOT. You spend the majority of the game stamping on things, roundhousing things, and kicking doors open. You also get a leash, essentially an electrical current that is attached to a thing around your wrist, and you can drag people towards you (and then kick them), blast people into the air, pull them onto pipes and other nasty things.

Finally, the scoring system. In Gears you don’t get a scoring system in the storyline, and ammo is at certain intervals depending on which difficulty you play at. In Bulletstorm you get points based on things called ‘skill shots’, you get more points depending on how extravagant your kill is. Shoot someone? Ten points. Leash a pilot out of a helicopter and kick him over an edge? Three hundred points. You get the idea.

Mix this points system with Hunt’s sarcastic and crass humour and you have a fantastic game. The guns are cool, the enemies aren’t particularly difficult/exciting but are entertaining enough, and the storyline holds its own. What really makes this is the skill shots, trying to get all of the achievements and finding out what the cool moves with all of the guns are. If you’re a fan of Gears then check this out, it’s certainly worth it.

Far Cry 3

So after however many months I’ve finally finished Far Cry 3. And my what a ride it’s been. Far Cry 3 is an open world first person shooter, released in November 2012 (so quite a while ago now). As always, there will be spoilers.

You play Jason Brody, a man who while out on vacation with a group of friends, parachutes down onto an island infested with pirates. You are captured by Vaas – a psychotic madman and leader of the pirates – but you manage to escape and it is up to you to become a warrior and save your friends from their fates. I won’t go through the entire storyline cos it’s really fricking long, but that’s the general idea.

You’re thrown right into this story, there’s no messing around, just wham and you’re sat in a slavery pen with Vaas staring through the bars at you. It is very intense, the story really drags you through at an incredible pace and I could barely put down the controller for a good week or so as I attempted to play through not only the story line but also the surrounding world – extra quests, competitions, loot chests etc. The goal is to become a Rakyat warrior, the inhabitants of the island who have been fighting against Vaas and his pirates for many years. You have three skill trees to level up in, and a tattoo on your arm that reflects your progress. Aside from the actual story you also have to kill animals and use their hides to craft new equipment, there’s random side quests to kill certain pirates with a knife, driving competitions with fellow players, all sorts of stuff.

There is, arguably, too much stuff. And this is the main reason people criticised Far Cry 3 because while I can find little negative with this game, the sheer amount of stuff to complete in the open world is ridiculous and frankly boring. The storyline itself you could probably finish in a few hours if you really went for it, but with all the extra bits it goes on for days and days and begins to feel ridiculously repetitive. Even the animation that happens when you loot a dead body (it takes perhaps 5 seconds) becomes absolutely infuriating after the 50 millionth time it happens.

It starts off fun, you have to try and work out ways of infiltrating places, taking people down without being spotted, decide what skills you want to level up. And then you get better and better, and it just gets really boring.

I feel like I’m giving the wrong impression about this game – it is absolutely amazing, perhaps one of the best I’ve played and certainly has one of the best bad guys I’ve come across aside from maybe Handsome Jack in Borderlands 2. Even though it can get a little boring, the characters, the open world, the plot, it’s all this fantastic heady mix that keeps you completely absorbed. Let me delve into a few reasons why this is absolutely fantastic.

Let’s start with Vaas, because he’s a pretty major part of the whole game. He is cruel, mad, childlike, oddly handsome (maybe it’s the mohawk. Or the accent…) and completely and utterly ruthless. He sells slaves and drugs, kills for sport and he has an absolute hatred of Jason Brody. Some of his dialogue, delivered in a slightly sing song tone, is mesmerising, especially the repeated phrase “have I told you what the definition of insanity is?” Until you’ve played the game, you won’t be able to grasp how fascinating this character is, and he is a constant source of wonder every time he appears on screen.

Other characters, such as Buck Rogers, represent perfectly how mad this island is. He buys young men from Vaas and uses them until he gets bored. Buck feels absolutely no remorse for his actions, because the island not only allows them but actively facilitates them. Some of Buck’s dialogue is surprisingly funny, as you must work with him in order to retrieve one of your friends from Buck’s grasp. A small thing that annoyed me with this was how easily the story got past the friend being kept as a sex slave by Buck – you get the friend out and, though the friend takes a few minutes, he’s back to normal pretty much immediately with no discussion or break down or anything. It’s more a sort of “well that happened, back to normal now!” I know it wouldn’t exactly make for pleasant gameplay but actually very little of Far Cry 3 is innocent.

The fighting itself is very clever, and the options are numerous when it comes to weapons or techniques. You can essentially be a tank with a machine gun, a sniper with long range, an assassin using just a knife, or you could just go with the flamethrower and incinerate everything. I preferred the knife most of the time, sitting and working out how to take down a group of four pirates without them noticing, hiding the bodies, throwing rocks to distract guards, it’s all quite a lot of fun. You also pick up abilities like a multiple take down or being able to pull the pin of a grenade while it’s in the pocket of a pirate and then kick the poor guy into a group of his friends. It’s all about being creative.

The open world  is very well done, with you being able to explore pretty much everything, with caves and rivers galore. Some of it begins to look the same but they have paid a lot of attention to the scenery and how you interact with it. Something the creators didn’t pay as much attention to however was the NPCs that you come across. They all look the same. I mean, I know every single person can’t look different or it would take years to develop a game, but please have more than three faces for the masses.

Something that is a little annoying is how many drug trips you go on. People blow drugs into your face, you eat random things you probably shouldn’t, and go absolutely mad. It’s infuriating because you have no idea what is happening or why you’re doing it. I understand the idea, you’re experiencing the insanity of the island first hand, you wonder if this is how people like Vaas experience everything he does. But I’m not really a fan, especially as it decides to trip you out when you’re doing a really important part of the storyline so you don’t really know if you’ve done what you’ve just done or dreamt it. Also, when you wake, there’s usually someone tattooing you, which is just weird.

Here come the big SPOILERS.

Something I think was an oversight on behalf of the creators, and what made the game as a whole really lose momentum for me, was the point at which you kill Vaas. I understand why you, Jason, would hate Vaas and wish to wipe him off the face of the planet. He’s ripped apart your family, made you become something you don’t necessarily want to be, and generally he isn’t a very nice man. But once he’s dead you’ve still got a whole chunk of plot to complete, going after another man who you’ve had no interactions with so far and someone who I as the player don’t really care about. Hoyt as a character is nowhere near as developed as Vaas is, he doesn’t really seem crazy, and your interactions with him are limited. Everything I did from killing Vaas to finally meeting Hoyt was boring, unnecessary and simply so that I could get the achievement at the end. Vaas was the reason I was fighting, ending his life was the entire point of the game, and yet there’s still a huge chunk of the game after that point. Vaas is on the cover of the game for crying out loud – he’s the poster boy for the entire marketing campaign. Jason Brody’s face doesn’t get a look in.

The ending itself was pretty pants. I saw it coming a mile off, and Citra annoyed me intensely. I chose to kill my friends, simply because I’d already seen the alternative ending, but the whole thing was just poor. It’s a shame really, considering how good the first section of the game is.

Conclusion? Play it. Seriously, it’s awesome. If you don’t like blood, drugs, sex etc etc then maybe avoid. But otherwise, PLAY IT.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Black Ops II is the ninth installment in the Call of Duty saga, following a similar format to the previous games but with an added futuristic element, first released November 2012.

The campaign runs two storylines that interconnect, first set between 1986 and 1989, the second set in 2025 during a second Cold War. The plot is very complicated and I don’t think I quite understand yet, so I’ll leave that to the Wikipedia page and just focus on the actual review.

So, as I’ve already said, the storyline is pretty complicated. You play various people, at various times, who all interconnect in various ways but sometimes you’re not really sure who you’re playing. Sometimes you’re even the bad guys, which gets really confusing when you have to start shooting people. It can begin to come together as you reach the last few sequences, but this doesn’t help the feeling of disjointedness as you play through.

Surprisingly, this is more or less the only thing I can think of that I didn’t like about the campaign. It’s a decent length (took me around 10 hours I believe, which is longer than a lot of modern FPS campaigns), is engaging, funny in places, pretty horrific in places, has cool new weapons as well as old favourites, the list goes on.

Of course I’m slightly biased, I enjoyed the other CoD games and as long as the storyline is interesting you can’t go much wrong. If you don’t like realistic FPS games then you’re not gonna like Black Ops II, there’s no two ways about it. The best thing about Black Ops, and why I like it more than Battlefield, is because of the characters themselves. You really feel a connection not only with David Mason (the person the story revolves around mainly) but also his right hand man Harper (voiced by Merle from Walking Dead) and even the bad guy has a back story that can make you question your own actions. This means that the campaign isn’t just a series of “here’s a gun, go shoot bad guys” but you have to actively make decisions about what your next move will be, decide how to storm areas or take down a heavily fortified platoon. On the flip side, one or two missions do just give you a helicopter and machine gun and let you mow down everyone who gets in your way.

There are a couple of scenes which are pretty grim, up close torture scenes, people being set alight etc. If anything, these scenes serve to make the action even more real, including them makes you more engrossed in the characters rather than keeping you at a distance. This is what makes CoD work, at the end, when the final credits roll, I was annoyed that I wouldn’t be playing with these characters anymore, they are fleshed out to such a degree that they are almost real people.

Speaking of the final credits, don’t skip past them, there are further scenes interspersed. They change depending on your final choice in the campaign, but there’s one in particular that is just weird. It’s so completely removed from the story line that it takes a second to work out what the hell is going on. I won’t spoil it, but brace yourselves.

Okay, so thumbs up for the campaign.t’s grand. Maybe even more enjoyable than Halo 4, though Mason gets knocked out nearly as much as Master Chief does.

There’s also the multiplayer, so you can pit your abilities against 15 year olds across the world. Okay, so they’re not all 15, but if you play on it be expected to be called a fag at least ten times a game. It’s pretty decent, the new loadouts are at the usual standard, and there are some new fun game types which I enjoy more than the standard team deathmatch.

The final game type you can enjoy is called Zombies – you play a character attempting to stay alive during a zombie apocalypse. You win points by killing, which you can turn in for new guns or for perks such as JuggerNog which gives you armour. This is brilliant if there’s a group of you, you have to work out a strategy once you get past level 10 or else you’ll all just get slaughtered, you have to think about your ammo reserves, which perks will benefit you the most etc.

So if you enjoy a good FPS, check this out. It’s fun, it’s engaging, it’s among the best campaigns I’ve played in a while.

Gears of War: Judgment

Judgment is the fourth installment in the Gears of War series, the very successful franchise by Epic Games which first arrived on our screens in 2005 and has continued to entertain millions. While the first three focus on Markus Fenix and run in chronological order, Judgment is set before the first game and follows Damion Baird – a popular character who also frequently appears in the first three games. It is also made by a different group – People Can Fly – and a lot has changed.

We are shown, through flashbacks, how Baird came to loose his title of Lieutenant and was put on trial for not following orders, along with his Kilo squad made up of old favourite Augustus Cole and newcomers  Sofia Hendrik (a novice cadet) and Garron Paduk (previously a Major in the Union of Independent Republics). You join them at the beginning of their trial, and play through their memories as they’re retold. We learn that, while out investigating a convoy, Kilo came across  Locust General Karn and decided to use a weapon similar to the Hammer of Dawn to destroy him.

So the plot is pretty far removed from the mass destruction of the previous three games, but instead gives the player an insight into why Baird was stripped of his rank and put on trial (something hinted at frequently in the other games).

You can tell right from the off that different people have been involved in creating this game – the controls are different, the play is different, the scoring is different. At first it actually made me feel quite uncomfortable – this wasn’t the Gears that I had come to know and love, but instead an impostor. Once you get to grips with it, you can begin to delight in the new weapons and new enemies, but I still miss the D-pad way of changing weapons and also being able to carry 3 weapons at once. It’s the feeling of being ridiculously overpowered (both physically and weapon-wise) that makes Gears, and this is lessened in the newest installment. They have even slimmed down the characters a bit, you no longer take up half the screen with your own bulging mass, more like a third of it instead.

A friend and I decided, in our infinite wisdom, to sit and play through the entire campaign in one go, and we managed it in about six hours.  This isn’t bad when compared to a lot of modern campaign times, but is a bit short in comparison to the seemingly never-ending Gears 3. There are some interesting new add-ons, for example the ‘declassified’ option at the being of each mission which make it a bit more difficult. This can range from environmental factors (such as limited visibility, or very strong winds) to being given a time limit. While some of these make a level very interesting, I found the timed ones to just be very difficult and it takes away from the fun. The best course is probably to play it through normally on hard-core, and then complete all the declassified missions on insane difficulty. Two birds with one stone and all that.

So in general the story is okay, a bit weak in comparison with the other games, but decent enough as a standalone plot. I think the reason this game was a bit lack luster for me personally was simply because it had to contend with the other games, and simply didn’t stand up. Gears of War as a trilogy has done very well to mix a classic shoot ’em up with a plot, resulting in characters and a story as a whole that you as a player really care about. The end of 3 was pretty tough going for most fans, and then this game is just a bit naff as a follow on. It also suffers from the exclusion of some very popular characters – Markus and Dizzy to mention only two. The comedy of the other games provides a little relief from the general horror that you have to fight through, but in Judgment both aspects are lacking.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the new characters are fantastic – Paduk being a favourite of mine – but they simple can’t contend against the long established characters of the first three. I was also disappointed with the big bad of the game, General Karn. He doesn’t have a backstory, doesn’t seem evil or desperate, he is just a Locust with a name.

Away from the campaign you still have the multiplayers, though some of the game modes have changed slightly. You don’t have 50 waves of Horde, but instead only 10. They have introduced some new ones which are quite entertaining, but you don’t play against Locust but instead other Gears, which I find a little odd. The amount of customisation you can have has lessened in some respects but increased in others, though this isn’t enough to make up for the lacking multiplayer aspects.

I would say that if you’ve played the other three games and enjoyed them, I would have a go at Judgment more for the sake of completeness rather than anything else. If you’re looking to get into Gears then please play the main trilogy before picking this up, because it will probably put you off wanting to get the previous games.

BioShock Infinite

The third installment of the popular BioShock series hit stores in March of this year and promised something completely different than its predecessors. And boy does it deliver.

Developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games, this is a first person shooter but with an added RPG element, allowing you to customise your skills how you see fit. We meet Booker DeWitt as he is dropped off at a lighthouse (sound familiar?) and has the task of finding and returning ‘the girl’ – Elizabeth – who is in the cloud city being kept prisoner. You must lead DeWitt through the city to free her and defeat Father Comstock along the way, using a mixture of melee, weapons and special powers called Vigors. It is up to you what you primarily use, and what you buy upgrades for.

The storyline, seemingly simple to begin with, gets more and more complicated as you go through the city, as more characters turn up and parallel worlds come crashing in. Once I’d finished the game, I had to go onto Wiki just to get an explanation about what had just happened, it’s that complicated.

If you dig out my old reviews for the other BioShock games, you’ll know that I’m not a particular fan. They’re confined, dark and very jumpy, with crazed people suddenly sprinting down corridors at you. In comparison, Infinite is set in the cloud city of Columbia, bright and cheery with wide open spaces and plenty of chances to try out different ways of fighting. This is so far removed from the previous game, the only thing that is vaguely similar is the Vigors that you can use, but even these have evolved greatly.

So what can I say that’s negative really? The answer is – not much. It’s entertaining, thrilling, difficult in places, everything you want from a game. Okay, some of the cut scenes are a little long in places and some of the enemies are a bit naff but overall I can’t particularly complain.

There is one thing, and it’s more that I don’t get the point rather than being a bad aspect of the game. This is the concept of your choices having an impact on the outcome of the game. As you begin to play you are given some choices to make – some are silly little things like either choosing a bird or a cage pendant for Elizabeth’s choker necklace, some are more important like whether choosing to spare someones life. You would assume that when a game gives you choices like these, whatever decision you make will revisit you at some point later – for example “this guy could help! Oh, you killed him? That’s a shame.” After I’d finished the game I went and did a bit of forum hopping and apparently no choices you make affect the game in any way. The pendant choice is just to make you feel some connection with Elizabeth every time you look at her. If you decide to kill or spare someone doesn’t matter in the slightest it seems. Now not having multiple endings or whatever wouldn’t bother me, but don’t give me the illusion of choice.

This little point aside, this is a fantastic game and you should all play. Once you’ve played it through once you even unlock a special ‘1999’ mode, which might be the most pointless unlockable difficulty ever. Your shields and health are minimum, damage you take is higher, the amount of money you get is lower, and it costs more to ‘respawn’. It is seriously hard, and seriously boring.

All in all? GO AND BUY IT!

Speed. Accuracy.

Speed. Accuracy.

Reload, check left, glance right, sprint out from my hiding place and across a small stream, cursing as my steps cause the water to splash noisily. Take refuge behind a large rock, the rest of my division are dispersed throughout the area and it’s only the infrequent blasts of gunfire that tell me they are close. Each breath heavy, laboured, heart pounding in my ears.

Got to keep moving.

Move out again, pausing momentarily. Need to find my team. I hear a yell as one of them goes down, cursing quietly to myself and scanning the surrounding area through my scope. Shit, was that a glint of a gun barrel in the undergrowth or simply the sun? Oh fu-

The first bullet rips through me before I even have time to react; I fire wildly in the shot’s direction but hit nothing.

The bullets riddle my body, each with more force as the previous as my enemies realise that I’m done for and close in for the kill. One final last blast from a shotgun and my blood is spraying in all direction, the ground rushing up to meet me.

I throw the controller to one side as the camera circles my body triumphantly. Five red players appear to bounce on top of my corpse repeatedly, cackling. Bastards.

Halo 4, Call of Duty: Black Op II, Gears 4. They’re all either out or coming out in the near future. And I can’t afford any of them, damn it. Also the xBox decided to corrupt my Borderlands 2 character just as I was about to finish the game. Unhappy Northerner, signing off.

Borderlands 2: First Look

Released on the 21st September (so three days ago at present), Borderlands 2 (developed by Gearbox software and published by 2K Games) is the sequel to the massive success Borderlands and runs on pretty much the same premise, but set five years in the future. Dubbed as a ‘space western’ this is a first person shooter mixed in with some RPG elements, set in the cartoon-style world of Pandora where bandits and weird animals run amok. This is just going to be a quick look at my first impressions of the game, which I have spent my weekend playing.

So in Borderlands you managed to uncover the Vault, but since then the leader of the Hyperion Corporation Handsome Jack has been drilling into the planet in an attempt to find the Vault once more and harness it’s powers. The opening cut scene of the game begins with all four vault hunters on a bobby-trapped train that blows them sky high, at which point you get to choose your character and customisations. This is pretty much identical to the first game, with the classes of soldier (Roland in 1, Axton in 2), Siren (Lilth in 1, Maya in 2), Berserker/Gunzerker (Brick in 1, Salvador in 2) and finally hunter/assassin (Mordecai in 1, Zer0 in 2) though the powers have changed slightly. The soldier still has a deployable turret, the gunzerker still ‘hulks out’ but Salvador duel wields guns instead of his own fists, the siren has phaselock instead of phasewalk so you can lift and suspend enemies for a time, and finally the assassin has a hologram effect that can be sent out while the real character turns invisible. These abilities can be improved, specialised with elemental effects and  whole range of other neat things.

From what I’ve played so far (I’m around level 17 and have completed a chunk of the storyline) the improvements made a pretty obvious and very welcome. The problem with the first game was that it became pretty monotonous, you stayed in the first area for far too long and had to go backwards and forwards constantly to the same point to collect rewards and new missions. In the new game you quickly move from place to place, encountering a lot of different people, terrains and baddies, meaning that it holds your attention for a lot longer and you continually have to rethink your strategy. The people include some interesting new people and some old favourites – I was very happy to see the inclusion of Dr Zed (“I might not have a med-school degree, but when you get shot you’ll be happy I’m here.”) and there’s the usual funnies with their various cut scenes etc. The designers have also finally discovered a colour that isn’t brown, so the world has things like snow, water and even a bit of grass. It’s amazing how much this improves the overall gaming experience, but it really adds to the whole thing. The baddies were probably the worst element of Borderlands because they were exactly the same, it was just their levels that were slightly different, and it became pretty tedious fighting the same things over and over. They’ve still got the old favourites (mutant midget shotgunners for example) but there’s a whole barrage of new bad guys with various weapons and perks, as well as animals and plants that will attack you on sight.

The plot line is also a lot more exciting than the first game, with the missions a lot more purposeful, you know why you’re doing them and how they’re contributing to the overall story. The inclusion of the characters from the first game is also fantastic, nicely linking the two games together and the constant commentary from Handsome Jack means that you don’t feel like you’re just wandering around doing pointless things, you’re actually antagonising the main boss and achieving something.

Overall, from what I’ve played thus far, it is hugely enjoyable and they’ve clearly improved on the less successful points of the first game. The main thing I’m disappointed about however is the dual wielding of weapons. This was pushed out as a huge thing, this ridiculous concept where you could dual wield sniper rifles or rocket launchers, and it is this ridiculousness that makes up the basis of Borderlands as a game. You can only dual wield as the Gunzerker, and only once you unlock the perk that allows you to. I was so excited when I first heard the idea of dual wielding, but when I discovered that only Salvador can do it, the whole character system seemed a tad silly. What differentiates these four new characters from the four in the previous game? They have slightly different abilities, but even those are exceedingly close in what they achieve when activated. I was hoping for the level of ridiculousness to be amped up and it just hasn’t been, even the guns are pretty much the same with just a few adjustments. There is however a new element called Slag, which is quite interesting but isn’t exactly the wow factor I was looking for.

Borderlands has always prided itself on being funny, and the comedy isn’t lacking in the slightest in this newest instalment. From what the characters say as they kill stuff to the taglines of major character that you encounter, everything is designed and described in order to get you smiling and chuckling.

This game is pushed as a co-op player, so you can split screen with another person. We had a go at doing this and I’m not sure if it’s just that we don’t like sharing our gameplay or that the co-op isn’t designed especially well. The inventory/map screen doesn’t shrink along with your split screen so you can only ever see a quarter of the menu at one time, which is really annoying if you’re trying to compare guns or something. I think in general I just don’t like sharing my guns, my kills or my swag, so this mode just doesn’t work well for me. I don’t play well with others.

I haven’t played it online yet, and I don’t know if I’ll bother, it doesn’t strike me as the sort of game that works well online, unless you just turn it into your bog standard Call of Duty-esque game.

So check it out, especially if you enjoyed the first because you will absolute love it. If you haven’t played the first then, for the sake of understanding the overall story, I would try to play that one first before getting your hands on a copy of this.

Are Comic Books Really Sexist?

This debate has been raging for quite a while now, especially with the new spate of Marvel films being released along with the new Batman films, and comic books in general seem to be enjoying a healthy revival with a lot more women becoming openly interested in the genre.

So are comic books inherently sexist? Of course they are! I mean just look at the outfits, the stereotypical gender roles enforced with every page turn, the way love stories are portrayed and the pièce de résistance – the ridiculously proportioned bodies. It’s no wonder men are up in arms about how their gender is represented in comics, it is truly sexist. See, you all thought I was talking about women and female characters, because that is gender that people get so angsty about, while the male gender just gets brushed to one side.

The most hilarious argument I’ve heard as to why it’s only women who start this sort of argument is because men want to actually be the superheroes and comic books stars that they’re reading about, whereas women just don’t appreciate being represented in such a derogatory fashion. I call bullshit. If I could have some sort of superpower, fight for a team for the future of the Earth (good or evil, I’m not fussy), a fantastic figure, an awesome lycra costume and breasts big enough to loose galaxies in (minus the crippling back problems), then sign me up!

I do think the above argument kind of misses the point though, if you’re going to apply a standard to how one gender is portrayed, then the same should apply to the other gender. If women have to be portrayed more realistically, so do men – let’s give Superman a bit of a beer belly and Wolverine should start losing his hair. Where do we draw the line? Catwoman can’t fight crime today because she’s got really bad cramp…

I suppose the real reason this argument has come about is because of how some men talk about the women in comic books and games as well. Yes, some are objectified, with the most famous probably being Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series, played by the gorgeous Angelina Jolie in the film adaptations. You’ve also got characters such as Fran from Final Fantasy XII, Storm/Jean Grey/Rogue from the various X-men franchises, Catwoman/Poison Ivy and others from the Batman universe, the list goes on. If you do a quick google search, some of the comments accompanying articles about female characters include some fantastic gems, but there is nothing actually that blunt or sexist, the worst comment I could find (true I didn’t spend hours searching) was “Emma Frost is by far the hottest comic book babe”. Yes, there will be a few sexist asshats out there, but the majority appreciate something more about the characters than just how big their tits are.

The same cannot be said for how women approach the male characters. Think about the release of Marvel’s 2012 film The Avengers. Ye gods, the levels of oestrogen in the theatre when Thor, or Iron Man, or Captain America, or Hawkeye, or even Bruce Banner appeared on film – you could have bottled it! A quick google search comes up with some fantastic comments, including:

• I’d still do Wolverine any day of the week
• [talking about Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye in The Avengers] Good God, the naughty things I’d like to do to that man… Those arms, too… those are some pin-me-up-against-the-wall-and-have-his-way-with-me arms.
• [The Avengers] I’d do all of them… at the same time… everyday… forever…
• [Concerning The Dark Knight Rises]  Bane’s penis will never be lonely as long as I’m alive.

Think about that last (hilarious) comment for a second, then change the character to Catwoman. ‘Catwoman’s vagina will never be lonely as long as I’m alive’ is a damn creepy sentiment, no matter how you dress it up. But women can get away with these sorts of comments, and the amount of objectification suffered by male characters in comics/games far outweighs how objectified women are. True there are other factors at play (men will always be seen as aggressors in this situation, whereas women are just expressing their appreciation for a fit male character) but I believe my point still stands – double standards! And before anyone comments, I will hold my hands up – at various points in this blog I have swooned over Wolverine, Liev Schrieber as Victor Creed, Chris Hemsworth as Thor – but I will quite happily allow men to do the same.

I will agree that the costumes for females tend to be pretty ridiculous, take the X-Men as an example. Jean Grey’s skin tight lyrca would be ridiculous to try and fight in, similarly with Emma Frosts’ outfit that leaves very little to the imagination. Hell, Fran’s outfit in Final Fantasy appears to consist of just a couple of pieces of strategically placed leather and not much else. But then take a look at the male characters – Wolverine, Cyclops, Thor, all of them wear skin tight outfits that accentuate every muscle and leave little to the imagination. True there isn’t quite as much skin revealed as with the females, but surely that’s the point? The point of all comic books, and games, and films. Escapism. The opportunity to experience something different from your own mundane little existence. I want men who have more rippling muscles than physically possible, women with amazing yet impossible figures, superhuman powers, the ultimate fight between good and evil. I want sexy, attractive, powerful people filling my screen and making me feel a little more important for a short space of time. And it’s not like the above description of the costumes is true for all characters – Batgirl wears a full body black suit, as do Storm and Rogue in X-Men. Similarly, the antihero Namor the Sub-Mariner tends to run around the Marvel universe in naught but a thong.

I would understand why people might get annoyed about women’s portrayal in comics if they didn’t have the same opportunities as men – but they do! They can be just as powerful (hell, Jean Grey is far more powerful than any of her male counterparts), they can be good or evil, they can kick arse or be pathetic, they can be emotional or stone cold. There is nothing a male character can do in the comic book world that a female character can’t also do. If this weren’t the case then yes I would agree that comics are sexist, but the reality is far from it! Yes some of them are stereotypically ’emotional’ or ‘hysterical’, but there are male characters guilty of these traits, just like there are some ridiculously masculine women – if you’ve never read Tank Girl I highly recommend them, they’re fantastic!

To wander into the world of gaming for a second, the focus seems to be less on the portrayal of women in games, but more how women who actually play games are viewed. There was recently some outrage over a comment made by Borderlands 2 designer John Hemingway during an article about the upcoming game, specifically concerning a new DLC character currently in progress called the Mechromancer. She is a small girl with a mechanical arm who is designed especially for people who aren’t that good at first person shooters but still want to play co-op with others, a mode which Hemingway very stupidly described as “for the lack of a better term, the girlfriend skill tree”. This immediately brings up suggestions of women not being very good at gaming, they will automatically suck at FPS and will only be useful as a support feature for their superior male counterpart. Even though Hemingway apparently meant the comment more as a nod to couples supporting each other, it was still a very bad phrase to use and if he’d used ‘boyfriend skill tree’ to describe it the outcome wouldn’t be much better. When doing articles/interviews just stay away from using these types of labels to explain an aspect of the game because someone is going to get upset.

So here’s the point that my post ultimately comes down to – who does sexism in comic books hurt? The characters in this sphere are created to entertain, to amaze, to be objects of our affection and lust. That’s the whole idea, and I don’t know anyone who would transfer the objectification they express towards fictional characters over to the real world. Hell, if I saw someone wandering down the street dressed like Poison Ivy I’d wonder what the hell they were doing, or if someone was as muscular as Batman they would have to be on steroids. It’s not real and in turn this allows us to objectify. That makes it sound like that seeing attractive people is the only reason for comics and it’s really not, the point is  entertainment and the freedom that comes specifically with comic books, this whole new world that is created where the human body is capable of amazing things and good (almost always) wins over evil.

I for one hope they don’t change how characters are presented in comic books, because I believe the genre would lose something intrinsic to its nature. I understand why things like film adaptations change the outfits (yes seeing Hugh Jackman running around in yellow spandex would be amazing, but ultimately impractical and distracting) and agree with that wholeheartedly, but leave the fictional characters of comic books and games alone!

Borderlands

Borderlands is a first person shooter mixed with RPG elements, developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games. It’s set on the fictional world of Pandora, a world rich in mineral deposits and the such. The Dahl Corporation decided it would be a fantastic idea to ship loads of convicts out there as cheap manual labour. Rumours of an ancient vault contained alien technology spark vast searches, but these prove fruitless and the planet’s changing season awakens Pandora’s vast array of mean beasties. Dahl opened up the gates of their prison camps then promptly buggered off, meaning the planet is overrun by bandits, crazies and those unfortunate enough not to be rich enough to escape when the Dahl left. The player is a mercenary who, drawn to Pandora by the rumours of the Vault, has decided to search it out but must fight numerous baddies on the way, guided by some bizarre ‘Guardian Angel’ and a couple of other friendly characters who want you to do increasingly difficult favours for them.

When the game first begins you have to chose between four different characters, all of which have different weapon specialisations and a particular perk available only to that character. Firstly there is Brick, a Berserker character who likes rocket launchers and explosives, and his perk is a Berserk mode where he basically punches the shit out of everything and regenerates health whilst doing so. Brick is my favourite player simply because of the Rage mode, it is exceedingly fun and has saved my ass many many times. Lileth is a Siren and prefers elemental tech weapons, and her perk is a Phasewalk where she turns invisible and moves very fast for a period of time. Upon exiting Phase she creates a shock blast that stuns enemies and hits them hard. Personally I find her perk to be the least fun/useful, and the comments she makes while fighting can start to grate. Mordecai is a Hunter, specialising in Sniper Rifles and preferring a Revolver as a side weapons. He has a pet Eagle-like bird called Bloodwing, which can be deployed at times to take down enemies. Finally there is Roland, a soldier of the  Atlas Corporation’s private Crimson Lance army, who specialises in shotguns and combat rifles, and can deploy a gun turret as his perk. All of the characters also have a melee attack, some having knives or lead piping and some using their fist. The characters perks can be improved as you go up levels and gained experience points, which you can attribute to certain things like making the perk last longer or a melee attack do more damage.

The fun thing about Borderlands is that the game does not take itself seriously – the gameplay is more cartoon-like than realistic, and the enemies have names like ‘Badass Psycho’ and ‘Mutant Midget Shotgunner’ with attributes that contribute to this names (for example the Midgets fall over with the force of their shotguns firing). Even the weapons do not escape the cartoon-esque nature of Borderlands, with names such as ‘Terrible Shotgun’ and ‘Fearsome Bettie’ and apparently  there are over 17,750,000 different variations of weapons throughout the game. Some also have incendiary, electric or corrosive properties which are both very useful and hilarious to witness. These weapons are dropped by enemies, given to you for completing quests or sold by vendors, and are randomly generated every time so you don’t know what you will get.

The enemies go up in level as you do, so you are constantly coming across newer better enemies as well as the typical ‘boss’ enemies who aren’t easy to defeat. You also get access to vehicles at around level 7 meaning that travelling becomes a lot less painful and you discover new locations with new allies and enemies alike. One of my gripes with this game, and it is very small, are these low level enemies called Scats which spawn near to where your main ‘base’ or town is. They don’t level up, they stay at level 2 or 3, but if you don’t bother to kill them they will end up killing you through sheer volume. This means you have to waste ammo and time killing these pointless little things.

This is also fantastic to play as a co-op game, either 2 player split screen or you can go up to 4 on a system link. It also gives you the option of starting a new character all you can all load up previously played characters and start a new campaign with each other. It’s a lot of fun sitting in a room with other people playing this game, but you have to make sure that you’re not all playing as the same character. Imagine four Mordecai’s, all with sniper rifles picking off enemies at long range? Boooooring. You also have to play with people who are going to play fair, because even though all the money you loot is split between you, ammo and money you get from selling weapons goes to the individual player. Now you can imagine how annoying it is if someone continues to run ahead of you and loot everything before you get the chance, arguments ensue, one of you ends up having a paddy. I mean, I presume that’s what happens. The person who co-oped with me would not dare to steal all the loot first.

If you enjoy FPSs and RPGs then I highly recommend this game, it’s fun, engaging and every play through is different because of the randomly generated weapons. The artwork within the game is also fantastic, and really gives this game an edge over others. That are there are very few games anything like this on the market.