Wherein I talk about everything but the ending

It's like an art student's orgasm

I finished Borderlands last night.

At first I was a little irked by how short it was seemed but Steam's log quickly showed that I had played almost 25 hours (WTF?!).

So what did I think of the game?

The Good

Visually the game is brilliant. The cel shaded style supports the game's tone of black humour and causal murder, and helps distant it from people screaming about it being a Fallout ripoff (not enough though).

Much to my surprise I really enjoyed the loot. In most circumstances I don't see the appeal in paying much attention to your character's gear and whenever someone starts bragging about their virtual weapons I'm like 'whatever fag/noob/commie/humorously-irrelevant-demographic.'
But not in Borderlands. With a disregard for sensibility and a love of fun, the game contains hundreds guns that run on pure awesome such as the shotgun that fires rockets, acid shooting machine pistols, 5 missile burst launchers and revolvers that have shotgun-spray.

Patricia Tannis. There's always a place for well done crazy people.

The Bad

The gameplay, although fun, is repetitive, easy and linear.

The missions are all MMO staples like kill 10 rats, which are just tolerable in MMO's because you are working towards a long term goal in an existing community.

Dying is just a slap on the wrist with a percentage reduction of your cash. But this is okay as horribly punishing deaths would take away from the casual fun nature of the game. What isn't okay is that as you the player get stronger the enemies go from challenges to speedbumps. It's a design that allows people who aren't doing well from being unable to progress but it also means that people who are doing well get rewarded with...no challenges.

Linear probably isn't the best choice of words; the game is an open world to an extent. Closed, empty or futile could also describe the situation. Like many other open worlds there is nothing to do in apart plot and side missions so the world turns into a scenic timesink. The status quo never changes in any way that matters and the only choices you'll get are whether you want to progress or not.

The Neutral

The plot is could use some more depth. I don't expect depth or brilliance for a non-story driven FPS but I'd like something more that 'collect the keys to get to the treasure'. As for the last hour or two, well that's the subject of a whole other post.

The Conclusion

I can't judge Borderlands completely as I only played some of the early parts with friends (oh did I mention the game is supposed to be co-op, cause it totally is) but from my mostly single player experience I can say that although it is no masterpiece Borderlands is much better than a lot of the FPS's out there. And if it weren't for the gameplay flaws mentioned above it probably would be a masterpiece.

MicroReviews #1

Whenever I write I find myself alternating between two states: unable to effectively explain my views adequately, and talking at length about minor details.
In an attempt to avoid these issues (the second one at least) I'm going to try my hand at doing several smaller reviews instead of one sprawling behemoth. This way I'll avoid bloating in favour of an unsatisfying lack of depth.

Paranoia Agent

Combines the unexplained surreal style of Serial Experiments Lain with the rotating roster of characters of Boogiepop Phantom. Unfortunately the meta-plot and in particular its conclusion let down the how which starts so promising. The visuals are definitely a strong point as the animation style varies in certain scenes to illustrate a point, such as becoming more stylised to reflect a character's delusions.

3/5

Dennou Coil

A rare sci fi gem; a series that introduces futuristic technology and then actual shows some of the effects it has on the rest of the world rather than leave everything else the same (eg most DC and Marvel series'). Dennou Coil follows several kids as they live in a world with virtual reality googles. The tone is fairly light for the most part, although it does get darker by the end as the protagonists unravel the conspiracy. Like Paranoia Agent the ending is weak and for the same reason; some of the characters are directly involved with the mystery and everyone else become irrelevant. Unlike Paranoia Agent though, it doesn't bring down my entire view of the show, it just could be better.

4/5

Ergo Proxy

It's been a while so I can't remember what I like about this series. Set in a post apocalyptic world where cities exist in domes the story is about Re-l Mayer's mission to discover the truth about the mysterious Proxy. Despite the meandering plot, absence of non-grey colours and the overuse of pretentious pseudo-philosophical phrases I still look back on this work with fondness and actually find myself liking the characters rather than just tolerating them.

4/5

Blue Gender

A post is not complete until I complain bitterly about something. Yuji wakes up from cryogenic sleep to find that a mysterious race of nigh-unstoppable monsters have wiped out most of civilisation and that what's left of humanity fight a losing battle with power armour. The flaws are numerous: the action scenes are boring, most of the characters exist only as devices and plot points, and the final aesop is horrible. Not even the frequent breasts make this series worth watching.

0.5/5

Flaws

The Final Fantasy franchise is known for recurring elements, such as chocobos, names of magic spells, and summons. While replaying FFX recently I started to notice other less remembered recurring ideas, which really should stop coming back.

Insane Optimism/Morality

I get that the FF games are of the glass half full viewpoint and are generally about a group of diverse individuals coming to together to change the world for the better. Fine, I can accept that. What I can't accept is when the characters take this to an irrational extreme and are still portrayed as heroes.

A brilliant example is present in FFX where Tidus (the protagonist) frequently declares that Yuna won't have to die to temporarily defeat Sin because he'll 'think of something'. Yep that is the sum of is plan, think of something.
It gets worse when the entire group sees a flashback of Tidus' father Jecht declaring that he also 'think of something' and he then proceeds to FAIL COMPLETELY. This would be a perfect time for Tidus to learn a lesson and stop being so arrogantly idealistic. But instead he continues to announce his intent to 'think of something'.
Further more the party then go and kill the one person who can teach them how to temporarily defeat Sin. Their reasoning is that since it stops Sin for a few years it is not worth the lives of two of their friends, ignoring the fact that Sin can easily kill many more people in that time than two. But don't worry, now that they've taken out the one sure fire defence, Tidus and co will really think hard about how to save the world they've endangered.

Ineffective/Stupid Villians

I suppose it is fitting to have pathetic villains to contrast the morally questionable heroes. Or it would be if it was intentional and the you were trying to make some pretentious subversive point.

Let's look at FFX again. The order of Yevon, like all religious groups in videogames, is corrupt. What I find baffling is that they don't even attempt to hide their corruption, and yet some of the PC's are surprised when it turns out the Yevon isn't all that pure. Yuna even grew up in the city of Bevelle (the capital of Yevon) which happens to be a giant machina city (machina is banned). Did she spend her entire childhood with her eyes closed?
Further more the leaders of Yevon seem to make habit of telling people things that will anger them and then get surprised when they get angered. Most noticeably they outright tell summoners that Sin will ALWAYS come back and there is no chance that this time it won't revive (which is the motivation of a lot of summoners). Despite saying this they still expect the summoners to throw their lives at Sin.

So I'm not just referencing just one game, I'll focus on FF7's Shinra now. Initially a power company, they developed a monopoly and in time became the effective rulers of the world. They then precede to act like villians from Captain Planet by being colossal bastards for no reason while also being completely incompetent.
When they discover the location of the eco-terrorist's hideout they drop a plate on it. The city of Midgar is two layers with the second richer layer being built over the poorer original city. So when I say they drop a plate, I mean they drop a portion of their own city onto another part of it. It'd be like Sydney nuking itself so that the radiation would kill some criminals in Brisbane.
It could be said that as supreme rulers of the world they can do whatever they want such as casual genocide and unnecessary evil laughter. And that would be acceptable reasoning if Shinra's massive military force were any good. But as any astute reader could guess from context Shinra's forces are a joke. Only several hours into the game you storm Shinra's headquarters and beat the crap out of the CEO; this is when you're on the first disc of three and you have only half of your party members. If that's not a sign of incompetent enemies I don't know what is.

I'm running too long as usual so I'm going to leave the exciting conclusion for tomorrow*.

*next week

Fractured

As you may be aware, Australia has some pretty intense censorship laws in comparison to other western countries (does Germany count as western?). When they are not outright banning media they are gutting it of its content, and in their spare time they are building a giant internet filter.

Left 4 Dead 2 Refusal of Classification

Though I'm rather ambivalent about the game, I am all for it getting into the country unchanged but apparently hacking the limbs off the zombies is too graphic. Outright banning probably won't occur as Valve will nerf the violence instead. So L4D2 could end up like No More Heroes, mechanically fine but visually butchered.
Last year Fallout 3 was also refused classification. What's strange about this is that the refusal was due to drug use, and not violence. Violence such as the slow motion kills you get from using VATS (ie all the time).

Mandatory Australian Firewall

I have difficulty trying to express my contempt for this idea without resorting to unimaginative responses like 'Luddite thinking' or 'where are we, China?'. On the most basic level the proposed firewall slows down all of Australia's internet.
What I find more troublesome is the vagueness of what will be banned and what won't. Content that is outright illegal (child porn, snuff films etc) is obviously out but things that are either immoral or offensive may be in danger. This worries me because not only do I enjoy some things that are technically immoral/offensive but I also don't like the government having a say in what's right and wrong (barring actual laws of course).
On a slightly more absurd note, I find it interesting that they'll be blocking child porn because I was under the impression that they used those sites to track down paedophiles. It would be funny (in the blackest sense) if paedophilia in Australia rose due because authorities couldn't track any down, and also because without the internet they had to make their own entertainment.

Even though I'm being hypothetical I may have crossed a line there.

Alternative Democracy

Half-heartedly researching this post made me wonder who the hell I should have voted for last election. My biggest complaint with democracy is that voters don't have nearly as much choice as they are made out to have. All you can do is vote for a party and hope they go through their promises. Given that people with actual knowledge and experience in politics have failed to come up with a good solutions to democracy's shortcomings I don't claim to have the answers; however I would like it if there was some way to make an 'antivote'. While I find it hard to find a party I agree with, I find it easy to think of one I want to keep out of power.

Obsolete

I was wasting time on TV Tropes when I happened to find out that Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame also does articles in addition to his weekly video so he can elaborate on things he had to leave out.

Awesome.

Until I realise that Extra Punctuation covers the same topics as my blog (minus the anime) except that he does it more entertainingly, with more skill and focus, and has an actual audience.

So it's one more name to the list of websites that do what I do but better.

Democracy

Gordon Freeman looks to be the winner of the GameSpot 'All-Time Greatest Game Hero' competition. In the annual GameFAQs polls he also tends to do rather well. Even though I'm aware that these sorts of events are meaningless I still wish embarrassing injuries and unfortunate illnesses down on people who vote for Gordon Freeman.

Now if I had readers I'd probably be accused by fanboys that I'm just a sore loser because my character didn't get picked. Well the jokes on you hypothetical reader, as my favourites never even make it into these competitions. Yeah take that, I theoretically showed you up.

And besides that not even the main reason for my hate of Gordon's success.

Gordon is a silent protagonist. Other characters in Half Life games will talk to him and apparently accept (and expect) no response. The idea is that by not speaking it makes it easier to imagine that you are Gordon Freeman.

I like this sort of feature in the right circumstances, like games with some sort of roleplaying element or when you are able to make important game-shaping choices. Half Life games are linear first person shooters. You can only ever take one course of action so the only real thing left to your imagination is how Gordon feels about this: 'I don't want to go through Ravenholm but I've got no God-damn choice. And Alyx I swear I'm going to slap you next time I see you.'

Further more, although he doesn't have a voice or personality, Gordon still has a name and appearance. To me this seems to greatly hinder the whole 'imagine it's you' idea.

Hear that Valve? I think your concept is overhyped and flawed.

On a side note, why the fuck is the crowbar Gordon's signature weapon. With the exception of right at the start of the game when do people use it? The gravity gun would make a lot more sense as it has relevance in game, and is more unique than the obligatory melee weapon. It's not like the wrench is Jack's Signature weapon in Bioshock or so forth.

Potential Irony

Usually for every post that's....posted there's half a dozen drafts which never see the metaphorical light of metaphorical day. The end result of this is that I waste several hours a week typing rants and reviews and finish with nothing to show for it. What does get unleashed to the internet is not the peak of my creative abilities however, but rather whatever has the good fortune to be typed when my standards are lower than usual (or I'm feeling vindictive).

So here's an attempt to revive a draft from incomplete to mediocrity.

Why bother pad out the post with the above paragraph? It is after all rather unnecessary and not particularly interesting.
It is however very appropriate as this post is a summary of my opinions about Stephen King, master of horror and padding the hell out of stories.

I find it hard to find new authors I like but when I do I generally tear through all their works like a rabid dog. With nothing to read for several months I figured King would be a good idea as he was fairly popular and had written a considerable amount of stories.

I started with King's magnum opus, the Dark Tower series. Right off the bat I was interested as in the introduction King admits he was inspired by Tolkien and wanted to make something epic. This struck a major chord with me as I've frequently wanted to write an epic saga that encompasses many genres and ties together years of lore.

The Dark Tower series tries to do this and it has a lot to play with: parallel universes, post apocalyptic lands, the fate of all existence and references to past King novels. Unfortunately like all series with surreal/meta elements it becomes a mess and ends unsatisfactory (which is one of the reasons I stopped caring about Lost).

After finishing the 7 book marathon I had found enough things that I didn't care for to stop reading King's books, but I couldn't tell what was King's style and what was just part of the Dark Tower series.

Next came The Stand, King's magnum opus according to everyone who don't like the Dark Tower. Let's see; virus kills almost everyone, cool; psychic dreams for the survivors, 'kay; rebuilding of society sidetracked by Antichrist,......hmmm; unsatisfying end, dammit.

Currently I'm reading It and I had had plans to also read Carrie but at this point I can see that most of the things in the Dark Tower I didn't like were not unique but part of King's style.

First and foremost there's the recurring element of destiny, that there's some force that drives both the protagonists and antagonists together. Fate is much like Superman: they are both far too powerful for most settings and if not used correctly tend to make stories dull and tensionless. And King does not do destiny particularly well in my opinion.
In all the books I've read so far destiny has been used as a weak justification for basically anything that needs justifying. If characters need to bond, they'll intuitively feel a connection. If a confrontation needs to happen, everyone involved will feel themselves being lead there.
Although I'm never fond of fate in fiction (as I feel it takes away from the characters' achievements) I can tolerate it if done well. Too bad King uses it for corner cutting at best and deus ex machinas at worst.

As mentioned before King loves his padding. I like to think that if he and Hideo Kojima ever worked together on something, it would be so long that it would take more than the human lifespan to finish. In small doses (if that's even possible) it is rather neat, as it can flesh out a tertiary character into more than just a plot device and it allows the planting of really subtle Chekhov's Guns.
The amount of padding actually used far accedes this though. The tertiary character goes past fleshed out straight into bloated. I like some depth to people who show up in one scene but I don't need their life story.

The final point I'd like to touch on is genre. King writes predominately horror, I read predominately speculative fiction. The end result is that although the two genre's events and characters tend to overlap, but the view and style vary greatly. This isn't a criticism, just a sad by product. I want books about humanity rebuilding after a virus or a shapeshifting cosmic horror but not the way King does it.

In closing I think I should point out that although I dislike much of what King does (including other things I haven't mentioned) he is still a talented writer. i just don't like what he does.