Why Borderlands might just be the greatest new IP last generation.

So there is a lot of debate over the greatest IP to come out of this last generation, and there are a lot of big contenders for this title too.  But alas only one game/franchise can really get the title.  So who gets it, and more importantly why do they get it?  With contenders such as Gears of War, Resistance, Dead Island, Dead Space, Bioshock, Just Dance, Skylanders, Mass Effect, Saints Row, Left 4 Dead, and Assassians Creed, the winner has a lot to overcome.  However I feel that the winner has to be something that has showed us that games are meant to be fun, and that we should expect nothing less than that.  That is why I believe that the Borderlands franchise gets the title.  It was not an easy decision though, and Borderlands had to work for it, but with a little bit of love, Gearbox showed us that loot fests are still in style.

That's right, you know you love it!

Okay, let me be honest here for a minute.  I didn't jump on the Borderlands buss right away.  Yea, when we first heard of the game I thought that a shoot and loot game was a pretty cool idea, especially one with as many different and unique guns as Borderlands was boasting, but it more or less flew under my radar.  That was until about a year after it came out when I was visiting some family and we were at GameStop and the game of the year edition was 50% off.  I decided that for $20 it was at least worth a shot, especially since I got all 4 DLCs with it.  Well that $20 was probably one of the smartest $20 that I've ever spent.  The first Borderlands just completely blew my mind with how fast paced, fun, and hysterical the gameplay was, and Borderlands 2 did it all over again to the point where I own three copies of the second.  There are only 7 other games that I own multiple copies of: KotOR, KotOR 2, SW: Battlefront, SW: Battlefront 2, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3.  If that doesn't tell you something, then I'm not sure what will.

So, now that I've got that cleared up, one of the things that I really appreciate about the games is the art and graphics, and normally I'm not really one to care about graphics.  It just all works, form the the psuedo cell shaded graphics to the signs that proudly say "Safty Fist", it all really just adds to the feel of the game, and helps to expand the setting with all of the minor details, which I feel that some larger games either don't do or lose focus of.  And that's not to mention the splash introductions they do for all of the characters and people you meet in the game, most of which have some sort of funny little quip about the character or boss monster that is actually relevant to either the character themselves, or where you are in the story.  Every setting in the game has a unique feel to it, I never once found myself asking "Okay, what area am I in again?"  Finally, Gearbox has really gone all out on even the minor visual easter eggs.  Whether it be the double rainbow in Borderlands 2, to the claptrap figurine in Moxxi's Red Light, or even the QR codes hidden in both games, Borderlands has an exceptional appreciation and attention for all of the little things that make playing them that much more memorable.

No one disagrees....right?

In addition to the art, I love the gameplay.  It's fast, it's dynamic, and most importantly it's fun.  Borderlands has been able to successfully take elements of both RPG's and FPS's and combine them into one game.  Bungie presented this idea with Halo 2 called "30 seconds of fun".  The idea of it is that if you can nail 30 seconds on continuous, good, fast paced fun, you can keep your audience in tow for 10 minutes of "boring" game play and they won't even realize it, and Borderlands pulls this off perfectly.  I consistently find myself presented with this sort of risk vs reward system, where the more I stick my neck out in the middle of a fight, the greater my reward in fun is.  Borderlands has hit the nail on the head in this department.  The character customization is just phenomenal, in both aesthetics and in game play terms too.  If I want Gaige to play the support role I can do it, if I want Maya to be an unholy death machine, I can do it, if I want Axton to drop a turret or two and then run in shotguns blazing, I can do it.  The number of play styles is endless.

One of the things that I will always remember about the first Borderlands is turning the game on and hearing "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" after Marcus's speech and just starting to jam out.  Borderlands 2 was the exact same way, but just sub in "Short Change Hero".  They were some of the most memorable openings that I have ever experienced.  Needless to say I was absolutely in love with the rest of it.  And the subtle BGM isn't overpowering either.  Every BGM track fits every area, every scene just right, they don't over do it to distract from the gameplay, but they don't under play it so you notice a distinct lack, it's just right.  In addition to that all of the background noises from not only the supporting cast, but also the PC's themselves are perfectly timed, (more or less) in good taste, and will always keep you smiling.  And it's not just the things in game either,  the fan-made songs are awesome too, like this one by The Escapists Miracle of Sound.  Seriously, listen to it, it's awesome.

Finally, the last thing that really makes Borderlands 2 truly surpass almost every other new IP is the fanbase.  Seriously, it's fanbase is diehard and awesome.  From all of the cosplayers, musicians, artists, fan-fic writers, and yes, even the shippers.  It's a cultural revolution, and it's not showing signs of stopping.  After having made many new friends through my relationship with Borderlands I know first hand that the fan base is large, and the fan base is diehard.  It's not to say that other games don't have these kinds of devout and loyal fan bases, it's just that Borderlands is not only loyal, but it's large, growing, and strong.  And to add to it, Gearbox is ever aware of their fans, and in turn, they have made their game aware of it.  Through the fans the game truly comes to life, both while playing and not.

While we might not be seeing a new Borderlands for a while, I think that I have provided enough evidence to convince even the most stubborn of people to believe that Borderlands is not only the best, but also one of a kind.  Well, with that, I'm hoping to start getting more posts done with a bit more frequency, so here's to hoping  Till next time!

And the Winner is...

So as anyone who doesn't live under a rock knows last week was E3.  And this years E3 was big, really big.      This is due, in no small part, to both Sony and Microsoft announcing their new consoles earlier this year.  While Microsoft laid their cards for the Xbox One on the table right out of the gate, Sony opted to wait until E3 to spill the beans on the PS4.  And what a reveal the PS4 had.  Announcing no restrictions on used games, no disputes over ownership, and no requirements that game developers have to have a publisher to put a game on their console.  Needless to say a lot of this was targeted at Microsoft's announcement on their Xbox One which allows a publisher to permit or deny used sales, is not very clear on who owns the game post sale, and requires that developers have a publisher to put a game on their console, including the team at Oddworld Inhabitants, one of the companies that help put the Xbox on the map.  Though through all of this people are still looking for the "Winner of E3", like it's some sort of game or something.  And though I may not agree with the practice (as I have discussed before) as each console has it's own merits.  But the tradition remains, and I feel that it needs to be honored.  So here we are, time to analyze each consoles E3 showing, including PC, and determine a winner, because the public demands it.

Before we begin I would like to clarify a couple of things on the rules for this little showdown.  We are going to primarily focus on the games that were displayed here, and less on the technology and business practices of some of the companies that make them.  But don't be offended if I tend to leave out a lot of sports games, and I sure you all know how I feel about those.

So lets get this chicken fight started then.  In no particular order lets start off with the Xbox One.  A couple of exclusives look pretty decent for this console, primarily Sunset Overdrive and Killer Instinct, and the fact that both FFXV and KH3 are going to appear on the Xbox One really help it add guns to it's fight.  Now a big game that had a lot of people talking was Ryse: Son of Rome.  Personally I don't see Ryse as turning into a big title, it feels like it will go the way of Kameo with moderate gameplay and an easily forgettable experience.  Forza 5 on the other hand, while it looks good, is becoming something of an all too familiar experience.  It seems as if we get one every two to three years and the series never really progresses as nicely as we would like besides better graphics and a couple of new features, like the Drivatar, though that is a really good idea.  Finally we also saw an exclusive sneak peak at Halo 5, and with that Bonnie Ross proudly proclaiming 60 frames per second as if she was going to win a Nobel Prize.

OMG 60 FRAMES PER SECOND GAIZ!!

Next up, the WiiU.  Now Nintendo tends to be on the back burner at every years E3 with not really too much to talk about besides a few cool 3rd party exclusives (Bayonetta 2 this year), and the inevitable Mario or Zelda title.  Now while Bayonetta 2 looks like a great game, and probably will be a great game, it was most definitely not Nintendo's biggest announcement this year.  That came in the form of Super Smash Bros., the fourth installment in Nintendo's award winning battle royal battle game, and one of my personal favorites that Nintendo owns.  Other big things that we're announced was Pikmin 3, which looks interesting, especially since we haven't seen a Pikmin game since the Game Cube.  Also a Wind Waker remake, which is making me want a WiiU, a new Mario Kart, New Super Luigi U (at least he's getting another game for himself), a new game focusing on Wario, and finally a new Donkey Kong country.  Not a bad lineup.

On to the PS4.  SO one fo the biggest titles that ultimately caught my attention was Killzone: Shadow Fall.  I personally do not own a PS3, so I missed out on Killzone 2 and 3, but I absolutely loved the first entry in the series.  Games like The Order: 1886 and Driveclub will also be extremely heavy hitters in this next generation, especially with the later of the two being free to PS+ members on launch, plus the whole steampunk feel of The Order really makes me interested.  Knack looks like a really cool idea, but reminds me again that it could very easily go the way of Kameo very quickly.  Though only time will tell if that is the case or not.  Finally we come to Infamous: Second Son.  Now while this game looks good, I've never been really big on the Infamous series so I can't say that I'm super excited for it.

Seriously, this game will be amazing.  And it's made by SCE Santa Monica.

PC boasts a small number of games, but we see two large releases: Total War: Rome II and Company of Heroes 2.  Both games predecessors have seen incredible success, and I'm going to say now that they will see much more.  PC also has the advantage of Titanfall, which is also on both 360 and Xbox One, but I have a feeling that PC will trump both consoles the same way that Skyrim did last November.  Though PC never really has a huge showing at E3 becasue a lot of its major games come from Indie developers, MOBAs, and MMOs.

Though it's a potentially unpopular vote, I'm going to have to give this year to the WiiU.  We're getting a truckload of first party games, and Nintendo always has great first party games, a remake of Wind Waker, possibly one of the most fun Zelda games ever made, and a new Pikmin.  I mean this really was an easy call. Plus they didn't get involved in the war that Microsoft and Sony did over their next gen console.  It was business as usual for Nintendo, and I applaud them.  But only time will tell if I'm right.  See ya next time.

Bask in the glory of your champion.

Another Generation of Garbage

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard all about Microsoft's new next gen console, the Xbox One.  All personal opinions aside, the Xbox One looks to be a very powerful console that hopes to compete with PC's, Blu-Ray players, web boxes, and your TV in the next generation.  But is all of that really necessary?  And after what Microsoft gave us two weeks ago in their excuse for a console press conference what can we really expect from their next gen console?  Luckily I'm here to help crack this issue wide open and give you some strong predictions for what will happen both at E3 this week and before we see the Xbox One (Night Stand) before it hits shelves in November.

So, for those of you who joined in on the live feed for Microsoft's press conference you may have noticed a sever lack of one thing that every video game console needs, video games.  I mean the only thing we really saw was a nice 5 minute long commercial for the new Call of Duty: Ghosts.  That's it.  Nothing more.  And don't even try to bring up the EA Sports thing as an argument for us seeing a video game, because by now we've all filed them under the "not games, just pocket pickers" category.  And I know that games are announced, and already have trailers, but we saw nothing in the lines of gameplay.  And that is the key to selling a next generation console.

However a distinct lack of games are not my only vocal concerns about what is in store for us.  My biggest concerns is an isolation of games altogether in the next generation.  Clearly neither the PS4 or Xbox One are being targeted at games specifically, which is a funny thing for a VIDEO GAME CONSOLE.  I want to say that one more time.  The PS4 and Xbox One are VIDEO GAME CONSOLES.  Not home entertainment systems, not a big brother machine, not ET that can't go a day without talking to its mommy, and definitely not a cable box.  They're VIDEO GAME CONSOLES.  So why the hell are Microsoft and Sony trying to pass them off as more than that?  That is a serious mistake.  They need to refocus, understand who exactly will be the most likely to buy their console, and focus their marketing toward them.  Nintendo did that with the WiiU, and because of that, the WiiU was a huge success.

Microsoft and Sony however are not focusing on the games, even though Sony has claimed that "the PS3 is for video games".  This is the same garbage we heard when they announced the current generation, and its the same garbage their giving us now.  The only real change that will ever happen is when we, as consumers, those who hold the almighty dollar and decide the fate of the console, decide not to buy into their bullshit and  start buying only the console that offers us a video game experience that we want, not the TV experience we don't.  That is the only way that we come out ahead.

I will say, the one thing that I do like about the new generation is the ability to take direct screen shots and videos and add them to social media.  It allows people with little to no experience in doing this an option for sharing their gameplay experiences with the rest of the world without the use of expensive equipment.

But this week, I'm hopeful, even though it may be foolish.  I'm hopeful that Microsoft will get their heads out of their asses and actually give us what we want.  Hopeful that Sony has a piece of hardware to give us, and a game to play on it.  Hopeful that David Cage finally gets the quality of graphics that he dreams of so that we can put this whole emotion in games bullshit aside.  And finally, I'm hopeful that Square Enix won't announce four new games that we'll never see.

Hope this week turns some of this around, but don't hold your breathe.  See ya next time!

Pixelating Emotions

So first of all its been a while, I know.  But I'm hoping that I can leisurely keep up posting here through the future even though time has very easily gotten away from me.  A lot has changed in my life and this is something that I would really love to keep up because it allows me a creative release and a place to go into a deep discussions.  I cannot promise a weekly post, but I can promise more frequently than what I was doing previously.  So with that being said, lets get started.

So I really want to cover an issue that has been in and out of the spotlight pretty consistently for the past couple of years but has recently gained a considerable amount of ground.  This subject is none other than: Emotions and Video Games.  Now this subject can be quite a large mountain to tackle, especially when considering its entire scope.  So I really want to narrow it down and just talk about emotions portrayed in video games through the writing in the games.  However, just to hammer how large this subject is I would like to point out a couple of different topics and let you ponder them on your own, but you never know we might cover them later.  So outside of emotions portrayed through writing, video games deal with emotion through attachment to a players character (such as in an MMO), emotion through the artistic direction in the game, emotion through the a concept explored through both game play and story line (and this is different than what we will be talking about today).  As you can see there is a large number of ways games can possibly display emotions.

But as promised I want to look at a display of emotions through writing.  Now, this can be done in a couple of different ways, but at their cores, its all the same.  Emotion through writing is the actions, dialogue, and events of any character(s) in a game makes the player feel something other than an overwhelming sense of meh.  A great example of this is in Gears of War 2, oh yea, spoiler alert here (though that should be obvious), specifically the scene where Marcus and Dom are searching the prison camps to find Maria.  When Dom finally does find her we have a unique chance to experience something deeper than the usual tone of the game.  The way we are experiencing emotion through writing here is the setup from the rest of the game up to this point, and even earlier as well, from the books.  You see, throughout the game the writers hint at 2 very different things: 1) Maria is dead and Dom will find only despair at the end of his long 13 year search, or 2) Maria is alive, living with the Stranded, and a happy reunion awaits for them when he finds her, thus giving Dom hope for the future.  But instead neither one of these happens to be true, and yet both are true.  You see, Dom finds out that Maria is alive, and because of that he fights on only to find her broken, a mere husk of her former self.  Dom is distraught by this, and at the sight of her he realizes that he truly has lost his family.  So he decides that the only thing to do is to remember her as she was and end her suffering.  Now I'm NOT going to get into a discussion as to if this was right, but it really got to me as one of those times where I realized that even a game like Gears of War, has a heart deep down.

Seriously man, the feels.

Another well known example is when Aerith died in Final Fantasy VII.  I'm not going to go into detail with this, because I'm sure we all know what happened.  But, even more importantly, the backlash from the fans was astronomical.  I know people who have sworn off Final Fantasy completely after that, and that's just a start.  Numerous people felt betrayed when she died.  Killing off a main character like that was rarely done in such a big name title like that.

Negative emotions aren't the only thing that writing in games can make someone feel either, multiple games bring a wide range of other emotions to the table.  One of the happiest moments I ever felt was in Kingdom Hearts when, at the very end, Sora, Riku, and Kairi were briefly reunited before Riku and King Mickey had to seal Kingdom Hearts from the other side.  I mean, it was like, finally!!  Sora is reunited with his best friend again!!!  But as we all know nothing lasts forever, and yet again in Kingdom Hearts 2 we get to feel the same thing that we felt before, a overbearing sense of joy that Sora, and by extension, the player has been able to overcome everything in front of them, and prove that the power of friendship and love is nothing to trifle with, and that even the smallest amount of light can shine through the darkness.  And better yet, at the send of the second one we finally get what we were asking for: a happy ending at Destiny's Island.  Moments of pure elation are abundant in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Heart 2.  And all of them are done through writing.

At long last, a happy ending.

Now there is a second way for games to show emotion through writing, and that is a direct tie into the the characters themselves displaying emotion.  Okay, okay, I'll admit that this one should be obvious, but it is truly easy to overlook.  Most people don't think of the writing as displaying emotion this way because in games all we hear and realize as writing is the dialogue, but this couldn't be further from the truth.  In fact everything that happens is because of a writer.  Think of a movie as a visual book.  We only hear the dialogue of the book but we can see all of the events take place, we may miss out on some of the descriptors, like cool water, or searing pain, but we can take in more information faster this way.  Now lets extend that analogy to considering video games to be interactive movies (I know some people will argue about how this isn't the case, but that's not really the point here).  In a video game we experience everything that we do in the movie, except for the fact that games are usually much longer, and allow a player to play a direct part in the narrative, now if this is a main role or a supporting role depends on the game, but either way, we experience everything that is happening directly.

But what does this have to do with character emotion?  Well honestly the same way that emotions are portrayed in a book applies to a game, as a player we have to do a better job at interpreting these emotions, this is because they're not spelled out for us, but this does not mean that they're not there.  I mean, imagine if instead of playing God of War (the first one, not anything after, we don't need any rage-filled hate monsters here), you were to read God of War as a book instead.  You would not need to interpret Kratos' emotions through his dialogue or his animation in the game, instead you would have a direct look into his mind about what he is feeling.  For example, when Kratos gets impaled by Ares, we as players know that he is seemingly hopeless because he feels he has lost.  We understand this because we can interpret his reaction to this event.  However in a book we might see something like: "And the instant the pilar had impaled him, a wave of hoplessness washed over him as he came to realize that this could be the end of his quest."  As you can see, when directly told something, the emotions of how the character feels is much easier to convey than having to interpret them from their dialogue and actions.

A very powerful moment in a game often needs to be interpreted.

Now something else I would like to point out before I leave you for today is none of these four primary methods of conveying emotions should ever act independently in a game.  Can they, yes, should they, no.  To do so would be to rob the player of an essential part of the gaming experience, the unique element that only a game can allow a player to experience.  A true sense of immersion, and a true sense of experience is gained when developers use all of these tools in unison to create an experience, and not when they use one as a crutch that half heartily gets the point across.  Remember this the next time you play a game, and see if you can start to pick up on what the developers are doing, and then take time to compare it to other games.  You might just be surprised.  See ya next time!

Why you should be upset with the Entertainment Industry if you aren't already.

So three weeks ago we saw the release of The Expendables 2, which I have not seen and I do not plan seeing it.  But seeing as this is supposed to be somewhat of a big movie it would be an opportune time to express a few long standing thoughts of mine on the current state of the Entertainment Industry.  I'm not going to beat around the bush with this one either.  I'm not happy.  Not one bit.  And this is for a variety of reasons too, which wouldn't you know it, we're going to discuss here.  Oh and you might want to buckle in because were going to be covering a lot of ground here.

So as I stated earlier this whole deal really just started with The Expendables 2, but the problem stems much much deeper than that.  You see what is really the big thing to take away from the whole Expendables 2 thing is that with it Hollywood is essentially doing what the music industry did with their Supergroups, a nice a novel idea to bring a bunch of big names together in an effort of making something even more famous.  And while this worked in the music industry for a while it eventually fell apart because one thing can only have so much fame.  You see that is what The Expendables did.  They took just about every big name action star that they could get a hold of and put them into one movie, was it bad: no, was it good: no, it just kinda was, and now The Expendables 2 is rehashing what the music industry did getting out of the "Oh hey cool" and into the "Yea, we don't care."  Okay, okay I'm ranting here, but it needs to be said: Expendables 2 is what would amount to a quick cash grab.  The writing from the first one was so generic that you could have taken any movie that any of those actors have been in and write in a role for all of the other characters in the movie and you get The Expendables.  The writing is just that bad.

No, just no.

And speaking of the writing in The Expendables the book industry isn't exactly immune either.  You see over the past 6 to 7 years a few notable books have been taking heat from multiple sources.  yes of course I'm talking about Twilight, but we've all heard everything there is to hear about Twilight's one dimensional, at best characters.  So instead we take a look at a more recent book series, Fifty Shades of Grey.  For those of you who don't know Fifty Shades of Grey, FSG, is a book series about BDSM.  You see the issue here is where the books finds their roots.  The books were started off as a Twilight Fanfic, not to say there is anything that is wrong with fanfics, but there could easily be something wrong with a fanfic containing heavy sexual content based off of a series whose original target audience is 12-18 year old girls.  Now if that's not reason enough to hate these books then look at message.  As I said the whole series is pretty much about BDSM, and from what I understand in the later books straight out rape.  Part of it is the fact that the main character goes into a submissive state for the millionaire that she is willing to do anything he says.  Now is this what we want our society to idolize?  I certainly don't, why teach the female audience to regress back to an age where they had no rights, and that they should be okay with it.  We should be teaching about freedom of self and individualism, not submissive tendencies to give in to deep desires.

My thoughts exactly!

But oh ho ho videogame industry, don't think that you're quite free of any attention here.  Yea you know that game about six to seven weeks ago, Darksiders 2?  Yea about that, I'm going to need you to turn in your ID badge to my desk on Monday morning.  But in all seriousness games like Darksiders, Dantes Inferno, and Bayonetta, why do you exist?  Is it to torture me into reminding me of a time where Devil May Cry was one of the first titles to do it to a level of awesomeness that you so feel you must attempt to live up to?  Or is it to remind me of how there actually once was a good God of War game with a plot that wasn't just Kratos SMASH!!?  Now I'm all for a good platformer, and have played plenty in my years of playing games, and will probably play many more, but what some of these games have done is taken proven and good formulas for that worked for specific titles because of their fresh ideas, and thrown all of that away and pretty much told all of us to buy their games and not think twice.  I mean its kinda like Resident Evil games, where their not scary, just actiony.  Oh and Ubisoft, if after Assassins Creed 3 you don't call it a series I might have to punch you, because I don't want to buy anymore half-assed excuse for games, especially not if they're going to try and replicate the first 2, which were possibly 2 of the greatest games I've ever played, each for different reasons though.

Not really how I imagined Death to look like.

And thats pretty much why I'm pissed off, and you should be, with the current entertainment industry.  Yes, I know I didn't touch on all the good things happening these days, but when all of the bad things are doing so well you really don't want to think of the good things, mainly because its just that these problems are huge and out there and you're screaming that they need to be fixed, but no one is listening.  Oh and sorry Music Industry if I forgot to pick on you a little bit, but I don't really think much is going on with you.  I mean there's nothing wrong with Nicki Minaj or Justin Bieber right?  Or how the number one the Hot-100 right now is about Taylor Swift doesn't want to be with her ex anymore.  I mean, no, nothings wrong with any of that.  Right?