Game Informer gives AvP low score, Gamers conclude reviewer is an idiot

Game informer's review on the new aliens vs. predator game appears to have been written by someone who hasn't even seen the movies. This article on Allegedly Speaking dissects the review and points out the flaws.

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Where I'm at right now

Edit: Forgot to mention that I took off the ads. They were very intrusive and weren't actually generating any cash.


Ah, new year, new batch of games.

As I begin my inevitable loss of interest in EVE online I looked into other MMO's. This time, it's warhammer online: age of reckoning. It's not the only warhammer-ish thing as of late, I bought dawn of war anthology a few weeks back.

I went for the retail version of warhammer online and struck gold.



Yes, that is the collector's edition of the game. This thing is scary huge. It's roughly as big as an xbox 360, and I think even a little heavier. It was on sale for $65 at electronics boutique (EB games) at the st. lukes westfield shopping center. Obvious plug, but that was an awesome deal you have to admit.


In other news, things have been going great - I finally managed to fix a busted partition on my hard drive (that was about 17.9 gb of unusable space)and added it back to the main partition.

How did I do it?

..Dunno, actually.


So, anyway - Warhammer 40k Dawn of War. Friggin' brilliant, if I say so myself. I didn't think squad-based real time strategy would be possible - if even such a thing existed - but I have been proven wrong.



WAAAGH!


Other than that, nothing much else has happened. Currently looking into buying mass effect 2 on steam.

Add me on steam if you want to, here's the link.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197985100217

I'd just say my steam community name but there's about fifty different goddamn "penguin"s on there.


-leo

Half life 2 dragged kicking and screaming into 2010.

EDIT#2: Replaced the twitter widget and also changed the general layout of the blog.

EDIT: Just noticed that the twitter widget has broken and is now displaying whatever the hell it feels like. Hmm.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1093025

Now there's something you don't see everyday...

PS1 Emulation... on windows 7?

Technology these days, eh?

Earlier today I dug out my mangled old copy of Digimon World and got my old install of ePSXe running, loaded up a few plugins and it worked like a charm. I just wish I had looping eye of the tiger every time I entered the gym. It was made really enjoyable by the fact that I had managed to get my PS3 controller to work with it, thanks to the good chaps over at .

Their latest drivers allow you to emulate an xbox 360 controller using a PS3 controller. Works with most games, Left 4 Dead being the exception.


In other news, I've been playing about with a few games. Fallout 3, Overlord, Torchlight, James Cameron's Avatar: The Game...

Yes, a movie game. Despite what reviewers say it isn't actually that bad. It feels like ubisoft actually tried.

Tried being the key word, they still failed horribly.





oh god that buggy was the most horrible vehicle ever

Selling out

You'll notice ads on the site. This is because I plan to be rich.

Borderlands (360, PS3, PC)

There's guns. And guns. And guns. And more guns. And more guns. I could go on like this for about an hour.


BORDERLANDS is the highly anticipated four player co-op shooter which has been touted as Diablo for a new generation by cliffy B over at Epic Games. That's pretty high praise. He's right, however - Borderlands is a loot-driven experience which relies heavily on co-op and online play.

The premise follows the tale of four fortune hunters arriving on planet Pandora, a wasteland of sorts filled to the brim with scrapyards the size of football fields and angry wildlife. It's your job to take control of one of the four characters and lead them on their way to find the Vault, a massive stash of alien technology. It's been generally dismissed as a myth, but you are contacted by a mysterious woman who tells you the vault is real. It's a decent enough plot but it's not fleshed out terribly well and feels rather forgettable.


The gameplay, however, does not disappoint. The single thing I can state firmly about it is that it's fun. It's fun blasting bandits and raiders to pieces, it's fun dissecting skags with your favorite shotgun, it's fun making heads explode with a sniper rifle that fires explosive bullets. You'll be gleefully entertained as you pick up a revolver and begin showing people what their brains look like. It's a good thing the controls can keep up with the action most of the time, although control defaults are a bit odd. Melee is mapped to V? whaa?


My largest gripe with the game was that I experienced a few bugs. The PC version has terrible connectivity issues and gearbox are jamming their fingers in their ears and shouting. The xbox 360 version's matchmaking function would send you into games with players well below your level. There's a few other ones I don't feel like specifying. The PS3 version suffers from a bug which affects being able to invite people from your friends list, and that hampers the overall experience, as borderlands is a heavily cooperative game.

The world of pandora will seem very lonely without a few other players to help you through it. This is problematic, as stated with the issues above. It's playable in singleplayer, but do you really want to slog through the entire game without anyone to shoot stuff with?





Graphically, the game won't disappoint. It's got a lovely cell-shaded comic-y style that pretty much anyone can enjoy. If you think this'd tone down the violence to the game, you're wrong - Heads roll, skag bits fly, and you'll be electrifying people out of their skin.

You'll occasionally notice a few visual glitches, blurry textures and poor animation (find Scooter in New Haven. You'll know his creepy, inanimate face when you see it.) but it can be looked over to an extent. I've got an odd glitch on my widescreen monitor which seems to stretch past the model for the combat rifles. There's an odd gap between character's arms and the screen. I'll post a screenshot of it later. I'm hoping gearbox will patch it, it's surprisingly distracting.


The sound design, also, does not disappoint. There's the usual variety of boom, rat-a-tat-a-tat, kchunk kchunk kchunk, ka-pow and others which all make a good amount of the weapons sound appropriately beefy. It's all supported by some solid voice work and good music. The voice work is downright hilarious, especially with the psychos and other bandits. One thing I always love is Brick's maniacal giggling. The music is all done very well, and there's not much else to say about it. It'll change into a more actiony track when you're fighting a large group of enemies which is a nice detail.


Borderlands, with all it's 17.5 million different guns, is a very fun game. You'll definitely need some friends in order to have some lasting fun with it, however.

Presentation - 7.0

Gameplay - 8.7

Graphics - 8.5

Sound - 8.5

Overall - 8.7