Borderlands - Score: 8/10 at 3:37 PM

Firstly: Best. Screenshot. Ever. (click for better details. you KNOW you want to.)

Secondly, Guns, guns, guns, and did I mention guns? If there’s one thing abundant in plenty in Pandora, it’s guns. It’s like that rhyme goes:

Old MacDonald had a farm, eeya eeya yo.
And on that farm he had a lot of guns, eeya eeya yo.
With a bang bang here, and a bang bang there,
Here a bang, there a bang, everywhere a bang bang,
Old MacDonald had a farm, eeya eeya yo.

Borderlands, before anything and everything else, before taking on bounty quests from the bulletin boards around the place, before collecting skulls from a raider’s barricade, before trekking long distance around the place- Borderlands is about killing people. Oh, and it’s also about finding the best gun out there for your killing needs.

Pandora is on the distant edge of the galaxy, a planet that colonists had hoped would be a better life, or at least would make them rich thanks to various mineral deposits. No mineral deposits though, just old, old alien technology scattered around. Those with enough cash in their pockets leave Pandora for good, otherwise the settlers struggle to survive in a harsh environment of scrags and bandits barely profiting from the meager availability of alien technology.

The story goes that there is a vault somewhere in Pandora, filled with riches and vast amounts of alien technology. In short, jackpot. And that’s what you’re looking for.

There are four characters to choose from:

Brick, a massive probably-man who focusing more on founding his enemies than shooting. Lilith, human turned into a Siren, with the ability to phase walk into and out of another dimension invisible to enemy eyes, doing shock-based area damage at the transitions. Mordecai, a Hunter, proficient in the use of revolvers and sniper rifles and able to summon a deadly pet. And there’s Roland, a Soldier, with a multipurpose turret, and his skill trees focuses on healing himself and his team, support ability of his turret, and general improvements to his weapon damage.

One of the fun parts of playing the game is that little thrill of finding a better gun. Will ya lookit that? A revolver with 95 damage, 90% accuracy and 3 shots per second! That is goo- Oh my lord, there’s ANOTHER revolver here, and, OH DAMN, it’s got a whooping 150 points of damage, with 93% accuracy! 2 shorts per second, but it’s one shot I won’t need anyway.

Rarity of items are distinguished by color codes. Like so: White <>

It’s played from a First-person view with a nifty looking HUD reminiscent of Fallout 3 (In fact, the game WAS inspired by Fallout 3), showing your EXP status, your Health, and of course ammunition, and a compass with a pointer for quest objectives.

Your backpack can only hold so many guns until you’d have to decide which guns to take and which to drop. Limit however can be increased with the aid of Backpack upgrade mods, allowing you carry more items as you progress through the game. Similarly you can only have 2 weapons equipped in the beginning, but as your character grows, you unlock two more slots, making it easier to switch to a weapon of your choice.

Other mods include grenade mods and character class mods, which gives bonuses to your character skills and/or other abilities. Adding a Transfusion grenade mod for example steals life from your enemies and heals you, while a Sticky, sticks to surfaces, and so on forth. Character class mods increase character abilities and so on.

Borderlands is kinda like Diablo with guns. Just like Diablo, weapons have prefixes and suffixes that determine a lot of the guns’ abilities. Along with that there’s the bit about manufacturers. Certain manufactures make more accurate weapons, while others make more elemental weapon, some makes their guns look high-tech, others make them look modern-ish? And so on forth. There are unique weapons, unique weapons that unique enemies drop, but are by no means worth keeping, weapons that makes you go “Holy Wowzer”, and weapons that make you go, “Are you freaking kidding me? This late in the game? Fug that!”

Taking cover is a healthy aspect of the game, as unless you’re rushing into low-level enemy territory with a really powerful gun, you’re likely to get pummeled by a multitude of psychos, and bandits and bruisers, not to mention alpha scrags. It’s always fun to be crouched behind a few crates, arm yourself with your favorite sniper rifle, stand, scope, shoot (critical hit), crouch. Rinse, repeat and awesomeness. 

Seriously, Borderlands is kinda like a paradise for a quasi-Gun nuts. I’m not sure if actual real life gun freaks would enjoy seeing so many weird and unlikely renditions of weaponries. But who cares about them. Diablo with guns. So many guns… Oh, so many guns… Now, THAT’s awesome.

Risen review at 11:53 AM

"Fable was one awesome game. Raelly cool. It’s what I’d call a ‘bright’ RPG with really fun gameplay and awesome character building mechanism. And then Fable 2 was announced. I kind of shamelessly went ga ga on it, not because it was anything like the greatest game on earth or something. It wasn’t. It was just fun- oh so fun- which was the beauty of Fable.

Being a PC gamer for the most part, though, has deprived me of the chance to play the second installment of the series, and much saddened was I.

I’ve always heard or seen something about the Gothic series, but tales of bad bugs and glitches warded me off from trying the game out. Gothic’s developer Piranha Bytes announced Risen, and I checked out the trailer and gameplay videos. I was interested. Why not?

And so began my investing countless hours of gameplay to this game.

The game starts with you, as the protagonist and your companion Sara as stowaways in a ship. Caught in an unnatural storm guided by some sort of entity, the Inquisitor aboard the ship teleports to safety leaving the ship to its fatal fate.

Not so fatal for you and your companion, though, as you’ve survived and have washed ashore a mysterious volcanic Island known as Faranga.

Though at first I was skeptical that it’d be much fun to be stuck in a single island for the duration of the game, but I was proven wrong as I found myself enjoying the game quite enough despite the location constraints, with but only one annoyance- trekking through what always seems like miles and miles of grass or swamp or even mountain. Don’t worry, though. Travelling from one point to another becomes easier once you start obtaining teleportation stones.

The gameplay is over the shoulders third person perspective allowing for a certain degree of zooming in and out. One of the major aspects of the game is of course combat. It’s possible to become skilled in swords, bows and crossbows, staffs and magic. Note though, all options may not be open to you depending on what path you take as you progress through the game. Using mechanics of blocking, parrying and dodging, combat can be challenging if you decide to rush your opponents head-on as you’ll realize such tactics rarely work. Patience and timing can win you the battles even if your opponent is significantly stronger.

As you defeat opponents and finish quests, experience points accumulate until you level up. Trainers are scattered around the map, and you spend your ‘learning points’ on these people along with some gold to increase your prowess in battle or other abilities such as smithing or alchemy. All fun and games.

Enemies scattered around the place, be they wild animals or quest villains, none of them will ever be scaled to match your level, but rather if you find yourself unable to defeat the them, the correct course of action is to leave them be for the moment and come back later for some sweet revenge served cold. Cold steel, that is.

There are two primary factions in the game, the Bandits and the Order. Not really as black and white as it may first seem to be, there seems to be some sort of conspiracy going on and it’s hard to say who’s in on it and who’s not. Depending on whose side you take the game play out vastly different, thus giving it a significantly good replay value. More or less.

Exploration is another aspect of the game, one which CAN be annoying thanks to the lack of a ‘fast travel’ system, until you get the teleport stones, which of course you have to find and collect.

Though not really heavily choice-intensive as games like Mass Effect and Neverwinter Nights, Risen aimed for something in between veering very much towards the Action-RPG Hack-and-slash genre. And it was a success. You’ll find yourself toiling around Faranga for hours and hours on end, despite the voice at the back of your mind saying that it’s quite enough for the day and won’t you please leave it off for now?

The graphics are quite visually pleasing except for one quite insistently annoying factor and that is every other character that you run into would remind you of some other bloke you met a while back in another area. Absence of unique character models would have made it a bit lackluster, but you hardly notice it, really. At least, I didn’t. Also, enemies may sometimes be pushed back into walls, and be unable to move. Not really a con as it lets you deal some heavy duty damage on an otherwise really tough son of a gun. It’s not really cheating, right? Taking advantage of the system, that is.

 All characters and NPCs have voices, and the voice actors are at the very least above the mediocre range, which is a good thing. There’s been too many a game where the experience was somewhat skewered through the sensors thanks to appalling voice actors.

This might be a spoiler, but what the heck. If you’re interested in using magic, you might prefer to steer away from the Bandits. I suffer for my sins, but I have a Sharp Obsidian Bastard Sword, so I’m content for now.

Risen is a much darker reality and game than Fable, but that’s quite alright. A solid game, one that gamers should give a chance. If you’ve survived the apparent glitchy horror story that is Gothic 3, then this is the apparent redemption of Piranha Bytes. And that’s for you to judge.

Once again, word of advice. The bandit faction, as far as I can see, does not offer you much in the way of magic. As far as I saw. But, hey. I have my Sharp Obsidian Bastard Sword…

Thumbs up. Definitely worth a try!"

- E

The CRPGs, actually at 5:46 PM

The little 'adventure' of that cleric and fighter wasn't really based on the actual world, but on a "D&D CRPG", particularly maybe Neverwinter Nights which is the only one I played. You can't really deny that's not how it works. Cleric goes to sleep, and cleric wakes up with a pocket full of Destruction spells ready to liquidate anybody dumb enough to get in the way. Or Harm. Or Call Lightning Storm. I will admit however that the axe-throwing bit was something of an overkill. No pun intended.

I also think I don't know enough about the actual D&D world to poke fun at it. Even if I did, I probably wouldn't beause D&D is utter awesomeness.

- Emil

Of D&D and CRPGs: Heal the world at 3:34 PM

Ever since the last post where Emil have specifically said people of the D&D world" had it easy because of the "healing" magic there - I've this terrible itch that probably can easily be cured by bashing Emil's head in.

Because the whole perception, and the hypothetical little game-play description - can only be out of a CRPG "realization" of D&D, a computer game that only uses the basic rules and some setting convention and voila - it's called a "D&D" game!

Let's consider some of the things that happened back there, from my perspective.

So, the player character is a cleric. And let’s consider his level – a Heal spell requires at least level 11 to cast. The cleric and his friend, assuming another level 11 character, were attacked by a group of dwarves. Cleric buffs the Fighter with level 1 and 2 spells, a realistic suggestion, and sets about cursing the opponents. The fighter, at level 11 quite the powerhouse of martial abilities, immediately sets about mowing through the dwarves, who begin to realize the predicament, and begins to flee. The fighter’s hands are just a blur, swinging the bastard sword effortlessly in so many parries, slashes and thursts in every 6 seconds – it’s hardly believable.

But in the fierce melee, the fighter is somehow struck by a thrown axe, and is incapacitated from the combat scene. The cleric has to step in, realizing the mortal danger his friend is in – and grimly sets his mind to perform divine marvels that are nothing short of miracles. He had already performed one, called in a flame strike.

Lo and behold, from the sky above a torrent of pure flame poured down, engulfing a wretched dwarf in agony, burning him to ash.

But now is the time for something equally impressive. Cleric murmurs the prayer to Lathander, entreating that this is the time to borrow his godly might, draw in to himself some divine essence that shall make him into a giant among men. The cleric’s judgment call of performing a miracle against a single dwarf was deemed a sound one by the deity, and he literally became a giant, glowing with Lathander’s light, smiting the dwarf promptly.

Having done that, cleric returns to his friend’s side. He assesses the wound quickly, and pulls out the axe that is still sticking out of the fighter’s side – and quickly casts a cure light wound spell to staunch the blood flow. Why he did that he wonders, since he proceeds to cast yet another one of his god’s miracle now, a Heal spell. At his cleric’s plea, Lathander himself intervened, lifts the fighter out of the death’s steady pull, and restoring every ailment, every cut, every bruise to health. The fighter was saved from the fatal wound dealt by a single hit.

With the vastly lower level enemies vanquished (the dwarves didn’t pose the threat a Mammoth or a War-elephant could represent, really. More on this a bit later.), the heroes are happy with several points of experience they’ve gained, and resumes their adventure.

Now, back to “behind-the-scenes” of what happened.

The cleric was level 11. At that high a level clerics either reach a respectable position in the church hierarchy and oversees the operations in a region, or - for the adventure story’s sake, is on a mission that is critical to his/her patron god/goddess who grants her prayers to perform miracles (thus, the divine spells) to overcome the obstacles she may come across.

Level 11 is not a “mid-level” character in a D&D world. Since it’s not about a particular computer game, or an adventure Emil’s planning; but a D&D world like Faerun or GrayHawk, you have to note this. Let’s consider two Level 11 monsters in the 4e. 1) A single War-elephant, 2) A single Mammoth. Even someone who doesn’t play D&D would know the scale of threat now.

Unlike your favorite hack & slash CRPG or a MMO where you “aggro” the living daylight out of “spawning” monsters, every character is not bound to reach Level 20. Level 20, heck, even level 17 or 18 is the sublime icing of the most powerful individuals of the realm, with the power and resources to topple nations, over time. What about the epics then, you say? They’re so out of your normal D&D world, that they have separate books and adventure sets that points out that these transcendent beings move over to other planes of existences for their great machinations. In our world they’d be stopping a galactic invasion or preventing Sun from freezing over, without us mortals even knowing about it.

The fighter gets struck down by an axe, thrown by a dwarf. When you’re criticizing D&D’s video-gamey healing, you should at least consider that the fighter can’t be struck down till he runs out of HP. But no problem, it’s the world we’re considering, and accidents do happen. So, I’m pointing out, a realistic accident just happened in the D&D world, out of the normal game rules. I’ll be using that just in a bit.

The cleric casually flicks a flame strike on a single low level dwarf. Flame strikes are easy to come by, a level 5 spell – can be cast by a level 9 cleric. You rest almost every day for 8 hours, so what’s the point of not casting it, eh? Lathander’s a good god, a close buddy of our cleric, granting every single prayer every day, since he can easily see that all of them are put to most efficient and appropriate use. It’s like when you’re a really high-class mercenary or a spy in this world. Getting a frag-grenade is so easy to you. Yes, you have the resources and contacts to acquire them – everyday if you wanted. That’s why whenever a mugger comes up in front of you, you throw a frag-grenade in his face. The cleric has to be aware that every divine miracle he/she performs, the deity is always looking over his/her shoulder. As realistic as it is in the real world, when you’re considering the D&D world in general, the cleric must debate if throwing a flame strike on the mugger is really not overkill.

But I’m deviating from what I’m on about – the healing. So, the cleric casts a Heal spell upon his fallen comrade, pulling him back from the brink of death by the intervention of Lathander himself. Lathander considered the cause and reason to be worthy and allowed the casting – the way divine spells, especially higher level ones such as this, work in the so called D&D world. The spell sorted out every problem in the fighter’s body and restored him. But in the D&D world, Lathander, out of the sake of realism, would deny the use of heal, since the fighter dude is alive and breathing, only needs some administration – at best some low level cure spells to put his HP back up out of the pit the Vorpal Thrown Axe of Uber Deadliness sank it to.

Which happens quite often, in a D&D world. Perhaps not in your game, but again – you’re criticizing the world. Many NPC adventurers you meet are without eyes, have horrible scars across their faces, missing limbs – and many more are dead, no raising and second-coming there. Why did these happen? Two reasons. Here’s one: every bald man you meet on Earth don’t have the money to do a hair transplant or aren’t in time to do it, and those people in the D&D world were in the same fix. And reason number two: Divine magic spells are acts of miracle, and higher level spells require the god’s direct attention, and no matter how he/she loves ya’ – casting Cure Critical Wounds to restore the eye of your friend that you accidentally poked out – is a bit tough.

In the actual D&D world average middle class families can’t afford to buy healing potions. Healing potions are not available wholesale, or found in every crate you bust open while you’re running amok. The same goes for services of clerics. Otherwise the dwarf party that attacked you would have had a cleric of their own, and each planned battle would be one of attrition, waiting for the other cleric’s spell to run out first.

You can lament that when you do have all the resources in the world, you can at least want the treatment to leave no scar, and no complications. And yes, D&D divine miracle seems to achieve that some times. But then you, my king, must be aware that the castle you live in might be demolished by a swarm of meteors brought down from heavens by wizards of the enemy nation – and Bruce Willis and NASA can’t blow these meteors out of the sky. Or that a shadow dancer can step out of that shadow in the corner and critical hit you to some place where the scarring won’t matter.

Go ahead if you’re going to poke fun at Diablo, Dungeon Siege or CRPG out there. I’m not even talking about Max Payne’s painkillers or Bioshock’s eves. Heck, even go ahead and have fun poking at 4th Ed D&D’s “Healing Surges”. I’ll join in. But there are reasons enough the old grand daddies of the fantasy game world spawned so many books, stories and endured generations of event progressions. It’s their realism and balance.


- Jitu

You and Bob at 3:00 PM

The post I had written up before 000webhost and joomla fucked it up and made it disappear, and I fucked up by not saving a backup. Not the exact post, but the same essentially. With the cartoon, too. Enjoy. Not AS promised, but definitely something of better quality.



Would it be or would it be not awesome if magic really did exist? I mean, not accounting the numerous hacks abusing the power to wreck havoc on the world, but that can't be helped.

In some ways, populace of the D&D world has it easy. Err. Apart from all the villages getting pillaged and wrath of angry gods. In our world, you break a bone and it’ll take you months and years to get back a fraction of your former functionability. On the other hand, if magic existed? Let’s consider a scenario, shall we?

You’re a cleric of the god Lathander, and you’re wandering around the outskirts of a city with your companion – we’ll call him Bob – say, you and your fighter companion Bob are wandering around the outskirts of a city, with Bob providing protection services in the case of some trouble, and indeed, trouble there is.

You and your friend are minding your own business chatting about the weather and multiclassing when a couple of angry dwarves suddenly appear from behind the bush. You know that they’re dwarves because they’re short, bulky, has a forest of a beard- all the dwarf requirements, that is. And you know that they’re angry because you can see it in their face, not to mention the axes and swords aimed at your abdomen.

Without further ado, the dwarves ask for all your valuables. You’re clearly outnumbered, but you aren’t particularly bothered because you have with you Bob, a large human moderate level fighter, and if you can guess correctly, the dwarves aren’t any of those. You politely refuse the dwarves their offer. Aggravated further, the lead dwarf calls out, “You asked fo’ it then, you twit.”

He swings his axe, and if it weren’t for your being more dexterous than average, you are sure your legs would have been cleaved off your body. You quickly backstep behind Bob casting enlarge person on him, who happened to have just stepped up. The combination of him becoming bigger and stepping up to the plate at the same time had a staggering effect on their small hostile enemies. Though clearly outnumbered, most of them were by no means lacking intelligence. Not all fighters were dumb. The ones that weren’t scarpered off into the general direction of the woods.

The rest decided the stuff they’d loot off these two twats would be worth the risk. And so Bob began the slaughter. His bastard sword flailed about in smooth arcs and dashing swoops, and it wasn’t long before all but two of the angry dwarves stood remaining. More fearful than angry now, at any rate. One of them gained a circumstantial intelligence bonus, and gripping his axe tightly as he could, he threw it at Bob and ran off into the forest as well. Bob, larger now and slower as well, failed to dodge the deadly axe. Despite the armour he was around, and the armor bonus from the buffs you cast, the axe struck him at the torso piercing the hard metal and lodged just a bit into Bob’s ribs. With an agonizing scream, Bob fell to the ground.

You meanwhile had been casting a few curse spells at the ones calling you twats. You threw in a flame strike, too. But, it seemed you had to take the front now. Casting a cure moderate wounds at Bob to make sure he doesn’t die, you stepped into the fray with your mace in hand. The dwarf had taken out a knife with the loss of his axe. The two of you circled around. Your spell ready, you cast divine might on yourself and bobbed the little angry guy on the head with your mace. It clearly smashed the skull, because red things began to ooze out.

You turned to Bob who was trying to take the axe out, like he had a death wish or something. You cast some preparatory spells to dull him from the pain and pull the axe out, quickly casting a cure light wounds to seal the skin. A few seconds passed as you prepared to cast another spell, and lo, Heal was cast, and Bob the fighter was all better now. Bob thanked you mightily and stood up, examining the axe. Deeming it useless he threw it aside and picked up his own bloody bastard sword.

The two of you began chatting about the weather and multiclassing again, deviating for a bit into the topic of why none of the dwarves had a spellcaster on them. n00bs, both of you commented and went on your way towards the Church of Lathander with a heavier purse and more experience, with a few trinkets thrown in. No splint, no bandages, no stitches, no agonizing setting of the broken bone, no new bone/skin growth, no infection, no months of spending time on therapy to get the use of your torso back to normal.

All’s well that ends well, ay?

- E

Really, I will at 12:18 AM

No, no... Honestly. I really will start creating comics of actual quality SOME DAY. I really will. Until then, bear with me. Please?

So, left click or right? at 8:06 PM

I never really wanted to be good with computers, or technological stuff in general. It's just something that happened automatically. I just liked playing alot of games. Which sometimes required more than a basic know-how of computers. So, I tinkered and I tinkered, and I poked around and learned alot.

At some past point in my life, computers were bought for me with the aid of this relative or that, who me and brother assumed to be a knowledge warehouse regarding computers. The relative in question changed now and then, but the principle was the same. Someone bought the computer for us.

Cheaper purchases allowed more gaming, and more tinkering with the computer, and there was the internet which would widen anyone's horizon, whether they like it or not. And before I knew it, the roles got reversed. Those same relatives, not to mention everyone else, now rely on my abilities to handle tech deftly to fix their computers. Abilities which came to me, through years of sweat and hard work, thanks to my liking and wanting to play lots of games. Which, of course, everybody always thought, and will continue thinking of as a waste of time.

On recollection, though, it has been a long time since someone has rebuked me for playing too much games. Or sitting infront of the monitor nearly 24-7... Maybe the age of technology has finally caught up with them, and they've realized the usefulness? Maybe.

- E