Borderlands and Brutal Legend: My Hobby Is Now Justified!

Posted by fuzzwobble on Oct 20, 2009 in Action, Adventure, Role Playing, Shooter, Strategy | 1 comment

To put it simply: the title says it all. Recent game releases have been depressing and weak. It was as if I was crawling on my hands and knees through an allegorical desert of fancifully-priced coasters that came in shiny boxes, occasionally graced with wonderful, soothing mediocrity that granted about 2 days of satisfaction at best.

I found myself digging back to older titles to feed my hunger for decent gaming. I was soon booting up the true classics such as Dawn of War (which was highly underrated), Portal and Starcraft, just to name a few. Now two fantastic game titles are releasing around the same time, each of its own original style with the longevity of fantastic gameplay value.

Of course one of the games I’m talking about is Borderlands, described as a Role-Playing Shooter on more than a single occasion.

You may remember the crew at Gearbox for their work on Half-Life mods and console ports. Their work is typically on the fringe of whatever genre they are involved with at the time, often taking the time to add a new feel to an old sensation. Fortunately for us, they have more freedom to pursue their potential nowadays and kick things up a notch.

Borderlands will utilize technology which on-demand generates almost unlimited variations of enemies, encounters and weapons. It features a leveling and customisation system unheard of in a shooter. Even the combat feels very fluid and merged: feeling like a cross between Half-Life 2 and the new MMO standard of interface. Scrolling combat text AND live fire? Now you’re talking.

Words probably can’t express the synergy at play here. Click here for a YouTube video showing some preview footage of Borderlands, as well as offshoot links to actual gameplay trailers. Be spontaneous: click what you feel.

In other (perhaps even more orgasmic) news, the game Brutal Legend (check out the game soundtrack in that link!) recently released in Australia. It’s no secret to anybody who knows me that I love my metal and I have always enjoys Jack Black’s comedic stylings. Then there’s my respect for Norse and Vikings and general iron-clad kickassery that I’m often told is ‘unhealthy’. Throw into the mix the fact that I think Tim Schafer is gifted and he is producing the game? Epic.

It would be incredibly difficult for Electronic Arts to blunder this one. They would have to pull something rediculously short bus to make me hate this game. Even this reply querying a PC release couldn’t make me hate the concept:

“Well it’s really an action game, that when you play it you’ll see that it was meant to be on a console.” I am not taking this out of context, the full interview can be found here and you can clearly see he has no intentions at this time to release to PC.

After hearing this, I would typically be very frustrated.

I choose to play on the PC platform because I enjoy the ability to customise and, to an even more important note, keybind my games to how I like them. Say what you will, but a standard controller will never have the accuracy and finesse of a mouse, and you would need obscene, genetically enhanced hands to use one with the same macro capabilities of an entire left side of a keyboard. While some RTS games allow mouse & keyboard setups, I doubt this game will. It’s just not the right genre.

Strangely enough though, the idea of playing it on a console still makes me excited. Possibly even more so, as I get the feeling this game will be hilarious fun to play with friends, even in single player mode. The dialogue and game style just has this wierd feeling to it, an aura if you will, that makes you want to watch it unfold.

I mean, it even lets you select as you play whether or not you want to enable or disable certain options which provide the roadie experience. If you assumed by that I meant gore, nudity and liberal swearing then you would be spot on. To be honest, the toned-down swearing in alot of games crushes the immersion. For crying out loud, remember the last time you stubbed your damn toe? You sure as hell didn’t slam out “Well gosh-darned it, that stung a mighty bit.” did you? So how do you think you would react to being hit by something that actually hurt? Or maybe encountering something that made you feel like luck kicked your gonads?

As for the game’s actual quality, I guess I’ll find out if EA has ‘pulled another EA’ soon enough. I’ve delayed purchasing a copy lately due to other pressing concerns, but I’ll grab one in the next couple of days and playtest it a bit with Jason. If I don’t post for a week, It’s probably safe to assume that things polished up well. There are a few songs on the soundtrack I know he’ll enjoy, but I don’t think Jason will appreciate Dragonforce or the similar styles so much (maybe Manowar?). He has a habit of allowing Nostalgia to clog his ears methinks, but I’ll admit that he has good taste and excellent musical sense.

Now, imagine air-guitaring this game with Project: Natal? Or should I say, Project: Natahl. Nat-ahl. Now I realise that Natal is innovative and worthy of much praise, but I don’t think it’s possible to expect everybody to bend the pronunciation of the spoken language around your product or service and not realise you sound pretentious.

Lionhead studios have been having their fun as usual. This isn’t exactly breaking news, but if you haven’t seen their work with Project Natal and ‘Milo’, then I highly recommend that you click here.

That’s me for the day. TTYL!