September Lost in the Borderlands…
Another high concentrate month for me in gaming. I have spent many hours into FFXV (and still haven’t gotten close to beating it [definitely not too busy fishing and hanging with the boys]), and many into Borderlands 3 (and many more), so my actual progress is rather small, but managed to squeeze a few in between release dates. Not sure I have a whole lot to say this month, so let’s get to it!
After playing hours on hours of FFXV, I think I got a weird craving for a fishing mini game that brought me to this. I’m not really sure how to feel about this game other than it was kinda weird. Understandably, it is a fishing arcade game, so it’s not really up my alley, but trying to figure out how to use each lure felt a lot more challenging and difficult than it was probably meant to be. That and it hasn’t particularly aged gracefully. Pick a lure, each lure has a depth strength, figure out its unique quirk, utilize it, and try to catch quantity and quality fish. The bigger the fish, the more points, and more is better as you are always on a timer, and each fish will give you very little bonus time.
Recommend? Probably not.
In a day of modern games and 3-D gameplay, I was feeling something a little more… classic. Which led me to Sonic CD. Generally I was fairly confused and conflicted with this game. I always play in a way of a collector and completionist. Yet the goal of the game is to go fast, where I would want to get all of the rings, find all of the hidden objects, and to make matters worse, you could go to the past or future versions of each level to find these hidden objects, but either future or past wasn’t certain. To give me more conflict, premise-wise I wasn’t really sure what was going on, only that Eggman had a giant metal planet, a metal sonic, and a few annoying bits that got me killed all too frequently. Yet, when I started getting into the flow I did start to enjoy the “gotta go fast” style and killer soundtrack. Apparently there are also multiple endings, things I would not get without a guide, and you can beat the game as tails after your first playthrough.
Recommend? Sure, if you can get into more classic fast paced and challenging 2D platformers.
Not sure if Zen is the state you reach once you finally get through all this game, but the only state I reached was a state of rage as I slowly began to lose the ability to get 99% - 100%. The objective of the game is to bind a wooden figure/statue with string which will apply paint via the string or paint balls on the string that explode on contact, until you either paint the statue or run out of string and tie it off at a designated location. The idea is to be “zen” and go with an intuitive flow, as you rhythmically tie the string around without stressing too much. Except I experienced a lot of stress as trying to rotate the statue could cause your rope to slip (in a way that wouldn’t happen had this not been on a digital format), or somehow gets bugged to go through the statue and compromise my ability to complete it. I’m not sure what I got from this game, but Zen sure wasn’t it.
Recommend? Hmmmm… NO.
Gears 5 Status: Beaten
Gears 5 is in now way the best, but it is definitely a step in the right direction after the disaster of Gears 4 and Gears of War: Judgement. It’s story has a little more substance than the last, and its gameplay throughout the story felt a little more like the old gears game while still adding in new interesting mechanics to make it its own. It now sports a new playable character, a flying robot that can be used or commanded to do upgradeable special attacks including blinding opponents, bringing up shields, and more. Another change, that I’m a little more mixed about, is the new open world aspect they added to the game. Although I enjoyed riding out on the skiff, the open world did not particularly benefit or take away from the game. It only seemed to try to capitalize on the trend of games becoming open world, the only other purpose is to find unique upgrades for your bot, and legendary guns that you can’t really store anywhere. The campaign and general level designs made for enjoyable battles. My biggest qualms with the game come from an unfulfilling forced decision the game brings you to and a little too open of an ending.
Multiplayer was a bit weird as it is now more of a basic loadout (some pistol variation, with a non-lethal grenade variation) and as you get kills and kill assists you can unlock a set of available weapons. It took a second to get used to, but after the first match was able to get MVP every match after. The horde mode is relatively standard to the series, however has an annoying leaderboard hub after every round that prevents you from doing anything in between majority of the free time of the round. “Escape” is a new mode that has you and other players race against a threat to get outside of a Swarm hive. Using what you can find and your players power, you can assist or leave behind your fellow players in an attempt to escape. I don’t really see much replay ability of this mode unless you squad with some good friend, it just felt too underwhelming as a whole.
I don’t know if the Gears series will ever truly reclaim its glory from 1 – 3, but it just might get close. I’d more recommend this to fans of the series who need some more, but willing to accept the current faults/lowering their standards for a moment.
Borderlands 3 Status: Completed
Long anticipated and my new favorite entry of the series. Several years after Borderlands 2 you play as four new vault hunters, all with interesting new skills that are quite customizable. The skill trees were all so interesting, that I wasn’t always sure which one I wanted to focus, which is a first for me. The new guns and gun mechanics are a lot of fun, with the Jakobs being my new favorite manufacturer. Though the writing can be a little everywhere and the villains were not as cool as I had originally hoped, the story is still an enjoyable ride, with a bunch of great areas to fight your way through, and great new characters to meet. I absolutely love a lot of the new looks for characters, particularly Maya, and generally fun/unique interactions with enemies, objects, quests, etc. This is still very much Borderlands (particularly Borderlands 2 and that is not a bad thing) with a bunch of quality of life changes, including the ability to fast travel to a point from anywhere, buying ammo by pressing a button near a vending machine and more. The game is littered with bugs however, mostly non game-breaking, repeating audios, laggy multiplayer, and the occasional enemy getting stuck in a while (mostly during waves of enemies missions, particularly the most frustrating). Still, the game is nothing short of amazing, and only a shame they made Epic exclusivity for PC (definitely buying again for the inevitable Steam release).
Recommend? Oh yes, 8.75 out of 10 (-.25 for cheeky and terrible ending song not fitting the Borderlands indie/alternative theme.)
I played a couple fishing games with my dad growing up but struggled to get into this one as well. I’m sure once you get playing it a lot more things become pretty straightforward but in the meantime… What a load of carp. hah
Definitely know what you mean re: the Sonic games and the urge to wanna go fast while also collecting things. With Sonic Adventure 2 I go for collecting things more since it had an impact on the game (feeding your lil chao guys) but with most of the originals have a lot more fun just going fast and playing how it feels like its ‘meant’ to be played - rather than stopping your flow constantly.
My dad and I also played Gears 1-3 but never got 4 on, hadn’t really heard much about the series so didn’t know it went so downhill. Always had a blast with the games and even replayed ‘em, despite looking like a ‘boring duck-and-cover’ shooter which I hear a lot of people dismiss it as. It’s nice to see the series being available on PC! Hopefully they can continue to improve the series as it opens up to a new playerbase.
What a load of carp.
Cheesy? Yup. Terrible? Yup. Do I now wish I made that joke in my review? Yes!
Glad I wasn’t the only one that struggled, but yeah I can see it being one of those arcade that you spend hours to master. Sinking coins into the arcade machine in the meanwhile… Guess you could say while people were trying to catch fish, they were fishing for your quarters. Puts on sunglasses
I eventually plan to get to the Sonic Adventure games, though I remember feeling a little weird about the game from the little bit I did play of it, but looking to give it another chance. Now that I kind of broke my ring collecting need for the Sonic games, I think I can get more into them more. Must go faster!!!
Definitely happy that Microsoft are moving the series and other previously XBOX exclusive games to the PC overall as well. I suppose the Gears series isn’t for everyone, but I also replayed them more than a few times. Sadly I don’t think I can do that for Judgement, 4, and 5… but always looking forward in the chance they reignite the fire the series once had. I only hope that it continues to get better rather than beating(or chainsawing?) a potentially dead horse.
Haha touché, your joke was fin-tastic as well. ;) Thanks for the laugh!
I’m definitely biased in that I was obsessed with Sonic Adventure growing up but I’m still a huge sucker for the chao garden & the ‘iconic’ levels, also listen to the music still today. :) Hope you like it more the second time around. Speaking of Sonic, here is an inktober you may find amusing, she caught me so offguard.
Glad I caught a laugh with that line. :3<
If the music is just as good as it was in Sonic CD, then surely it can be reason enough to enjoy it if not for the gameplay and whatnot.
Oh no, caught off guard indeed, but great and only better by the fact that a few years back I made a drawing of Sonic visiting Tail’s grave… guess he was too slow. ;) Surely this is only coincidence, but I’d like to think these connect. ^_^
I just finished Gears 5 as well with a friend, and while I enjoyed the gameplay overall (it’s more gears in the end), the story didn’t excite me much and I was really annoyed by the bugs we kept having with the NPCs. Especially towards the end, with the hammer of pain and the fight with the brumack, we had to play this part so many times! First the NPC didn’t want to set up the beacon… Then my friend killed me with the hammer of pain, then, NPCs didn’t want to open the door for the next part. And then again, NPCs got stuck and wouldn’t go up to set up the beacon!!!! And we had to play it one last time but because I killed myself with the hammer of pain :’ ) my fault but we replayed this part so many times it was crazy!
And that’s just one part. We had so many trouble, my friend though it was my fault at first since I was hosting. But then we switched and it was still the same. Except we lost all our golden abilities for Jack! For some reason. Worst part is that in the end, my friend still got the achievement for getting all of Jack upgrades or abilities or whatever. While I didn’t get it. Good thing I don’t care about achievements that much but still, why?
Good thing the game was pretty fun to play. I especially liked the invisibility ability that allowed us to go and clear an area without being seen. But it seems you got lucky since you haven’t experienced any bugs!
Oh, I don’t think I really experienced any bugs (maybe crashed once, don’t really remember.) other than maybe some weird situations with enemies being stuck in odd positions wipes sweat of relief. I also couldn’t imagine losing all that progress on Jack, especially with the abilities you have to go seek out in the world. Of course, it doesn’t really seem like games these days can’t be released without a batch of bugs. At least in today’s day they have the potential to fix them.
The story definitely doesn’t pack the punch the originals had, each one seemed like they had a nice juicy overall objective, where this kind of just strings you along a little, but as you say, it is still more gears.
You used the invisibility a bunch? Definitely seemed nice, and enjoyed stealth killing as many as I could before being found. I believe I focused more on Jacks freeze ability and sensor, guess I’m kind of more straightfoward in my tactics sometimes haha.
I bet co-op was a great experience though, and cool you got to experience the game with a friend (despite the bugs). Honestly wish I had someone for the final fight, because the friendly AI seemed almost as useless as Dom in the first Gears of War.
I killed myself with the hammer of pain :')
R.I.P. :’)
It would have bothered me a little more to not get the achievement, but I’m not as deadset on achievements for XBOX/Gamepass games, especially since they don’t activate consistently with PC I have found.
My friend and I both are pretty “bad” at hiding. Read, we like to shoot stuff so we basically stay up and shoot until it’s dead (so yeah we go down often). So once we unlocked the “stay invisible longer the more you kill” ability and since we’re two, it was quite easy to clear a large part of the mobs before being seen and having to actually shoot anything. Plus as said, we lost the freezing so we didn’t use it anymore.
Basically we used invisibility and invincibility (for rez mostly). My friend had invisibility. I was in charge of invincibility. Strangely, we never used the detect ability now that I think about it. Sometimes hacking or traps.
Also, my brother told me he didn’t have any NPCs bugs as well, so I guess only the coop mode was buggy for some reason. But still, Gears in coop is the best Gears I believe yeah!
I can help bring the fishie to safety :catpeek:
Pretty sure I was always told you can’t trust a cat with a fish… or maybe that you just can’t trust a catfish… hmm…
Perhaps you carry some of the small fish, while I carry all the big ones? :d
Definitely the latter, they can’t even decide what they are so they’re not to be trusted