Review: "Borderlands: The Handsome Collection"

Borderlands 2 was one of the first games I ever played start to finish in Co-Op. The unique artistic style, dark comedy, stylish gunplay and sheer levels of dumb fun kept me fluttering around it like a moth to a flame. Even after my group of four disbanded and we parted ways to play other games, I still found myself being drawn back into the world of Pandora, wanting to beat the challenges, obliterate raid bosses and just get some god-damn better loot. It's fairly safe to say that at least Borderlands 2 has quite a sentimental place in my life, as it was a game that I played with some of my closest friends, and it also allowed me to drag my girlfriend, albeit reluctantly at first, into the world of video games.

Now, why am I bringing all of this up?

The steam summer sales rolled around, during which I bought Borderlands: The Pre-sequel and Borderlands with all of their respective DLC's. So I figured I might as well look back on the series as a whole, and see what went so incredibly right for the geniuses at Gearbox. For the sake of comparison, I won't be mentioning Tales from the Borderlands, as while I do have it, I'm yet to play it, plus its a completely different genre to the main body of the games themselves.

BORDERLANDS

So this is where it all began, being greeted by an annoying robot after I get off a bus. As far as shooters go, it's fairly innovative. The different element types, class variation and gun randomisation make the game far more interesting than it looks. However, its pretty easy to see where all the love for the series came from. The game itself is fairly challenging, requires a lot of patience and skill, and overall makes you feel like you've accomplished things when you beat certain bosses or done certain quests. The game has this nice feeling of steady progression, and with the constant need to upgrade and change your loadout, and therefore playstyle, it doesn't get stale quickly. The story is fairly captivating if albeit a little short compared to its sequels. The skill trees also feel a little stunted, but considering that this game was a new IP, I'm okay with it.

The DLCs, although not adding any new playable characters, makes for a good and fairly reasonable expansion to what already available, adding in some interesting new NPC's and locations. Overall the first game was a really good place to build from, allowing for the sequel to be even better.

BORDERLANDS 2

There is train-crash, and I'm greeted by the same annoying robot. First of all this game makes one hell of an impression as soon as you launch it. I love the way in which the entire story of the first game is summed up, and the all the consequences are delivered in the pre-start narration. Considering that I didn't play the original game before this, I felt going into it that it was a new game in its own right, which personally I thought was well reinforced by the introduction of new playable characters, and the original characters playing a pivotal role within the story, as NPC's, or in some cases providing an extra AI hand in combat. The introduction of a new elemental type, Slag, makes for an even greater reliance on both environmental damage as well as teamwork in multiplayer, as while it deals no damage itself, it causes damage received by those under the effect to be magnified significantly. This game does what the last game did really well, but even better than the last game did. The slightly oddball characters in the last game are now outright batshit crazy. The larger than life characters and pure charm alone carries the game so much further than the original. The inclusion of the customisation system that includes new head skins and colour collections rather than the choose your own colour scheme system in the original adds so much more personal depth to the player's characters than previously done in Borderlands. The DLC's are phenomenal, and that's not including the story or Headhunter DLC's, but also the two character DLC's that add new and exciting variation to an already varied class list.

Speaking of the story DLC's I couldn't resist singling out and mention one specific DLC. "Tiny Tina and the Assault on Dragon Keep". This one DLC is an absolute masterclass in storytelling. The setting is beautiful. The interjection from the characters makes the game so much better, as it makes it seem like the Dungeons and Dragons game imitation that it is. But it also does something that I wasn't expecting, it shows all the stages of grief through the eyes of the youngest NPC, as a final DLC to conclude the Borderlands 2 experience it so beautifully ties together all the mechanics, characters and gunplay that makes the game incredible.

BORDERLANDS: THE PRE-SEQUEL

Unfortunately, this game is a step in the wrong direction, in some aspects. Whilst the main mechanics are essentially the same as Borderlands 2, there are two additional mechanics which are a welcome addition to the game. First of all Cryo damage, this acts as a slag replacement, because in terms of the lore of Borderlands, slag damage doesn't exist yet. Cryo damage is easily better than Slag, as it makes enemies far more vulnerable to critical damage, as well as melee and explosive. Hopefully, there will be the co-existence of Cryo and Slag in, what I assume will be, the final instalment of this series. The other mechanic, that I'm not sure I'm sold on, is the low-gravity, double jumping, ground pounding, semi 'aerial' combat. Whilst the majority of the new combat adds much-needed variation to the series, allowing for the arenas to open up vertically, the majority of the game takes place within these low gravity areas, which in some cases makes everything just a tad more uncontrollable. One of the slight complaints I have is that nearly everyone who is on the moon is Australian, apart from, to my knowledge, a single random cockney ten-year-old. As far as I'm concerned, the story of Pre-Sequel is both good and necessary, as there was the entire backstory of the villain of Borderlands 2 to explore, and credit where credit is due, instead of giving us egregious amounts of exposition in the form of audio backstory, we actually get a game that develops five of the existing characters, introduces family of a fan favorite from Borderlands 2, and fills that gap between Borderlands 2 and 3.

I consider this game very much what Fallout: New Vegas is to Fallout 3. A large DLC, developed by another studio, released as its own game, with other DLC. Unlike Fallout: New Vegas, however, it's not better than in predecessor, that's not to say its bad, but it would be incredibly hard to live up to the phenomenal game that is Borderlands 2.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Its quite obvious that as a series Borderlands has been going from strength to strength, even if Pre-Sequel is a bit of a step backwards from Borderlands 2. I am very excited to see where the game takes us in the, technically fourth, but the third instalment, there is so much they could do. This however also leaves me cautious, as there is so much that could go wrong. With any luck, the game won't be overhyped, won't have a large number of its details leaked prior to release and won't make the mistake of not moving on from Handsome Jack. For once, there is a game series that I'm genuinely excited for, as it has colossal amounts of potential, but with that comes the danger to disappoint.

Review : Just Cause 3

Welcome to Olly's first post. The main things you gotta know is I tend to write a lot more about one thing and unlike Dan, I am one of those pesky console peasants with a subscription to online services and with it the selection of monthly free games. For PlayStation, August's top free game was Just Cause 3, the open world shooty boom bang game and I, in typical review fashion, have some thoughts. (Potential spoilers)

The main synopsis is that our hero Rico and his agency return to his home country to help a rebellion remove a militaristic dictator. Simple stuff, really. The game also thinks this is just enough to get you started, throwing you right into the middle of a battle and reuniting with all your old buddies that you've shared so many memories with. I was initially confused, but passed it off since I hadn't played the previous entries, I did a bit of research and yeah, no, this is the first time players have seen these people, despite them apparently being Rico's best friends and crucial allies. 

This quick and simple pace continues in the cut-scenes, always taking place in a one shot camera motion, which while keeps things interesting, gets a bit much when its mostly just characters talking to each other in quick succession, no time to breath. The general story is harmless enough, a couple of twists, lots of action and a few funny lines. I was always looking forward to destroying bases as it meant receiving a radio message from a kidnapped celebrity forced to explain why the military was getting rid of all their strongholds. This character improved even more when I realized he was voiced by David Tennant. 

The story was never the main selling point however, the game play is where this game truly shines. Right off the bat it gives you access to the majority of your weapons, vehicles and gadgets including an infinite para-shoot and wing-suit. Travelling the world feels effortless, just grapple upwards, get some air and your off. I imagine most players spending their time off the ground. (Especially as the majority of the vehicles handle reaaaally badly.) It's the most fun I've had travelling to point A to point B in a game.

The larger part of the game comes from liberating military areas and towns by taking out individual assets such as statues, posters, gas tanks and electrical equipment. And yeah, this is what the game is really about, because pretty much everything that needs to go will go up in a massive explosion. Everything explodes. And you have plenty to explode things with. Tethers, grenades, tanks, jets - oh it all blows up eventually. Yeah it gets a bit samey over time, most towns and bases kinda look the same, but it blows up just the same. You can just blow it up. Just 'cause (Oh I get it now).

The side content is a little lacking, split into two categories; collectibles, which will reward you with some special weapon or vehicle, and challenges, complete a certain task and you'll get gears out of five, the more gears, the more mods you can apply to your game play. 

These challenges suck.

They're immensely frustrating, including incredibly specific goals and bullshit consequences. I admit when I've made a mistake in a game, but if a challenge just puts you in a truck on the top of a mountain and the end goal at the bottom you'd expect some difficultly but some general method of getting down. Nah this is just "good luck, try not to hit anything on the way down because it'll send you flying in the wrong direction and you'll lose precious seconds on your top score." Added with the load times that take just a bit too long for current gen games, restarting challenges over and over will really wear you down.

And while the game really does looks great; vibrant colours, shiny buildings and those huge fiery explosions, it really doesn't carry all this very well. During my play-through I suffered countless frame rate drops, a few game breaking glitches and once had the whole game crash 4 times in one session. This game came out in 2014 guys, can't they patch a few things?

On the whole this isn't a game you should go into with grand expectations. It's certainly a good game and absolutely tons of fun throughout, but I would recommend only playing a few hours at a time, maybe after a long day at work, unwind by soaring through fields or blowing shit up. 

Olly

Review: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

When it was announced I was very happy, a new campaign, some additional layers of challenge, some special units belonging to both you and the enemy, seemingly freshly ironed of bugs, all wrapped up with some new mission types and some new voice acting to boot. Consider me hyped up. 

War of the Chosen (WoTC) came out on the back end of august. After sinking several hours into both the original XCOM and its expansion, as well as XCOM 2, I decided to buy it, cos if it’s awful, steam will let me have a refund, a feature that to date has been used once on a game I don’t care to remember. Thankfully, it remains unused as this game is good.

Now I want to make one thing painfully clear, it’s really unbelievably good. It takes all the good things about XCOM 2 and improves on them. I never got round to doing a review of XCOM 2 before it became redundant, but holy hell WoTC does an exemplary job of making me love the game more than I already did. The addition of the new fatigue mechanic as well as the AP and XCOM AP for special soldiers makes the game have a tonne more depth. Any of the Chosen actually present a threat and can easily beat up your best team if you slip up for more than a second.

The new classes do lend themselves to the occasionally overpowered moment, dropping whole ADVENT pods in a single turn. The Reaper is quite nice to play as they have a unique concealment mechanic called "shadow", that’s give them a chance to not be detected whenever they attack an enemy. The Skirmishers are just out and out lethal, in conjunction with a Grenadier I killed two high level enemies without even breaking a sweat. Their unique attack twice in one turn as well as their melee weapon essentially turns them into rangers on steroids. The final and favourite class of mine is the Templar, a psionic glass cannon that can end up being the single most powerful unit on the battlefield at any given time. I’m not sure what to call these, but they rely on killing enemies with a with a melee attack called "rend" to build focus, which in turn makes them stronger, but they can spend this focus to carry out some insanely strong psionic attacks, that in one of my missions killed all three members of a pod instantly. These classes are extremely well balanced with the rest of the game, and with the addition of the fatigue mechanic, it means that while they can be super-soldiers, if you don’t give them some rest time, they will suffer from a tonne of negative traits.

The Chosen are quite cookie cutter, pulling from a pool of abilities, some present in the base game, some added by WoTC. However the thing that makes them unique to every play through is that they have different strengths and weaknesses, and can develop new ones over time. They can be defeated, but respawn until you use one of the new rooms, The Circle, to hunt them down to their base and finish them once and for all. There didn’t seem to be a uniqueness to them. Sure they all look different, and do different things, but how beating the Chosen works is the same every time. Use their weakness against them until they die. Maybe if I had to discover their weaknesses and strengths whilst fighting them that would be better, as I would have to try literally every tactic to bring them down, instead of looking at the obvious neon signs telling me how to beat them.

Also am not going into any detail, as if you’re going to play this game, which I recommend you do, I want you to experience this for yourself. FUCK THE LOST. FUCK THE LOST AND ALL OF THE THIER FUCKING MISSIONS. The game added in the Lost, aka Zombies, which to be fair, are fucking quality. They provide this pressure, this unbeatable enemy, who forces you into situations where sometimes you have to decide which soldiers are more valuable, or if you want to fight advent, or you'd prefer to see your soldiers get ripped apart by some mouldy screaming motherfucker.

There’s several improvements to the research system. Namely the inspiration system, and breakthroughs. Inspiration makes research take a shorter amount of time, and breakthrough provided bonus that have to be priorities to gain them, otherwise the chance to get them goes. The Circle and its covert operations add use for soldiers who otherwise would never see the heat of combat, as well as a way to gain PCS's, weapon mods and supplies, and also give XP to your less used recruits. There is also propaganda system now, where you can make posters involving your soldiers, and their exploits.

Overall War of the Chosen is brilliant. It’s a well thought out, well executed, fun and generally rewarding gameplay experience. It’s made a game that was already quite enjoyable surpass literally every expectation I had, as I was expecting DLC akin to something like the previously released "Alien Hunters" or "Shen's Last Gift", and I was soooooooooooo fucking wrong. Honestly, it’s worth the £35 price tag, buy it.

Dan

Theres going be some changes...

So admist "The Other 99%" and University and a myriad of other games. I have deceided to implement some changes around here.

There will be a potetially large increase in the number of posts, mostly due to the new guy, how has been suffering alongside me in the 99%, who has finally grown some testicles and decided to publish his own stuff onto this blog.

There may also be some changes in the layout of the site, as well as the name, URL .etc as Level Up was personal to me, and to reflect the nature of this now becoming a joint venture, i feel that changing the name of the site would be A) more accomodating of other authors and B) also reflect the attitude that we wish to have towards it, as we both want to take this project more seriously, as we both have a passion for gaming, and would like contribute to the community we've taken so much from.

This isnt a full time project for now, and it might never be a full time project. We will post as much as we can, however we both value the quality of the posts above the qantity of the posts, so there isnt a strict schedule, so between the two of us, there probably will be atleast one post a week, however during exams season at uni, or when deadlines approach, the blog may go quiet as we will both be very busy trying not to drown under the pressure of coursework and exams.

Thanks for sticking with me for so long, if any of you have stuck around at all. I hope you like the new content and arent too put off by any future changes.

Thanks again

Dan

The Other 99%: Destroy All Humans: Path of Furon

This game, actually isnt as bad as i was expecting.

We have a few issues with it. The parts designed to be "thrilling" arent, and the weapons being mostly useless, meaning we ended up using roughly 3 of them in the course of our playtime, as the first weapons were the ones we upgraded and used the most. Not like it matters however, because DNA, the games currency, is thrown at you left,right and center, making getting upgrades a matter of when, not a matter of if.

I think the main issue we have with the game that its not bad, it doesnt leave us feeling baffled and angry and confused, however its not good ethier, its full of bad sterotypes, shoddily cobbled together action sequences and main character who sounds like a bad Patty and Selma impression mixed with the slug lady from Monsters inc, mixed with Jack Nicholson. The game is far too repetitve as well. Each area us unique, but they all follow the mission formula of mind reading mission, kill some shit mission, do some other shit mission, boss fight. Its too rinse and repeat. It feels rushed.

The script for the game is just "eh", theres some funny lines, most of which are not said by the main character, leaving the "entertaining, funny" Alien character kinda just wasted and lost on us, because all the line delivery was just bad, and the main character is just uninteresting.

I think my view on this game isnt helped that the games that came before it were actually decent, like the first couple of games were well designed and the played really well. This game is just clunky and badly optimised, as shown when in the Not-France area (Belleville) the boss fight cutscene screamed at us, screen tore and crashed five times, and then finally system crashed after the boss fight. We didn't even finish the fucking thing because it kept crashing after the Not-France Boss fight. Not to mention after three chop and change cookie cutter levels prior to it, Not-France was just downright fucking boring.

One of the key features of the game is destroyable citites, but when we leveled an entire city, the game lagged awfully, its just not acceptable for a game released onto a system where the hardware doesnt change, optimise your fucking game.

Easily the best feature of the game is mind reading. Like honestly, thats where we genuinely laughed most. Some of the thoughts are brilliant, and they are unexpected, and they add a level of depth to the game that we find pretty good. The incorperation of the mind reading into the missions actually makes sense and is enjoyable. 

In total, its not bad, i dont hate it, but niether do i like it, but as bad as it is, its leaps and bounds better than Retribution, easily, because i actually enjoyed playing this game to an extent. Unlike that pile of shit it was actually playable and had potential to be decent, but it was too rushed and badly optimised to be a good game.

Dan

The Other 99%: A new thing to pass the summer.

Hi,

Im not dead.

Uni is done (for now)

Im unemployed (also for now)

So in the months till i return to Uni, im starting a new thing, a sort of series, based off an experience.

It all started with this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWxEwdGpIPQ

"Ride to Hell Retribution (1%)".

Yes, that fucking awful dog-shite game. On a day out with my friends, before we parted for uni, We found it, tucked away on the pre-owned shelf in CEX. That fucking god-awful dog shite bag of wank game. As per request in the video, we bought it, yes, me and my friend Oliver actually paid money for it. We split it, I spent £1.25 for 8 hours of gameplay and over the course of 4 separate days split over a year, we played it and i shit you not, i still feel ripped off. 

During this we encountered 4 system crashes, too many terrible awkward sex scenes, and enough explosions to give Michael Bay an seizure. But we beat it, despite it nearly beating us, nearly over a year since it came into our life.

But as the credits rolled, We felt this vaccum. It got us asking a question "is there anything just as bad as it, if not even worse? and if possible could we find it?".

So join us as we spend money we dont have, on games that arent worth it, for no apparent reason at all.

Because any game, AT ALL, has to be better than that steaming pile of horseshit. Probably.

Dan.

Fallout 4: lout...

Hark, a new year, and still the same shitty opinions of a teenager sat in his bedroom.

Fallout 4... (acquired from questionably legal means).

So yeah, back to the wasteland, that one in Boston. The premise is good. Totally not been done before... but it has. You know, in Fallout 3. With the whole missing parent thing. oh and the Brotherhood of steel shows up. like in Fallout 3, and there are other factions, like in Fallout 3, and there is a giant junk city, like in Fallout 3.The main plot is like Fallout 3 up until you find your father. You emerge from the vault journey across the wastes help/pissing on people to find your son/father, then you do shit with them, and then the game kicks off and throws some various spanners in the works.

By no means it the same, but its similar. Bethesda have expanded on the brilliant weapon modification system from New Vegas to levels of insanity, meaning that all weapons can now be modified to extreme levels, and all weapons are now viable into late game. For example , the 10mm pistol I first used has carried me safely to level 14 with few deaths. The modification system also works well as any mods you craft are attached to weapon, but you can remove them. and you can find weapons with random mods on. meaning you can access mods you cant currently craft by swapping them out with less powerful mods.

One thing that pisses me off about the game is the fact that everything can be used. So now looting buildings takes ages, and I end up carrying around more crap than an incontinent baby. In the early levels you need literally everything to progress, weapons, armour and junk. It takes the piss. Also the changes to the ghouls that make them zombie like is amazing, as they are much much more terrifying than they were in the past.

Settlement building is fairly easy. Within my first 8hrs, after saving the last minuteman and nearly being cleft in twain by a deathclaw, I had transformed sanctuary into walled and easily defendable place with a ton of food and water, power and other amenities. Then I just could not be arsed with the poxy other settlements. all I wanted to do in the end was just move everyone to sanctuary, but due to my computer having the processing power of the average potato, it was going to lag my game.

The new power armour system is what the fallout games has needed for ever. It makes power armour expensive to use, but also makes it worth it, as it massively boosts all your stats. However my all time favourite combo of Power armour and fist is now not viable. However being able to fly and not take fall damage is fun, you become more like a space marine from warhammer than a survivor of a post apocalyptic event. (GET ON MAKING THIS A THING). The graphics are certainly an upgrade and the atmosphere is still there, so not all bad.

I cant help feeling too with the insane shitestorm of mechanics and factions that they throw your way, right from the start, kinda means that you pust finding your kid off, and the excellent "Yes, Yes, Sarcastic Yes, Yes" dialogue makes it even harder to stick to the main story. The whole game for me is just a bunch of side quests, some that effect the world more than other.

In short, its abit disappointing, or its too different, I don't know which. it took what made Fallout great and kinda when , "yeah that was good, but look, we expanded on the Hearthfire DLC and made it better, then added zombies and nukes". Now that's not to say its not enjoyable, Fallout 4 is a good game, but it isn't a good Fallout game.

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/377160/

Level: 8/10

Dan