Borderlands was one of the surprise hits of the year for me (and many others). It was announced without much excitement and when press events were held, people talked more about Randy Pitchford than the game itself.
I love the game. Check the review to see why and if you haven't grabbed it yet, hopefully it will sway you (be best if you had a coop partner though).
I have been given Mushihimesama Futari to review for NTSC-UK and it is fair to say I am spell bound by it.
For those not in the know, Mushihimesama is a pretty hardcore shmup, specifically of the bullet curtain variety and is not something I normally play as they are incredibly daunting. I popped it in on Christmas Eve to have a quick look at it and before I knew it, 3 hours had flown by.
People always relay stories about how they lost track of time playing a game and this was a genuine and honest example of that. I don't want to spoil the review but from out of nowhere this has made it's way on to my GOTY list.
So, how was Christmas?
I spent a couple of days at my parents and discovered that I am right in my assertion that British TV is mostly terrible (none of my TVs are tuned into receive a signal in my place and thus it is only when I go to other people's houses that I see TV). I long for the day when families consider it traditional to sit around with a game rather than sit and watch terrible British sit coms. I'm not saying games should replace TV but in my family, games are considered something that kids and nerds do and are not part of any family time. My parents grew up without games in their lives until I got a Mega Drive and don't consider games to hold any merit or worth as family entertainment. This is due to a lack of education about games and also the same fear of playing them that paralyses a lot of people that haven't played games before. Which is why I stayed up for hours after people had gone to bed to play Mushihimesama.
Just before Christmas I embarked on a game that both delighted me and infuriated me. My girl was awesome enough to give me a copy of Dragon Age for Christmas (we did presents early) and I popped it in on the day before Christmas Eve as I was curled up on the sofa being ill.
That game is straight up awesome. It is late and I want to go to bed so instead of writing a lengthy paragraph about why it is awesome, let me just say this: it is a Bioware RPG.
THEY MADE KOTOR.
So the delight is obvious but what about me being infuriated with it?
In your camp there is a guy that wishes to speak with you. When you speak to him he describes a wonderful, epic quest filled with adventure and riches. You get several layers deep into his conversation tree and find out the quest can only be embarked upon if you buy more content.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
In my fantasy RPG there is an advert for DLC?
To make matters worse, there is a separate space in your quest log entitled 'DLC'.
This fantasy RPG is filled with adverts for some DLC. This kind of behaviour is repugnant and despicable and I'm probably talking myself out of ever having a job at EA (which will hopefully be remedied by my upcoming blog post about how much I love the Army of Two characters).
For the past year I have been saying that in either 2010 or 2011 we will start seeing ad breaks in games. I'm not talking about a cheeky logo in a loading screen or FMV but a full on advert between levels. When I say that part of me thinks it is nonsense and will never happen and part of me remembers that Need for Speed Pro Street had adverts in the achievements.
One last quick thing before I hit bed; I have just finished Wanted which means I have played the holy trinity of console based Grin games and the fact they are gone breaks my heart. All of their games have some issues but they all have some amazing ideas in them. Absolute gems of design implementation like Wanted's cover hopping system or the way the grapple was worked into combat in Bionic Commando. I would have loved to see what those guys would have made if they got to do an epic project with their own IP.
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