Weenisday? Update

And lo, the 4th week of the 10th month would be the Week Of Gamegnathus.  Ye verily.

Gunnar has got me hooked on a bunch of good stuff this week — you’ll probably see some overlap, but I go first and am better by any empirical standard, so read this post. That will free up your Friday to run out and buy whatever Halloween costume is left at your local thrift shop.

SMALL WORLDS

Gunnar threw this gem up on his Twitter last week. It’s a neat little piece, but that it calls itself a game does rub me the wrong way.  Yes, on a very rudimentary level, it’s a game, as you’re trying to navigate your little man from point A to point B. But clearly that challenge is not the “point” of the piece.

I’m not completely comfortable with how far we’ve stretched the “game” moniker. If the only criterion for being a game is that you interact in some way, then adjusting the contrast on your TV is technically a game.

I’m not so much interested in having a council of very serious persons setup guidelines for what gets to be a game.  What we really need is a word for these things that hover in the nebulous gray zone between art and games.  “Gart” comes to mind, but I’m open to suggestions.

BORDERLANDS

Gunnar has been drooling over Borderlands for weeks, but I was unmoved. Then I was linked to these delightful talent trees. It was at that point I decided they were actually taking this project seriously, so I had to poke my head in.

I’m impressed with their effort on the roleplaying side, but it is a tad old-school.  They’ve taken the loot system almost verbatim from Diablo, even using Blizzard’s color-ranking system for loot. The odd thing to me is that they chose to crib Diablo 1 instead of WoW, which has substantially improved the ‘epic lewtz’ model.  Getting anything to drop is completely random, so I find myself crossing my fingers and checking the store constantly.  Having a choice of loot from quests and linking powerful weapons to powerful enemies instead of RNG (random number generation) should be standard these days.

I have been impressed with the FPS elements.  I find myself hot swapping weapons, mixing in my melee attacks and watching enemy patterns to expose weak spots.  Clearly they’ve done a lot right.  It’s also surprising how much more I enjoy FPS when I have control over my weapon load outs.  I’ve always found automatic weapons pretty boring, and I’ve managed to eschew them almost entirely so far in favor of sniper rifles and high powered pistols.

Gunnar has been some kind of invisible ninja chick who wields a shotgun.  Clearly anything goes.

The game includes vehicles, but they’re wonky as all hell. They have no inertia, so you run into bushes and stop dead without taking any damage.  Also, whenever I have access to a vehicle, I just run over bad guys, hop out, grab my plot coupons and move on to the next camp.  Fortunately, you can’t take them into a lot of places, so they don’t stomp the difficulty curve.

I’m really curious to see how multiplayer and endgame content shape up.  I know I’ve approached my character methodically with an eye toward having a “build” for use in a group setup.  As far as I can tell, Gunnar is basically winging it. I’m curious to see if Borderland’s multiplayer will lean toward MMO-style punishment for those that don’t have a group setup and a focused roles, or if it will ultimately lean toward FPS, where any group that shoots good will be fine.

We’ll keep you posted. If you want to hook up with me on Steam, I’m BenjiGauntlet.  I think.

I’ll post a video shortly of me playing through Borderlands’ first real quest.

WoW  Update

Patch 3.3, which will add Icecrown Citadel (Arthas’ crib) is incoming, so that’s where most of the news is.  Blizzard has started releasing info about class changes and the new raid.  I can’t find any 3.3 PTR raid videos that aren’t live feeds, so here’s some of the five-man stuff.  I’ll try to FRAPS something up or find some raid videos as soon as I can.