Monthly Archives: April 2019

Blog: Katana-na-na Zero -04/24/19

Have you ever wanted to play a game about being a drugged up, cyber ninja with the power to slow time and also there’s some conversational options that seem to impact the story? Well first, that’s oddly specific, but second, you should check out Katana Zero.

I’m not super deep into the game, but it’s definitely scratching an itch that I didn’t know I had. The action is super fast and unforgiving, but not like in a Dark Souls way, where you question if you ever even liked video games at all, but more in a Hotline Miami way, where you’re honing your skills and plotting your path through a level until you get it down perfectly.

It’s this cycle of entering a level, killing everyone, dying to some dude who showed up late to the party, and repeating the whole process till you’re the only one left standing. It feels a lot like the Trials games, except instead of riding motorcycles real good, you’re stabbing people in half and slowing down time to deflect bullets back at them.

So far I’m really enjoying the dichotomy between the frantic action and the story beats. I have no clue what’s happening in the story, but I do enjoy how my dialogue options have in game ramifications. For instance, one of the early levels has you going into a hotel to kill a dude. The receptionist asks you why you’re dressed like a samurai, and while there are the standard, “cause I’m a cool murder guy” answers, I picked the one that alleged I was doing cosplay. The receptionist bought it, let me in with my sword, and covered for me when I tried to leave later on when a cop asked me why I was slathered in blood. It was this cool little moment that highlighted the important of my choices, something I did not expect to get from this game.

I’m still very early on in Katana Zero, but I’m pretty excited to keep going and see how it plays out. So far it’s managed to strike a a good balance between action and story, which has been a great motivation to keep going from level to level. Maybe it all falls apart in the end, who knows? But so far, I’m way into Katana Zero.

The Borderlands Conundrum

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The announcement of Borderlands 3 and the details that were revealed about it left me feeling pretty indifferent about it. I’ve always had a weird relationship with Borderlands as a franchise and Borderlands 3 seems to continuing that tradition.

Before I get down on the franchise and the Borderlands 3 announcement, I figure I should mention that there are things that I really like about it. For one, the art style has always been appealing to me. The cel-shaded graphics gave the franchise a unique identity and personality that it lacked when Borderlands 1 was initially announced. It was a smart decision that enabled the series to age visually age more gracefully than other games of its time. Borderlands is and will continue to be a very impressive and memorable game based on visuals alone.

Along with the visuals, some of the mechanics of the series were impressive for their time. Borderlands made multiplayer a fairly painless process that made it easy for people to drop-in and drop-out without much of a hassle, which is something some games still struggle with today. The randomly generated, infinite guns thing is also cool in concept, but in my experience I rarely found any of the really cool or interesting ones that I’ve heard people talk about. The talking guns, or the guns that fire other guns never really dropped for me, which is a shame. Ideally I’d like for Borderlands 3 to not only add more interesting gun types, but also make it so I can see some of that stuff at lower levels.

But as with anything I write, there are aspects of Borderlands that I really don’t like. For instance, the writing always been a contentious issue for me – particularly the humor. It just always felt like your dad sent you a meme from 5 years ago that they just discovered. “Yeah dad, I guess that cat does want to ‘haz’ cheeseburger” doesn’t feel too different from, “Yeah Claptrap, that is a cool dab you just did.”

Perhaps maybe my least favorite aspect of the Borderlands game is the lack of customization. Borderlands 3 doesn’t seem to be changing this in any meaningful way from what they’ve shown thus far, but it just seems crazy to me that in a world where games like The Division 2 and Destiny exist, you can’t create your own character. Sure those games have pretty limited customization options, but you’re still making a character.

Instead, Borderlands 3 seems to be continuing the tradition of picking one of four characters and going from there. Which wouldn’t be so bad if they included a lot of customization for them, which in all fairness they could do. But based on their past outings, you’ll probably get a couple of color swaps, and one or two that give your character a beard or a hat or something.

It just feels like Borderlands 3 could benefit from having a robust character creation system. Sure some of their existing characters were neat, like Zer0 and such, but I think it’d be cooler if I could just make my own weird cyber ninja, or robot summoner instead of having to pick from four premade options.

But Borderlands 3 does seem to be fixing one of my least favorite parts about the series, which is the world design. I’ve always found the post-apocalyptic style of the world of Pandora to be incredibly dull. But that’s a personal preference of mine, I just never found the post-apocalypse to be that interesting, whether it be in Borderlands or Fallout. In Borderlands 3, you’ll be traveling to more diverse planets which will be a great change of pace and a much needed shot in the arm for the franchise.

There’s so little information about Borderlands 3 at this point that all of this is just speculation, but I’m just not confident that Gearbox will take too many chances and try to change up what’s worked for them in the past. Considering their last few games didn’t exactly set the world on fire, particularly Battleborn, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel to name a few, I just think Gearbox is apt to play it tremendously safe. Then when you add in some of the scandals and allegations surrounding the company and its CEO Randy Pitchford, Gearbox really needs to change the discourse around themselves.

I don’t envy the position they’re in, and I really hope that Borderlands 3 is the game that they need it to. Hell, I want that game to be good so my friends and I can have something we can play together, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Blog: Uncooperation – 04/17/19

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I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s a real pain trying to find a game to play with my friends. It’s difficult for a multitude of reasons, chief among them being our tastes, but platform differences and scheduling conflicts make it even harder. I’m not surprised though, as we’ve all gotten older, gaming has kind of faded to the background for a lot of people, as it probably should.

This isn’t me renouncing my love of games or anything, but as we get older, our priorities change. We all have such limited time to actually play anything together, and that’s probably the sign of a healthier lifestyle on all our parts. For me, it’s been tough to even write the blog some weeks because I’m just not playing new games as frequently as I used to. Once again, not an indication of me cancelling the only feature on this site that regularly updates.

But more to the point, the few friends I still do have that I talk to online all have vastly different tastes in games. We tried all sorts of things on both extremes of our preferences. I tried Divinity: Original Sin II, a game in which my friends love, but one that bores me to tears. We all tried Battlefield together, but that game did nothing but frustrate everyone involved. Hell, I even bought The Division 2 thinking that it would be a good middle ground for us, but alas, it wasn’t.

But that’s alright. The more I think about it, the more insular I’ve become in my gaming habits. I can’t recall the last time I’ve hopped into a multiplayer match of any game by myself. People talk about playing a couple of rounds of Apex or Overwatch or whatever, and I just don’t know how they bring themselves to do it. It just seems exhausting to compete with others after a day of work. What my friends and I seem to crave these days is more of a cooperative experience over a competitive one.

I don’t know, the more I type this, the more I think I’ve written this same exact blog before. But it’s one of those things that remains constant in my life and stands to become a bigger part of it as time goes on. Maybe Borderlands 3 will be that game, maybe that World War Z game will do it, or maybe we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to find the perfect game for us.

Blog: TABS – 04/10/19

Blog: The Punch Wizard – 04/03/19

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I’ve never been a fan of the Bethesda styled RPG. They always felt cumbersome and clunky in a way that I just couldn’t get into. Despite having known this for over a decade, I still do a thing every year that defies my internal logic in an attempt to have fun. I started playing Skyrim once more. But this time, I’ve done something different.

See, there’s this video series that I very much enjoy called Monster Factory. It’s the brainchild of the McElroy brothers, known for their various podcasts and work at Polygon.com. They take character creators in games and make the most horrific being that they can using the tools at their disposal. I really like it, but that’s not why it’s important to my latest Skyrim endeavors.

In an episode of The Monster Factory, they take on Skyrim and do their dark magic to the avatar they’re creating. But once they finished making their monster, they played in the world as it. They abused the console commands to give them incredible speed, unfathomable power, and the ability to punch people so hard that anyone near them dies as well. It was the first time I’d seen Skyrim being played that made me want to do the same.

At first I thought this would sound weird, and while maybe it does, I also did this exact same thing in The Witcher 3 and had a fantastic time because of it. So, being the adult I am, I set out to emulate a thing that I saw on the internet. And you know what? I’m having a fucking blast. All it took was me breaking the game to enjoy it; who would’ve guessed?

After this photo was taken, I sent this fool to the moon.

Contrary to how I felt about The Witcher 3, I don’t give two shits about the story in Skyrim. Thalmor? Don’t give a shit. Dragons? That sucks. Dragonborn? Nah, I got console commands. And harnessing the awesome power of the console commands has allowed me to give birth to the unstoppable Punch Wizard.

You see, the Punch Wizard has the ability to launch giants into orbit with a single punch, bring down a dragon with a single shout, and cast a spell that literally kills everyone around me for 15 minutes. Learned a lesson about that last one in the worst possible way. My apologies to the people of Whiterun.

The Punch Wizard is an agent of chaos who not only wields the power to destroy life, but can bring the fallen back to life by typing the word, “resurrect” into the console. He is truly an ambivalent god among mortals, never casting judgement, only spells. And that is why I write this blog, to honor my lord and savior, the Punch Wizard.

We love you Punch Wizard.