Affectionate Diary

I have genuinely tried to write reviews for all of the following, but in a feat of procastrination, I have spectacularly failed to finish any of them. Instead, here’s a roundup!

Borderlands:

As if you got a gold-standard AAA cinematic action FPS and had all the bullshit stripped out and replaced with gleeful proceduralism and a million guns. Pretty much the best FPS in the last five years, Borderlands offers a stripped-down hybrid of two things that really should have borne such fruitful offspring A LONG TIME before late 2009. Although skewed too heavily in support of its MMO aspirations, Borderlands offsets its frugal concessions to player customisation, or highly specific player builds, with raw fun in abundance and, as already mentioned, enough guns to make you piss raw happiness for hours at a time. Sadly, in the post-completion afterglow, the criminal lack of dress-up options and a decent stealth spec leaves you feeling like you’ve been grubbily exploited, but you fucking loved it, you fucking cheap whore. 21

Mass Effect 2:

In a world where no Sci-Fi trope is out of bounds and where everything feels clumsily bolted to everything else (including the kissing), it’s heartening to know that your hard-spent cash has at least bought you the option to have sexual relations with more NPCs than ever before in a tawdry, imaginatively-derelict lumbering clusterfuck of confused RPG and 3rd-person shooter mechanics set in the most tiresome multi-humanoid Sci-Fi universe ever designed. Excelling in stylistic and design mediocrity, Mass Effect 2 is a grand celebration of near-obscene linearity masked by much the same vague gesture at open-universe spacefaring as its prequel. In reality, Mass Effect has become Resident Evil, in the sense that it does many things in exactly the worst way you could have possibly imagined. It’s immensely confusing, then, that I feel mildly compelled to play it properly. The list of player interaction howlers is as long as the stupendous inconsistencies and idiocies that plague the Mass Effect universe, yet the action has enough punch to drive you forward and the vague gestures at RPG progression are just enough to keep going. Really, all I care about is the Captain’s Cabin, where I get some room to dress up and customise a place I can call home. The moral here is that I will do just about fucking anything in a game if it gets me a dress-up option or a choice of pet for my persistent lesbian space marine with a completely random moral code.

Mass Effect 2 is like a Kinder egg where the toy is really quite cool, but the white chocolate is mustard gas mixed with open-heart surgery and the milk chocolate is rabies and child pornography with a party-political manifesto. In some alternate reality, I’m actually frothing at the gash over Mass Effect 2, as it’s a stoically rigid game of astronomical wonder, with immense tech trees and huge weapon selections, rocks a trillion different hats and hangs together with the effortless grace that a misty-eyed amalgam of Damocles, Hired Guns and Elite could spontaneously create. Fuck KOTOR. Seriously. 21

Infinite Space:

Should only be played on a DS that isn’t on the verge of having a screen hinge break. Even though it makes almost no sense and despite having the funnest spaceship equipping screens ever, its lack of Elite-level commodity trading strikes a chasm along my heart. That said, I fancy the spacemilf so fucking much, I did have a full and intractable breakdown when my DS’s right-hand hinge finally broke, making the top screen ropey as fuck. Certainly ropey enough that I can’t possibly risk playing it on the tube, which is the only place I’d play Infinite Space anyway. Surely some iPhone cocksucker can remake this relatively fun space fighting game with load of that Elite shit and coin it the fuck in? On second thoughts, make it Android and low-spec. 21

Just Cause 2:

There’s a lot to be said for sprinkling your delicious world with freeplay objectives aplenty, and even more to be said for making them all the same, enforcing a shit player character on me and not giving me any dress-up options at all. What I actually say is ‘FUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK’, over and over, because if Just Cause 2 had dumped its imbecilic pretensions and gone truly player-centred , or maybe asked what would be brilliant fun inside its brilliant tech, we might have had the greatest terrorist-cum-tourist thrillseeker simulation of all time. Please pay A LOT MORE attention to Saint’s Row 2, Just Cause 3. You can do more activities at the average Centreparcs resort, FFS - and they don’t even have helipads. A common thought I had while playing Just Cause 2, either when blowing stuff up or traveling somewhere, was: “why aren’t I earning some XP for this shit?”. I guess after Prototype fucked that right up, everyone else has been to fucking pussy to really go for it. I can only hope that Saints Row 3 remembers why Saints Row 2 was so fucking awesome. My abiding memory of Just Cause 2 is that the dude looks like Lewis Hamilton in the loading screen, but a cross between Clive Owen and Ian McShane in-game. Harrowing. 21

Splinter Cell Conviction:

I can’t even get started writing about this. Such is the bile I want to spill. If it wasn’t for Afterburner Climax, murders would have happened. 21

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Gaming Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.