Tales from the Borderlands is off the market

"What's that sign say?"  "Dunno, something about anime."- Tales from the Borderlands

I have played the borderlands series for an absolutely disgusting amount of time, even before the 6 months I spent recovering from abdominal surgery. I love these games and appreciate their consistency in keeping up with their own lore. I mean, it looks like they've retconned the pre-sequel's end with their new DLC and that would bother me if it wasn't the only time in 10 years they've course corrected.

Instead "Lilith's fight for sanctuary" leans hard into two characters from Tales, welcoming them warmly into RPG side of the franchise. For everyone that got on board when critics were calling Tales the best borderlands game ever made, this is nice. For anyone who was into Borderlands 2 and checked out for 7 years... I got some bad news. As of June 13th Tell Tale game's bankruptcy really starts to sting because their best work is no longer available online. You could find a physical copy on ebay but that's absurd.

Could you just watch it all on youtube? That's a cynical way to look at interactive narratives but yeah, that's about 70% of the experience. This deserves to be played. I bet a ton of old fans will want to know how and when scooter died and there will be barely any legal means to find out. I hope this is just temporary. THQ nordic or something will snatch up the rights and put it back on the Internet. I hope that happens before BL3 launches because a lot more people should have played this in the first place.

Do it for Gortys.

Pillars 2 Deadfire Review: Melancholy Green Giant.

Fallout: New Vegas was the first video game consistently well written enough for me to appreciate like a good book. Every little nook and cranny told a story and it's still the best game I ever played. I've never forgotten that feeling of playing a game that both respects my intelligence while challenging my moral compass. Mostly because scant few since 2010 have even come close. To say that Deadfire is as good as Obsidian's apocalyptic western opus is pushing it... but its not pushing it far.

As someone who bounced hard off of the first pillars not once but 4 times, it took a lot of convincing to get me to think this would be any different. I'm pathologically allergic to crpgs and needed way more hand holding through the active combat than that game was willing to give. I'd blink and half my party would be dead. It wasn't a good time. But then came Deadfire's turn based mode which was so good my old roommate wouldn't let me look away. It was the purest distillation of dungeons and dragons into a single player experience to him. He said not only would I love it but I might give D&D another glance in the bargain. I don't know about that last part, but he was dead right about Pillars 2.

Now no character on the battlefield moves until I tell them what to do. There are no nasty surprises and if someone gets hit by a cheap shot I know exactly where it came from. That's all I needed to get into it, just a broad knowledge of which skills work and which don't. Pretty soon, 20-30 minute encounters breezed by on the strength of its mechanics. I'm told Original Sin 2 blows it out of the water but I had a damn good time all the same.

Every ship in the deadfire has their own flag. "Had" in the case of these.

Now that the game's dense lore has a chance to breathe and change things up the series comes alive. By trading the bog standard Tolkien fantasy setting for a pirate-y archipelago, pillars starts to really say something. Not that the last game's big reveal over how all the gods were just formally human rich pricks wasn't a bad turn... it just took 20 hours for that to be interesting. Pillars 2 takes that premise and wonders what those gods would do if they had to bargain with a pirate to kill one of their own.

That would be you. Only if you wanted to be a pirate, anyway. I decided to be the exact opposite of my usual taste and rolled a stoic, true believer, monk. If any developer was going to take this do gooder and put him through the politically grey ringer, it was Obsidian. I wasn't disappointed. The pirate factions weren't a fan of how unprofitable my charitable nature was and that locked me out of a ton of negotiation potential. Many a time I would have been able to flash a captain's seal and side step unnecessary violence.

This chart knows exactly how many times you've been a dick for no reason.

But I also understood them better than they did themselves. With high enough insight I was able to curb the wrath of politicians, pirates, and trading companies alike. You want bloody economics and colonialism with your high fantasy fare? That's a trick question. This is the second best branching narrative I've ever played. Its so good I can almost forgive the ending. It yadda yadda's over the final dungeon, describing it in excruciatingly intricate detail, only to dump you out in front of... well... the end. It's a total wet fart of a finale even if it involves a decent debate on whether humanity needs gods or an afterlife. I should have been more disappointed in it but the journey there was so interesting and poignant I didn't care. As much. They totally ran out of money, though.

This is a book as much as it is a game. Most of the time you will read about what's happening rather than see it. That's the most d&d thing about it. You'll play text adventure mini games about crossing rocky ravines or sneaking past lizard men. In the latter case the rogue in my party was able to gain the lizard's trust by doing fancy coin tricks. They ended up giving me food instead of killing us. You can finesse your way out of some truly stunning stuff including most major boss battles. I wanted to fight a krakken on my first run only to realize I'd already talked myself out of it.

This is how the game talks. If you can get into it... there's some pretty sick pithy burns in it for you.

Navel combat itself is a bit of a text adventure but it's commendable how much fun they can squeeze out of what is essentially just radar and text prompts. Your first couple bouts will end in failure but you'll soon be jibing with the best of them. You'll spend a decent amount of time sailing with your crew which brings me to my favorite inventory management thingy ever: feeding your crew.

The better food and drink you feed your crew, the more morale they gain. The more morale they have the more exp they get per ship encounter. But morale is expensive and maintaining the high 80's is harder than it seems; because rum in bulk is not something you can easily afford but better food isn't. Basically as long as you've got a ton of yummy +1 food with water (-1 morale) you'll be set. The single best loot drop for me personally, more than any weapon, was a +10 cake. My crew had just been through the sh*t and they really needed the break from watered down ale. Sailing is so engaging I didn't mind the lack of fast travel. I'll let you figure out why for yourself, there's a lot more to do than just raiding ships.

Who wants some evocative ass imagery?! Seriously, you're going to have to love it if you're going to finish this game.

Greed, politics, colonialism, warring gods, and the tragic impossibility of peace in the face of all of that is why you need to play this game. If you've ever prized story telling in your games, if you ever had a passing affair with the mid 90's crpg boom, and if you're a sucker for a good cast of bickering party members you need to play this game. It might teach you something about your politics that you didn't know. Long story short, their east India company equivalent made one too many good points for their survival over the opulent and internally racist native Queen. It really got to me. Which is Obsidian at their very best.

Deadwood Review: Hello. Goodbye.

There were two things that jumped out at me on my Deadwood re-watch ahead of its miracle of a finale. One, I can see how the cursing turned my dad off it. I had got him the box set for Christmas years ago and well... he handed it back after the 14th c**ksucker. Which is to say around episode 3. The script did come off as network tv writers who were a bit too giddy to say bad words as often as they liked. But 2? This is motherf**king Shakespeare.

Even the most "simple" characters in Deadwood get flowing and revealing soliloquies that make it like nothing else that's ever aired on TV. Before I knew it, I blew through every episode and now I got to see how it all ended. I almost didn't want to. Deadwood was an intimate soap opera. Most of the show was about checking in on peoples lives. How do you "end" that without killing everybody?

The answer is by playing off it's biggest bad: George Hearst. He's the primordial stage of the corporate agenda. He's perfectly affable as long as he gets everything he wants. Maybe he didn't cut off saloon owner's fingers himself... but dollars to donuts the real Hearst ordered much worse. In the show's final act Hearst is one plot of land away from setting up telephone polls in Deadwood. Standing in his way is Charlie Utter. I have no problems spoiling the film because, heck, if you cared about those you had a decade and a half to do something about it.

Utter can't stand up to Hearst's grinning barbarism and it isn't long before a couple men show up to execute the 73 year old coot. After which the town is a bit disgruntled. As they should be. Hearst pulls the same tired lines every powerful man says after getting caught red handed. In other words "civil justice for me but not for thee."

This culminates in a lynching of Hearst that I enjoyed a bit too much. The way its shot, the way the horror music chimes in, the tenor is there is no such thing as a heroic mob. As much as deadwood reveled in its lawlessness, it saved it's harshest criticisms for the mob. As fun as it was to see this murdering old bastard to get whats coming to him it poses a sobering question. Why not be better than him? Why not beat him at his crooked game instead of punching him in the mud?

In either case, the frontier wins and Hearst goes back to California, tail between his legs. That's pretty much it for conflict which is maybe only a quarter of the 2 hour run time. The rest is spent reminding you how much you love these characters, the ones still with us anyway. Jonie and Jane get a delightful mid life crisis romance, Sol and Trixie get hitched, and Al's dying. I'm still convinced Ian Mcshane passing a kidney stone is the single best example of agony in acting history. All the fans needed to see was his soiled bed sheets to get it. He was always a softie when his reputation wasn't on the line and while his end doesn't redeem the bastard, its as happy as he deserved. Bottom line, he does right by Trixie.

It was a good story and I'm glad it got to end but there was barely any c**k suckin' Al Swarengen in it! Still though... Hoopleheads did somethin' right fur'a change. There's enough "oh sh*t he came back?!" moments to cover up any major criticisms. Basically, if that cast member is still alive there's a 90% he or she is in this. They saved a handful for the last minute just to needle you. Even one of the dead ones.

It's just a bit sad to leave them all forever now. Which means they did a great job.

Chernobyl Review: You didn't see anything.

When writers I like on twitter all start talking about a show at the same time with the same tenor of "holysh*twatchthis* enthusiasm I usually balk. I've been burned many a time, often by HBO itself. I still can't believe I made it all the way through The Brink. But a reunion between Terror alums Jared Harris and that show's magnificent mutineer Adam Nagaitis meant I wasn't going to stay away forever. Even though I missed the first month I'm still kicking myself for not being there day one. I was expecting a boardroom drama about corrupt party officials unfairly punishing workers who did everything they could to keep a death trap of a reactor running decades after it should have been shut down.

The seeds of all that have been planted but that's not what the first episode is. It is a sci fi body horror masterpiece. There is a humongous beam of sunlight blasting skyward from a smoking crater and everyone in a 5 mile radius is going to die. Anyone who dares say the core is "gone" is labeled hysterical and rushed out of the room. Everything is fine. They did "everything right." They just need to pull down the control rods and keep pumping water. But the core exploded. It's gone and nobody is mentally prepared for what that means. The plant director can't even attempt to reassure the board without vomiting. His replacement is sent to survey the damage, nothing more than a fire, he's told. He returns 15 minutes later with a full body sunburn.

This sh*t is terrifying. I had every intention to watch for 20 minutes to get the gist and finish the rest over breakfast. I couldn't shut it off. Folks just started bleeding through their clothes and somehow I found the energy to keep watching.

But seriously, America needs to talk about Russia. About how sh*tty politicians can make a horrible situation dire through suppression and spin. If the government lies to you about the little things they will lie to you about the life threatening things. You've got to wonder if this current administration would hobble an evacuation to avoid a bad news cycle.

I didn't get much sleep after all.

Roommate Update:

Panchito could have been a lot of different birds. He could have just eaten my food while tolerating my presence. He is instead a relentless beam of sunshine. He has his fits but it’s hard to stay mad at something that wants to stay on your shoulder and preen your beard all day so badly. Everyone needs someone in their life that appreciates a sunrise as much as he does.

Get caught in the Rain

Risk of Rain hit a soft spot of mine back in 2013. One of those games you'll never beat but you still have fun seeing how far you can get each time. It captured that arcade feel without eating any of quarters. But I did actually beat it. Once. I swear.

Risk of Rain 2 was announced a few years ago and while I admired the jump to 3d I had my doubts it could somehow be more fun and not bewildering getting devoured on all sides by 30 monsters at once. Then BAM, it showed up in early access this week and then POOF my wallet was $20 lighter. I ate those first impressions last afternoon. 2 hours went by in a flash. It's just shootin' and lootin' in a gorgeous minimalist cell shaded zen garden of death. Shout out to the animation as well, it's all terrific. This sits along side darkest dungeon as an early access game that's meaty enough to stand on it's own. Co op or solo this ain't sitting on top of steam for no reason.

Sick of shooting? Play as Virgil from DMC3 instead.

Boundary Break: Simpsons Hit and Run.

Boundary Break is a fun little youtube series where games are freed from their camera perspectives and you get to see how the proverbial sausage gets made. Yesterday he did a video on Simpsons hit and run and I was all "Oh... YEAH! That was damn good game." So now I get to talk about that!

There was a time in my mid teens where I had no taste and would still routinely fall for licensed cash ins. This was a double edged sword as there were some real gems in the bargain basement. Hype, a medieval play mobile game with way more going on with it's story than it ever deserved, is still the most affecting time travel story I've seen in a video game. For real. You meet your Merlin equivalent when he's still an apprentice and keep checking in on him as you try to get back to the future. He's dead in your time and his scene in old age lamenting not being able to help you when you need it most was damn good stuff.

But there were loads of let downs and they all stung. I wasn't made of money at 12 and neither was I  blown away with the Simpsons crazy taxi game, but Simpsons GTA seemed like a good time. It was. The Simpsons hit and run is unequivocally the best Simpsons game. As dubious an honor as that is. All the actors are doing their best and there are some legitimately good lines that hold up. Sure, they used the same 3 free roaming areas at least 2 times each. But it all ends in a Halloween special makeover so loving it made the entire journey worth it. I have no idea where to find this thing. GOG? Nope, looks like ebay for a pc copy is your best bet. Only Simpsons diehards need apply if you've missed the nostalgia boat. Anywho, here's boundary break:

Got a new roommate

I work upwards of 8 hours 6 days a week. I don't have the time or space a dog deserves. I've seen what an apartment with lethargic owners does to a pit bull. It makes it a neurotic shadow of the rambunctious cuddlebug I know they can be. It's awful. I'd never want a pet that couldn't live a good life without me in it 50% of the time. But what could?

A green cheek conure. Quiet, friendly, they eat all the fresh fruits and veggies you should be eating, and they live at least 20 years. A little under $400 later and I got Panchito. He's as quiet as his reputation. Still a bit bitey, but he's comfortable in his cage, plays with all his toys, and likes it when I read to him. This was a great decision. This is an A+ birb. 

Patrick O'Brian does that to me too...

Peace in Andromeda.

It's taken 2 years and the heat death of Bioware's talent pool for me to take a deep breath and say.... "Andromeda was a deep, rock solid, single player RPG with some script/story problems." If anyone else besides Bioware made that game I would have given it a 9. Though some of the bigger worlds reek of asset scuttling in that it's just a bunch of finished locations vomited out on a bland canvas. Had I never played Inquisition and appreciated how all those areas felt like real places I never would have been as harsh.

But there's the game's biggest issue: lack of imagination. It takes place in a whole new universe yet the most interesting aliens came with you. There's only 2 new talking species and about a 3rd of the way through you figure out... there is only one species. This game needed to get Weird with a capital W but settled for doing a good job keeping the original trilogy's lore in tact. Krogan are still prickly battle toads, Salarians are still overly polite, arrogant, geckos. While I like Jaal, the angaran ambassador, his race is just kinda there. I can't sum them up like I can everyone else. Their "thing" is hiding from the Kett. That's pretty much it. It's a humongous wasted opportunity.

But the story itself, your reason for questing, is pretty solid. Your people are starving and need a colony to work. That's your gig, use your shmancy AI powers to make a home. Sometimes for your people, sometimes not. For a game that's mostly about shooting things there's a refreshingly constructive bent to it's narrative. You may choose not to be in Andromeda to make friends... but you probably should be.

Movie night on the Tempest.

As for Ryder him/herself I got a big ol' "meh." Ryder doesn't hurt but he doesn't help. Coming off of Shepard, the greatest speaking RPG protagonist ever, this is a criticism that still holds. I've seen worse but that doesn't keep him from getting a solemn C-. Though I will give the male Ryder the edge because the Nolan North impression he's going for is SCARY good sometimes. But the rest of the crew? Pretty good! Your salarian pilot gives a lively performance. Drak is an endearingly sarcastic Krogan grandpa and almost edges out Wrex on the incidental dialogue front. Liam sucks but that's mostly because his actor can't read a script to save his life. Helping him move a 600 year old cryo sealed couch is a hell of a scene-let. Natalie Dormer knows she's slumming it as your medic but she's still such a pro shes a highlight.

But the planets themselves are hit and miss. What's more, the 2nd and 3rd are easily the worst. The late game picks up with a desert Krogan colony and a space pirate paradise but I wouldn't blame anyone for bailing out before then. It's a 10 hour sprint to those places including a plodding trip to the angaran hideout that walk-locks you for 12 minutes. I know running NPC's make no sense but neither do pop up windows or inventory screens. Let me run!

If there was just one more Kadara (space pirate) planet in the mix I could have called this a good game at the time. But I digress. This game was built by mass effect 3's multiplayer team and while they may not have the strongest sense of place They. Get. Combat. The gun play is sublime and the gear crafting almost more so. You can make any type of weapon at any time. You just need the right materials. If you want stronger versions of that gear you need to research stuff. You need to finish quests for that. To keep your favorite weapons on the bleeding edge you need to do a bit of everything. This makes it the single greatest in-game economy I've ever seen. I haven't tried the new game plus but you would need that kind of time to level up different weapons and that's a pretty good excuse to keep grinding.

In light of Anthem, AKA Bioware's funeral pyre, I'm ready to make nice with my laundry list of Andromeda based quibbles. This is a fine 8/10. They did a good job. As long as you have it running on a solid state drive the load times are minimal and the patch jobs they did since launch let me run the best textures at 60 frames. If this is to be their last classic Bioware game... well it's certainly a better place to leave it than ME3.

We'll always have pirate planet...

Dead Space 2 is absolutely perfect.

It's taken 9 years and god knows how many playthroughs but I'm calling it. The first was larger but plodding, the third had the highest peaks (spaaaaaace!) and the deepest valleys (the other 2/3's of it). But the second is survival horror polished to a mirror sheen. I'm not used to playing a 9 year old game and saying it's head and shoulders above one that came out a month ago.

To be fair, Resident Evil 2 is a remake of an even older game but they share almost the exact same gun play. Cutting off limbs is just much more interesting than shooting a zombie upwards of 6 times in the face. It's weird how much fun DS2 is even though I've practically memorized it. I am trying a slightly different approach. The store is littered in free dlc weapons and armor that I will resist the temptation to use on zealot. Ammo is scarce, health packs a fleeting memory, and a half second hesitation in the face of a charging leaper is certain death. Isaac dies some pretty great deaths, here!

The game play loop of strategic ammo consumption with frantic shooting that turns to sedate loot scrounging is flawless. I'm not sure how it stacks up to it's granddaddy Resident Evil 4 because LORD has it been a while since I've been down that road. It's got to be close. Photo finish close. So yeah, re-download this gem and give it a whirl.


Also, PC folks! remember to disable v-sync in game and force it in the nvidia pannel. You're welcome!

Civ VI Gathering Storm Review: Prince of Tides.

I have a tendency to hate games I’m bad at for obvious reasons. Could never get the hang of any fighting game. Couldn’t get into multiplayer shooters either.  Not even when my buddy chance gave me one of the best gaming compliments of my life in overwatch by calling me a “scary zen.” But I still suck at them to the point where I don’t have any real fun. Then there’s civilization. Where I can’t play any difficulty over prince. Which is medium, I guess. No one who plays civ anywhere near the amount that I do would deign to start a game under deity. Which is an experience akin to making a souffle while dodging mortar fire.

But I still love civ because I can never fully understand it. Every time a trusted friend steals 5 turns worth of gold from me I’m shocked. Every time I knock down a jumped up warmonger I cackle. Every decent game makes me lose hours at a time. Even when I have one foot out the door or my coffee has finished brewing I can lose 20 minutes setting up the perfect starting map. It's a great bedtime game too as long as you can put it down before the sun comes up. But all that was true about vanilla Civ VI what does your $40 get you this year? You get the UN and floods!

When you try to settle cities now you'll get fun new icons on tiles that can be affected by tsunamis, floods, and volcanoes. When those hit, your farms will be out of commission for at least 8 turns. That's no death sentence but it will scuttle your expansion plans for a good while. The up shot is flood plain and volcanic soil becomes more fertile after the fact. Permanently. There's other stuff like drought and tornadoes that are less constructive but add to the natural disaster motif. I mean, it'd be weird if they weren't there, you know?

Close your eyes and try spell it.

Then there's the world congress which starts in the Renaissance era because mechanically it needs to. You now have political capital points which you generate 2 or 3 per turn at the start. It's not much but you can use them to trade for stuff you actually need before the world congress begins. Other players will trade their points with you too. Often in lieu of anything else. But once you get a pot of 100 or more you can get some really neat stuff done. Sure you can host Olympic games and world fairs but you what really want to do is ban a rival's critical luxuries, hamstring their citizen's happiness, and start them down the path of revolt! In Civ V all banning luxuries did was slow people down but add rise and fall to the mix and you can start flipping cities to you!

It's just that much sharper than V's WC so it doesn't seem like a copy paste but the 2 year wait to get it back was a but much. I'm not sure why it couldn't have launched with a lesser version, honestly. Aside from that there are smaller improvements and that's where GS really shines for me. They are small but they are legion. Natural resources have been balanced in a clever way. In 2016 if you wanted iron to turn your clubs into swords and you weren't lucky enough to find some yourself you had to sell the family jewels to trade for it. Now each deposit gives you 2 iron points per turn. You only need to build a mine if you want to double it to 4 points. It's also much easier to trade for it now so you never need to worry about your military upgrades.

On the flip side powering your cities fuels climate change so the more oil you use the more danger your coastal tiles are in. I haven't played a game yet where climate change bothered me much; but I hear of some folks who consciously hunker down in land locked areas and belch fire to drown their coastal enemies. You also don't have to make a beeline for neighborhoods to fix your cramped cities anymore. Dams become available during the renaissance that give you more space while blocking the damage of floods. New upgrades are available for scouts and horsemen so you don't wait forever for their industrial variants.

Gathering Storm makes every game of civ 20% more interesting. That will be true 5 years from now. I can't say I'm over the moon about it but I can't imagine going back. It takes a couple games to help you appreciate all the little quality of life changes (I actually despise the new flash java-esque main menu if I'm being honest) but this is totally worth the price in the end. I haven't even tried the new Maori civ. they start in the ocean and gain bonuses based on how much they land they discover before settling. That pulls everyone's first 50 turn strategy inside out and I am all about that! As much as I would love to see more expansions in the future, Firaxis's history says this is the last. In my heart of hearts I say this is a damn good place to leave my favorite epoch of Civilization.

This is Kupe. He's the sh*t.

Cruel Calculus

At an earnings call last week Activision-Blizzard posted record profits and a round of historical layoffs. 800 people lost their jobs because one of the biggest entertainment companies on earth didn't plan growth properly. That's sh*ty and it won't stop until a video entertainment union worth a damn sprouts up out of nowhere. That could take years, maybe more. What worries me most is what happened during the rest of the earnings call.

COO Coddy Johnson drew a line between what he believes were two halves of the company. One half were artists and programmers (development)  the other marketing and customer support (non developers) This was mostly for investors but a message was sent loud and clear to the peanut gallery. "We just sent 800 of your colleges packing. Don't ask any questions about Bobby Kotick's stock options and get in your designated box."

A-B has chosen to rule by fear. There's nothing illegal about it. Not even investigation worthy. Everything that company did was above board. That's what bothers me. We live in a world where your boss can make you petrified about your job security and if that person can prove it boosted sales that person gets promoted. Or gets a bonus bigger than most earn in a lifetime.

I ask you, reader, shouldn't that be a crime?

My Cherry Valentine.

And I didn't get you guys anything...

Hollow Knight is a masterpiece and Team Cherry is the indie dev team to beat. Even kotaku's intrepid investigative reporter Jason Scheier agrees. These guys are goddamn magicians. The 3 of them and a genius composer spent the last year giving HK free DLC while toiling away in secret on a sequel. They said Hornet was going to get a stand alone chapter and I'm so jazzed they changed their minds over how big that "chapter" might be.

Behold:

Hornet looks to be more of an engineer than the knight's black mage loadout. I see her launching buzz saw traps and bombs. I also see huge intricately animated bosses that they couldn't afford the last go round. This looks amazing. I could totally wait another year for it but I hope it's only a few months out. It's good to know that Activision and EA could burn to the ground tomorrow and Team Cherry would still be merrily plugging away at what will most likely be my favorite game of the year. I mean ya'll... this sh*t looks finished.