Borderlands - Review

A game with a light hearted story, and a fantastic implementation of RPG elements into the FPS genre, with further features that makes single player or coop play a blast.

Borderlands is a post apocalyptic first person shooter featuring RPG statistic mechanics, and many guns and items to loot. It has the fairly standard backings of most modern shooters taking the path of aiming down iron sights to fire most of the time, but it also handles firing without the scope fairly well too, especially at close range. The game's real charm however is in it's RPG character development from gaining levels, to getting improved loot; however at the same time the RPG influences end there, there is no deep or very intriguing plot, and while the main characters have some life to them, often times their personalities are simply used as comedy devices.

At the start of the game after a very brief introduction to the characters, and the planet you're placed on, Pandora, the narrator prepares to tell the story of the “Vault Hunters”. That sequence that pretty much spells out the mood and plot for the entire game, from then on you are given the option to choose your class. The classes are basically what most shooters go for where classed based systems are concerned; you have the Soldier who is an all around good fighter and can deploy turrets, the Berserker who is tough and handles big guns well, and the Hunter who leans towards using high powered but low capacity weapons such as sniper rifles or magnums; and then finally, the Siren who is probably the most unconventional class in a shooter but standard fare in a RPG, she specializes in a small degree of magic, and light, fast firearms.

All of these classes have more RPG assets to further their development, such as unique skills that the other classes don't have, and skill trees that allow a player to further tune their character to deviate them from other characters of the same class. However that is where the RPG facets end, besides being able to change the color very specific parts of a character's features such as clothing, or hair, there is no character appearance customization.

Despite the lack of that, the game still has RPG elements throughout the game in the form of experience, quests, and items. The quests and experience are fairly standard and ordinary, many of the quests themselves don't have accompanying dialog with them besides what a character says when you approach them, and often times it is a simple greeting or farewell which has nothing to do with the quest itself. Quest progression however follows a logical approach half of the time, with that half being the first time you visit a new zone. Most of the time after you finish your current quest in that said new zone, immediately after you turn the quest that you were working on in, you will get quests that go back to the exact same zone. The zones distinctly feel like they were designed for the first quest however, and the follow up quests mostly feel tacked on, simply being there for extra experience or for completion sake.

The final part of the RPG elements the game has is items, and this is where the game shines. If you were to argue with someone who is venomously against Borderlands, almost no one can dismiss the item system that the game brings, without mentioning it's positive sides. The game uses a very diverse system of creating items starting with different types of stocks, barrels, sights, and even grips; all of which is minimized by categorizing guns made by certain companies over another rather than having all of the items be wildly random, but even still the guns are extremely varied, and it's very difficult to find the same gun twice. Most of the time you'll be happy to find different guns however as even two sub machine guns will have a distinctly unique feel unless they happen to have the exact same manufacturer, and components. For example, one sub machine gun might have a ton of recoil but fire 3 bullets at once, where as another might have little but only fire one bullet at a time and at a lower rate of fire. To further increase the loot lust, there are more than just guns. You won't find things such as full body armor in the game, or any sort of appeal protection such as that, however there are grenade mods, shields, and class mods that further specialize a character in specified areas, such as doing more damage with a ability, or weapon. While the possibilities of all of the items are still confined (you won't find a sub machine gun that fires different ammo types like rockets for example) the confinements are wild and numerous enough that it makes the acquiring of items in Borderlands, never a dull experience.

With all of the RPG elements aside, Borderlands is still a very solid shooter. It has the same fast pace as most shooters today, often rivaling them, as well as sharing their similarities such as the fluent and accuracy of quickly aiming down a sight to get a few shots off then going back to the regular gun at the hip position to quickly move from one place to another. There is one part that isn't entirely great but is functional enough that takes the form of the vehicle in Borderlands, the Outrunners. Amply named enough, the Outrunner isn't exactly the best form of vehicular combat that you'll ever see, it's clunky handling and no sense of gravity almost makes it feel like you're driving a piece of paper, especially evident in sequences where you're encouraged to fight in a vehicle against other vehicles. In the end the Outrunner is primarily just a means of transportation, getting the player from one destination to another, rather than another alternative to fight in.

The real charm of Borderlands however is taking the game and all of the things in it, and playing it with friends. There are almost no restrictions on the cooperative play in the game, and it even has multi-player only versus modes in the forms of arenas that serve mainly as a distraction rather than a full on game mode. The story and it's cut scenes are completely intact, and unhindered by having another player along, and while it's possible to be at a different part of the story, any progress someone does in a different part of their personal character's storyline is carried over and saved on their file. There is basically no disadvantage to playing with others save for one, that's the lack of any sort of loot rolling system, and while it's possible to duel people over loot, there really is no restriction placed on by the game itself that distributes loot, which means it's strongly advised to play with friends, rather than with random people, unless of course you don't care about loot, but just in general playing with friends is a lot more fun.

To sum it up : Borderlands is a fantastic shooter with RPG elements that makes it stand amongst the crowd. Add in a fantastic item generation system, and cooperative play which equals a excellent game all around, to play with any number of players. However don't come for a exciting or even fairly gripping story, you won't exactly find it in Borderlands, but if you're willing to acknowledge that, and are still interested in the things that the game excels in doing, you're in for a great trip in the world of Pandora.

Concept Implementation : Great

-Sticks to it's light hearted approach in story telling, and successfully adds rpg elements to what would be a basic shooter otherwise.

Gameplay : Great

-The game doesn't take many risks evolving the controls of a first person shooter. Additional menus for inventories, and quests are made fairly simple. The RPG mechanics in the game are also done very well.

Presentation : Average

-The storyline isn't very interesting or gripping at all, but it's enough to keep the player going, along with the promise of loot, and more experience points.

Graphics : Great

-The game takes a very unique style of cel shading and creates a grim but still “cartoony” feel that adds to the game's general atmosphere, and mood.

Sound : Good

-While there aren't many memorable soundtracks of the game, the sound effects themselves are fairly effective, and the different reactive sounds of bullets hitting enemies and their reactions are spot on for the effect of being “cartoony”.

Singularity Score : Single Player 2, Multiplayer 3

Overall Score – 22/25 Great

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six : Vegas 2 - Review

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 brings more of what people love about the Rainbow Six series, with more rigid character progression.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is the sequel to Rainbow Six Vegas, the introduction of the Rainbow Six series onto now current gen gaming. It is a tactical shooter with the game play backings of realism, and although it has a lot more action than most stealth focused games, it still manages to strike a fairly good balance between combat and stealth game play, all of which is done from the same perspective.

You are placed in the role of Bishop, a team leader for one of the squads of Rainbow. The game starts off with events before the first game that allows the player to see the escalation of the terrorist attack, as well from a different team’s view point. This type of story telling of course raises the issue of if you would need to play the first game to understand the story. While it isn’t completely needed, playing the first game would greatly enhance the ability to know what is happening in the game, and for the most part the game is so clustered together and put together a way that almost consists of you getting into a firefight immediately without any real small sessions of the characters strategizing, or discussing events that took place. In the end it would help leaps and bounds to play the first game if only for it’s story if you’re looking for Vegas 2 in that regard, however with that aside, the game has numerous improvements, and additions over it’s predecessor.

As you start the game off those who have played the first game will immediately notice that the character creation screen, previously only accessed directly through the multiplayer menus, displays right after the intro logos, while the facial customization is fairly limited in terms of default face selection, it does have a passable amount of variety. Armor and clothing customization is also included and displayed on your character, which has a in-game effect, as wearing heavier armor will offer more protection, whereas wearing light armor would allow you to move faster while not being as protected as the heavy armor provides. This of course brings up the issue of “How much protection would heavy armor provide?” it’s actually a sizable amount, while still staying in line with the super fragile feel of the game. While you won’t be able to soak up bullets ever, and taking a bullet to the head will always result in death, the protection improvement is definitely noticeable as you get into combat, and on the other hand, mobility is also noticeable when you need it especially to rush a enemy’s position, or to quickly get into cover, however on both ends even the most dramatic maximization and minimization for one stat for the other won’t make a huge difference in game play, it is a very slight feature in all but appearance wise where someone who has a lot of protection looks very armored, where as someone without it would look less bulky. The armor options still also give off the look of a militarized special ops unit even when going out of your way to try to outfit your character to look as wild as possible.

Thankfully all of the customization with your character isn’t waylaid to the side during single player as many games do, your character completely carries over to the story mode of the game. Another new improvement to the game is the A.C.E.S. system, standing for Advanced Combat Enhancement Specialization, basically it is a way to further improve your character. You gain experience points for simply shooting someone which leads to you leveling up, however you also gain additional points in other aspects depending on how you kill enemies, for example if you kill a enemy with a grenade, you would get 2 points in assault, where as killing someone at a long distance would give you points in marksmanship. The way the system is included in single player, and multiplayer makes it a very good incentive to play the game a lot more than one round through the story mode, besides for progression reasons, it also handles how the game unlocks weapons, and additional clothing, and armor pieces for your character, as you further improve your rating in one of the system’ categories, it’ll give you rewards from additional experience to a brand new rifle.

After you finish the campaign, there quite a few other game play modes to keep your attention for awhile, starting with the returning Terrorist Hunt mode that let’s you take on the smart AI by yourself or with a few friends. While the AI can be cheap at times, sometimes spawning enemies in convenient locations that would allow them to flank you easily, Terrorist Hunt remains a fun and challenging mode. Finally there’s the competitive multiplayer component which for the most part remains the same, with new maps. All of these modes share the same character that you create when you first start the game up, in fact the only thing that doesn’t carry over is your weapon load out which lets players select different weapons for different occasions.

The game play itself is almost identical to what one would have come to expect from the Rainbow Six series, it’s a mixture of a tactical shooter with a lot of realism, in short you won’t be soaking up bullets without dying for very long. The movement is also a lot more weighted than most shooters giving it a further realistic feel, and finally the graphics and sound are brilliant. As gunfire rings through the Las Vegas strip you can see fantastic spectacles of light that are more than muzzle flashes, the buildings and the environmental lightning is very pleasing to look at, and the character models are realistic looking, and look much smoother than the first game.

All in all, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a improvement over the first game in every way except story, where it provides a very interesting concept, but it lacks the presentation to follow through, as well as having little to none “previously on” semblance to catch players up who either don’t want to, or haven’t played the first game. The game is definitely not for everyone, if you approach it like a fast paced shooter like say (Unreal Tournament or the more recent Call of Duty series), the game doesn’t pull any punches having the AI teach you why that’s a bad idea right off the bat; although if you can get used to the way Rainbow Six handles the shooter genre, it can be a very rewarding, and at the very least, a unique feel to the genre, making this game stand out amongst the crowd.

Concept Implementation - Great

-As with all Rainbow Six games, Vegas 2 provides a very satisfying realistic feel to the FPS genre that is done well.

Gameplay - Great

-All of the game’s mechanics gather together to make you feel like a special forces soldier.

Presentation - Average

-There is a severe lack of story line coherency in the game mainly because it goes off the idea that the player has played the first game, however this is not rectified in every a small way that would allow someone who hasn’t played the first game to ease in. There are also a few technical gimmicks that are extremely noticeable.

Graphics - Good

-While not much of an improvement over the first time, the variety of new art assets the game adds makes up for that, and in general the game still is a good looking game, particularly in the effects of combat.

Sound/Music - Great

-The sound goes a long way in Rainbow Six games, and Vegas 2 isn’t any exception; the music is also an improvement over the first one, while it doesn’t exactly add any groundbreaking scores, it does add a memorable theme.

Singularity Score : Single Player - 2, Multiplayer - 3

Overall Score - 22/25 Great

The Game Review Criteria of Singularity

The goal of my scoring criteria is to award a game for it's technical merits, rather than it's entertainment value. The reason for this is because what people think of entertainment, including myself, are greatly different from one another, and simply saying a good game is “fun” is usually not sufficient enough to get people to want to play it. Furthermore, I am unable to get games as easily as normal companies that specialize in reviews, and in general, reviews are not Singularity's specialty. It is however something I would like to have mainly to give certain praise to games that deserve the praise.

With that said, here's how my scoring system will work out :

Concept – The rating of how well a game's main concept is implemented, concepts are not genres such as action RPG, but rather single ideas that a game wants to get to the audience above everything else, this of course means concepts can range from simplistic and broad things to something very specific, such as the shooting in Halo, against the feel of being an assassin in Assassin's Creed.

One more note about concepts, this part relies on the game to make it's concept clear, if the game's concept is not clear, or the developers of the game state the game's concept themselves, then these factors will also change what the Concept is rated on.

Game Play – This score is based on how the game handles all of it's main controls, and features such as shooting, movement, dialog, and more, all of which are dependent on the game itself.

Presentation – Storyline coherency, tutorials, and other things such as noticeable bugs, all of which would affect the overall appearance and flow of the game.

Graphics – The quality of graphics in their own style. For example Persona 3 Portable on the PSP would get the same score as God of War, as they both have different art styles but they both produce fantastic graphics for their styles, on the opposing side ; dynasty warriors 6 would get a average score as the models are good but everything else is fairly bland, even though dynasty warriors keeps it's own style.

Sound/Music – This score deducts the quality, and placement of various sounds, and musical elements of the game.

Scoring System : All of the scores (per catagory) are based on poor (1) to great (5), all of them adding to a total overall score with the total possible of 25 points.

Overall Scores :

1-5 Poor

5-10 Below Average

10-15 Average

15-20 Good

20-24 Great

25 Exceptional