September: Why Can't I Hold All These Great Games

I won't lie: attempting to come up with a great game that everyone should play for every day of a week shouldn't be hard, but it is.  Not only have I recently transitioned from having nothing to do to having tons of work and social events every night, but I also just can't jump around from game to game that much.  It's overwhelming when one boots up their personal computer and realizes that there are at least five games that they should be playing at that very moment.  And, in all honesty, games are getting to be an endeavor to finish.  Some games take up to 60 hours to beat, and trying to enjoy a game that is supposed to take you at least 2 weeks to get the full experience in a few days is mind-numbing.

In short, I've decided that Games You Should Play Week has turned into Games You Should Play Month!  It's a pretty simple concept: instead of a week where I talk about a single game every day for 7 days, I just make one post about all the games I've been playing this month, or perhaps will be playing this month.  Since I didn't even really finish GYSP the week before, I've decided that skimping on last month is a no-no.  Therefore, I'm going to lay it all out in one big post for the month of September.  So, here they are!

THE BIG ONE: Borderlands 2
I might as well just say it now, mostly because at the time of writing this Borderlands 2 is coming out in 2 hours and I'm SO FREAKING PUMPED TO PLAY IT.  And considering Borderlands 2 has become one of the most pre-ordered games in history, it's a pretty big deal that I talk at least somewhat about it.

First off, I'd like to start this by saying that if you haven't playing Borderlands 1, you actually don't have to.  Even though your friends might say, "Borderlands was the best game when I played it, the loot system was so good, the bosses were thoughtful, and the art style was brilliant."  Don't give in.  Borderlands 1 used to be one of the best console games around, simply because they finally managed to figure out how to perfectly integrate the looting mechanics of Diablo and Torchlight into a First Person Shooter without making it Fallout.

"War.  War never changes."
"And neither will your load-out."

Don't get me wrong: Fallout is great.  I can't wait to see what kind of insane shenanigans Bethesda will be able to come up with when they integrate the world into the new engines.  However, for the purposes of arguments sake, I'll say this: Fallout had nothing on Borderlands.  In my opinion, Fallout's world, looting system, and characters were not nearly as interesting or varied as Borderlands' were.  In fact, and I will admit, that I got tired of Fallout's wasteland about 20 hours in, whereas Borderlands' wasteland had me hooked from beginning til DLC end.  It was that good.

Now, fastforward to 2012, and there's a very different story.  If you wanted to try playing Borderlands 1 now, you might feel a bit alienated.  Not only is there a massive pressure to buy literally ALL of the DLC because it's just all so good (except for Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, that one was lame), Borderlands just feels way too big and yet so very empty.  Maybe it's a grizzled veteran of the Borderlands world speaking here, but everytime I start up Borderlands now, I feel as though I'm about to delve into Fallout's wasteland.  Add to that that there's a lot of very large issues with Borderlands 1 in terms of graphics, replayability, and menu's, Borderlands just plain suffers from being dated.  It's really sad to say, but Borderlands will be obsolete in 2 hours.

That's okay though, because it's being replaced by this:

Just for reference, there wasn't a single drop of snow in Borderlands 1.
Oh, and the big guy can dual-wield gatling guns.

So, now that Borderlands 2 has finally come out, and I've played a good bit of it, I'm proud to say that it is, in fact, destined to be the biggest game of this month, and probably this season.  However, I won't argue what will or won't be the best games of the year, since we have a lot more ground to cover on that one.  HOWEVER.  Enough about why Borderlands 2 *could* be the best new thing around the PC gaming corner.  Here's why it is.

First off, Borderlands 2's largest improvement over Borderlands 1 is the story.  I love how every character, even the characters that were completely voiceless in the last game, have personalities, likes, dislikes, and real life relationships with other characters (two of the playable characters in Borderlands 1 apparently had a relationship.  Prizes to the blokes who manage to guess who they are).  Not only that, but Pandora feels like a world that has changed, and in so many different ways.  First of all, every faction that was in the old game has vastly changed.  The Crimson Lance?  Totally good guys now.  Hyperion?  Still dicks, but in a much bigger way.  Claptraps?  All but extinct.  The game is absolutely ridden with references and tip-of-the-hats to the original title, and the writing ought to be commended as well.  However wrote this game gets a gold star and several Oscars for some of the most hilarious dialogue in video game history.

Pictured above:
The most hilarious villain ever conceived.

Oh, and speaking of things this game just does all kinds of right, gameplay!  The AI system has been vastly improved upon since the original, as the enemies in this game actually understand that if they are getting hit by a sniper rifle at close range, they should, oh, I don't know, duck and roll?  There was a point at which I climbed a massively tall tower, and the enemies couldn't shoot me because I was too high up and the angle was awkward.  Then, to my utter surprise, they chucked grenade after grenade at me at a perfect angle until I almost died.  Had there been fall damage in this game, I would most certainly have perished.  Luckily, I decided that, as punishment for receiving a decent FPS education by the developers, they deserved some grenades to the face.

Oh, and lest I forget one of my most talked about topics in video game culture: music.  I suppose the best way to describe the music for this majestic game is to say it's just plain adrenaline inducing, which is great when you're being shot at by 2 helicopters and 3 bandit cars when you have just been forcibly thrown out of your car by an explosion (which, by the merits of logic, just so happened to be your own car, not theirs).  The music in this game might not be remembered, in all honesty, but I will say that it sets the mood in all the right ways.

So, verdict: this game truly lives up to every expectation.  Honestly, even if you're a pop-culture junky with a mild interest in video games, get this game, because there are thousands upon thousands of hilarious references in this game.  There is a TMNT reference in there.  There's Topgun.  I won't spoil the rest, but holy shit there's some hilarious stuff.  Do I honestly need to say any more?  If you get nothing else this month, get this fucking game.

Fuck.

HRRRRRRRRRRNGH

THE TEAR-JERKER: The Walking Dead Game
What happens when you place a couple of starving, irate people with an entire world full of zombies?  Well, pretty much exactly what you think happens in that situation.  The Walking Dead Game is definitely not for the faint of heart, but for those of you who have steel hearts and/or are just interested in the subject matter, listen up.  The Walking Dead Game is easily one of the best point-and-click games out there.

The story is very simple: you start out as this guy named Lee.  He's on his way to jail when the game begins, in a cop car with a rather "taxi-driver-esque" cop taking him there.  Of course, the car crashes into a ditch after the cop accidentally hits a zombie (#apocalypseproblems). Then, Lee, of course, gets chased by zombies around a forest until he makes his way into a town, and meets this little girl who's been surviving pretty well for her age.  This girl, Clem, is going to end up being your best friend, and Lee must act the father for this child.  Now, I don't want to spoil any more than I already have, but essentially, you have to make a lot of choices in this game, and a lot of them aren't easy to make morally.

The only choice you don't get to make in this game is "survive".
But y'know, you've already done that in L4D, anyway.

Now, I'll be honest.  Point-and-click games aren't my forte.  In fact, I'm pretty new to the genre.  I never played Day of the Tentacle, or any of the other classics, although I plan on taking some time to play the Blackwell series.  In light of this realization, I decided to start off my point-and-click ventures with this game. I didn't regret that decision, as this might be the best game to start off on.  The characters are lush and full of dark personality, Clem is an indespensible companion, and I've found myself often staring at the screen not knowing whether I said or did the right thing, or if I accidentally made an enemy out of all my friends.  It's a tough game to play, not because it's particularly hard (it's narrative based.  If it was hard, there might be a problem), but moreso because I couldn't play it for extended periods because of how emotional this game gets.

It's a wonderful title, and I can't really put into words how amazing the story for this game is.  So, if you happen to be on Steam or whatever other game service you use, you should check it out.  It's one of the most beautifully dark games I've played in quite a while, and ho-boy, does it deliver.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

PIXEL PERFECT: They Bleed Pixels
And out of nowhere...INDIE TITLE!  This time, it's They Bleed Pixels, a mega-cute, mega-dark platformer with a take on H.P. Lovecraft's writings.  I'm just gonna let you take in that last sentence there for a minute... And we're good.  Yeah.  This game is excellent if for no other reason than that it's inspired by Lovecraft's works.  This game has just about everything I could possibly want out of a platformer: amazing pixelated art, an extremely dark theme, with the cutest freaking protagonist ever.  I mean, just look at her.  The cool thing about the protagonist is that the game literally has its own section for fanart of this girl.  It's a pretty nifty idea, and one that my PC certainly thanked me for (SO MANY BACKGROUNDS ERRMAHGERRRD).

Now, enough fan-gasming.  It's time to actually tell you why this game rocks.  First of all, the art style is fantastic.  I love the simplified nature of the protagonist and the stages themselves against the beautifully drawn backgrounds.  Not only that, but the cut-scenes are all also pixelated, which is difficult to pull off, as they managed to do so with tears in my eyes.  The protagonist is, as you can see, a girl who ends up in non-descript academy, where she snoops about the library from time to time.  Eventually, she accidentally spills a drop or two of her blood on this evil-looking book, and lo-and-behold, her body begins changing rapidly.  Her skin starts to rot.  She grows claws where her hands should be, and to top it off, they're made out of her own blood.  Pretty hard to hide that shit.

The side-effect of her having rotting skin and blood claws
is that she turns out to be FUCKING RAD.

So, while all this is going on, every night she dreams; and when she does, she enters this dark-version of the real world with these ink monsters who are trying to kill her.  She turns into her final form (pictured above) and begins her platforming quest.  And ever morning, without fail, she wakes up and finds herself one step closer to that form.  It's a weird story, but one that is very well told through the cut-scenes.  But, as most indie platformers go, the story isn't the main focus.  The actual gameplay and quirks, however, are pretty important.

As far as gameplay goes, you run and jump just like any other platformer.  However, the controls, you'll find, are pretty hard to use at first.  The character feels a bit sluggish and kind of difficult to control, but once one gets used to her momentum based movement, it's really not so hard.  She also can fight these ink monsters with her claws, and attempt to combo them into giving her blood, which she can use to create a checkpoint in the level once she has enough.  The core gameplay isn't that hard to master; the hard part comes with the achievements and challenge stages.

It wouldn't be a Lovecraftian platformer without
copious amounts of blood, cogs, and total darkness.

The game does ramp up in difficulty depending on how far you want to get into it.  It's a very accessible platformer in terms of difficulty, so I highly recommend that gamers of any skill level play it.  And if you manage to get all those achievements, seriously, props to you.

Massive.

MASSIVE EFFECT: Guild Wars 2
There are very few MMO's that I actually enjoy playing, in fact, at the moment, I can only think of two: League of Legends, and Guild Wars 2.

BULLETS: Black Mesa
Fuck dude, just... Stop asking.  It's coming at a later date.
*smirk*