Showing posts with label Gamers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gamers. Show all posts

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Borderlands 2 a Gamer Girl's Review

Borderlands 2 was the much needed upgrade to the classic and well loved Borderlands 1 game that came out in 2009. If you have no idea what borderlands is or what the game is about, here it is in a nutshell. Borderlands is a first person shooter, with rpg elements, and a lot of loot. The things that made Borderlands 1 and now Borderlands 2 stand out in a sea of first person shooters is that cartoon art style (cell-shading) and the level of randomized loot that is in the game.



The Good

Guns
Let just start out with the good, and why I've spent hundreds of hours, playing and replaying Borderlands 2. The loot, the game boost that they have somewhere in the bazillion mark of available weapons in the game, if bazillion is even a number. And they are right, I have played this game through with every character more then twice and there are a lot of guns and grenades. If you want to snipe they have sniper rifles, if you want to mow someone down you can  use a sub-machine gun or rifles, if you want to blow something up they give you grenades, rpgs, and shotgun. Borderlands 2 basically has everything you could ever think of, which is what really made this game fun for me. I can play with any play style I want, and I can change my play style at any time to fit any situation.

Leveling
Who doesn't like rpg's? Well maybe I shouldn't say that, but if you like rpg's Borderlands 2 has enough rpg elements to make it feel like you are really turning your character into a kick-ass gun toting, powerhouse. The game starts you off with four characters, that have there own special abilities, making each one unique. (there is DLC currently out if you want to get an additional two characters.) Each character has there own skill tree with three branches, which allows you to make your character more offensive, defensive, or a little of both. The skill tress are well balance so you don't feel like you're playing at a disadvantage if you pick one character over another or if you pick one skill tree branch over another. Another plus to the leveling system is that you can reset the points you put into a skill tree branch at anytime. So if you started down one particular skill tree branch and wanted to relocate your points to suit how you are currently playing or just because you want too you can do that. It gives the game more replay value.


Art style
Not everyone is a fan of the cartoon art style. In fact I have friends who refuse to play Borderlands just because of that one reason. But the art style fits the game, and here is my reasoning behind that. If  the game had a more realistic art style it would be hard to buy into the fact that it takes over 100 bullets to kill a boss sometimes. People would be expecting one-shoot kills and etc like as if they were playing Battlefield or Call-of-Duty. Secondly the art style lends itself to the playful nature of the writing team. The jokes in this game wouldn't be half as funny if they were delivered in a more realistic art style game. Now onto how the game looks. It looks beautiful. The first borderlands game what literally stuck in brown, and neutral colors. But Borderlands 2 changed all that, and actually give us colors (red, deep blues, etc), and the cell-shading looks better then what it did in the first borderlands game, which already looked good.


The Bad

Character Customization 
This is the only thing I can really fault the game on, besides one other thing (but the other thing is more of a personal matter then a actual flaw I see in the game). Borderlands 2 offers character skins. Its Gearbox's way of letting people customize there characters. But it doesn't really work. Yes you can change you characters clothe with preset outfits, but all the outfits look the same, except they changed the colors. I'm sorry but that is not customization or at least not the customization we expect form a game developer like Gearbox. When we think about being able to customize our character we are thinking size, height, skin color, eye color, nose orientations and etc.I am not saying that this takes away from the game. You are in first person view, so its not like you can see your character beyond there hands, but this is the touch that Gearbox is missing out of there Borderlands 2 game. With all the different types of guns, and grenades, and locations that are in the game it would have been nice to have all different types of characters too.



Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
This is a wash, rinse and repeat type of game. But I wish it was more then that. You have to play the game twice just to max out your character, so i feel like you never get to see your characters full potential unless you repeat the game again. Which means playing and listing to the same content over and sometime over again. Now when you play it over again it is on a harder difficulty level, but after a couple of hours, due to the fact that you get better and stronger guns, you are basically just playing the game over and over again. Now this is more of a personal matter, since the game is meant to be repetitive to a point but playing a game 3 times with 4 or 5 and yes sometime 6 different characters is over kill.

Overall Score: 9/10

Hey this game provided me with so many hours of fun that it deserved the high score. The bad things that I did mention about the game never took away from the game play. I didn't even talk about the hours of fun I had playing co-op with family members, friends, and other random players online. There is no other game on the market that makes playing co-op this fun, and with such great game mechanics, letting other players drop in and out of your game, without messing up your game missions, or save file.        

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

What Makes The Playstation 4 Special To Women Gamers

The Body

Lets just start out with the PlayStation 4 , is striking in a gorgeous way. It's just plain unique, I haven't had a system that wasn't just one slab of brick in my lifetime. Granted the PlayStation 4 is just two slabs at a angle making a parallelogram of sorts, but it is still different enough to make people take a second look. The glossy finish up top, the matte black finish on the bottom and the blue light in the middle they just make a statement. I look good, and I know I'll be noticed among your other boring electronics. Why is that special to a female gamers? I live in my living room, mostly. If I am not in the kitchen making something so I can get back to my living room, or in my bed room sleeping, I am in my living room. When I have guest over, they are in the living room. So to have something that attracts such good attention. and takes very little effort on my part is golden.  The PlayStation 4 has a stand that is sold separately that make's the PlayStation 4 stand up at attention. Putting all of it's three great design qualities on display, but the PlayStation 4 also looks good laying down too. This console has a subtle attention grabber quality too it, no matter how you stand it, place it, or put it. It is rare that I ever have a console in my living space that helps it look good, let alone makes my living space look a little more unique. So Sony Design Team, I'm giving you a 1up for actually making a console body I can enjoy living with.Add the fact that console is quiet, except for when playing video games for several non-stop hours or loading a game disc into the system and I dare say I can live with this console for the  5 to 8 year period that is requited before the Next-next-generation consoles come out .

(c) 2013 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All right reserved. 
Design and Specification are subject to change without notice.



The Brain

At least for today I don't want to get into the technical parts of the PlayStation 4 's 64-bit APU. I am  just going to say that the PlayStation 4's brain is sexy. And why is that important to a girl gamer? Because brains are important. One of the best parts about the PlayStation 4 is that it is so easy to take apart. If you go to this link here it will take you to Polygon.com where you can see the director of PS4's mechanical engineering team Yahuhiro Ootori take the system apart, bit by bit. There are 4 screws to open the PS4 and then only 1 screw to get to the hard drive. I'm trying to stress how easy it is for anyone with no tech skills at all to open the PlayStation 4 and upgrade it. You need a screw driver and a new hard drive. If something breaks, you can fix it, just order the part and replace it yourself. It has never been easier for women to get dirty with there console's internals since, ...  since never. 4 screws people 4 screws.

The Eye

The PlayStation's Camera has been a so, so peripheral. And to be honest I rarely use my PlayStation's Camera with the PlayStation at all but instead I use it as a webcam for my home desktop. It has good audio quality, or at least good enough audio quality for programs like Skype, or Google's hangout. But the games that involve using the PlayStation Eye camera has been so lack buster that I've never taken out my pocketbook to buy one. Now if something is free on the PlayStation store, I will get it, like the CreateEye game, which is more like a video and audio editor then a game. But now that the PlayStation 4 is here that means a small upgrade to the PlayStation's Camera (Eye) or should it be called Eyes since the Camera has a dual lens. Anyway I would be interested in upgrading my Sony's camera if  they can get me something like U-fit that works properly , and if I can play a classic game like duck hunt or something. Now the PS4 does have Twitch which lets you put your image in the top corner of the screen and have audio while enjoying you game play but again until Sony gives me something worth playing with the PlayStation Camera I can't shell out the money to get one.  



P.S Thanks everyone for reading my blog post you can find my other posts here.