Filed under: Uncategorized
Yup, we’ve gone all pro! To see future articles on Playstation gaming, reviews, tips, news, flame wars and more, head to:
3 things come out of this video:
1. This girl needs to work on her golf-swing
2. At least it wasn’t a PS3
3. I hope she didn’t damage the golf club.
Two days ago I wrote a post on my first impressions of Borderlands. Since then, I’ve pretty much been playing it solidly.
I’m now up to around level 22 and can understand the ins and outs of the game a lot more than when I started.
At the beginning, it’s pretty tough to do any decent damage to anyone. Despite starting with the sniper rifle, I could have done the same damage to enemies but telling them their pals were calling them rude names.
The key to this game is levels
Each bad guy has their own level – target them and the level number appears next to their health bar. If it’s well above yours, you basically don’t stand a chance.
You may think you have a weapon that looks like it’ll do some damage but if a guy is a higher level than you, you’re weapon will actually do less damage to them than if you were shooting at a lower level guy.
So if you start a mission then find you’re getting pwned from the word go, best bet is to go do one of the other many missions that are available and come back to this one later on. Once you’ve levelled up some more and aquired some different weapons, you’ll suddenly find it really easy.
After you’ve figured that out, the game becomes an immense amount of fun. Like Fallout 3, you travel around zones meeting different people and carrying out a very large number of missions. Unlike Fallout 3, there’s no picking up random kettles and toilet brushes and holding on to them just in case they come in handy later on.
Graphics and Weapons
The scenery is briliant. There’s not too much in the distant scenery of any interest but you’ll constantly be impressed by your immediate surroundings. Particularly if you’re a fan of graphic-novel-style artwork.
You’ll also keep coming across rare weapons that you convince yourself no one else on the planet knows about. Has anyone else found that 10100 weapon yet? Take a look at the video in this post and it’s the first weapon I use. Leave me a comment if you want to know where I found it (hopefully it’s the same place for everyone).
Don’t forget that, even if you think your weapon is the dog’s knadgers, it won’t do squat if you’re fighting a guy who’s much higher than you in level. Even if he looks identical to the lower level guy you met ten minutes ago who died as soon as you waved your finger at him.
Vehicles
The buggy things in Borderlands are a lot of fun and drive really well once you’ve got used to the “steering the same way you’re looking” set up. It’s great fun driving over various enemies and causing some carnage.
You do get a “choice” of weapon from each vehicle station but it just seems to be a different name for the same vehicle. It’s more of an identification thing if you have another vehicle already spawned somewhere else in the game.
Other than the buggys, you can jump in a rare turret from time to time but so far I haven’t seen any other vehicles.
Multiplayer
Splitscreen: My brother-in-law came round to join us and we managed to get a few missions in before our partner’s started to get a bit peeved. One thing to note is that experience points gained apply to both characters at the same time. So if you’re at Level 1 and playing with someone who’s Level 20, you’re going to start levelling up bloody quickly.
The screen gets split with a line that runs from top to bottom and the game still plays really well with half a screen.
Online: I’d farkin’ love to tell you what online Borderlands is like but, for now at least, I can’t get the damn thing to work. As you can see in the video in this post, I tried to invite my friend into the game but my in-game friendslist consisted of only two people – both of which I actually deleted from my friendslist months ago.
I tried to hit the “online game” option from the main menu a couple of times and both times the game froze up (except for old claptrap taunting me in the background and making faces) and I had to restart.
Apparently this is all down to gamespy and I’m certainly not the only one who’s been having problems. Lets hope they bring a patch out to fix it soon.
Rent or Own?
If you’re into online gaming, I’d definitely recommend just renting this one for now. If they don’t get the multiplayer fixed soon then this will cause you all sorts of frustrations.
If you play for a couple of hours a day, the single player is more than enough to keep you going for a solid week. After that, if you want more then I’d definitely say it’s worth a purchase. Otherwise, I’d hold off until they bring out an update to fix the online gaming.
One liner
It’s a fun arcade version of Fallout 3 that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
As my local DVD/Game rental store had run out of MW2 copies, I figured I’d finally give Borderlands a go. I’d heard a lot of positive feedback from clan mates and so was keen to check it out.
While I was downloading the latest (frikkin’) PS3 system update I set up a single player game and got stuck in.
The intro video was pretty smart and was a mix of the old PC game, Full Throttle, and one of the Mad Max movies but filmed in the same cartoon style of A Scanner Darkly.
The intro video comes to a close as you choose one of the four characters to play as. Being the cool, calculated killer that I am, I chose to play as the skinny sniper guy with the funny attack pigeon.
The game begins and after a very short time you realise how similar it is in structure to the Fallout series. You move from outpost to outpost, killing mutant bandits and completing small missions for people that you meet.
First impressions of the weapons and aiming system was that they suck! Seeing my first target in the distance, I pulled up my sniper scope (which is fixed – no zooming in and out) and pulled the trigger.
After a few misses, I discovered that it’s quite tough to aim at a guy who’s moving across your field of vision. The only way I can describe it is ‘lag’ but without the online connection! I swore I was zero’d in on the guy’s chest and missed on a fair few occasions.
When I actually got a shot, I did bugger-all damage to the guy. So much for my sniper rifle. Plus now that I had the guy’s attention, just like for any other enemy in this game, the guy just runs at you shooting.
It didn’t take me long to find a shotgun but I was even more disappointed with that. I could have done more damage if I’d swung the weapon around my head and hit the guy in the face with it.
I’ve been reliably informed by clan mates that the early weapons are designed to be very weak to make the later weapons even more impressive, and that I’ll be impressed once I get further into the game.
For me, that’s going to take a bit of patience. I’m not really one for these RPG games where you have to open up every bloody box you find and lift every toilet lid (seriously) to find cash, ammo and randomly useless objects.
However, I’m enjoying the graphic-comic style graphics and artwork I’ve seen of wicked vehicles and impressive weapons is enough to make me play on. Plus by now, my update should have installed so I can try out the game online at last!
I’ll probably update these thoughts once I’ve got further into the game.
Filed under: System Updates
Don’t we all just love Playstation system updates? You rush home, jump on the PS3 to start your game and then you have to wait an ice age for some ESSENTIAL new update to install. And what does the update do? It changes the layout of your photo gallery.
If you’re like me, your Playstation 3 will download updates a lot slower than your PC connection. But did you know you can download the update straight to your PC and then install it to your PS3 via USB flash drive?
Here’s a 3 step guide to downloading the latest Playstation 3 update via your PC and installing it to your PS3.
1. Jump on your PC and put this link in your browser:
http://fau01.ps3.update.playstation.net/update/ps3/list/au/ps3-updatelist.txt
2. You should see a load of text on a white background. Scan through it until you find a link that should read something like:
3. Copy that link into your browser and the download of the latest update should start.
Once it’s downloaded, grab your USB flash drive, create a folder on the root directory called “PS3″ then a folder inside that one called “UPDATE” so you should have something like:
H:\PS3\UPDATE
Next, copy your newly downloaded “PS3UPDAT.PUP” file to the folder you’ve just created. Stick the USB stick in your PS3, head to the System menu and select “System Update”. When given the option, select “Install by USB” and you’re done!
Let’s hope that Sony switch to optional updates in future. Some of us really don’t care if our photos are laid out horizontally or vertically and just want to play games!
Back in the day when we were all regularly playing Killzone 2, I noticed that you could stick C4 mines to other people.
Armed with this knowledge, I set myself a challenge. To place a mine on the face of an enemy player.
I documented the results and created the above video, which has been viewed over 2,000 times and counting, and tweeted about by Killzone’s own development team!
