While everyone else is up and excited about the release of Borderlands 3. I finally wen't back and finished Borderlands 2. Borderlands 2 (BL2) was released in 2012, so about 3 years after the first game, and it has been released on several platforms since. I myself played it on PC which is in a way the reason why I didn't complete it until now. The problem being that the game didn't run on my PC for whatever reason. Borderlands games are shooter games filled with violence but refined with a good sense of humour and with some great RPG elements.
Story
In Borderlands games you play as characters called "vault hunters." What is this vault and what does it contain? Well it kind of depends on the borderlands game. In BL2 it contains an ancient warrior that the main villain "Handsome Jack" is trying to bring to life in order bring peace and order to the planet of "Pandora" and destroy all the raiders and everyone else that comes in his way. The flow of the story is quite fluid. First you wake up on Pandora after Handsome Jack tries to kill you. You find out what he is trying to do and then you try and stop him. The only thing that disrupts the flow of the story are the side missions that you pretty much have to do in order to stay on the same level as the story missions. If you are too low level the story missions become almost impossible to complete, as they are sometimes quite hard as they are.
Gameplay
As long as you do quests that are somewhat on the same level as your character, the game is a lot of fun and very fluent. You can either run, jump or shoot your way through the levels but if you skip too much of the killing you will eventually fall behind in level. Killing all the weird and different kind of enemies that you encounter along the way with even more weird and different guns sometimes fun and sometimes a lot of fun. The role play elements of the game bring a nice level of depth to this otherwise very shooter heavy game. Sometimes I did wish that there were more those elements in the game but somewhere is that fine line when it can disrupt the shooter feeling of the game too much so maybe it was at a pretty good level in general.
Sound design
The sounds of the game were filled with shooting and chaos, at least at the beginning but when you progress more into the game sounds you come across become insane. My personal favourite was a gun that screams when you shoot it.
Open world
The world of Borderlands, the planet Pandora, is very open but it has been divided into sectors that you have to travel between. Some of the areas are very linear, and some of them are very open, all of them are equally awesome. Even the more linear areas are full of shortcuts that make them feel very open and the more open areas you even need a car to go across, making the different areas feel somewhat similar in size when you think about it. And if the place you need go is on the other side of Pandora and even a car isn't enough, you can always fast-travel to make a life a bit easier.
Comparison to the previous one
Straight of the bat BL2 is a lot more refined version of the previous game. In almost all areas of the game there are some improvements and this is something I like to see in a sequel. The world seems a lot more interesting, the gameplay is more refined and fluent and the guns are lot more crazy than in Borderlands. The story itself doesn't continue straight from where the previous game left of but you can quite quickly notice all the references to Borderlands and see how the story links up.
The review
Even though Borderlands 2 wasn't a mind blowing experience, it was still a very good game. It had pretty much everything that one would want out of a sequel and it provided me with countless hours of fun and enjoyment 8/10
maanantai 23. syyskuuta 2019
tiistai 10. syyskuuta 2019
Red Dead Redemption 2
Red dead redemption 2 was one of the biggest releases of 2018. It was a sort of prequel to the previous game "Red Dead Redemption." RDR2 (Red Dead Redemption 2) was highly praised by everyone and most reviewers gave it a perfect or nearly a perfect score. A lot of people have also praised the story of the game as one of the best there is, but a huge open world game like this is much more than a story and a review should look at all of the aspects of the game from gameplay to the comparison of the previous installment.
Story
This part will obviously include some spoilers. I will try to keep them to a minimum but if you still haven't played the game just skip this part. The story is the biggest part of RDR2 and there's a lot of it. Only the main story takes tens and tens of hours to complete and the game also includes plenty of side missions. At the beginning the game might story wise feel like a regular wild west story but it will get more and more intense as the story goes on and just as you think you've completed it, it offers you even more excitement and a very satisfying ending. In short the story is the best part of the game and one of the best original stories in video games.
Gameplay
The gameplay can be tweaked in the options in many ways, but most important is setting the aimbot to a max so that someone like me who isn't used to a controller can actually hit something. This is very important in a game like this that is very focused on the gun play. There are of course several other aspects to the gameplay such as riding a horse, the menus and the map in general. Most of these work just as they should. The only problem being riding the horse, especially galloping. The many times that I ran the horse into a tree that the horse just seemed to be magnetized on, or galloping over a small stone that the horse trips on and falls over to the ground dying. This was especially nice during horse race side missions that you would instantly lose if your horse died during the race and these horse racing characters were not easy to find in the wast world.
Sound design
The music and the voice acting in this game is brilliant. Other sounds are quite nice as well.
Open world
The world that you play in is massive. Maybe even too massive. The world is full of empty space that of course looks amazing but doesn't really add anything otherwise. Especially the forest areas that as so full of trees that it's almost impossible to get through them without the horse aiming itself into at least one of the trees. It would be nice if I could at least get to the next town before completely running out of horse revivals. Huge worlds have their own good sides but in this case I wish that it were a bit more compact. Spending most of your time travelling in almost empty areas is not fun.
Comparison to the previous one
Red Dead Redemption was released in 2010. So 8 years before the release of RDR2 but in the end not much has changed in those 8 years. The biggest difference you can see right away is of course the graphical improvements. The gameplay is a little bit improved but mostly the same. The game obviously has a different story but other than that it isn't much different. Even the map is partially the same which is nice in it's own way. Seeing some of the places what they were a decade earlier and in improved graphics is cool but I wish they would have spent some of that time actually making a different game.
The review
After all the hype that surrounded RDR2 I expected it to be the next coming messiah and changing the way we perceive open world games. But instead we pretty much got the same old game with a new story. It isn't all that bad that the game is similar since it is of the same franchise but still. As previously mentioned, the story was amazing and the best bit of the whole game but I don't think that just the story justifies the high scores the game has been getting thus far. I still think that it is a good game just not that good.
Overall thinking about all the aspects of the game I would give it a solid 7/10
Story
This part will obviously include some spoilers. I will try to keep them to a minimum but if you still haven't played the game just skip this part. The story is the biggest part of RDR2 and there's a lot of it. Only the main story takes tens and tens of hours to complete and the game also includes plenty of side missions. At the beginning the game might story wise feel like a regular wild west story but it will get more and more intense as the story goes on and just as you think you've completed it, it offers you even more excitement and a very satisfying ending. In short the story is the best part of the game and one of the best original stories in video games.
Gameplay
The gameplay can be tweaked in the options in many ways, but most important is setting the aimbot to a max so that someone like me who isn't used to a controller can actually hit something. This is very important in a game like this that is very focused on the gun play. There are of course several other aspects to the gameplay such as riding a horse, the menus and the map in general. Most of these work just as they should. The only problem being riding the horse, especially galloping. The many times that I ran the horse into a tree that the horse just seemed to be magnetized on, or galloping over a small stone that the horse trips on and falls over to the ground dying. This was especially nice during horse race side missions that you would instantly lose if your horse died during the race and these horse racing characters were not easy to find in the wast world.
Sound design
The music and the voice acting in this game is brilliant. Other sounds are quite nice as well.
Open world
The world that you play in is massive. Maybe even too massive. The world is full of empty space that of course looks amazing but doesn't really add anything otherwise. Especially the forest areas that as so full of trees that it's almost impossible to get through them without the horse aiming itself into at least one of the trees. It would be nice if I could at least get to the next town before completely running out of horse revivals. Huge worlds have their own good sides but in this case I wish that it were a bit more compact. Spending most of your time travelling in almost empty areas is not fun.
Comparison to the previous one
Red Dead Redemption was released in 2010. So 8 years before the release of RDR2 but in the end not much has changed in those 8 years. The biggest difference you can see right away is of course the graphical improvements. The gameplay is a little bit improved but mostly the same. The game obviously has a different story but other than that it isn't much different. Even the map is partially the same which is nice in it's own way. Seeing some of the places what they were a decade earlier and in improved graphics is cool but I wish they would have spent some of that time actually making a different game.
The review
After all the hype that surrounded RDR2 I expected it to be the next coming messiah and changing the way we perceive open world games. But instead we pretty much got the same old game with a new story. It isn't all that bad that the game is similar since it is of the same franchise but still. As previously mentioned, the story was amazing and the best bit of the whole game but I don't think that just the story justifies the high scores the game has been getting thus far. I still think that it is a good game just not that good.
Overall thinking about all the aspects of the game I would give it a solid 7/10
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