Wow what happened to October? Games happened. To many good games to play. Two in particular that grabbed me and took up my time. These two came out towards the end of October. Borderlands and Torchlight. Both of these games share a few things in common with the Diablo games. The only thing in common with Borderlands and Torchlight is that they both have loot. Wonderful abundant loot. But the similarities end there between the two games.

Borderlands is first and foremost a first person shooter. It has a cell shaded style that may turn some off. I think it’s more of a comic book cross hatching style myself. You can see in the screenshots what I’m talking (maybe) about.

Borderlands has a very light rpg mechanic pasted into the shooter. And these guys get it right by keeping the shooter aspects dominate and letting the rpg stuff be secondary. As mentioned Borderlands has loot. Lots and lots of loot. They borrow from Diablo and World of Warcraft so you if you played either of those the loot will look familiar. You got white vendor trash, green, blue, purple and orange items. Each color denotes a higher quality of item.

Borderlands is out now on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Be warned despite what the developer of the game may say the pc version is port of the console game. It currently suffers from a number of problems and I suggest the console versions over the pc game.

Well my Xbox 360 is getting three rings of death. Which pisses me off. I just picked up Too Human. A game which despite the hype is kinda fun. My console is out of warranty. But for shits and giggles I filed a repair order with Microsoft. I’ve got 20 days after getting the box from them to send it back before the order is deleted. There is a chance I maybe covered because of the three rings problem I seem to be having. This sucks.

Edit
Seems to be working again. I get the box on the 25th. Hopefully it keeps working.

My 360 is emo. At least according to my 360voice.com blog I signed up for when I got it:

I have come to realize that turk1701 has no soul… and his heart is a twisted black mass of evil. To never play a game is my new eternity!

Poor thing. It’s not my fault there isn’t anything I want to play that has come out since Mass Effect.

Honestly I hadn’t planned on getting it. But I did. And I’m glad I did. With Halo 3 I had low expectations. With one feature in particular it has me really liking the game. That is the Theater mode. In theater mode you can replay saved films. In these saved films you can take screenshots. Screenshots that can be uploaded onto the net. It maybe a minor thing to some. But I happen to love taking screens of the games I’m playing. You can see a total of 33 screens here in my gallery.

Now if they would enhance these features. It’s a pain in the ass to use the file share to upload one picture at a time. I should be able to upload the entire lot. Or at the least flag shots I want to upload. Further negatives about all this, the default file share max is six slots. For replays, screenshots, game modes, etc, etc. You can pay 750 Microsoft Points to increase the file share to a total of 24 slots. That’s per month by the way. Hopefully this is something that more console games will enable players to do.

Someone recorded the 360 demo of BioShock. Embedded video below:

Video Died

You need the divx webplayer installed to view this video. You can get it here.

I’m playing Oblivion again. This time on the 360. With my newer computer dead I’ve got to get my fix on the 360 for rpg and such. The old computer can play EverQuest 2, I’m just really broke right now. So in a pinch Oblivion is a good choice. Well it’s the only choice for rpg’s on the 360.

Since it’s on the 360 I can’t use any unofficial plugins. I’m stuck with the official stuff only. And this time believe me I’ve skipped the goddamn horse armor. What I am playing with is listed below:

• Shivering Isles Expansion (2400 MS Points)
• Knights of the Nine (800 MS Points)
• Spell Tome Treasures (80 MS Points)
• Vile Lair (150 MS Points)
• Wizard’s Tower (150 MS Points)

Which in the end I spent about 45 bucks to purchase these on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Not including the 60 bucks for the actual game. All of which I hand the hindsight to purchase before my car died on me. Te last three in the list was just purchased for shits and giggles.

Knights of the Nine I’ve played before on the pc. In general it’s a fun little quest. Not sure it’s worth 800 MS Points. Shivering Isles on the other hand is an honest to god Expansion Pack and is well worth the money. It adds an almost Morrowind like landscape to the game. It’s quests so far are fun. I even got to push a guy off a ledge so he plummeted to his death. Until another real rpg comes out for the 360 Oblivion will have to do.

Crackdown is a game for the Xbox 360 that just came out. I played the demo off of Xbox Live for quite a long time. The game has the type of free form do what you want gameplay that I enjoy. The story is very thin. Your are a genetically engineered super cop who is tasked with putting an end to the three gangs of Pacific City. You are free just to tear around the city as you see fit.

There is a light rpg like system of five skills that raise in level as you go about your business of fighting the gangs in the city. Driving, Explosives, They are: Firearms, Strength, and Agility. All of the skills except Agility go up as you actually do each type of activity. Agility goes up when you find agility orbs that are scattered around the rooftop and hard to reach high up areas. Once your raise Strength and Agility a few times you start to feel like a superhero jumping around and picking up cars and tossing them at bad guys.

The graphics are worth mentioning because of the almost comic book look of the characters. It’s a blend of cell shading and realistic style graphics of other games. Below are some screens just to give you an idea of what it looks like:

Just lots of fun. It has co-op join any time just like Gears of Wars and is a perfect game to play with a friend. It is worth mentioning that Crackdown comes with an invite for the Halo 3 beta test later this year. Which I’m sure more than a few people picked it up just for the Halo 3 beta. Either way I think it is a must have for the Xbox 360.