Having finally bought all the Borderlands DLCs off Steam I thought I’d give them a spin, then review them after finishing or getting stuck.

Accurate depiction of what you will be facing

First up is Dr. Ned’s Zombie Island – This DLC promises us the opportunity to slay zombies and lots of them.
Set on a island bought by the Jacobs corporation which for some reason is now crawling with zombies, wereskags and other undead abominations.

This looks promising...

As you materialise from the Fast Travel system you are greeted by a Claptrap imploring you to clear the local township of zombies and reset its defenses. You are then set on a journey through swamps, forests and hordes of zombies to meet the [in]famous Dr. Ned who sends you on your way to run errands to collect data on the zombies which he created accidentally but is apparently looking for a cure.

I really am helping...

From this point onwards you are thrust into an adventure to find out the truth behind the zombie infection, fighting mutated citizens and undead creations that only Dr. Frankenstein would think up.

My flesh, it burns!!!

Gameplay is the same as Borderlands just this time there’s more emphasis on use of incendiary, explosive weapons and copious headshots to be had on your undead foes – those who decided to invest in elemental weapons you won’t be disappointed by the lightshow.
Pack rats and trigger happy folks are well catered for with the zombies dropping masses of loot, and ammo.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

The Zombie Island arc difficulty is scaled to your current progress in the main arc, resulting in more challenging zombies and better loot the further you are. Unfortunately for me I was only a third way through my second play-through when I decided  to give Zombie Island a spin which resulted in a less than challenging run.

Watch out for the clay pidgeons

The AI is rather dumb with most zombies charging at you with exceptions of those that attack you at range with slowing mud or explosive barrels (that can be blown up), all of which can be countered by simply backpedaling and setting the poor souls on fire. They do have a few tricks up their rotten sleeves such as the ability to spawn anywhere that there is dirt, so watch out for that midget creeping up behind you as you’re fight the tank in front.

The new art assets for the zombies look great in their rotting glory, the new maps although simple are loaded with atmosphere everything from creepy looking trees to angry crows that want to eat you; the new local include a hospital graveyard, lumber mill and haunted swamps. Gearbox have done a great job getting the point across that something is not right in paradise.
Network play also gets a mention here as it seems like the various patches for Borderlands has finally fixed the inability to host private games, unfortunately what they haven’t fixed is the lack of information about the server such as ping, and location. Aside from those faults the netplay runs like butter.

I think a saw a body move...

This is a great DLC but there are a few shortcomings such as Gearbox recycling the Lance outpost featured in the main arc – reskining it, placing a few corpses strategically and changing the lighting to make it all creepy. Unfortunately that won’t fool anyone as even the vending machines are in the same spots.
The problem with items partially showing or not showing at all still exists and remains unpatched by Gearbox.

This picture contains spoilers click at your own risk

Overall what did I think of this DLC? It’s a great distraction from the main plot, lets you kill zombies in the most spectacular ways, has a few plot twists, and features Claptrap on Claptrap action: All in all a fun package wrapped in rotting zombie flesh.
Go grab it and you too can be a hotshot zombie slayer!

Yeah I know you're look at those funbags.

Stay tuned for my review of  Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot DLC!

As one can probably gleam from the title it’s a defence game more specificly a highly addictive Tower Defence game.

The premise is simple: to defend a group of power cores from aliens of varying types that run the gauntlet through your barrier of towers in waves, these waves get harder and more numerous as the game progresses.

Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run...

Enemies come in all shapes and sizes from tiny swarming bugs, to flying and cloaky bugs who can only be shot at by towers point blank.

So many towers, so little time...

The towers also come in various flavors from the simple machine gun tower to cluster bomb towers.

HMS Dreadnought would be proud

Each tower has its strengths and weaknesses for example the concussion towers drop cluster bombs over a small area and are extremely effective against swarming aliens but are completely inadequate against single tough units, conversely towers such as the Cannon towers deal massive damage to single units but their rate of fire does not allow them to effectively counter aliens that swarm.

(Left to right) Dakka, More Dakka, Even More Dakka

The towers are upgradeable up to two times each upgrade increases firepower, range and rate of fire boosting their effectiveness each time, the towers upon upgrade redeploy with a bigger gun or even more guns (‘More Dakka‘) and are colour coded green (level 1), yellow (level 2) and red (level 3).

Enlighten the Xenos today!

For those who are familiar with Tower Defence games they tend to feature a super weapon capable of saving the player when he/she gets overwhelmed usually in the form of a bomb: Defense Grid gives the player a giant laser satellite that shows the Xenos the light of god in a limited area.

As previously stated the game is very simple: aliens attack your base and you have to defend it with a series of defensive towers, in the default story mode your power cores that are stolen can be returned to your base providing you kill the alien running away with it at which point the alien will drop its prize and the core will slowly float back to its rightful place.

Screamin' Eagles!

The maps make ingenious use of  height opening up new tactics such as perching towers up higher so that they can rain shells on the enemy below while also covering their own level, other design features are multiple entry/exit points for aliens, multiple power core locations and attack paths that can be ‘shaped’ by blocking them with towers.

Make for interesting game play and unlike more primitive tower defence games allows for a more expanded tactics to be used.

Do it you know you want to.

For the masochistic, challenge modes can be unlocked one of such modes is ‘Poison Core’ in which any alien that picks up a dropped power core will instantly die and the core is lost. This challenge and other challenges are available after completion of the related story mission.

The game’s visuals are pleasing to the eyes – crisp, vibrant, and conveys the game’s atmosphere and gameplay very well. The camera allows only one view direction but does let the player to zoom in right down to the heat of the action.

The audio is not bad the soundtrack plays very well with the action, and sound effects are excellent with cannons giving off a chunky ‘Bam!’ when they let loose. Unfortunately the voice acting in story mode is rather cheesy. Your AI partner speaks with a heavily stereotyped British accent with lines that only James May would utter, just will less sarcasm and ‘luxuriousness’.

When talking about it just isn't enough.

As for online features Defence Grid offers leaderboards, highscores and four DLC packs up for sale for $0.99 each which apparently includes more steam achievements and extra maps to slug it out on.

All in all Defence Grid: The Awakening was a great game it fills all the criteria for a game of this type (in my books): Addictive, simple, and entertaining.

Which Defence Grid managed to pull off with flying colours, unfortunately it was only let down by the cheesy voice acting otherwise it’s a great time waster for when you’re sick of playing soldier, taking over the world or just plain procrastinating.

Grab a copy off Steam today!

The last time I attempted to run this game with SoftTH it didn’t display as planned.
After a bit of reading I found Widescreen Fixer that fixes the field of view (FOV) of the game to suit the resolution being used in this case 5040×1050.
I used SoftTH 1.09a which worked a treat, grab my config file here remember to modify to your desired resolution, and change the extension to “.cfg”.

Here’s the video of the game in action played on regular on the first level since it was the easiest to fit into the 10 min limit on Youtube, eye candy was set to high with x2 AA.
Surprisingly Call of Duty scales very well.

Awesome composition by TrueOneMoreUser with splicing Team Fortress 2 and ‘The Law Abiding Citizen’ trailer.
Check out his channel here for more of this works.

Having managed to get a key for the Beta I’ve been for the past few weeks playing around on it.

The beta features the Rush game mode and one map: Port Valdez.
Port Valdez set in the snowy Alaskan landscape is a four stage map in which the defenders with unlimited reinforcement tickets must defend sets of M-COM stations.
Whilst the attacking team must demolish these stations before they run out of reinforcements.

For each stage the attacking team completes they are awarded with extra reinforcements; objectives can be destroyed in various ways the primary method is to run up to the station, activate the demolition charge on it, and defend it until it detonates.
Alternatively you can just use the Recon’s C4 charges to demolish the building containing the M-COM or place the charges on the station itself.

Both teams are provided with a variety of vehicles the Russians (attackers) are given a tank, an APC and quad bikes.
While the Americans (defenders) are only afforded vehicles after the first stage falls.
Although only given an APC they do get access to the infamous Apache attack helicopter that in the hands of a talented pilot can cause the opposing team to grind to a halt, unfortunately it’s a double edged sword as in the previous Battlefield game vehicles can be stolen.

Aside from the new game mode one of the major differences from the previous Battlefield game is the smaller number of classes more so EA has consolidated the classes: Recon is still by far the most recognisable class keeping his infamous C4 charges and high powered sniper rifle, the Medic has now been provided with a light machine gun instead of the familiar assault rifle giving him an infantry support role along with keeping his squad alive, Assault doubles as the Support class being able to now deploy ammo packs, and finally the Engineer doubles as Anti-Tank been given a rocket launcher to deal with tanks or later on deploy mines.

Unlocks have been reworked from the old Battlefield 2 system; now all unlocks depend on how much you play a class so for instance you play lots of Engineer you only unlock Engineer related unlocks and specialisations.
Specialisations are usually class specific such as a more powerful scope for the Recon to use or faster healing health kits for the Medic.
Specialisations are not limited to infantry as use of vehicles are rewarded with unlocks that enable the player to have more armour on any vehicle they get into or being able to passively detect enemies around their vehicle.
EA has still kept universal unlocks like in Battlefield 2 which come with ranking up these unlocks are applicable to all classes; they can range from being able to run faster to being able to wearing extra body armour.

Okay so there’s new unlocks and neater classes, how do they play together?
From the hours of game play that I’ve spent on the game they interact fairly well so long as your team don’t all decide to play as Recon, Port Valdez is fairly balanced enabling equal opportunity for either side to win, and with the addition of destructible cover it makes it a very interesting prospect for the defending team.

Recon still plays very similarly like in BF2; you find a nice camping spot and pick off your victims although the unlockable binoculars enables a Recon player to call down a mortar strike to flush out or destroy pockets of resistance.
Medic is still king if you want to quickly rank up as you can become the top player in the game simply by running around reviving team mates and healing, now that you’re packing a machine gun it makes it all the more easier to defend yourself and support your squad.

Assault is all offensive you run into the fray guns blazing firing off 40mm grenades and can have an infinite amount thanks to the ammo packs you can deploy.
Finally the Engineer plays very much like in the original game except now you’re not stuck with a shotgun but are given an assault rifle to defend yourself with, your role now expanded to Anti-tank duties means you get to do the risky job of blowing up armoured vehicles although play style of the engineer hasn’t really differed much from BF2 play.

Vehicles like in the previous game are a huge trump card but useless without support, for instance the Main Battle Tank (MBT) no longer has a driver machine gun but requires a second crew member to mount the top mounted machine gun luckily for the second crew member the machine gun is remote controlled meaning they won’t attract sniper fire.
Usually a tank charging into a base without that second crew member will not survive for long as you’ll undoubtedly become an RPG magnet.

Enough about the gameplay, what’s the game look like?
The user interface is slick, easy to navigate and logical.
The visuals in this preview are of the game at medium quality and I have to say this game looks absolutely gorgeous, the models are detailed, and particle effects are amazing.
Now for those people who think they can get away with playing this game with absolute minimum spec you should think again, this game is fairly resource heavy so anything mid/high end from the last 2 years will run it great any older and you’ll need to lose some eye candy.

Alright so now I’ve covered most of the game’s good points now it’s time to gripe.
My first gripe is EA in all its infinite wisdom has removed the ability to go prone (lie down on your stomach) this is a huge annoyance especially when you’re trying to take cover in a crater as snipers can still see the top of your head because you can only crouch.

My second gripe is with the god awful server browser, although the interface is slick it lacks most of the features you’ll find in a server browser: The ability to filter by region, the ability to order the servers by properties, and the ability to stop the server list from updating since it’s infinitely long due to having no regional filters.
My final gripe is the game’s stability only two weeks from release and there’s a show stopping bug that seems to appear out of nowhere like dropbears.

Aside from these issues I haven’t had huge problems playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and immensely enjoyed my Beta experience, so aside from my above gripes I had lots of fun, and look forward to the retail release of Bad Company 2.

For those Battlefield veterans still leaning on the fence about buying Bad Company 2 I’d say take the jump and parachute into the Battlefield universe once more for another ride.

Welcome to Pandora

I digress, Borderlands is not Gearbox’s first foray into the world of PC games with the release of Gears of War for PC being their debut title.
What does Borderlands promise us? Apparently it promises a compelling storyline, co-operative play and lots of guns all set on a far away planet called Pandora.

You’re placed in the shoes of a treasure hunter who arrives on Pandora to look for a legendary ‘Vault’ which apparently contains riches from a long lost alien world but only opens every few millenia.

The Vault: it's more likely than you think

From the get go the game opens up with a slick opening like something out of a Tarentino movie, you get the choice of four class types: Brick a close combat character that relies on brute force and raw power your general RPG Tank. Lilith a Siren apparently gifted with the ability to enter another dimension for a limited amount of time before re-emerging otherwise known as ‘Phasewalk’; she is a mage/assassin hybrid type of character.

Phasewalk: The only way to travel

Mordecai your typical hunter archetype blessed with the ability to kill stuff from really far away and able to summon a pet Bloodbird that can attack and help scavenge supplies, finally you have Roland a former mercenary who specialises in close range weapons, is able to deploy turrets and later on is able to regenerate ammo for weapons.
The characters are introduced by the bus driver who you find out later is the owner of a chain of weapons/ammo vending machines.

Personalities (Left to Right): Roland, Mordecai, Brick & Lilith

After you select your character you’re kicked off the bus by the seemingly friendly bus driver and are welcomed to the world of Pandora by a robot with an attitude called a Claptrap, you’re run through a quick tutorial, and starter missions that outline basic controls, skills, combat and questing in general.
Then from there you are then left to your own devices to complete quests that allow you to collect various special guns or artefacts that can be combined with your skills (In my case I played as the Siren and was able to make a fiery exit out of Phasewalk) think of it like the artefacts that modify your stats in S.T.A.L.K.E.R unfortunately the variety of artefacts on offer from missions is rather limited at least in the case of the Siren…

The questing in-game is in the form of a bounty board that allows you to access missions be they side missions or important storyline missions of course it’s highly advisable to do the side quests as sometimes the swag you receive is worth it; missions vary from simple scavenging for particular items to going to ‘dungeons’ to fight giant beasts or defeat warlords/barbarians.

Werk, Werk, Werk (Top to Bottom): Bounty Board & Quest Log

The gameplay is still very much standard FPS fair but with an elements of RPG showing through such as headshots not always being an instant kill specially if the weapon you’re using is weak or the enemy is at a higher level than you of course there are skills that allow you to do more critical damage to score instant kills.
As previously mentioned skills can be be trained up each time you level and you’re freely able to put the skill points into whatever character development branch you want, these points can be freely redistributed by paying a small fee to reset all your points.
Weapons can be buffed with the aforementioned skills and Proficiencies – meaning the more you use a weapon the more proficient your character becomes which results in better damage, higher fire rates and faster reload times.

Leet Skills (Left to Right): Character Skill Branches & Weapon Proficiencies Menues.

On the subject of weapons the developers claim that there are over 17 million weapons in game with 750 thousand variations as of release, the weapons in game are indeed plentiful and for those of us who are pack rats will end up with full backpacks after missions of course all the common weapons are not worth keeping and are usually sold at the next vending machine.

The weapons that are worth collecting are the semi-rare weapons that drop off bosses and legendary weapons that can be either found or bought; these weapons tend to have a little red text related to the weapon’s name and insanely good stats ranging from crazy damage percentages to ammo regeneration this applies to shields in-game as well with rarer shields being able to quickly regenerate both shields and health.

Sick Loot: Inventory System

Death is dealt in its own way; when your health hits zero you are given a small amount of time to quickly kill an enemy which immediately revives you with full shields giving you an opportunity to make an escape or take cover until your health recovers.
Otherwise if you are unable to kill anything in time you are revived at a ‘New-U’ station for a fee.

Row, Row, Fight the Power

Possibly the most fun aspect of Borderland’s weapons are the Elemental weapons made by Maliwan they’re typically weaker in terms of base damage compared to other weapons of the same type but offer the chance of doing one of the four elemental damages: Incendiary, Corrosive, Explosive and Shock.
All four damage types each carry a unique death animation when the elemental damage finishes your victim each of which are show in the image below.

Using the Elements (Left to Right): Bake 'em, Melt 'em, Explode 'em and Shock 'em.

How does the game look? Being developed on the Unreal 3 engine Borderlands looks gorgeous, the pseudo-cell shaded art direction looks great with [almost] endless wasteland to explore with a day/night cycle, effects like explosions from incendiary weapons look great and the character models are a detailed and gritty.

Although it would have been preferable that Borderlands had Anti-aliasing as the cell shaded nature of the game means ‘jaggies’ are more obvious which is a real let down as the game looks great on PC.
The game music is good and fits very well with what is happening on screen as you play, the sound effects are great especially the sound of various firearms such as the various shotguns and revolvers at your disposal all producing a meaty ‘Bang!’ sound (the epitome of this is probably the M3 Pump action in Counter-Strike).

Git off mah lawn!

Finally we get to the point were I post about what I find was bad about Borderlands.
First off is: The AI is a bit too easy most involve either charging mindlessly at you or hiding behind cover and occasionally popping up to shoot sporadicly at you both of which can easily be dealt with so it does get a bit old fighting the same enemies over and over again.
Second network play is horrible in its own way before the game was patched, the game was barely able to play co-op mode with various bugs preventing someone from hosting a private game and the only option was to host a public game, which brings me to the next point relating to network play.
The server browser is simply the worst server browser I’ve used in the years of online gaming under my belt, the server browser only displays what the server’s name is, the characters in-game, what slots are left in the game and which part of the wastelands they are up to.
For those who play multiplayer online will notice is that I’ve failed to mention one of the most important things when choosing a server: The ping which alludes to where the server would be hosted which ends up with people having to name their server in which country their game is being hosted in otherwise you end up joining games in Russia which results in 9000 bajillion ping making the game unplayable.

Worst server browser ever

Although the implementation of co-op is a good idea on paper it doesn’t work too well in practice as I’ve noticed while playing co-op that players don’t seem to realise they have a voice chat button or the ‘Talk To Team’ button to at least communicate with their teammates so it ends up feeling like you’re playing with bots; if I wanted bot teammates I would have played Call of Duty or a scripted shooter and in those games at least the bots communicate to you.
So my recommendation for co-op is round up some mates, all get the game and go forth to conquer the wastelands.

Next is a few niggles I had with the game relating to the interface although it’s slick and great overall there are a few flaws that annoy me as hell the one of the worst being the weapons description box: you’re probably asking yourself why a I’m being anal about it well it’s annoying because when you see a rare/legendary (gold) weapon you can’t see all its stats meaning you can’t determine if the weapon is just rare because its got this giant rice scope on it or because it regenerates ammo. This links on to another problem relating to weapons is that some weapons have descriptions missing altogether such as a semi-rare shield drop called ‘Wee Wee’s Super Booster’ has no description what-so-ever meaning you can’t tell what it does (See video above).
My last complaint is that the game does not have an Anti-aliasing option meaning I can’t enjoy my game without jaggies but otherwise I have no other quams with the visuals.

Your Guardian Angel or is she?

In conclusion Borderlands was a great game, even with its thin plot it was a great shooter to blast through, sound and music was great, excellent visuals, gorgeous game world, fun gameplay and interesting co-op mode so long as you have some mates to game with.
So if you’re looking for a fun RPG/FPS hybrid game for Christmas then grab yourself a cheap copy during the Christmas sales, if you’re looking for a fast pace co-op experience I suggest looking at games like Left 4 Dead: 1 and 2 (for L4D:2 those in Australia are advised to get gifted an overseas version to avoid getting the censored local version).

The new expansion comes with more faction ships to earn, modifications to projectile weapons, improvements to the game’s interface, revamp of the in-game mail system and the most talked about change – Sovereignty.

I’m not going to talk about how the new sovereignty system will work as it has been already outlined by CCP here.

But there are definitely interesting times ahead in the world of EVE as large alliances lose ground and smaller alliances fill in the cracks.You can check out the trailer for the Dominion expansion here.

I know this post was late but I was busy playing EVE and looking at the pretty planets and starfields.

Now back to killing rats and blowing up rival alliance members. YARRRRR!!

Edit: Fixed planet image links.

Cheers Mike for pointing out that some of my image links weren’t being linked properly.

You be the judge.

Australian Censored Version

Uncensored Version

They have basicly removed pretty much all traces of gibbing, blood splatter on the screen when you kill a zombie up close, the melee weapons don’t get blood on them, they removed a riot police infected, and finally the bodies disappear before they even hit the ground (which if I’m not mistaken did not happen in the original Left 4 Dead).

Also for those interested it is possible for the gamers of South Australia to possibly vote Michael Atkinson out of office to which he issued a challenge several months back.

The Classification Review Board (the Review Board), after reviewing Left 4 Dead 2 has come to the conclusion that it could not accomodate Left 4 Dead 2 within the MA 15+ bracket and has classified Left 4 Dead 2 as RC (Refused Classification).
This was due to same issues that arose when the game was originally rejected for classification – the depiction of dismemberment and ‘graphic’ violence pertained within the game.

Apparently though the modified version that is classified as MA15+ will only be sold in Australia so we won’t be getting the unedited and ungimped version.

Check out the media release here for more information about the rejection of the unedited version.

Yay, for outdated classification laws diluting another highly anticipated game.

That’s right you heard it right Aussie gamers. We will not be getting Left 4 Dead 2 in Australia as it has been refused classification by the Classifications Board this week.
The report on the game said it contained “”realistic, frenetic and unrelenting violence” and therefore was refused classification, as the current classification system Australia does not have an R18+ rating for computer games similar to that for movies.

Early reports the games’ success is going to be huge in Australia and the rest of the world.

It’s a shame really instead of gamers buying a game locally in Australia and spending their money here they’ll just resort to a) importing overseas, b) pirating the game or c) just not play it at all.

This issue has once again put into the limelight that Australia still does not have an R18+ rating and that the classification system is in much need of reform. This is not an old issue though as there has been attempts at introducing an R18+ rating for games in Australia with all Attorney Generals of each of the states agreeing, except for Michael Atkinson an attorney general from South Australia who voted against.

Currently he is the only one preventing a new rating system being implemented, according to him he is ‘protecting the children’ from being exposed to such material. But wait! I though it was up to the parents to monitor what their children are viewing, but then I guess it’s just easier to blame the developers when you find out your kid is playing a violent game instead of looking at the big fat red sticker on the game box.
Why raise your children when the government can do it for you?

I for one had strict parents who didn’t even let me watch movies or play games they considered were not suitable for me that was until I hit 15 which then I was allowed the freedom to watch/play most games and movies barring buying porn (but that’s what the internet is there for right?).
It’s not very hard to see what games your kids are playing as being a parent means you have absolute control, monitoring what content passes through your house hold and the simple act of reading the rating does help somewhat when you’re buying computer games for your kids hell I was asked to be accompanied by my dad back then when I tried to buy Fallout Tactics which had an MA15+ rating.

Anyway I’d say write polite complains to the Classification Board to protest their decision might help sway their decision but writing to or estimed Michael Atkinson would just result in typical political spin.

Electronic Arts(EA) the distributor for Australia is still working with the classification board to resolve this issue and it will be allowed to be sold in Australia in its pure undiluted form like F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin which had a similar story but having its’ ban lifted.
Instead of a gimped release in the case of Fallout 3.

Although I do enjoy living in Australia and enjoy its’ many freedoms, I have to say it is akin to living in a country town: nice to living in but not modern.

Edit: After a bit of digging around on the internet Atkinson apparently posted a letter to the editor for the Adelaide Advertiser about the very subject of video game censorship in Australia only to be later rebutted by a gentlemen of  57 years of age; Terry O’Shanassy. The rebuttal was done  in such a fashion that Atkinson very much got ‘owned’.

Source News.com.au