Game Bytes: Borderlands

Read the full in-depth review HERE

Developed By: 2K Games
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Players:1-2 (split-screen)
Online: 4 Player Co-Op

What It’s All About:
Welcome to Pandora, a bandit-ridden wasteland that draws the attention of off-world scavengers for one reason: The Vault. The Vault is a mysterious structure that is believed to hold the most powerful and wealthiest treasures in the universe, and everyone from scavengers to fortune seeking global corporations wants to get their hands inside. This is the setting you will find yourself wading through with Gearbox’s latest title Borderlands, a FPS meets RPG.

What It Did Right:

• Great character development
• Unique art design
• Reward system
• Fantastic Gunplay

What Brings It Down:

• Vehicle Control
• Lonely, anti-social single player experience
• Cock slap of an ending

The Final Verdict:

Borderlands succeeds as a perfectly balanced combination of the RPG and FPS genres. Along with it’s unique gameplay style, it boasts an art design that makes Pandora come alive and will keep calling you back to the bandit ridden wastelands. With satisfying character development and an impressive arsenal of weapons, this game will keep you busy for a long time. There are a few places that the game could be improved, especially when it comes to the anti-social and lonely nature of it’s single player experience. All in all, Borderlands is a great title that is well worth checking out.

8/10

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Fracture

Original ideas in gaming these days are few and far between, and while it seems every title is claiming to offer us something never seen before, usually I end up being disappointed, like a kid who waits all day to buy a chocolate ice-cream to have a stranger steal said ice-cream, eat it and then crap it back out into their cone. It’s sad, depressing and makes you never want to trust anyone again.

Having said that it’s now time to look at Lucasarts newest game Fracture. Looking at it for a quick overview, it’s simple a run of the mill 3rd person shooter with not much to offer like that one plain cheerleader on the squad who always tries to hard to get somebody’s attention. What is Fracture’s claim to fame? Something they like to call Terrain Deformation (TD) but we’ll get to that in a moment.

So basically you play as Atlantic Alliance soldier Jet Brody, a slightly less manly and wimpy version of Marcus Fenix in the battle against the Pacificans. It’s the 22nd century and the Pacificans started altering DNA to keep up with the changing climate, while the Alliance put a ban on Genetic Engineering and chose to go with Cybernetic Enhancement. The Pacificans get pissed, cry to mum and then decide to say a hearty “Fuck You” and take over the world and have a tea party at the end with jam and scones and whipped cream. Standard story for any futuristic shooter these days

Fracture is a simple 3rd person shooter with some rather interesting weapons. You have your standard machine guns, rocket launchers and the like, but the real fun is to be had tth the TD grenades. You collect a set of grenades that can alter your terrain to your advantage on the battlefield. Let’s say you are getting pwned by a bunch of bad guys and need some cover, throw a TD grenade and boom there is a hill right there in front, giving you the cover you need to regenerate your health, reload and get ready for action. There are a multitude of these weapons that raise or lower terrain, create a gravity pull and the like, and while they are cool to see in action, they aren’t used enough. The puzzles that require TD to complete are simple and predicatble, and I honestly feel if the developers really pushed the boundaries with TD the game would have been much, much more interesting.

AI leaves a bit to be desired. All the enemies look the same, drab colours and not enough variety, and why they aren’t the smartest bunch and aren’t too difficult to dispose of, Fracture makes up in the number of them, they just keep coming and coming wave after wave, and often gameplay ends up being tired and boring, kill bad guys, get to checkpoint, move onto next area, kill bad guys and so forth

Controls are simple and easy once you get a grip on them, and once you have the TD functions down pat you will be out there ripping it up on the battlefield. Graphics are actually quite decent, and the TD effects look breath taking! Audio is also damn solid running through my 7.2 system (only running 5.1 though)

It’s true, Fracture does offer something that gamers haven’t seen in a game before until now, but instead of capitalizing on that idea, it was used in a boring and uninventive way. All in all I actually really like Fracture, it’s fun and while sure it’s run of the mill and not a game that stands out like Bioshock or Little Big Planet, it was a blast for the weekend I completed it. I hope Lucasarts takes some feedback, goes back and releases a sequel that utilizes the potential that this title really did have

6/10

Nathan Drake Back Again

Although expected, it was never certain that a sequel would follow the successful Playstation 3 game “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” until this morning when Naughty Dog president Christophe Balestra announced that work has already begun on the follow up title

With the next Naughty Dog release anticipated to be the next in the Jak and Daxter series, I think fans of the Uncharted series will be waiting at least until 2009 for the release

I will keep you posted as more news becomes avail

Nathan Drake rivals Indy

Want to know what Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is like? Imagine a game of Tomb Raider mixed with the Gunplay from Gears of War, with the movie and comedy stylings of an Indiana Jones movie and you pretty much have it in a nutshell. Yet while this game can be compared to all of these things, it still manages to create a world of it’s own that is a cut above the rest, and one of the most memorable games I’ve played this year

Nathan Drake, an explorer who is a decendant of the famous Sir Francis Drake is set out to find a treasure after finding a clue in the coffin of his acestor. With the help of his long time friend Sully and the host of a reality TV Show Elena, the player is thrust into a world of exploration, dramatic gunplay with pirates and a rich storyline that keeps you coming back for more.

The graphics are stunning, and in times will have you sitting there in awe, especially while scaling a clifface over a waterfall, noticing that your shirt is actually wet when you get out. Dynamic shadows really bring the jungle to life as sunlight filters through the trees effortlessly, creating a realistic jungle setting that rivals Crysis. My only criticism is that the enemies could have been a little more detailed.

The audio is fantastic, from the musical score to the explosion of that grenade that was thrown at you to the voice acting, it really does a great job in dragging the player into the world. This is seriously some of the best voice acting I’ve seen in a long time, although it just goes along with some of the most interesting characters this year. Nathan Drake seriously does remind me of Indiana Jones a lot, but put them together and there are several differences. Elena plays a pivitol role in the story, and creates a little more than just “Let’s find the treasure and kill pirates” which I think keeps the game from getting stale

Weapons are good and spread out at a good pace as is the awesomely cool Jetski levels that are always lots of fun. Gameplay is easy to get a hold of, and within no time you will find yourself jumping from cliff to cliff and shooting bad guys as you run through the 20 + chapters of the game.

For those who love unlocking achievements there are plenty of reasons to replay the game (even if the story doesn’t bring you back for a second time round) with treasures to find, and gunplay achievements to be completed.

All in all, Uncharted is easily one of, if not THE, best game out on PS3 right now. It appeals to pretty much every market of gameplay, with fantastic characters, good controls and a decent story, what isn’t there to love

9/10