If you didn't see my latest blog, I reviewed Borderlands (the RPG/Shooter game from Gearbox). I wanted to make a second blog though bragging about how I got all the achievements from the game!

I also downloaded the Zombie Island DLC. It is awesome and fairly lengthy. I was very impressed with it, as I was with the regular game.

Borderlands is a fun co-operative loot fest. The game is simple: do quest, earn experience, find weapons. The fun comes from seeing your character progress and unlocking new abilities and weapons. It may sound unassuming, but Borderlands' playful and energetic nature makes it more enjoyable than one would expect. The story is straightforward, find the vault, but it only exists to create more opportunities to find better weapons and further power up your character. There is co-operative modes for 4 people online or 2 player split screen, and the real fun is in playing through this game with a friend.

Borderlands is a shooter/RPG hybrid. The shooting controls exactly like Call of Duty and should be very approachable to anyone who's spent time with the Xbox 360. The RPG portion is equally simple and the game does a great job of explaining all the unique details. Within minutes of starting the game, players will be fully familiar with the basics and enjoying leveling their chosen character ****

There are 4 ****s to choose from in the game. Each has their own special abilities that make them better in certain functions. Still, no character ****is restricted from using any of the weapons effectively. With the exception of ****mods, the only restriction for equipment is level. So, if you want to use a sniper with your Berserker, or Rocket with your hunter, then the game doesn't restrict you from doing so. However the bonuses available to each ****will make some weapons more useful than others. Also, while each team member will have abilities that aid a team in different ways, when working with friends online, any combination of ****s work.

Overall the game is not very difficult or very long. On the difficulty, if you die you'll be given an opportunity to revive yourself by taking out a single enemy within a small time limit (your team-mates can also revive you). If you fail to be revived you'll just warp back to the closest New-U station and be charged a percentage of your money. With persistence, there really is no challenge out of reach. On the length, the main portion of the game is not very long. You will probably need to level some though and there are a substantial number of side-quests to complete. If you complete them all, you adventure could easily stretch over 30 hours. The game is highly replayable though. In fact, by completing it once, you unlock the 2nd playthrough option, which increases the difficulty level and number of enemies in the game. Then there is still the option on playing the game as one of the other ****s.

Overall, Borderlands is a blast to play. You level up fast and are constantly getting new more powerful weapons to use. And, since you'll normally have a friend with you, you can easily show off your new abilities. In that, the game creates a fun way of propelling the player. The biggest downside to the game is the ending. Once you've completed the story missions you might find yourself disappointed there aren't more to do. The upside though is that you can play through it all again on the playthrough 2 mode... and then playthrough 3 if you finish that.

I strongly recommend Borderlands to anyone looking for a game to play with their friends. It might not be the most ambitious game ever made, but it is fun and funny. There is some dark humor and constant gore, but the game still manages to feel playful and light through it all. If you are looking for something to spend hours on by yourself, this game still could scratch the itch, but you wouldn't get the satisfaction of asking excitedly asking your friend, "Did you just see that?!" every few minutes.

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I finally was able to play DAO out of my system. I finally got to the point where I not only felt competent at the game, but felt I could very easily best any challenge it presented. I'm not recanting any of the things I held against that title, but if you want something for just a whole lot of playtime hours then you might as well stop putting it off and go get it. Either that or WOW.

Anyway, this leaves me in an odd place for this time of year. I'm left without any game I really want to play. Normally there are four or five titles that have just been released that I'm asking people to buy me for Christmas, if not running out and buying myself. This time... nothing. I'm waiting for Mass Effect 2 and Lost Planet 2. Seriously publishers dropped the ball this year, at least for me.

This might seem hypocritical of me, but I'm finally coming around to DAO after investing WAY too much time into the game, especially if you include both the 360 version and the PC. In my previous blog @Monco59 suggested that it wasn't the game, that it was me, and this is partially true. You have to play the game the way the developers wanted you to, which means slowly. An occasional retreat from a dungeon for some rest and recovery (and to sell your of you inventory full of crap) does wonders for easing some of the games tensions. A lot of the rest of the trouble can be taken by NOT trying to beat the game. I know that sounds stupid, and it is, but that is how I used to play RPGs and that is how this one is meant to be played.

Some other things that help are the games controls work very well on the PC. You'll spend much less time trying to wrangle the game's targeting because it is simple point and click. It makes directing individual party members much easier in those situations where enemies set up ambushes (though I think the game would be much better as a whole without these set-ups).

I still don't know what to say about the game on PC though. As a whole it is a lot better but it still infuriates me from time to time. The autosave could still be far more generous and I still feel it is poorly designed. Also, and I know this is not just me, sometimes the AI just bugs out and your team members just wont "see" enemies. This is a problem both on the 360 and PC and no amount of working with the tactics fixes it. It is easier to remedy on PC though because you can zoom out to view everyone and when their behavior gets a little wonky, either by following tactic or not, you can correct it.

To me the game feels like a MMO only without the massively multi-player, or online. What I mean is that it feels like the game is edging you on, but you never really achieve anything. There is always one more quest to finish or another level to be gained. Like all old school RPGs, despite the fact that the world is on the verge of imminent destruction (of which only you can prevent), you still have time to scower the world to collect love letters or work on your crafting. I hate, loath, abhor, despise, detest, and otherwise dislike any form of forced exploration, and this game has it. You have to look everywhere because otherwise you might miss that one item that you need. I can't tell you for sure what that item is, but you know for sure while you're walking around that you'd better not miss it.

Finally, even after hours of dedicated study, the game is still hard. Anyone who says the game is just bragging on how much effort they put into learning every secret of the game. Sure, if I had known I would be fighting a fire dragon, I would have kept all the fire resistant stuff, but since I only have room for 90 different items types, I sold them. I figure general purpose items will be useful more often. Maybe I could do some other quests and level some and get the money to buy all that back, but this is really the point where I stop caring.

To role-play for a bit, I became a Grey Warden to stop a blight, not run around the world searching every cranny and solving everyone's problems for them. Seriously, if it really were up to me, I'd let Ferelden fall to the blight and just join up with the Wardens in Orlais. Maybe they're not to busy fighting each other to focus on the objective, though in the Dragon Age world, I somehow doubt that would be the case.

In layman's terms, I just don't think this game is for me. Sadly, I still feel somewhat addicted to it. That lack of feeling of completion keeps irking at me, and it only does so more and I unlock more awards on my player profile. Like I said, I've spent way too much time on this game. Some of it I have enjoyed, but for every minute of exhilaration, I spend hours in frustration. I just don't find the game very fun, and I think it would be fair to say I hate every single character in it... except Sten. Sten is a good guy... and I guess the Dog is OK too.

I bought Dragon Age Origins for PC because I had a gift card and thought maybe the game could redeem itself. Well, it hasn't. The PC version is just as full of the same BS. I'm playing on normal and am not only dieing all the time, I'm having to leave dungeons and buy items halfway through and its reqired to have multiple save on many occassions. This is all on normal mode, which is stupid. Most other games aren't this much of a pain in the ass on hard.

Some enjoyable characters do not make up for the blatant game padding that will fill most of your time with DA:O

Difficulty: Hard

Time Spent: 40-100 hours

The Bottom Line: "Overrated"

Dragon Age: Origins is a short game that has over 50 hours of play-time padding and will frustrate and infuriate anyone who plays it. While the game starts off very well, everything deteriorates quickly. Unfortunately you'll be hooked into continuing playing by the promise of character progress. However, the people who made this game are happy to remind you at many intervals how weak your character is, regardless of how long you've been building them.

Cheap deaths are far too common and there isn't much you can do to prevent them. The targeting in combat is terrible and will cause more than a few problems late in the game when every fight seems like it has to be against fifty people. Also the game's autosave is unreliable, not activating after key battles, so most players will probably end up repeating a good section of the game before they relearn to stop and save every five minutes.

What progress you do make in the game is slow. Even after over fifty hours of investment my characters were still only at level 18. In the beginning it especially feels like you're just waiting to level. Its made worse because as a new player you're not sure what skills you would like, and if you put your early points in the wrong place, it might take another five levels to "fix" your mistake. Really, I thought the RPGs you needed a guide to play were a thing of the past. DA:O works hard to make sure they're not completely dead yet.

As for the story, the entirety of the plot is laid out in the first few hours of the game. You are a Grey Warden and you have to stop the Arch Demon to end the blight which threatens the entire world. You end up trying to get the allegiance of different groups and have to jump through hoops to do so. There are four groups you have to work with and each one will drag you through many hours of BS before finally giving you the "real quest". Of course, once you have that quest the game will still throw three unnecessary and very large dungeons in the way, just because.

In the game, every decision you make gets evaluated by your current team members and they will decide if they like you more or less based on your choices. While in theory this would be great, in practice its terrible. Because of the games difficulty, you're almost required to take specific characters (read: your healer) with you at all times. Because you are so dependent on that character, you don't want to risk upsetting them and losing their support (or maybe even having to kill them). So, instead of your player character influencing your squad members, your squad members almost make you major plot decisions for you.

In the end, you'll probably be left unhappy with how many events in the story turned out. Many times your only choices in that game are bad option #1 or bad option #2. The "dislike" you get from one of your team members is just the icing on the pain cake. At the very end, you'll get to read the results of your choices. There is no ending cinematic, its just text that you read. Thats it. There is also no new game plus option.

To Bioware's credit, they did manage to create some believable characters. Every one of your team members has a personality that you can explore if you get them to like you and the voice acting is spectacular in almost every instance. The downside to this is that by comparison your main character feels bland. In fact, the player's character seems a little ham fisted into the game. The story would work better without him/her.

Another thing to note is that the graphics are rather poor for a modern game. Its obvious the Bioware cut the texture resolutions to the absolute minimum to make room for all the voice acting on one DVD. The draw distance is short when in open areas and in later battles with many enemies the game does slow down some. There are also a few buggy quests, but nothing that prevents you from completing the game. These are small problems though and don't ruin any enjoyment the game might offer.

Overall, DA:O is a game best left alone. Its a modern RPG that the majority of the game is stuck in the past. Dungeons are repetitive and boring and all the unnecessary game padding is annoying. The no-win situations and dissenting team-mates might be more realistic, but they are far less fun. Leveling is slow even with the game often spamming you with enemies. The game can easily eat up a lot of time, but much of that will likely be spent being frustrated. This game is best avoided.

I sold my PS3 on Ebay and it went for $350. That is with the games and headset, but I'm still very happy. Thats $100 more than I would have sold it for in person.

I also sold my Super Nintendo on Ebay. It went for $94, with 6 games. I was sad to see it go, but it went for considerably more than I was expecting.

I changed my Xbox Live gamertag. I really don't care to tell all my friend's list because many of them are getting deleted anyway, but for the people on here who are wondering who ZapCom is, its me, "zdg123" was just too plain.

I'm strongly considering selling my PS3. It is the type that cam with MGS4 and can play PS2 games. I also have MGS4 (obvious), Socom: Confrontation (which sucks), and Disgaea 3 games. On the HDD I have Warhawk and Fat Princess Downloads, but I'm not sure if I can delete my profile without deleting those games. Finally, I have the PS3 headset. If anyone in the continental US is interested, I could sell it to you. Anyone wanting to make an offer?

For any PS3 fans wondering why, its because I don't play it at all and its taking up space. I barely have time to play 360 recently, which is my favorite system, and have mostly just been letting family and friends borrow it.

I have another Dead 360. The one I was using for a spare died upon return to my sister. Its being shipped back to Microsoft today. For some time I was able to happily proclaim that I own 4 Xbox 360s and haven't really had a problem. Now its not true. This is the 3rd RROD for me total.

I'm seriously considering canceling my Gamefly membership. I get perks because I've been a member so long. Its 10% off every store purchase and a $5 gift card every month. I don't want to lose my benefits, but I seriously do not have enough time right now to keep up with my 3 game at a time plan. I'm pretty sure if I leave and come back they'll restart my time. Anyway, I have nothing against their service, but I think I'll be fine without them for a while.