I nearly went and Dishonored myself

I was totally prepared to ditch my mantra and buy Dishonored on pre order of all things. Because fuck self discipline mantras. 

But now the hot blonde at the bar promising so much that was Dishonored has turned out to be a big gross bearded woman in the grim light of day.

In researching this article, I found a weirdly large amount of celebrities shopped to have beards, which is hot, I guess?

I ask myself, is that what I want? To sleep with a gross bearded lady? No. That is absolutely not what I want. By this logic (shuddup, it totally is logic) I don't want Dishonored. 

So what fills this hole? Motherfuckin' zombies, baby. That's what fills this hole. I freakin' love zombies. In a few weeks, I'm going to hang out with a bunch of like-minded people in an industrial estate near Birmingham to shoot actors dressed up as zombies with airsoft guns because fuck actors. 

This is the cleanest thing I could get from google imaging "fuck actors".

It's obvious then, right? There's only one game to fill that hole. Get over here Dead Rising 2, you little snuggle bunny. 

On paper this game looks bad-ass. Running round and putting shit together and cutting zombies up with that put together shit. Cool, brah. 

But I've been around, I've seen things. I've played Evil Dead Regeneration on the PS2. That game sucked balls, only made worse because I love the films, and looks a lot like Dead Rising. You're a lone guy, running round, cutting zombies up with shit. And it was hella repetitive. 

And I'm scared, alright. I'm afraid. I can't take it if Dead Rising is the same level of bullshit over and over again. 

But, at just ten quid in my local store, including store credit from swapping in the rape themed Resident Evil 5, I'm gunna do it. I'm going to go cheap on this and ignore Dishonored for just a little while longer.

I'm also guna wear my red striped shirt. Bitches love red striped shirts.

Why Arkane Studios' Dishonored will ruin my life

I'll come straight out and say it. I'm a liar. I lied. To you.

When I started this blog, I wanted to stay true to my cause. To only play games that were heavily discounted at my local GameMaster because until my fan fiction of Mario boning the three boobed chick from Total Recall gets picked up by a major publisher, I can't afford to buy new games every few weeks.

(Damn right you're punching the sky, you randy little plumber)

But that was before I started getting a virtual and real life hard on for Dishonored, out on Oct 9th. Seriously, have you seen that shit? 

(Film: That shit)

The protagonist Corvo Attano is one real mean motorscooter, and in the trailer above that came out back in April he looks like the baddest sonofabitch in town. The supernatural powers he's bestowed in the chokey kinda help towards that.

Framed for the murder of the Empress, Corvo goes out and does the thing that looks so fun in games and movies but in real life leaves you looking like a real dick in the silent pub as the broken pool cue falls from your hand and everyone makes a promise they're never going to touch your little sister again, are they Carl?

That's right people, we're talking revenge. The dish best served dead. (You're welcome Arkane.)

Watching some of the level runs that have been put up on YouTube makes the steampunk world that Dishonored inhabits look like the beautifully polished offspring of Bioshock and the inside of a clock. 

The game is not open world. That kinda sucks because after Skyrim everything should be open world. But it does promise a whole heap of ways to overcome obstacles found in each level. Think Deus Ex Human Revolution. Or don't. Whatever. I'm not your mum. 

(If I was your mum, I'd be this one.)

The action relies on traditional swords and super powers like teleportation and stopping time. Hey, it doesn't redefine the stealth genre but it does promise to be adding to it pretty freakin' well. 

There's a power where you can call on rats to eat your foes. This sounds a bit too hammy to me and makes me think of some shitty Dr Dolittle-type guy running around Oldey Worldey Victorian England with a pocket full of street urchins or wherever Fagin kept those children he molested. 

(You've got to pick a pocket or...HOLY BUBONIC SHITPLAGUES!)

The other power that isn't working for me in theory is possession. This skill lets you posses animals (later people if you spend talent points in the skill) and lets you wander around in their skin like a steampunk Hannibal Lector. This is cool. I can dig possessions. I'm down with Paranormal Activity.

But in Dishonored, you can use possession as a de facto teleportation. Falling off a building? Just posses that fool on the ground and then reemerge a second later and walk away. Easy peasy and no deaths! (Except months later when the formally possessed man is found with a note after failing to reconcile the brief period where another man was deep, deep inside him.)

(Unless you posses certain people. PIC UNRELATED)

Mike you stupid drunk, that sounds awesome! I can hear you saying ineffectively at your computer screens. But the thing I don't get is, if you can posses people like that, where the fuck does Corvo's body go? Like, inside the thing he's possessing? 

What about all his weapons? Or that badass mask he wears? Do they all shrink down into the size of a rat or a fish or a bird or something? It all just feels a bit too 'you can do this, because wizards!' to me. 

If you don't understand this reference, I'm a sad panda for you.

These are only two small gripes in a game that looks to be incredible. I feel sorry for my girlfriend because she is going to be missing out on more lovin' in the week Dishonored comes out than when my old guild first started raiding Molten Core (look it up, kids). 

Breakin' my own rules with Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2 came out at midnight, and although it goes against my strict criteria for which games I'm allowed to buy, I am chomping at my mangled little bit to play it.

Lets watch the trailer to get all excited:

There was something so incredibly satisfying about the first Borderlands game. The RPG elements were spot on and innovative. Selecting the online mode and dropping effortlessly into a four player mashup within seconds was one of the most badass experiences Xbox Live has ever given me (ignoring that one time I worked out how to stream porn from it, no lie).

This looks like much of the same, only with better looking characters and more imaginative guns.

The characters are kinda based around the schmucks that went vault hunting in the first game but with some worthwhile differences. 

First up we got Roland Axton, a no messing commando that drops turrets to take on enemies. He looks a bit too much like Corporal Hicks from Aliens for me to take seriously.

(Axton)

(Hicks)

He's also a little too similar to Roland from Borderlands 1 for me to care that much about. If I wanted to play the same character in a different skin I'd just hold select and roll blue Blanka.

(Do I make a ginger joke or a gurning joke here? Blanka you so cray-cray)

It's good to see the over-the-top violence has been toned down for the sequel. Nah just fucking with you, one of Axton's high level talents is a 'small nuclear blast' attached to his Sabre turret because fuck subtlety.

Next up, we got the one that's most likely to be my numero uno, Zero. She's the assassin character. She does this kickass trick where she throws out a decoy and turns invisible until she attacks, meaning you can hop around the screen like the fucking Predator or a rogue from WoW and shank people in the kidneys with your blue sword. 

(Judging from baldy's expression, that blue sword just hit his pink one)

The third char is Gimli the dwarf, except hairier and called Salvador. Fuck me sideways, is he meant to be Latin American? I figured he was just a cross between a bull and a tree stump. Is that what Latin American's look like to the games designers? 

His class is the stupidly named Gunzerker which I can only assume was invented by the games developer's kid cos that little shit just would not shut the fuck up about being part of the game. He's got the ability to dual weld guns and I remember when Halo introduced that shit and people practically came in their pants. 

Not sure if this will have the same effect, but the big loud bangs of the Borderlands universe always welcomes another gun. 

(Not pictured: Subtlety)

And the final playable character that's rolling into town is the bang tidy Maya. Like Lilith, the girl character from the first game, Maya is a Siren and uses all freaking elemental shit to toss bad guys around like rag dolls and freeze them in place. Unfortunately for the advertising team at developer Gearbox Software this ability kinda just makes it look like she's doing some aggressive pointing when displayed in stills.

(It's like the explosion went off out of sympathy)

I liked the Siren char from the first game, and I'm hoping for big things from Maya. I'm aware that of the four chars I've admitted a preference to playing the two female ones, but hey, MMORPG. 

Sadly, I won't be buying the game until it gets knocked down in price at my local GamesMaster due to my stupid rules that I have to stupidly live by, but I will sure as fuck be watching plenty of YouTube vids in preparation. 

Keep Calm & Game On

Gaming and getting older is God's own spiteful paradox. When you're young, you have all the time in the world to play games but no dinero to buy them, and when you're just a fraction of a liftime older, you're suddenly too busy with a 'real job' to be shooting insurgents 24/7.

When I lost my games virginity in the cupboard below the stairs on some shitty old console - I'm looking at you ZX Spectrum - it was the best thing in the 8-bit world.

(Pictured: A unicorn graveyard? Disease under a microscope? Urgh, 80s kids were stupid.) 

Then I got a bit older and games got older with me. I'm no longer expected to fire a block of pink at a block of white in the hope that I will win the game before the cassette warps and renders itself as useful as bacon at a Bar Mitzvah.

But then I got older still and in terms of the games out there for me, it just could not get better. Now, I can put a bullet into the online avatar of some guy sitting on his sofa in America and watch it back in glorious slow motion. Even more win, I'm now in my mid 20s and gainfully employed so I could just buy the shit out of computer games if I wanted to. I'm an adult. Hell, I could decide to not eat for a week and instead buy every Final Fantasy and appropriate console and spend the week in my pants blowing the Doritos dust off my chest while I beat the fuckers.

(Yay, adulthood!)

But here's the paradox. The older I get, the less time I have to actually spend guiding a hapless Eastern European around a faux NYC. Worse still, being an adult sucks. Suddenly people want shit from me. I gotta spend money on feeding myself, feeding my girlfriend, rent, internet, even the electricity I'm using to type this is an insatiable leech, sucking money away from computer game spending.

(Pictured: An insatiable leech)

So I've decided to being an adult about it, what with all the practice I've been forced into having by the cold indifferent passage of time. I'm going to compromise. Instead of buying into the hype and jumping on board to pre order the latest buzz game just to get different in game pre order bonuses depending which retailer you get it from, I'm going to be more picky with my game choices based on a few criteria.

Firstly - no new games. All have to be second hand. The reasons for this are twofold. Namely, it's a fucktonne cheaper and I hopefully won't get caught up in the hype of a new release and feel like I've been shafted by a game publisher's marketing team when the game turns out to be a terrible dullard.

Secondly - A game that's been out for a while has had time for the studio behind it to get their shit together and release any essential DLC to iron out any glitches. I'm an ex-WoW player and nothing makes me want to punch the day in the face more than a buggy game that was released six months too early.

I'll be reviewing older games with a more mature outlook in mind, because when you've got shit like a £40 phone bill to take care of, you need to make sure the game you buy is worth skipping a few lunches over.