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.

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. 

Resident Evil 5 roundabout review

Racial stereotypes in games are super fun yo. Consider Mario. Who in the gaming world can think of an Italian without a big mustache and overalls? Or an American without being rough and ready and in a cowboy hat? Or black people without picturing them stamping things to death and raping white women. Wait, what?

Before I go on, I'd like to point out that I am absolutely not one of the PC brigade that gets offended by anything. 

           (Except that man's suit; it's offending all our eyes. ZING!) 

But I couldn't help but feel that a few elements of Resident Evil 5 were a bit, you know, black people = animals. 

At the start of the game we are treated to our hero Chris Redfield strutting through an African village. Although things seem a bit off, there haven't been any face-monster attacks yet - though the player has been privileged to see some freaky stuff that Chris and his bang tidy sidekick Sheva Alomar are unaware of. 

Then Chris walks past a group of villagers. Nothing too weird there, except they are totally stamping on something tied up in a bag. The bag isn't big enough to hold a person. So yea, they're just killing a dog in there. 

                   (YOU STOP LAUGHING AT MY RUBBISH AIM)

These things happen though. They're infected with all sorts of crazy face cracking monster demons. That's cool. I can accept that maybe a bunch of dudes would get together, tie an animal in a bag and then stamp the crap out of it. I mean c'mon, who hasn't been to summer camp, am I right? 

But then you see the first whitey in the game that isn't Chris. And she's a girl. And she's probably being raped. Yeah, really. (First few seconds of vid).

                                        

Wow. I mean, wow. Should we even go in that room after that or just call the cops? Because they probably need a psychiatrist or some other specially trained professional in there first. Last thing that girl needs to see after whatever the hell happened in that shack is some steroid-packing mercenary waving a gun around. 

Don't agree with me? Go right ahead and bitch in the comments. But before you do, consider this – why the hell make her the only white girl in the game so far? It's not like it's referenced anywhere before hand.

Racism aside, the game offers some wonderfully worked graphics. Shading and faces are good with only one or two glitches on Chris' eyes as Capcom's MT Framework engine struggles to keep up.  

The voice acting is okay-ish but the script is terrible. Not bad, not awkward, genuinely terrible.

How terrible? 

(This terrible)

Considering how much time you spend popping fools in the head, Sheva gets very upset at strange times and in predictably God-bothering ways. Here's a few scenes from the script: 

SHEVA: A bomber equipped with missiles? He can't fly around in that without
getting shot down...oh God!

SCENE ENDS

[By shooting explosive barrels, CHRIS and SHEVA manage to stop the truck and
eliminate a horde of Majini. Going down into the sewers, the two are ambushed
by packs of Adjule, but manage to get back outside. Sprawled out on the wet 
ground are several corpses.]

SHEVA: My God...

SCENE ENDS

[CHRIS and SHEVA open the doors and run towards the crash site to find the
chopper ablaze.]

SHEVA (turns her head): Oh my God.

SCENE ENDS

Sheva's one expression of shock gets pretty grating after a while, as does her inability to differentiate between varying scales of concern. God gets wheeled out when she runs out of ammo just as He does when she sees swathes of dead bodies, like they're totally comparable. 

This broke me out of the experience more than anything else in the game. 

Resident Evil 5 is not scary, nor is it survival. Instead of cheap jumps that are so abundant in previous incarnations of the franchise, this is full on 28 Days Later streams of zombies, just begging for headshots. 

(I guess there's worst things he could've done to that mouth)

Ammo's never really a concern. From time to time you run out, but the next suspiciously similar breakable crate is just around the corner filled with bullets. The game errs towards action and adventure. This is fun, but there's a few design flaws which don't stand up to the action genre.

The shooting mechanic is awkward. As with previous games, you push one button to put your pistol up and another to shoot. While aiming your weapon, you can't move. You're like a gun toting rabbit waiting for the 18-wheeler zombie truck that's about to slam into you from every direction.

(Like this, but with guns, and zombies, and nothing like this)

And forget changing weapon mid-fight. For a reason which I can only assume was driven by the designers' desperate need to go out and score more crack real quick, the game doesn't pause when you access the weapon menu to change guns. This means that to equip a new gun, you pull up a menu that takes up a large portion of the screen, frantically find the damn thing and then whip it out. All while this guy tries to cut your face off.

(Hey, mind holding up with the murder spree for a sec? Gotta find my boomstick)

Luckily, the AI of Sheva is almost up to the task of covering you while you flail around uselessly in a weapons meanu. From time to time she sprints around like a slack jawed moron but usually she's pretty good. I loaded her up with a machine gun early on and she was content plugging bad guys with that. 

The bosses are satisfying, all big and need some mild, albeit entirely obvious unless you're a stone cold moron, lateral thinking to kill and shit. The puzzles are a bit of a letdown. They're as cryptic as a massive arrow on the wall saying PULL THIS LEVER!!! QUICK PULL IT!!! 

Overall, I'd say the game was worth a punt if you can get it at a decent price. I got mine for £10 with instore credit. Wallop, job done.