The very very late weekly update - the world of gospvg

Currently I am playing Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens & World of Final Fantasy on the PS4. We (daughter & I) completed another two chapters on Force Awakens at the weekend, there are some nice puzzles in the game that require a bit of thinking & she still enjoys playing mainly as BB8.


World of Final Fantasy is my main game at the moment, you play as two characters who collect mirages (think pokemon) & meet the various character, locations & lore of the many previous Final Fantasy games.

Since my last update where I had completed Dragon Quest Builders I have also played and completed Tales of the Borderlands & Rise of the Tomb Raider. I've not uploaded any gameplay videos of either game which is a shame because both games have some great moments but I was just focusing on playing them with the extended xmas break.

Tales of the Borderlands is one of the better telltale games, even I had started to get bored with the formula & Rise of the Tomb Raider is more of the same just looking more prettier, some nice set pieces & thankfully less gruesome death scenes than the previous game.

I have added some new sections to the PWB box with Shelf, which lists all the game I have yet to play in the hope it may stop me purchasing some more! & Pre-Ordered which I don't think will ever have that many games because I rarely pre-order games.

Edit - Completely forgot about iOS gaming!
I am still playing the usual in Carcassonne, Lost Cities, Clash Royale & Pokemon Go.

Reigns is my latest enjoyment on iphone. You are a king, how long can you survive whilst keeping all parties happy. It has simple swipe the cards to say yes or no to your choices but each choice will have an effect on one of the parties you are trying to manage.

On the iPad it is either 8 Ball Pool, Rodeo Stampede or Crashlands which is a sci-fi survival game, Your ship has crashed, mine, craft & build your way off the stranded planet.

New Game - Borderlands Pre Sequel

Started this on local co-op with my daughter, she went for the Nisha character & I went for Wilhelm.

It took us a while to get familiar with the controls once again & once I managed to find an assault rifle it was business as usual.

I hate the addition of an Oxygen meter, it's just another bar to keep an eye on in the heat of battle.

It does feel like an expansion pack & is obviously a cash-in before the 360/PS3 generation of consoles are consigned to history.

Once the 'Claptrap Boys' have completed Ghost Recon we will be finishing our amazing run of PMG (Planned Multi-player Gaming) games which started in 2010 with Borderlands & will finish with this Pre Sequel game playing as Claptraps.

Completed - Borderlands 2

To answer the obvious question? Yes

Yes, it is better than the first game because gearbox have a more solid story to the game this time around.

The gameplay is the same shoot, kill & loot but you have different character classes to choose.

On my local co-op game which I completed this week I played with the same commando class from the first game, mainly because the turret is one of the better action skills.

The game has you chasing Handsone Jack in his quest to revive the vault warrior. There are some very funny moments in the game from the minecraft Easter egg to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles quest but it is the death of Roland at the hand of Handsome Jack that stood out for me. Gearbox killing off a character from the first game is a bold move.

The game ends with a multi world vault reveal, hinting at the direction for the next game.

The beauty of the Borderlands game for me is the pick up & play nature of it. You have an hour spare lets go do a couple of quests?

After completion you then unlock play through 2 but before I think about playing that the DLC content awaits.

Just in case anyone is wondering the Claptrap Boys are still playing this on a Monday evening and we are nearing the end fight.

New Logo - Mech Addiction

Old Logo - Not enough borders

Time for a new logo, Borderlands 2 is enjoyable but to me it just feels like more of the same.

It was difficult to decide what to have for a new logo, time for a change instead of games I am playing or recently completed I decided to go instead for a mech from the Front Mission series of games I have played over the years.

New Logo - Mech Addiction

 

I'm here Huckleberry

Time? maybe partly. Apathy? yes a little. Chore? quite possibly.

For whatever reason I've not been posting much on his blog for the last few months.

I'm still playing Assassins Creed 3, finishing a sequence & then completing the various side quests from The Hunting Society to the Homestead missions. Abbas has complained much about this game & is overall disappointed. I think the main issue is after three games with Ezio he misses the character.

I however am enjoying the game very much & like how they have not forced any of the side missions on you, the climbing of trees can be a bit hit & miss & the generation of money is a slower process.

Apart from AC3, I have Borderlands 2 overkill with four games on the go, two UGVM pmgs (usually Monday/Thursday), local co-op with my daughter & a single player campaign I have not touched for weeks.

Fifa 13 I have hit the inevitable decline partly due to the fact I now have a full Liverpool squad including Gerard, Suarez & Sterling. I have not played a match in a few weeks but I am keeping an eye on my trade pile via the web or iphone app.

Everything else on the consoles is in limbo.

iOS gaming is mostly still multi-player in Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Lost Cities, Disc Drivin & Words. Single player is taken up by the Angry Birds advent calender in Seasons & current favourite Middle Manager of Justice.

Expect a few more posts on some of the above games over the next few days whilst I try to rekindle my love for this blog  I also need to update the splurge since August.

New Game - Borderlands 2

It's been nearly a month since my last post not because I've not been gaming (Skyrim Diary still to update, Uncharted 2 getting further, Guild Wars revisited & still iOSing) but just been far too busy with 'Real Life' things getting in the way.

Anyhow Borderlands 2 was released on Friday luckily my copy from Shopto.net turned up on Thursday.

Initial one word thoughts ?
AWESOME !!

Did you really expect me to say anything else?

The pre-order premiere club keys also applies to all the accounts on the console so the kids also get the golden guns, vault hunter relic (+5% chance of rare loot drop) & a golden key. You can also receive another golden key by signing up to the Gearbox Shift social portal (Via the extra section on the man menu).

Four different character class to choose from Axton the Soldier you love & know, Zero who is a Ninja Assassin, Maya who is the siren class & Salvador the Gunzurker.

I initially went with the Gunzurker class. The most obvious difference you notice from the first game are the custom skins & heads. You can unlock new skins/heads throughout the game but apart from making your character look unique it really does nothing else. The new BadAss rank adds an interesting element to the challenges in the game when completed you earn a token & you can upgrade a attribute like Maximum Health by 1%. These tokens will be applied to all characters you create with your profile. There have been some small modifications to inventory management in you can mark your loots as junk with a red cross or favourite them with a star.

The claptrap boys PMG session is on hold for a week until Jaimie returns to a 360 console. I went with the local split screen option to play with my daughter which is fine for her because she gets first refusal on any loot found.

We made it to the first town in the game & met Sir Hammerlock who gives you a few quests to complete to receive some nice weapons. This went well until we sat down on Friday to play again & my split screen character had lost all it's Bad Ass ranking & the extra vault key from the shift social portal. The challenges I completed previously were still showing as completed but I had a ranking of 0 & all my perks I had chosen were gone.

This seems to be a widely reported bug on the gearbox forums which I thought initially was for split screen players but a few gamers via twitter have confirmed that they have only played single player & have also lost their BadAss ranking.

The only way I found to get the challenges reset was to delete my character & start again.

This time I went for single player only with Zero after getting my character to the same part in the game I saved & turned off for the night. The following day I tested this character on local split screen with my youngest daughter's account (The other kids were to scared to try their characters & I don't think my 5 year old daughter is going to play Borderlands 2). I'm happy to report that all my Bad Ass ranking was still active but I have lost the golden key from the shift social sign up.

Time to brave it again then yesterday (Saturday) with my daughter on local split screen with another new character this time Axton. Getting to the same point meeting up with Sir Hammerlock so far so good no bugs. Fingers crossed then for today.

New Logo - Borderlands 2

New Logo - Time for the Claptrap Boys to reunite !!

Time for a new logo, with the many new releases coming out this year including Assassins Creed 3, Halo 4, Need for Speed Most Wanted. Once game stands above all of these & that is Borderlands 2, release date 21st September can't come sooner.

Old Logo - Bye Bye Red shades

I still have a couple of more DLCs to play for Fallout New Vegas

Borderlands 2 - Launch Date Trailer Analysis

We see for the first time all four characters in the game.
Salvador who is the 'tank' class character similar to Brick in the first game. Maya is your siren (Lilith from the first game), Axton is your soldier class (Roland from the first game) & lastly we have Zero the Hunter class attacking with his sword (Mordecai in the first game).

We see a range of different enemies from robots to snow creatures, obviously lots & lots of weapons. New vehicles in possibly SUV's & helicopters?

The skill option tree for Maya is shown, Handsome Jack your nemesis smiles & comes into view. Lots of new locations are shown throughout the video & of course Claptrap is back !! :)

September 18th for US Release & 21st September for the rest of the world.

Pre-order secures you access to the Borderlands 2 Premiere Club & gifts you the Gearbox Gun Pack, a Golden Key and the Vault Hunter's Relic.

Not sure which retailer in the UK will be doing the pre-order but to emphasize in caps

I SO CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS GAME !!

Borderlands 2 - 21-09-2012

2011 - Game of the Year

Looking through my completed games for 2011. I have completed some truly enjoyable games which started with Fable 2 - I have never played the original Fable game & I managed to get Fable 2 thanks to an error on Microsoft's part that let you download the game for free but I enjoyed it's adventure in storytelling so much that I purchased the third game which I have yet to play of course.

Assassins Creed follows a similar path to Fable in that I have never played the first game yet loved the second & was happy to play Brotherhood to see the continuation of Ezio's & Desmond's storyline. If it was not for the current game I am playing I would have spent my time over xmas playing the next game in the story which was purchased for Abbas but I then promptly sold on whilst it still had it's pre-owned value. I will now patiently wait till the the complete game with dlc is released in 2012 & purchase for less than £15 to play.

In 2010 Shadow Complex was one of best games I have ever played which is why it is in my Top 30 list. I purchased quite a few xbla games in 2011 but only played Costume Quest, Vandal Hearts & recently with my son Turtles & Assault Heroes. Although quite a short game I did enjoy playing Costume Quest, it's quirky humour & Halloween setting made in an enjoyable simple rpg to play.

The iOS platform be it playing the games on iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch has for me this year been very chaotic, with too many games & thanks to appshopper/freeapphero the daily free download of never-ending titles has really now become tiresome & boring. I have enjoyed the disc drivin, carcassonne & other tournaments that I have organised throughout the year but from the many single player experiences I have completed only Sword & Poker is worth mentioning a mixture of playing poker hands in an rpg setting.

Alas the PS3 & Wii (yes I still have it somewhere I think) have been ignored through-out the year not because I do not have any games for them, the likes of Uncharted & Mario Galaxy sit on the shelf gathering dust. Lack of time & possibly also my preference to using the 360 controller has led to me ignoring these two consoles. Something I hope to correct in 2012.

The summer months were very quiet for gaming, the weather & family activities led me to do little or no gaming for 3 to 4 months but come Autumn & I returned to complete Splinter Cell Conviction, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Batman Arkham City & Rage.

Batman Arkham City & Rage were the only games I completed that was actually released in 2011 but both games disappointed me. Batman with it's open world GTA style setting did not give me the enjoyment that I got last year from Arkham Asylum & Rage, the less said about that the better I think.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 & Splinter Cell Conviction I did enjoy, Battlefield for it's design on levels, every level was different giving you a new experience to enjoy & Splinter Cell Conviction's nice stealth gameplay was very satisfying.

Looking through my completion list I have discussed almost every game I have completed except two Lost Planet 2 & Borderlands. 2011 for me was the year of the PMG (Planned Multi-player Gaming), every Monday evening (almost) without fail Gus, Jaimie, Jon (Borderlands) or Jaimie & Toby (Lost Planet 2) would connect over xbox live to game. Lost Planet 2 storyline & somewhat odd game mechanics as a single player experience would be painful to play but is just about playable on a PMG because of the other players.

Thus my game of the year for 2011 is obviously (the picture in the post) Borderlands, the game itself is a mix of a first person shooter with rpg touches but what really makes the game shine is the on-line experience you get with 3 other players. If you are dying someone will come over to heal you, out of ammo? don't worry I will equip my ammo regeneration mod & thank you 'gospvg' for being the bait in Mad Moxxi.

So take a bow Jon, Gus & Jaimie for without The Claptrap Boys, Borderlands would not have been the game of the year 2011.

Borderlands - The Final Acheivement

I got the final achievement today for Borderlands by my character reaching level 61, I did not really do much in that I played a local co-op game with Monster's character who was a level 69 soldier & he had completed the 2nd play through so the enemies were all at level 69 or 70 & my poor low level soldier could do no meaningful damage.

So I just sat back and kept on shooting Monster to heal him & occasionally go charging in to revive him if needed, which would usually result in me needing to get healed.

The final stats on my soldier character read 8 days 10 hours & 42 minutes which in hours makes a staggering 202 hours !!

Easily one of my most enjoyable games on the 360 & one of the best UGVM PMG games.

Borderlands - Crawmerax Crab Meat

Crawmerax is now tinned crab meat.

We had to use the hiding glitch - "when you come out of the lift go along the cliff edge to the far left corner & crouch down, if you are lucky the crab will not detect you & you can stay hidden whilst the other players in your group try to kill him.

I think this boss would be impossible to do on single player & without the hiding glitch, because when you die & are transported back to the bottom of the lair you have to wait for the lift to come down & if no player is left at the top fighting the crab his health is restored to full. Thus by me being the lowest level character in the group I hid whilst Jaimie, Gus & Jon went shooting with their elemental weapons. You need to make sure you come equipped with a shock, fire & corrosive weapon. The fire & corrosive  weapons you will need to use to kill the smaller crabs that are spawned & the shock weapon to attack crawmerax. Make sure you aim for the purple blobs on his body to cause damage.

It took just over 30 mins to finish him off & you are then treated to a festival of loot, I managed to collect some nice guns inc a 241 x 2 SMG & a 1750 quick health shield. There is a lot of loot so if 1 player stays at the top the others can go to the shops at the bottom of the lift to sell loot & return to collect some more.

The killing of Crawmerax also brings to an end a great gaming experience. Every Monday without fail (excluding DIY injuries) Jon, Gus, Jaimie & moi would party up to take on the hordes of Pandora. For me it has been one of the highlights of this generation "on-line co-operative gaming".

So I say thank you to Jon for always running over to save me from the enemies, thank you to Gus for always reviving & healing me when I'm dying & to Jaimie? You are welcomed - I saved your arse on a number of occassions :)

Till Borderlands 2 ....

Borderlands - Mad Moxxi - Completed

I am finding it difficult to write anything good about this DLC, change that, I am finding it impossible to write anything good about this DLC.

The last 3 arena's have 20 Waves of 5 Stages each which you have to do in one sitting .. Aargh !!

Oh yes I found something good !!

I've completed it !!
Thank f*@k for that !!

Borderlands - Oil cans, Pizza Slices & Claptrap Bobbleheads

Oil cans, Pizza slices & Claptrap Bobbleheads
Claptrap's New Robot Revolution DLC

The Lubricator, Bobble-Trap & What a party! achievements are 3 of the most annoying in the Borderlands game mainly because they hardly ever drop for you to collect.

Obviously you can only get these by killing claptraps.

There are 3 locations where you have a chance of getting these drops.

1. Dividing Faults, you need to go to the Hyperion Claptrap factory, this is a good location because there is a huge number of claptraps for you to kill.

2. Hyperion Dump, make your way to the small fort & claptraps will spawn from the nearby pipes.

3. Farming MiNAC - This is the best location because it requires you to do very little. After the MiNAC intro run to the top right corner of the map & you will find a small shack. Just hide yourself in this shack & let the MiNAC spawn exploding claptraps. When they explode they will drop loot.

I used a wired controller for this because the wireless controller goes into sleep mode if not used. Camped myself in this shack for a few hours whilst I watched some missed episodes of Torchwood. Came back 4 hours later to kill off the MiNAC & collect the ridiculous number of loot that had been dropped.

Not the best method I admit for enjoyment & power consumption but I blame gearbox for having these lazy achievements in the game & my OCD for completing the game.

Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot - Easier less annoying strategy

Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot

Such an annoying DLC, it took us 3.5 hours to complete the stage 4 arena. I have been trying a new tactic to complete the stage 5 & 6 arena & can now confirm it works.

I created a new character and started a split screen game with my son playing co-op with his LVL 64 character. The new character doe not unlock fast travel but my son does with his character so we warped to Mad Moxxi.

I can then select the first quest on the small arena's & all the enemies were lvl4 touch for my new character but a walk in the park for my sons lvl64 character. After completing the first 3 arena's & turning in for the quest my character jumped to a lvl6 with the experience points gained. We then went onto Stage 4, the enemies were now a lvl 12, again too tough for me but very easy for my son.

I will be using this tactic for the UGVM weekly PMG to finish off stage 5 & 6. With 3 high levelled characters it stage 5 should hopefully take us a lot quicker than 3.5 hours we wasted on stage 4.

Update
Stage 5 took us just over 2 hours to complete.

Borderlands 2 - Leaked 14 Min Gameplay

Borderlands - 3.5 Hours !!

3.5 hours !! 3.5 HOURS !!

Aaargh stupid friggin DLC

3.5 hours to complete 20 rounds of 5 waves each on The Gully Arena !!!

Seriously whoever came up with this DLC, deserves to be severly punished. How about getting them to sit down & play 3.5 hours of Mad Moxxi's?

Only two Arena's left to go but I'm going to try a different tactic - will post back soon.

Borderlands 2 - More Screen Shots

Borderlands 2 - Screen Shots

Get ready to snipe

Gorgeous Visuals

WTF Marcus?

What's that on my shield?

Sandworm Monster

Borderlands 2

Oh Yes !! It's official the sequel is coming !!

From the press release

"Borderlands 2 features all new characters, skills, environments, enemies, weapons and equipment, which come together in an ambitiously crafted story. Players will reveal secrets, and escalate mysteries of the Borderlands universe as they adventure across the unexplored new areas of Pandora."


Fans and media will be able to get their first look at the game at Gamescom 2011 from August 17 – August 21, and at PAX Prime (Booth #3417) from August 26 – August 28.