At the time, it seemed like such a great idea. Back in February of last year, when the Vita was first released, it was a brilliant piece of technology. Graphic capabilities and processing was much better than the PSP, it had touch screen capability, cameras out the ying-yang, and dual analog sticks for control. Did I mention it's backwards compatible with most PSP titles? Even before it was released, I knew I wanted one.
But DAMN was it expensive! I'm not exactly rolling in dough, and I already have a PS3 and a PSP, and because I didn't have a ton of free time on my hands, I just couldn't justify spending the money. So I kept my eye on it, biding my time until some great deal came along. I should have just stopped there and let the dream die. I should have asked myself, "Why do I even want a Vita?" My justification at the time was that I would be getting a much better gaming device than the PSP. Nevermind that there didn't seem to be any exclusive titles that interested me. Even if there were NO games I would play on the Vita, I would still have a cool piece of hardware that could do a hundred things the PSP couldn't. And the marketing for the Vita was phenomenal. "You mean I can transfer some games from the PS3 to the Vita and back again!" Unbelievable! Again, I should have just quit it. Along came Black Friday 2012, and with it, a slew of Playstation Vita deals that got my mouth watering. This was it! I'm finally getting a Vita! After patiently searching, I found a bundle that was priced right, and I bought one without a second thought. It came bundled with a game (Assassin's Creed: Liberation) and a Memory Card...the two things that I was going to have to fork out extra cash for. I was so stoked! The device came a few days later, and I hastily set it up. I was blown away immediately. The touch screen and networking was responsive, the graphics and sound capabilities from AC:Liberation was awesome, and I was even surprised by a couple things like the front-mounted camera and the touchpad on the back of the device. Absolutely amazing. But after about a week, I started to realize something...maybe the Vita wasn't as great as I thought it was going to be. I started to realize that the Vita was really similar to the PSP. Obviously, there was a technical difference that made the Vita slightly better, but on the whole, the Vita could only do a couple more tricks. And besides, what's the point of those tricks anyway? I mean, my Droid Incredible 2 can do everything the Vita can do and then some. Sure, it can't connect to the PSN, but who cares? I have a PSP for that...Oh god... I realized I'd made a huge mistake. It was right around the time I was finishing up with AC:Liberation, completely bored out of my mind with it. I'd also downloaded Playstation Battle Royale, and that, too, left much to be desired. I scrambled online to check out what titles might be coming up that would pique my interest, but nothing sparked my attention except a few titles that would be on PS3 anyway. I kept trying to justify the Vita's hardware capabilities, but the more I did that, the more I realized how redundant it was. I'm not going to boot up my Vita to Skype, or watch movies, or *gasp* play games. I couldn't even play my old PSP games on it because I came to find out the backwards compatibility was for downloaded games only...and everything I own is on a UMD. So the Vita is on eBay now, heading off to someone else's life. I hope they are happier with it than I was. Many of you might think that this is simply a case of an uninformed buyer not listening or doing his research well enough. There is plenty of truth in that, but I will say, that I bought the PSP doing the same amount of research and really just wanting it because I wanted it, and I am a thousand times happier with my PSP. The Vita, I think, just isn't badass enough for the times. It needed to do something greater than any other handheld device could do, and sadly, it just kinda...didn't. Oh well, maybe I'll buy a Nintendo 3ds.
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As a writer, video games can be a most unwelcome passenger in my life. They provide a distraction that often takes me away from my responsibilities for hours, maybe even days. But this is only half the story, for despite the distraction, video games have also helped my creative process. Believe what you want, but playing a video game is not equivalent to crapping out in front of the TV. Video games require strong hand-eye coordination, they force me to think quickly, challenging my abilities to think critically and problem solve on the fly, and most important, oftentimes, they inspire me to create. Annnnd that brings me to my review of Borderlands 2, by GearBox. Now, this isn't a typical video game review. Graphics and gameplay matter to me, but what I really care about is the story. In fact, I've played some terrible games in the past, but hung on until the end because I was riveted by the story. Borderlands 2 isn't one of these games...not yet anyway. I've only logged about 14 hours on Pandora since the three weeks that I've owned this game (a relatively small amount of time when you think about how much time some people spend watching Football on a Sunday), so I haven't exactly "finished the book" yet. But what I have seen so far has definitely kept me playing. Borderlands 2 takes place on the planet, Pandora, about 5 years after the events of the first Borderlands game, and let me tell you, things haven't changed all that much on the surface. There are still tribes of cannibalistic psychos camped out at every turn as well as fierce alien beasts set on murdering anything that crosses their path. The scope of the world of Pandora is huge. You start out in a frozen wasteland, move on to a desert/junkyard, and about halfway through, you end up in a highland landscape complete with military bunkers set over cascading waterfalls. When you throw in the history from the first game and this game's diabolical villain, you have a world that every fantasy writer wishes for...deep in detail, rich in history, and most important, intriguing. As for the story itself, the game begins as the protagonists, the Vault Hunters, descend upon a Hyperion Corporation train on a mission to kill Handsome Jack, Hyperion's CEO (oh, and he's also the self-proclaimed Dictator of Pandora). You see, in order to "clean up" Pandora, Jack has pretty much vowed to wipe the living population off the face of the planet in order to rebuild from the ashes. As one of the four (now five!) Vault Hunters, your mission is to take out Jack and restore as much peace as Pandora will allow. Predictably, the train hijacking is a setup, resulting in the Vault Hunters being stranded in the Arctic Wasteland, only to be rescued by the familiar and loveable "Claptrap", a dubsteppin' robot with dubious motive. The Guardian Angel is back in this game as well, returning again as the Vault Hunter's advisor, although this time, Angel isn't exactly the same as before. We also get to see a return of the original Vault Hunters from the first Borderlands. On Handsome Jack's Pandora, they have taken the roles of freedom fighters, and reuniting with them brings some of that history I spoke of earlier back to the surface. Gripes? As characters, the new Vault Hunters are pretty simple cardboard cutouts. We only get snippets of dialogue from them, and their personalities are pretty much summarized by their snappy comebacks in the heat of battle. This was true of the original Vault Hunters as well. The cool thing is that in Borderlands 2, the original Vault Hunters are non-playable characters, meaning we get to talk to them and fight with them unlike anything we got to see in the first game. This time around, we get to know the originals much better, and that, to me, is a fantastic reward. Bottom Line: If you liked the first game and enjoyed the story, you'll really get some enjoyment out of the second installment. Of course, there are some gameplay differences that may affect the enjoyability of the game overall, but screw it, I'm all about the story. |
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