Let’s start with what a cheapskate I am.  I didn’t get my copy on opening day because I wanted to wait for price to come down.  Usually I buy games once they come down to around $20 from $50.  Target clearance racks are good for that.  However, Amazon had Portal 2 on sale for $30, just a few weeks after the game came out.  I decided to splurge and get it early.

Three days went by and no Portal in my mailbox.  In retrospect, I should have paid for the US Priority Mail, since Amazon’s free shipping is apparently the FedEx 8-10 day (re: slow as snails) shipping.  Much complaining on Twitter was done by me.  It was two weeks before I actually got the game in the mail, and another two days before I got a chance to install it.

But it was worth the wait.  This one was a little longer than the first, at about ten hours, but packed with humor as you would expect and also a better plot than the original.  The sequel builds on the story from the first game (however thin it was) by delving into the history of Aperature Laboratories, the origins of GladOS herself and why she went insane in the events immediately prior to Portal, killing all the scientists with deadly neurotoxin.

The bonus feature of Portal 2 that wasn’t available in the original is online cooperative play.  Although I finished the single-player version, I haven’t played the multi-player yet.  But you and a friend take on the roles of two robots (who take your place as test subjects after the events of the single-player game).  That’s two ingress portals and two egress portals available in every room, which must be crazy.  I look forward to playing it soon.

There was a lot of gameplay missing in the sequel that I really liked in the first game.  One was character optimization.  In the first game, you are allowed to choose the armor and weapons for your team mates.  Weapon specialization was chosen by putting skill points into a weapon type.  In the new game, each teammate has only two weapons.  Better weapons and armor are not found by defeating increasingly difficult enemies, but by upgrading your weapon types in the laboratory.

Each time you visit a new planet, it’s a treat for the eyes.  The first game was split between indoor missions and outdoor exploration in a vehicle.  Mass Effect 2 spends a lot of play time outdoors, and the landscapes are beautiful.  I missed the rover exploration, but there are a couple of missions that take place in a shuttle that you drive around the planet.  Unfortunately, these are just as linear as the regular missions and do not allow much open exploration.

The best part of the game is the characters.  Some old friends from the first game make cameo appearances.  I was really happy to see Tali again, but we still don’t know what she looks like under that mask.  I think my favorite new character is Mordin, a Salarian scientist.  He has a lot of interesting dialog, and at one point he even sings.  Another fun character is Zaaed, a delightfully ruthless mercenary.  He tells lots of interesting stories revolving around his morally reprehensible deeds.

My main problem with the game is that the missions are very linear.  There are no side alleys to check for hidden loot or power-ups.  Each mission is like a winding path that you follow through to the end, stopping every so often to gun down enemies.  Even the outdoor environments funnel you through a very particular path.  I’m used to looking for hidden items on missions, but the narrow paths make it impossible to hide caches of treasure.

You deviate from the main story only to recruit your teammates.  Each one has two missions: one to recruit them and a second personal mission that unlocks their loyalty.  With loyalty, you get the bonus power for that character and a new costume.  The new costume is basically the same as their existing armor, except in team colors of brown and black.  I liked this so much that I changed my own armor color from red to brown as well.

Unfortunately, I didn’t win a couple of the loyalty missions, so some of my characters did not get their final power.  Without this last skill, they’re basically crippled, only good for cannon fodder.  There’s plenty of room for cannon fodder in this game though, since the final leg of the main storyline is roughly a suicide mission.  You basically have to choose which teammate dies, several times.  I understand it’s possible to pull through it without losses, but I didn’t get so lucky.

This game reminded me a lot of Gears of War, which I loved as an action game, but I was not as happy with the limitations that the new format introduces.  The entire experience has been distilled from an RPG to an action format, but with tragic losses.  I don’t even see any replay value here (I played through the first game five times).  I’m looking forward to the third game though, and hoping that they put a few more of the RPG elements back in.  There’s still more left for the story and I can’t wait to see its logical conclusion.

I took the card out to clean the fan.  It was pretty dusty, but that didn’t fix the problem.  My computer still buzzed loudly.  I was all set to ignore the stupid fan, but then the computer shut down in the middle of playing Borderlands.  So,  playing games causes the video card to overheat and thus shut down my entire computer.  Great.

So that leaves me a couple of options:

• Put my old video card in to replace the loud one.
• Buy a new, more powerful (expensive) video card now.
• Buy a cheap card now to tide me over.
• Wait for Black Friday to buy a new computer on sale.

I still have my old video card, so I could put that in to alleviate the noise.  But I upgraded to my current video card to play the latest video games, so I still wouldn’t be able to play video games then.   I might buy a new, beefier video card and plan to move it to a new computer some time in the future.  But after some research, I found that my power supply won’t support a new card’s huge power requirements.

I might opt for a cheap video card as a quick replacement.  This wouldn’t be expensive, probably $50 or so, and would keep me running until I could upgrade to a new computer (with the expensive card in it).  However, it turns out that cheaper cards available now wouldn’t be as good as the one I have (even as loud as it is), so there’s no use wasting money in short term.

I’ve decided to wait until I can upgrade my entire computer.  I won’t be able to play games until then, but this opens up my options.  If there is a really good Black Friday sale, then I can just buy a whole computer.  Or on the other hand, I still have the option of buying the components on sale, and this gives me a month to research PC parts.

I’d like to get a copy through GameStop so that I can get that Shockwave unlockable character.  Unless the unlockables only work on the console versions, as the rumors go.  If we’re lucky, there will be a War For Cybertron panel at Botcon to clear up the rumors.  It’s possible that they’ll be selling the game at Botcon too, which would rock.

I finished Portal and then got a free copy of “Half-Life 2″ on the Steam network, but because the Steam client was such a resource hog, I deleted it after finishing Half-Life.  Now I wish that I had not because Valve is offering Portal for free on Steam until May 24th.

I gave Portal another try this week since I had already played BioShock 2 to death.  But first I had to install the Steam client all over again.  Once I figured out where to download it and got it installed, getting my free copy of Portal was pretty easy.  It just took an entire day to download through Steam.

Portal is just as fun as I remember it.  It’s also just as short!  I finished all nineteen levels in two and a half hours.  It’s pretty easy when you know how to solve all the puzzles.  Even though it has been two years since I last visited the Aperture Science Research Center, it all came back pretty quickly.

The six bonus rooms that are set apart from the main storyline are much harder.  It took me longer to solve the level 18 bonus map than it did to complete the entire game.  That level is a really hard!  I died countless times.  Then there are the custom maps that you can download from the Internet.

For example, there are forty maps in the Flash Map pack from WeCreateStuff.com, adapted from their Flash-based 2D Portal game.  I’ve read on many Portal forums that these are some of the best maps available outside of the original game.  Unfortunately, the Flash maps require a copy of Half-Life 2 to run.

It kind of makes me upset that I deleted that game a long time ago, since I would really like to play those maps now.  I had to start a new account on Steam because I couldn’t locate my old one, but I might be able to find references to it in old e-mails.  If it still exists, maybe I can move my old Half-Life 2 registration to my new account?

Portal is still free for a few more days.  If you’ve never played it, I would highly recommend downloading a copy and giving it a shot.  The game is challenging, especially if you’ve never played it before.  The best part is the enemy AI named GLaDOS. She has a lot of personality, for a computer, and really brings a lot of life to the game.  And hey, it’s free!

And hey, I won!  Dark Horse sent me eight “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” graphic novels in the mail.  It took a while for them to show up, but I was happy to get them.  I played the KotOR video games by LucasArts, so I was interested in seeing how the comic version tied in.  Very loosely, or so I found.  The story is sort a prequel to the video games, not directly related to those storylines, but the game characters do make guest appearances.

The art by Brian Ching started the series strong with great detail work.  Like Groo, by Segio Aragones, the scene would often pull back and show sprawling city scenes in the background, filling in details about the location and alien life all about.  The art would waver again as Ching cycled in and out of the artist chores.  It would appear that many artists don’t share Ching’s talent for backgrounds.  I didn’t like the art for the Vector crossover at all, but improved when Ching returned.

I don’t normally win anything, so this was a pleasant surprise.  And since the KotOR series recently came to a close at the 50th issue, I received almost the entire print run in one shot.  Just need to pick up the last four issues to see what happens in the end.  I haven’t even read them all yet though, so no hurry.  I sent a nice “thank you” note to Dark Horse (digitally, of course).  I’ll have to keep a lookout for more Dark Horse giveaways concerning Aliens or Predator.

I’ve compiled the emails that I sent out below, along with hindsight commentary in brackets.  I’ve already beaten the single-player game twice, but Swavek and I have yet to play cooperative mode.  If you’re at all interested in information about Borderlands gameplay or links to cool Borderlands stuff, then read on.

11/2/09
I love finding new shields, especially ones that are better than the one that I already have.  I got a shield that was named something like “fast recharge” but it also had “thermal” in the title for fire immunity.  The description didn’t say anything about fast recharge time, but it already had four lines in the description.  Here is a fix to see all five lines:
http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showpost.php?p=1626085&postcount=258

[It turns out that "fast recharge" is a little arbitrary. Rely on the recharge rate numbers to tell you how fast you can expect to be protected again while ducked behind cover.]

11/5/09
There are a couple of really funny videos made using the Borderlands assets and character voices.  You’ve got to check these out!

Homage to the Christian Bale Meltdown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDf_S18tOxg&feature=player_embedded

Funniest Thing I Have Ever Seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOWPMPtHbcc&feature=player_embedded

11/9/09
I just got an awesome sniper rifle called The Volcano, and it has the red text “A sacrifice must be made to Pele” in the description.  [Red Text means that it's special in some way.]  It makes me want to weep openly.   It has a x4 Fire Effect rating, and I’ve got my fire artifact at level 2, so people just burn up with one shot.  It’s awesome, and I find myself keeping my distance until almost everyone in an area is dead, then moving in to mop up with the SMG.

Red Text Weapon Effects
http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Special_Weapon_Effects

I also found my first “pearl” weapon.  Not made of pearl, but the name of the item was listed in “pearl” color.  It sucks that the pearl text looks JUST LIKE white text, but it appears at the top of the list of weapons (unequipped items are sorted in order of rarity).  It’s a repeater with the red text “Uncle Toni says Hi” or something like that.   I don’t use it very often though, since I’m most often switching between my Volcano and the Eridian rifle that was behind TK’s house.

11/24/09
I finally beat Borderlands. I would have thought that a giant purple Cthulu would have been harder to kill.   I just kid behind a rock and fired at his purple pustules until they popped.  I’m at level 36, I think.  Can’t find any weapons, shields, or mods that are better than what I already have…

There are a few places that I didn’t visit though.  While cruising the salt flats, I noticed that there was a bus attached to a cable that went out to a mesa or something.  There was no job or anything out that way, so I passed it by.  The best loot seems to be out that way, so I might check that out before I try a new character.  [This area was a player-vs-player arena.]

I’m not usually a melee type, but I might try playing the Brawler next time.  I played the Siren as a sniper the whole time (although the electric-phasewalk attack did wonders against the aliens), using mostly elemental weapons, so Mordecai [the sniper character] might be like playing the same game.  I don’t normally play melee fighters (even in fantasy games), so this will be different.

11/25/09
After you beat the game once, you can continue with your high-level character on a second play-through with higher-level bad guys.  I tried the second play-through with my Siren tonight, and almost had my ass handed to me for the first time in a long time.   It’s like you’re starting all over again, except the monsters are ten times tougher.  I had to fight a badass-level fiery uber-skagg for the TK quest. He almost got me…   Not sure if I’m going to bother going after Nine-Toes or just start another character.  The loot that you get right off the bat is pretty awesome though!

12/4/09
I think that there might be something wrong with Borderlands…  I started a new character, a Brawler, and once I hit level 9 or so, everything got really hard.  I emptied ALL of my ammo trying to clear out Bonehead’s junk yard.  There was a badass-level bandit there!  And even with no ammo left, I still had trouble beating up Bonehead in Berserk mode (and that was with only half his health).  I walked away with no ammo, no shield and only 30% health!

An elder skagg attacked my roller last night, which shouldn’t really happen at level 10.  Then, I was attacked by a Bruiser (at level 10!) and he must have had 1000 hit points, since I could not kill him with my gun or grenades or anything.  Berserk mode didn’t do any good either.  Then I ran him over with my car instead, and he just sat there taking it for a minute.  It was ridiculous.  Mind you, this was not long after beating Nine-Toes to death with my fists in Berserk mode…

Guys shouldn’t be this hard this early on, and I’m doing nothing but dying.  I’m thinking that I’m fighting second play-through guys somehow, or at least guys that are as powerful as second play-through guys.  From what I understand, most bad guys shouldn’t be able to withstand a Berserk uppercut from a Brawler, much less six of them.  So I’m a little disheartened…

12/5/09
Borderlands Intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai7pMPCDHpo

Watch it in HD for the full effect.  I really like this game.

12/9/09
After getting screwed with my Brawler, I tried again as a Soldier.  I like him better, and I really dig the Scorpio gun turret.  However, the same thing happened again.  I was able to take Nine-Toes down pretty easily, but then the fight against Bonehead was really hard.  The gun turret helped a lot though!  So getting this far was about the same as my first play-through, and not nearly as difficult as it was with Brick.

Once Bonehead was dead, however, I jumped my roller over the ramp and then ran directly into a fiery uber-skagg.  I’m like level 9, and there should NOT be a fiery uber-skagg on the other side of that ridge.  I freaked out and hit it with my car.  IT KILLED MY CAR!  So I’m blaming the game.  It’s broken or something.  There must be patch for this…

Speaking of starting a new character, have you ever scouted around the area that you first start out in?  As soon as the bus rolls away, ignore ClapTrap and run around a bit.  There is money and ammo everywhere!  I suppose it helps to know what to look for.  There are even guns on top of the building to the left.  Just run over there and climb up to the roof.  It’s a big space, and it took a while to run all over, but for a new character, it’s worth it.

12/10/09
[Swavek said that any time you play Borderlands again, even with a new character, it's considered a "second playthrough", so you get tougher enemies.  I didn't think this was the case.]

No, the “second playthrough” is for characters that have already beaten the game.  For example, if you beat the game with Mordecai, then the next time you select Mordecai from the Single Player menu, it will ask you if you want the First or Second Playthrough.  The first playthrough is just a continuation of your first game.  You can continue on to level 50 from there, but I didn’t get much challenge from the enemies at that point.

The second playthrough is a exactly like the first, starting in Fyrestone with a tutorial from ClapTrap, but you get to keep all of your skills and inventory from the first playthrough.  All of the enemies are jacked up, usually with new adjectives in their name.  So instead of “skagg pups” to fight when opening the gate to Fyrestone, you get “rabid adult skaggs” with a buttload of hit points.  You get elemental monsters right off the bat.  There are several levels of bad guy, each with its own adjective, and apparently “bad-ass” level isn’t as high as you can go.

The problem that I was having is that I’m on my first playthrough with new characters, but the enemies that I’m getting are really hard to kill.  I tooled around with my Soldier for a bit last night, just running bad guys over and shooting at them with the gun turrets if they’re too big.  I whittled another Fiery Uber-Skagg down to half its hit points with my car turret before running it over this time.  I still don’t think that a level 10 Soldier should be getting Fiery Uber-Skaggs, but I’m adapting…

1/1/10
I just beat Borderlands for the second time, this time with Roland.  That Destroyer took out the Scorpio turret way too easily, but I just did the same thing that I did last time (hide behind a rock, jump out and shoot).  I almost got killed when I jumped out and dropped the turret next to my rock.  It targeted the turret and I got banged up with the spread damage.  After that, I would run from rock to rock, dropping the turret in between as I went.  That worked better.

I’m finally going to install Dragon Age on my PC.  New year, new game.  I think I have enough closure with Borderlands now.  I heard that Dragon Age was really hard, but it’ll be a nice change of pace from Borderlands.

Remember that commercial about the crack monkey that ran all the time during the late 80′s?  They got this monkey hooked on cocaine, and then gave it all the drugs that it wanted.  It took cocaine over food, sleep and even sex.  It took cocaine until it died.  That’s about how I feel about Fallout 3 right now.  I can’t seem to get enough, and I find myself thinking about game strategy all the time.  Sometimes I’ll play until three in the morning without even noticing the time.  And then I have dreams about it when I finally do go to bed…

I know that’s not healthy.  Unlike the crack monkey, I can see my problem and understand what consequences may come.  I’m making a conscious effort to only play the game while everyone else is asleep so that I’m not neglecting my family.  I occasionally get to play during naptime (noon to 3 PM) and then I go hardcore after Chrissy goes to bed (usually by 9 PM), depending on whether the baby is crying.  Don’t worry, I’ll beat it soon. In the meantime, I’ll be in the basement with the crack monkey, playing Oblivion-With-Guns until I die.

I planned to play as a “Paragon” (good guy) this time, since I was despicably evil the first time that I finished the game.  There are some deep decisions to make at the end of the main storyline, like which of your party members, Ashley or Kaiden, to sacrifice while you pull your team out from the planet Vermire (so as not to be toasted by the nuke that they just planted in Saren’s base).  I left Kaiden behind to die last time, but my female lead has a thing for him, so I chose Ashley to die this time, despite the fact that I had her in my party the entire game.

The last moral dilemma of the game is whether to save the Galactic Council members from certain death during the final battle with Sovereign at the Citadel.  I ordered the Alliance fleet to rescue their flagship from the Geth armada.  This got me the “good” ending, in which the Council, now more appreciative of humans, agrees to create a new seat on their governing body for the Alliance.  I nominated my mentor, Captain Anderson, since he’s a good man.  The “evil” ending was less satisfying: after allowing the Geth to destroy the Council members, I only served to help the smarmy Ambassador Udina into power (slightly akin to promoting Senator Palpatine into Supreme Chancellor-hood).

Making the virtuous decisions during the game this time helped to change things up a bit, even though it was hard to stomach sometimes.  I was just a little too virtuous for my tastes.  I often had the same feeling about playing as a Renegade, though (except for the opposite reason).  I didn’t want to go the neutral route, even though the conversation trees allow for that.  I’m not sure if there is a “neutral” ending, but it’s probably boring if it exists.  I’m happy enough with the two that I’ve already seen.  I guess that I’m done with Mass Effect until Bioware releases more downloadable content!

It turns out that there are human survivors from the science team on the asteroid.  One of them talks me through the mission by radio, until the Batarians find her hiding spot.  There is plenty to do on the asteroid, but I got saving people to do!  The bulk of the new content is driving the Mako to each of the three thrusters and disabling them.  The installations are the same throughout the galaxy, so nothing new there.  At the last thruster, I am confronted by the Batarian lieutenant.  I used the “Charm” skill on him to negotiate rather than killing him outright because I’m playing a good guy.  It was surprisingly easy to convince to give up his superior to save his own butt.

The problem with playing as a “Paragon” is that sometimes you would rather knock off the bad guy.  He’s really really evil; he deserves it!  Batarians suck, and they sick Varren monster-dogs on you!  But because my character is “Lawful Good”, I let the lieutenant and his two sidekicks go, with his blessing to kill his boss.  Once I catch up to the Boss, after killing countless Batarians in his base, he wants to talk.  Of course. It seems that he has planted bombs all over the place, right near his human hostages.  Mass Effect is all about moral crossroads: I can kill him (let the scientists die) or let him go (run to defuse the bombs).  Good guys defuse bombs.

I’d like to know what happens when you decide to chase after the Batarian leader instead.  But in this case, since they all lived to talk about the event, one of the hostages gives me a choice of rewards: light/medium/heavy human armor, Quarian armor, or a tech tool.  I’m playing a tech/soldier, so I chose the tech tool, and it’s easily the best one in the game (and I got it right in the beginning!).  Overall, “Bring Down The Sky” is pretty nice for a freebie.  Although a goodly chunk of it is “more of the same”, Bioware managed to introduce a new race, provide more rich background story, and provide a good couple of hours of new gameplay.