I was never a huge fan of the first title in the Mass Effect series. While it did many things well, it never grabbed me as it had so many other players. So going into Mass Effect 2, my expectations were pretty low.

I love the setting of Mass Effect. The progenitor race, the mass relays, the Citadel, the interspecies politics. And as much as I’ve never been a fan of the alien species in Star Trek and Star Wars, the races of Mass Effect were as well done as could be expected. Personally, I’d much prefer that aliens were more than overly short, tall, fat, skinny, or muscular humans with face prostheses.

Bioware also does a great job with its characters. While I found Miranda and Jacob to be fairly boring, many of the other characters were very well done. Mordin was my personal favorite, and as much as I didn’t love the first game, the return of Tali and Garrus was very nice. Tali grew on me. Jack annoyed me, which made her memorable. Grunt became that supremely useful guy who I never got close to. Thane and Samara made very nice late additions to my group. All the characters were well fleshed-out, probably aided by the fact that I did all the loyalty missions, even if I did succeed in pissing off Jack and Legion to the point where they weren’t loyal anymore.

I had heard so many good things about the female Shepherd voice actress that I played the femme-Shep. I enjoyed it. She feels much less generic than the male Shepherd I’d played in the first game. I tried to romance Miranda, but was never able to make anything happen. Maybe it’s because I’d had a romantic rendezvous with Garrus.

Somewhere around the 50%-65% mark in the game, I developed a theory. It turned out to be totally false, but I think my theory was almost more interesting than the game’s actual plot. If you haven’t yet played Mass Effect 2 and want to avoid spoilers, skip the rest of this paragraph. No spoilers after the ending of this paragraph – this is your last warning. Okay. So after I learned that the Collectors were harvesting human genetic material, I knew that they needed it but not why. My theory was that they wanted Shepherd’s DNA. I thought that perhaps Shepherd was resurrected for the sole purpose of serving the Reapers’ ends, although the details were fuzzy. Following that line of thought, I’d theorized that The Illusive Man was actually an illusion, and controlled by the Reapers to boot. And while my theory was totally wrong and totally bogus, I’m willing to bet that we learn in Mass Effect 3 that he’s actually an AI. Insanely ironic that the leader of a radical pro-human organization isn’t actually human.

As mediocre as I found the majority of Mass Effect 2, the finale made it all worthwhile. The game’s end segment was fantastic. I’ve long been a fan of killing off the main characters in a story as a way of maintaining dramatic tension, and Mass Effect uses this to great effect in the game’s end sequence. Another part of what made it great and unpredictable is the fact that while I knew that it was possible for all characters to live or die depending on your actions, it wasn’t clear what actions determined the fates of the game’s characters. Loyalty? How much damage they’d taken in a mission? Something else? I’m still really not sure. The following game events are not really spoilers since they pertain to my playthrough specifically and likely will not happen in your playthrough. Legion died after successfully navigating an air vent, and he wasn’t loyal to me after I’d taken Tali’s side in an argument. But I also lost Grunt, who was totally loyal. And in regards to my other non-loyal character, it had appeared that Jack survived after escorting us through a segment using her biotic bubble, but it later showed me a quick pan of her dead body while Collectors ran past. Not sure what happened there. But I was nearly tempted to give that last segment another playthrough. Not gonna happen at this point though. I’ve uninstalled Mass Effect 2 and I’m playing the next game.

Although you may be aware that I found the original Bioshock to be an overrated game, I played through and enjoyed it enough. Now, Irrational games has released the original design documents for the game. Very very cool. Check it out.

As I continue to play through Borderlands, after having completed the main quest, I notice more and more the external influences that must have affected the game’s design. For example, the pillar of light that appears when you activate quick travel looks very much like the pillar of light coming from City 17’s Citadel in the Half-Life 2 episodes. And the game’s scythids are very much like headcrabs. There are probably many more influences I’m missing.

But by far the thing I’m noticing most about Borderlands is that it’s a heck of a lot like Fallout.

In many ways, Borderlands is more like Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 than the new 3D Fallout 3 game is. Of course, Borderlands couldn’t use Supermutants and Deathclaws, but there are so many other factors omitted from Fallout 3 that are present in Borderlands.

Aside from the fact that both games take place in a wasteland, the most apparent thing is the music. The ambient drum-heavy music sounds like it could have been taken directly from one of the original Fallout games.

Another thing is the irreverant, often adult humor. In one of the original Fallout games, you could have sex with a girl, after which her father would force you to marry her at shotgun-point. In Borderlands, Scooter calls the Catch-A-Ride “more busted than my momma’s girl parts”. Things like this crack me up.

Both the original two Fallout games and Borderlands have a penchant for Easter Eggs and intertextuality. In Fallout, I stumbled across Dr. Who’s Tardis and found a velvet Elvis. In Borderlands, “Mad Mel” is an obvious combination of Mad Max and Mel Gibson, you can find the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, and when you choose an orange vehicle there’s a “00” painted on the side. Dukes of Hazzard, anyone?

Fallout 3 obviously had more of a plot, whereas Borderlands has multiplayer gameplay, which is one of the main draws of the game. I could go on comparing and contrasting them, but the most interesting comparisons have already been made.

This is a pretty cool site. The Gun Show allows people to upload and show off their Borderlands items, and it seems as though they may have a system in place for people who want to trade items. Fun to look through.

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

Because of the emphasis on its high-end hardware requirements, I didn’t try Crysis until long after its initial release. When I finally did, I found that while it wasn’t as amazing a game as its predecessor Far Cry, it was still an excellent game. The jet-piloting and zero-G segments were fairly terrible, but were also mercifully brief. I had a lot of fun with the game, and I’m ready to dub it a keeper.

Last night, I completed Borderlands’s single-player story mode, using Mordecai the sniper. And while the gameplay is so addictive that I plan to continue playing multiplayer Borderlands with friends, I have to agree with reviewers that the ending is lame.

There’s now an interview online in which Randy Pitchford calls Borderlands 2 a “no brainer”. They’re not yet actually working on a sequel – first they’ll be knocking out a bunch of DLC. But when they do, here are a bunch of things I’d like to see from the game.

10- Destructible Environments

Imagine that a nearby explosion could knock bottles off tables and topple shelves. Imagine that an incendiary grenade could set a hut on fire. How about if you could destroy entire buildings Red Faction style? Yeah. It’d be cool.

9- The Ability to store items

So you find this awesome shotgun that shoots rockets. But you can’t use it for another 4 levels. You’ve got to carry it around with you. Or maybe your favorite weapon just became obsolete, but you’d love to give it to your friend the next time he’s online. You’ve got to carry it around with you.

If Borderlands gave you a personal locker of some kind, it would make inventory management that much better.

8- Vehicle Improvements

Going into the Dahl Headlands, vehicles begin to seem like a huge deal. There are bandit rocket car patrols and even a vehicular boss battle. But after that, things fall off. Vehicles become primarily a way to get from A to B quickly. Borderlands 2 will need more vehicles. Maybe single-seater motorcycles, three and four-seater cars with multiple turrets, maybe a couple APC or tank vehicles. A couple water vehicles and maybe a helicopter would be nice. An armored mini-mech like the kind that appeared in Butcher Bay would be phenomenal.

The randomization of weapons in Borderlands is wonderful. If they could work the same randomization into vehicles, it would be awesome. Vehicles with dual side-mounted shotguns. Vehicles with ram plates and wheel spikes. Vehicles with tank treads. Vehicles with mine-droppers and smokescreens. This alone would make me want to buy the game.

7- Character quick start

After finishing the game last night, I wanted to start a new game with a Soldier just to see what he played like. I had to sit through the entire intro, and then do the stupid tutorial over again. They need to provide a way to start a new character quickly. After the 4th time, that intro and tutorial gets OLD.

6- More than 87 Bazillion Guns

The diversity of weapons in Borderlands was fantastic. You know they’ll need to ramp it up for the sequel. Maybe a few new weapon categories like speargun or chain gun. Maybe a flamethrower or sonic weapon. Grenades that leave behind acid puddles for 5 minutes. Go even crazier.

5- Creature Diversity

While it’s true that there were multiple kinds of Scags and multiple kind of antlions, I wish that there were more than six or eight creature types in the game. How about doubling that? Fifteen or so seems doable. And I love the fact that each creature has a different critical hit spot – that needs to stay. I liked the game’s two or three unique bosses, and seeing more of those would be great too.

4- More humor

One of my favorite moments in the game is when Nine Toes is introduced – the still image overlay to the right is hilarious. But how many of those are there in the game? Six or eight? And how many are funny? That’s the only one I can think of. Programatically, adding more would be super-easy. The only investment is paying a comedic writer to come up with the stuff. Borderlands does humor very well – I loved the conversations and voice recordings of the insane archaeologist Tannis – there just needs to be more of this humor in the game.

3- Different characters

In a sequel, you wouldn’t want the same four characters. Roland kind of bugs me, and Lilith is annoyingly arrogant. If any character remains, it should be Brick. He is quite simply awesome. Mordekai would be my second choice for a carry-over, but I think keeping only Brick would be best. Other characters might include a different Siren – perhaps with different and more diverse Siren powers.

A PC psycho character might also be a lot of fun. His ability could be brief bouts of increased fire rate and unlimited ammo. He could eventually gain skills that would let him leap from one vehicle to another, Mad Max style.

I’d also like to see more diverse skill trees. Perhaps branching ones like the skills trees from Champions of Norrath, where the skills branch out and sometimes rejoin.

2- Better QA

I’m not sure if it was only the PC version, but Borderlands was super-buggy. Online play required router configuration, Gamespy connectivity stinks, voice chat doesn’t work, and the PC interface feels like a bad console port. Also, sometimes when I pick up a weapon it equips itself. It’s intermittent, and I HATE it. Borderlands 2 will need better quality assurance.

1- Better Story

The number one thing I’d wish for from a Borderlands sequel would be more story. Hunting an alien vault on a new world should be fascinating and magical: hunting down small clues to the aliens’ existence, finding ruins with incredible artifacts, and seeing others’ amazed reactions.

I’d also like to have seen more of an ending. I’m fine with being able to continue playing after completing the game, Oblivion-style, but perhaps a better explanation for the chick who magically guided you through the game, a cutscene showing the amazing vault, or maybe the automatic awarding of an orange-level loot item. Just something more satisfying.

I’m sure that Borderlands 2 will have lot worth playing, I just thought it would be fun to create my own feature wishlist.

I’m playing as Mordecai the sniper, so first off I’ve got my PPZ Liquid Wrath sniper rifle. In addition to doing over 200 damage, it zaps right through enemies’ shields. Very nice.

And secondly, my standby at medium range. The HLK War Cobra. It’s got a scope nearly as good as the sniper rifle, and fires in three-shot bursts. That’s 72 damage times three. Very nice.

My sniper, Beernut, is level 22 right now. As I move along in the game, I’ll probably post some more weapons as I get new favorites.

I’m playing the Steam version of Borderlands on a PC, which means that I’ve been playing about a week less than the XBox and PS3 folks. It also means that I’m not playing on a platform for which the game was designed. The menus in Borderlands were obviously put together for a console, and it shows. I’ve got to hit ‘E’ to compare weapons and the space bar to drop a weapon. It would have been so easy for them to create a mouse-based GUI with right-click options had they only decided to spend the time.

Even more frustrating is the flaky online connectivity. Rather than using Steamworks to connect players, they went with Gamespy. I’m still not exactly sure what my initial issue was, but the first day I tried, I was completely unable to connect to a multiplayer game. I suspect that setting up port forwarding (how to) is what fixed the problem, but that type of router wizardry is beyond many people. The game’s online functionality should have been designed to be as easy on the PC as it is on consoles. I swear – the PC doesn’t have achievements, but there really should be a fifty-pointer for successfully connecting to a private game.

On Tuesday night, I played the game for a few hours with my cousin Paul in Connecticut. Once we got the game successfully running, we gave Steam’s built-in voice chat a try. It worked, but only in the same sense that an overnight security guard “works”. That is to say, the push-to-talk was broken, voices cut out mid-sentence, and Paul observed that speaking at all on loading screens made me sound like Max Headroom. Next time we’ll probably use Skype.

After the ordeal of starting a multiplayer game was complete, it actually became kind of fun. I was playing Brick, the tank, and Paul was playing as Lilith, the siren. You get no skill points for the first five levels, but they whizzed by and I reached 5th level and got my berserk ability before I knew it. Berserking turned out to be far more fun than I’d expected. Brick screams like an enraged mental patient who missed his antipsychotic meds, sprinting around and throwing punches at the rate of a machine gun. Except the punches do way more damage than any machine gun I’ve found in the game so far. I ain’t kidding.

As it turns out, Brick and Lilith work really well together. He absorbs the damage and gets in close for punches while she keeps her distance. If need be, she can get in close too, and then escape with her phase ability. I end up using Brick’s rage a lot of times just to heal myself, since he heals continuously while raging.

Managing quests in multiplayer can be a bit annoying. Since Paul has played through a decent bit of the game before, he runs up and gets quests, then switches active quests from the log screen all the time. At first, I didn’t even realize there was a log screen, since I hadn’t gotten that far along in the tutorial in my single-player game. Honestly, I suppose there’s really no good way to handle this, short of making the player hosting the game a kind of “party leader”. And although I’ve heard that the game doesn’t have much plot, I can’t help but feel that I’m missing out on what little story there is.

Other annoyances:

• If your inventory is full and you try to pick something up, you’ll drop a random item. Could be really bad if you’re in a public multiplayer game and you accidentally drop that ultra-rare sniper rifle. Some unscrupulous bozo could snatch it up before you have a chance to recover.
• Vehicles are a pain in the ass to steer. You accelerate and brake with ‘W’ and ‘S’ and steer with the mouse. Boo.
• There’s too little story. The game feels like an endless series of fetch quests. I could sure do with some more variety.

But all in all, I’m still playing the game. I’m actually playing it a bit more than I’m playing Trine. I won’t recommend the game, but I also won’t suggest that you not buy it. Just read some reviews and make up your own mind.

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

As Lore Sjoberg once brilliantly put it, video games and movies get along like cats made of oil and dogs made of water. Aside from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, there are no good movies based on video games. No! Shut up. I don’t want to hear about Doom, Resident Evil, or anything Uwe Boll has come within a furlong of.

On the flip side of the coin, you have video games based on movies. While the good ones may still be rare, they’re likely still countable on your fingers unless your name is Frodo. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay is one of a rare breed: very good games that are based on movie properties. I’ve played through Escape From Butcher Bay twice now, and it’s likely that I will again. I can’t think of a shooter that has better stealth mechanics, although Dark Messiah of Might and Magic comes close. Lurking in the Pitch Dark (har har) and seeing every move your enemies make while they can’t see you at all is loads of fun. But that’s Riddick.

I just bought a copy of Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena for $5 from Direct2Drive. I hope it’s as good as the original.