Mongo Nation

You asked for a challenge, and you got one.

By Jeremy Azevedo

Borderlands was easily one of my favorite titles of the year, if not ever. Combining the loot collecting, RPG elements of Diablo with the shooter Gameplay of Halo has resulted in one of the most refreshing titles in ages. But as much as I loved “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned”, this second DLC, “Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot poses a couple of problems for me.

The arena based combat that makes up the entirety of this add-on is nothing entirely new to Borderlands veterans. There are several instances in which you have had the opportunity to compete against waves of wasteland baddies throughout the main narrative. These have always served as a fun diversion, and it would make sense to have a chance to revisit them for one very simple reason: After a certain amount of time, your character and weapons will become too strong to be properly challenged.

Borderlands’ new leading lady, Mad Moxxi.

It’s too bad then, that The Underdome is just a little too goddamn hard. I hadn’t played Borderlands in a few weeks and was surprised at how rusty I had become. So that was my first problem. My second problem, and one that many people will experience, is that there wasn’t really anyone else playing it at the same time as I was.

With five rounds of five waves of enemies, there is absolutely no way in hell that a single person could make their way through it without playing in the first playthrough (in which the enemies are significantly less hardcore) with a full set of super-orange weapons and gear. And even then, you probably wouldn’t survive long, what with the rule changes that pop up between rounds. These could range from specific weapon damage bonuses to low gravity, spastic enemies, a health sapping vampire mode (which will be none too familiar to Soulcalibur vets) or playing “naked” (with no shields). Co-op play is not just encouraged here, it’s pretty much required.

Gearbox appears to have learned a little somethin’ from Dragon Age’s infamous “Warden’s Keep” DLC…

Once you get a team together, things get a lot more interesting. Instead of being shit out of luck when you die, you instead go to a “penalty box” for the duration of the round. From here, you can still snipe enemies and participate in a limited fashion, which is sorta fun. It reminds me of Super Bomberman back on the Super SNES. The difficulty on later playthroughs really tests your ability to play well and work as a team, which is something a lot of players wanted. Plus you get a “bank” to store your favorite gear, which is awesome, especially if you do a lot of trading with other players. And you can get a couple of skill points for your trouble, which gives you a very specific edge in PvP arenas and that. Read the rest of this entry →

New arenas and a “bank” feature to be included

By Jeremy Azevedo

Not that there was ever any question that Borderlands was directly influenced by the Mad Max series, but this new DLC, “Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot” sounds like the video game version of “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome”. And that’s a very good thing. But it’s not the only good thing about it!

The new DLC, like last month’s “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned’, will retail for about 800 Microsoft points (or 10 earth dollars). And although the level cap will not be raised, there will be a couple extra skill points that you can acquire for your character, which may give you a bit of an edge in the arena. (Unless you’re playing as Brick or Roland, in which case, all the skill points in the world aren’t going to help you against Mordecai’s cheap-ass bird.) But best of all is the inclusion of a “bank”, in which you can store some of the 1337 gear you’ve been hoarding all this time! Sweetness!

“Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot” will challenge players to fight in three “Riot Mode” arenas against waves of Pandora’s most badass monsters and raiders. It probably goes without saying that this will be a nearly impossible undertaking as a single player, so you’d probably better gather a team for this one.

Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot will be available for download on XBLA and PSN December 29th, 2009.

Will it re-animate your interest in Borderlands?

By Jeremy Azevedo

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is the perfect example of how DLC should be done. Right around the time that you may be feeling the urge to dive into some of the other games stacking up on your shelf, an excellent new mission pack appears to suck you right back into the world of Borderlands.

Zombie Island is more than just a new area to explore, it’s a stand-alone narrative that may even be stronger than the over-arching narrative of the game that it supplements. Obviously, the emphasis is still on the action, but the various characters that populate Jacob’s Cove are especially entertaining (despite the fact that most of them are dead by the time you get there). Additionally, all of the enemies you will meet are unique, and represent a cross section of the known zombie population. You’ve got your slow, shambling zombies, your crazed, fast running zombies, your giant, lumbering Frankenstein’s monsters, your acid barfing spitters, and your dragging, dismembered torso zombies. This isn’t even taking into account the handful of animal and boss enemies that exist on the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.

I didn’t necessarily find any new weapons that I hadn’t already seen some variation of, not even after defeating the (awesome) final boss. But then I am a huge dork that’s playing with a level 50 hunter packing some serious orange (super rare) weapons so your experience may be different. I can tell you one thing though: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned poses a particularly difficult challenge to even the most badass character build if by nothing else, throwing a metric shit-ton of zombies at you nearly everywhere you go. The bastards pop up out of the ground at any time and in any place, surrounding you, blinding you with poisonous zombie barf, hanging on you and basically overwhelming you with sheer numbers. The traditional zombie M.O.

If you’ve been playing and enjoying Borderlands near as much as I have, than I strongly recommend you download this DLC at your earliest convenience. (I guarantee you, there are few thrills in Borderlands that are equal to taking down a giant Frankenstein with a weapons crate strapped to his back and then looting his corpse.) I also recommend that you play with at least one partner to watch your back, and that you consider investing in some fire-based weaponry. As we all know, the undead hate fire. You can leave your acid weapons at home though, because they do just about f**k-all to an already poisonous undead monster.

The complete RE5 experience is coming to Xbox 360 and PS3

By Jeremy Azevedo

New DLC for Resident Evil 5 has been announced, the first of which will be available for download on February 17th, and will be titled “Lost in Nightmares”. This new story mission will follow Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine through the secret hideaway of Umbrella co-founder Ozwell E. Spencer.

It’s probably a pretty sure bet that this “hideaway” contains at least a few hungry zombies somewhere within its walls. A costume pack for Chris and Sheva will also be made available that same day, neither of which will be as awesome as the panda bear secret costume from Onimusha.

Following on March 3^rd are one more story mission (title TBA) and another character costume pack. Additionally, each of these four pieces of DLC will include two new characters and weapon load outs for the “Mercanaries” mode. Of the eight new characters planned, one can only hope that classic favorites like Hunk, Tofu, Ada Wong and Barry Burton will be included. Leon Kennedy is another likely candidate. Rebecca Chambers? Not so much.

For those of you who (like me) have yet to pick up a copy of Resident Evil 5 this year, Capcom is prepared to award your reluctance with Resident Evil: Gold Edition. Resident Evil: Gold Edition for the Xbox 360 and PS3 will collect all of the planned DLC in one package, along with the original game, and will retail for a reduced price of $49.99. Sounds like a pretty square deal to me!

Check out some Resident Evil 5:Gold Edition new screens right here:

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A huge leap forward for the genre

By Jeremy Azevedo

For people that have been playing Guitar Hero games for several years now, there is undoubtedly a feeling of “Tony Hawk Syndrome” creeping in by now. How many times can you experience a variation on the same theme without eventually growing tired of the entire concept?

Lucky for us, Neversoft was playing close attention to the way people actually play music games, and the resulting tweaks make Guitar Hero 5 the most enjoyable rhythm action game on the market. Nearly every complaint I’ve personally had with the series has been addressed here. For starters, the entire set list is available from the start. No unlocking or cheat codes are necessary for those who play the game solely at parties and have little to no interest in playing alone. Additionally, the currency system has been done away with, instead replaced with a challenge system that offers players more incentive to play through the career mode alone or with friends. This way, new characters, outfits, etc. can be earned instead of bought. Now you can watch Courtney Love dig up Kurt Cobain’s corpse and desecrate it by making him rap to “Feel Good Inc.” without having to slog through the single player mode for hours first!

Actually, to be fair, the single player mode isn’t much of a “slog” at all anymore. The career mode has been massively overhauled to allow you to switch instruments and/or difficulty, jump other players in and out and tackle the aforementioned challenges at your leisure. It’s an awesome way to get you to experience many of the songs in ways that you normally wouldn’t, i.e. switching to vocals or bass guitar when you normally wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so. Some of the challenges even require a full band, again adding to the incentive to play the career mode with friends. Perhaps best of all, the streamlined new menu system shows you little entries for each song that outline why each individual song is an important piece of rock history or at least has the potential to one day become one. It’s a great way to familiarize oneself with some of the more far-out songs, and it’s a wonder why this feature wasn’t always present!

The multiplayer mode is equally improved from its predecessors in nearly every way. First of all, you can’t really fail out of songs, which was a major problem when playing with n00bs in previous editions of the game. In Party Play mode, for instance, you can jump in and out of the song, changed instruments or difficulty, go to the fridge for another beer or do pretty much whatever you want without disrupting the other players in any way. The game doesn’t even pause for them. It’s awesome. The ability to play whatever instrument you want, whenever and however you want makes GH5 so much easier to approach, while still remaining competitive for experienced players. If you’ve ever been stuck playing bass while some hot shot hogs the guitar parts, you’ll be happy to know that those days are over. You can even have two drummers, or two singers if you want. You’re really only limited by the amount of plastic instruments that you have and, if you are at a party, the amount of songs that girls know the words to. (The girls always want to sing for some reason, but only ever know like five of the songs.)

For those of you that enjoyed the GHStudio mod in World Tour, you’ll be happy to know that the entire process has been streamlined from top to bottom, with a completely different and way more effective user interface that will make song creation significantly easier, and hopefully encourage more original material to appear on the download service as a result. Another thing worth noting for World Tour veterans is that you can upload about 35 or so songs from that game into GH5 for a tiny re-licensing fee of 280 MS Points, or about $3 in genuine American dollars. All of your previously downloaded songs carry over for free, save for a couple of Jimi Hendrix tracks if I’m not mistaken. This really ups the amount of songs that you have to play with and eliminates the need to swap discs, which has been an annoying hold out for the series up until now. Rock Band has very little to brag about in terms of features at this point, unless you really enjoy spending a shit-ton more money on DLC, something I’m not particularly fond of m’self. Read the rest of this entry →