an Agree To Disagree review

TheMorty and FBT take very different trips to Pandora.

While TheMorty gets robbed by the locals and leaves a negative review on TripAdvisor, FBT comes back with a Claptrap figurine and a tattoo from Mad Moxxi.

Vault Hater – TheMorty

Borderlands. Bore-derlands more like. Never have I played a game with so much promise that delivered so little. For a game given a sequel, a pre-sequel and a TellTale spin-off, it must be good, right? At the time of release, there was only really the Fallout series in terms of post-apocalyptic RPGs and Borderlands offered a comedic alternative where you could just have a blast. I was full of hope. Not just from the fast-paced, hell-for-leather trailer detailing an hilarious, action packed comedy, but this was in FBT’s top 5 of all time! What higher honour could be bestowed upon a title? Sadly, the slow and repetitive gameplay, the uninventive antagonists and a variety of weapons that you simply couldn’t use was a major let down and made Borderlands less of a gore-fest and more of a snore-fest.

The game starts with giving you four seemingly great characters to choose from. Your friendly bus driver gives you some god-awful advice that brute force won’t cut it in Pandora and you must be smart. So, I figured, okay, I’ll pass on the walking tank, the hot-shot sniper, the jack-of-all-trades soldier and go for Lillith. The girl who’s about stealth and whose special power is to Phasewalk to go invisible. What. A. Mistake. I had made such an error and by the time I realised how bad her power was, I was hours in and couldn’t stomach a re-start. Borderlands is not a stealth game and what I had was essentially a twilight-tween who glittered whenever trouble was near. In arena type battles her power was useless and put me at a serious disadvantage. By the time I realised how maniacal the game was, it was too late. I needed brawns not brains and I was stuck getting battered like a cod.

Borderlands is so generic with the character choice that bar that one special ability, the differences between who you play as are irrelevant. Sure, there’s the odd one-liner and the QuickTime of you getting in and out of a tank, but otherwise there’s nothing that showcases personality or that tailors the gameplay to the character you choose. The replay value really is minimal. Take Lilith, she’s portrayed as the sexy siren, but not once does she use her beauty or allure to get results and without the 3rd person view of her scantily-clad design, you might as well be playing as Princess Peach. To put it bluntly, would you play a first-person Tomb Raider? No. Because that’s just Mirror’s Edge and no-one wants to play Mirror’s Edge.

Something else that hacked me off was the lack of game saving ability. Sure, there’s a Save option, in which you can bank your XP whenever you quit out. But be warned, the next time you load you’ll be back at the beginning of the level and all the enemies will have re-spawned (oh, and they’ll also have levelled up, just to make it a bit more inconvenient). I lost count of how many times it got to 2am and I was still battling past hordes of henchmen trying desperately to complete the level just so that I could finally get some kip before getting up at 6 to go to work the next day. Borderlands isn’t a game you can just dive in and out of, having a quick 30mins blast to kill some time here and there. Playing Borderlands is a slog in which setting aside nothing less than an entire day to play will cut it. Traversing through a wasteland for hours just to ensure that you get to that heavenly safe spot coveted more than Pandora’s Vault itself is really your true goal – just to avoid tediously re-doing the same level all over again the next time you pick up the controller. While that’s not something new in gaming and you’d expect it from Destiny or any online session game, it’s far too much for an offline Role-Playing Shooter that marketed itself on being “Fun”. The beauty of games like Bulletstorm is that you can dive in, have a blast for as long as you want and then quit out. With Borderlands, it just feels like more work than it’s worth.

Its not just the characters that are one-dimensional, the missions are too and often you find yourself in a state of repetition, having to clear the same areas again and again. Meeting residents of Pandora that give you the same old mission time and time again…

Dr Zed: Alright mate, I need you to kill this bloke in Skag Gully, Nine-Toes

Me [4hs later, tired, covered in blood, all ammo spent]: It’s done.

Dr Zed: Thanks, have a crappy pistol from the vending machine.

Me: You’re kidding… That’s it? What’s the next mission?

Dr Zed: Can you get me this key?

Me: Okay, sure. Where is it?

Dr Zed: Skag Gully

Me: Oh FFS!

Worst part of it is that when you eventually Kill Nine-Toes for Zed, he has the audacity to demand that I buy HIM a drink? The cheeky bas-

There’s 87 bazillion guns apparently, at least that’s according to the sticker on the box. Though, you can only carry a handful. The best of which you can’t use until you level up another 20 times so best to sell everything you find. Meaning that you’re essentially a scrap man, trawling around the streets in your van asking the residents of Pandora if they’ve any old iron. If not, kill a few Skaggs and you’ll find they’ve swallowed a gun that can be ground down and sold for next to nowt. It goes on and on and on, constantly exploring the same bit of map where all you get is guns you can’t use and the same villains to put down. Think it’s a good money-spinner? Think again, it’s rare you’ll survive without a respawn or two which, naturally, takes a tax on your hard-earned cash. The more you have, the more you’re taxed meaning you don’t really get a great deal out of playing the boring missions. Literally, just XP.

The comedy’s decent, I’ll give you that and the comic-book style of gameplay was certainly unique on its release. However, if you’re looking for a cross between Fallout and Bulletstorm, you’ll be disappointed. It’s more Starship Troopers meets Beyond Thunderdome where giant insects and overtly camp topless dwarves in hockey masks run amuck. Maybe one day I’ll dive in, play as Brick and enjoy it, or maybe I won’t. One things for sure, not only are the titles in my Top 5 safe as houses, it’s not even troubling those in my Top 50.

Vault Hunter – FBT

Borderlands separates the men from the claptraps. It’s a leveller, a palate cleaner (with bleach), a reset on every game that ever put a gun in your hand. Go big or go home.

The best way to play Borderlands is the way the raiders in Borderlands play Borderlands – run straight at an enemy laughing. It’s designed to be played with a death wish, every encounter a breathless Second Wind followed by a ‘fuck that was close’. Try playing it like Fallout and you’ll be back at a cloning station quicker than you can say ‘now come on, that was just unfair’. It’s a RPG for those who don’t give a shit – once you get your head out of the RPG space, Borderlands becomes something very special. There’s side-quests and a larger story but really, you’re after fame and riches. TheMorty can sit there planning his approach – do you have a good spread of weapons, are all the elements covered, what kind of shield do you have – and I’ll launch myself into the fray like Leroy Jenkins.

Having a quick save just removes all that intensity; saving is for pussies and it’s about the visceral moment not incremental baby-steps. The creatures only respawn once a day; if you get put back at the beginning and they’re back too, you’re too slow. Borderlands is head-long or head-off. It’s all in the reflexes – you’re Jack Burton and you’ll not get through it without a hefty dose of bravado. A couple of skags aren’t going to stop us. Unless you’re TheMorty

No character? Your lead isn’t lacking in personality, they’re lacking in morals. Lilith often dissolves into giggles after kills or asks “that was it? Well it acted tough”, and she pays no attention to anyone’s plight – even the mission-givers are selfish, like Scooter asking you to save a guy so he can kill him later (he “ruined my mama’s girl parts”) or people stiffing you on the reward – everyone’s out for themselves and life is cheap.

Even money’s cheap. The counter goes up to $9,999,999 and you still earn more. It’s everywhere. Sure, it’s galling to get charged a mill after getting offed because bullshit, but it doesn’t actually matter – there’s nothing to buy except bullets and medkits and they’re like $40. Only cowards buy guns. Play the gun-hand you’re dealt and dig up something better. There’s a bazillion weapons, another bigger, better, madder gun is just around the corner letting you evolve your approach, and winning a high-powered corrosive revolver, a rapid-fire sniper or a rocket-firing shotgun keeps the battles fresh and gets you excited about the next fight; I wanna shoot something with that! Both weapons and missions are locked by XP, so stop fannying about and go out there and get some level-ups. They represent confidence; soon you’re laughing at the Skag Pups you ran from a few hours ago – now you’re facing huge Elemental Alpha Skags like they’re no big thing (They’re always a big thing but the mad fight and huge XP bump is worth the blood). Start building your skill tree, find some brutal weapons and go from Welp to Warrior, pushing until even Lilith can punch out a skag without breaking a sweat.

How can I even be friends with TheMorty, slagging off my girlfriend like that? Lilith is a beauty to behold and to play. She’s not stealth, creeping about like a wuss is not going to impress Lilith. Her phasewalk is only for retreating at first; she is under-powered early on, but that just forces you on the offensive. Get in there, get her hands dirty and once her skill tree start to warm up? Whoa. She goes from Valley Girl to Sarah Connor faster that you can say “I have angel-wings that set people on fire as I pass by?” Lilith’s phasewalk starts killing people, she can strike while invisible, enter and exit with elemental powers, absorb bullets and shot them faster; all automatically – she’s brutal. She’s the most constantly evolving, rewarding lead in a shooter I might have ever played; if you come out swinging instead of sneaking. You become a God, instead of just shooting more bullets than everyone else.

Borderlands is for the fearless, but it’s also just for fun. Once you start seeking out the worst that Pandora has to offer, you really get into the lawless, Tom & Jerry tone of it. Whereas Dark Souls thinks it’s funny to kill you, Borderlands lets you die laughing. You’re not saving the world like in a regular RPG, you’re looking to own it. TheMorty says Borderlands would never land in his top 50. I’m betting he’d never survive level 50 (let alone Mad Moxxi). I could go on but this response is longer than he lasted in Skag Gully. And that’s just the tutorial area; let’s not even tell him about Playthrough 2.

2009 | Developer Gearbox Software | Publisher 2K Games

genres; shooter, RPG, Sci-Fi

platforms; Win, X360, PS3

An Agree To Disagree Review

As 2K’s FPS turns a decade old, FBT & TheMorty go head-to-head as they replay the original deep blue, sci-fi classic.

Rescue by FBT

There’s a lot of games I love, but Bioshock is as close to my favourite as is possible. At its core it’s nothing new – We make our way through relatively linear levels killing anything that moves; It’s a shooter and conforms to shooter standards. But that’s just FPS DNA and Bioshock DNA can be altered, changed, spliced … The setting, a city beneath the sea called Rapture is more believable than most ‘real-world’ game environments and the enemies are as much victims as villains. Most of all, it has a complex plot that you get tangled up in; a story that like a good book, you disappear into. All in, Bioshock adds up to an experience that transcends its medium – like all good art.

FPS as a genre is just digital Cowboys and Indians and usually you have the same emotional attachment but Bioshock got under your skin like a plasmid. It has adult inferences, plot plots and themes – it’s a grown-up’s game; you ponder the values and philosophies while surviving a complex horror that evokes the uneasiness of Stephen King and the sickness of cinema’s Seven as much as Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, from which Irrational took their inspiration. While many games are adult due to their content or appropriateness, Bioshock is just thematically mature, intellectual.

Andrew Ryan, a Howard Hughes-style industrialist created Rapture as a place ‘where the great would not be constrained by the small’; namely the ‘parasites’ (government meddling, religious belief, the less fortunate) – only the Self mattered. Freed of morals and regulation, Rapture made huge if questionable advances in the pursuit of art and invention – but those geniuses needed someone to pick up after them, to serve them drinks, to stop the place flooding and that created a class-struggle comparable to Metropolis. Along with those who failed to succeed, a destitute and disregarded under-class formed. Into this mix was thrown ‘Adam’, a DNA-splicing substance found in sea-slugs which was used to create Plasmids, tonics which gave the users remarkable abilities. The denizens of Rapture abused this latest fad as a distraction and edge on competitors while others turned to religion to help contend with the isolation, but the biggest change was the success of Fontaine, who owned the docks bringing in the slugs. Fontaine’s power rivalled Ryan’s (who knew a conman when he saw one) – he responded by ‘removing’ Fontaine and nationalising his industries; an act of government and the beginning of Ryan’s slide towards the dictatorship he once despised. Meanwhile a working-class hero rose in the shape of Atlas. Supported by the under-class, Atlas declares war and Ryan seals his own fate. He orders Adam be infused with a pheromone so he can direct those addicted to it against Atlas – compromising his one belief; the Self. And it’s just as Ryan and Atlas are at a stalemate that our Silent Hero lands. Now that’s a backstory. And best of all, none of that is in an opening cut scene. Instead, we’re deposited into Rapture via a plane crash. Gasping for air surrounded by fire and debris, we spot a forlorn lighthouse and start swimming. As we piece it together, we realise Rapture’s story isn’t over yet.

Arriving in Rapture is like being dropped into Paris in the midst of the Nazi occupation. Underneath all the decay is a beautiful world at the height of art and refinement. Picking your way through the rubble there’s a persistent sense of horror – the kind you can’t see, the kind you build up in your own mind, the best kind – it rotted on the inside as well as out yet you can picture upper-class Rapture folks enjoying cocktail parties and taking in shows; it’s so real Rapture could actually be out there, somewhere. There’s water leaking everywhere, it groans and creaks and gives way; it feels like an incredible achievement and a folly, built through sheer will. The light from the city gives us glimpses of the seabed but it’s not the Great Barrier reef or warm blue tones with god rays from the surface; it’s dark, dank and cold – there’s nothing, no escape, no leaving, nowhere to go. You start to feel contained, claustrophobic and understand why the Rapture citizens eventually fell into abuse and extremes; under the art-deco façade is an oppressive, pressurised place. Audio recordings reveal the struggles and it feels as if most people lived in fear it would collapse in on itself at any second; instead it was society that couldn’t handle the pressure. Splicers (those deformed by Adam and controlled by Ryan) were just caught in the middle and we’re in the middle of it too; this isn’t just a case of a heroic ‘you’re the only one who can do this’ as we cut a way towards a boss battle, turns out we were always the only one who can do this.

As we fight our way past those wretched addicts to reach Ryan, locked away in his office as his Rome burns, Bioshock is revealed as a solid shooter. The Splicers attack on sight but they’re sorrowful creatures crying out for lost loves, apologising for horrific acts (‘I found her like that’), clinging to some memory of a better time while they search desperately for their next Adam fix. Dressed in 1940s attire with masquerade party masks to hide their deformities, they leap, scuttle and in later levels, clamber on ceilings to ambush. They fire guns and use plasmids too but they also attack with fish hooks, pipes, anything they can find. And then there’s the little sisters.

Roaming the corridors, playfully singing and dancing, the Little Sisters were once young girls now brainwashed into drinking the Adam-infused blood of corpses littering Rapture’s corridors. If that wasn’t sickening enough, they do this to feed the slugs implanted in their bellies, filtering the Adam for collection. That makes them invaluable. And that’s why they have Big Daddy. Hearing one clumping about fills you with a mix of dread and excitement. They’re horrible, sad things. Somewhere inside that stinking hulk is a man, stripped of his individuality and driven only to protect little sisters, moaning and calling out for her. Seeing them be gentle with the Sisters just breaks your heart, and seeing them tear apart Splicers also breaks your heart. I have to kill that thing? Once you’ve put him down though, you have the most infamous moral-choice decision in gaming. Kill or save a little girl. Seems like a no-brainer and the first time you face it, with her cowering in the corner it’s effecting. We’ve been told there’s still a little girl in there somewhere; we’ve also been told the girl is just a husk and killing her to get the Adam is the only way you’ll survive down here. It’s you or them. That’s not cowboys and Indians.

The weapons we use are familiar but the real shooter selling point is the Plasmids. Electro Bolt to stun or electrocute Splicers, Incinerate to chargrill them or melt ice. We also get to launch swarms of angry Bees, hypnotise Big Daddies and so on – they are a variation on any fantasy game’s spell casting but they’re hella fun and seeing adverts for Plasmids as life-aids and health tonics you realise how desperate this war became with everything, including people weaponised.

By the time we reach Ryan, we have mixed feelings – our Silent Hero has seen a lot of loss, horror and sadness, and it is completely Ryan’s fault. We should be ready to murder him but as we find him holed up in his office playing golf, both resigned to his fate and unbowed we feel some pity, and a little intimidated by this giant of a man. Ryan’s control of the Splicers seemed like his final mistake, but there was one more. It’s the biggest twist in gaming and Bioshock carries it off with such class that Ryan’s words -a man chooses, a slave obeys- haunt you. Partly because Ryan was right. I’ve never been angry at myself as a character before. I am a slave.

It’s true that this scene is as incredible as the rest of the game is a let-down, experience-wise. It continues to be a great shooter, a beautiful environment and an unsettling journey but it’s much more generic after this. But the ending saves it; easily one of the most moving, satisfying cut-scenes of all time – assuming you took the ‘Good’ route. If you took the bad, it’s amazingly dark. Bioshock is as close to art as gaming ever has gotten, that it’s a great shooter as well just makes it perfect. At the start, we descend to the city and hear Ryan’s pre-recorded welcome ‘with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city’ – it has.

I’ll be in Rapture forever.

Harvest by TheMorty

2007. A year when gaming just kept releasing more of the boring same. Call of Duty 4, Halo 3 and Half-Life 2 were the top sellers as the market drowned in a flood of sequels. As developers went for the tried and tested money spinners, no-one was brave enough to release anything remotely unique in the FPS genre. That is, until Bioshock came along. At last we had an FPS that was diverse enough to move away from the traditional setting and immerse you in an unexplored location under the sea. One of the biggest mysteries of Planet Earth regards what lies beneath – with over 70% of the it being water and around 95% of that yet to be explored – absolutely anything could be down there. Until Bioshock the closest we’d ever got to exploring the blue was SEGA’s Echo the Dolphin some 15 years previous. So it’s fair to say there was nothing like this game in the FPS genre – or in any genre of gaming at all. With my hopes high I headed into the first playthrough, but was bitterly disappointed with what I encountered.

It starts with a fantastic opening sequence where a plane crash sends us tumbling into the drink (a fitting example of why it’s against the law to smoke a mile high). As we surface, an Art Deco lighthouse, miles from civilization greets us. Inside, a strange orb awaits which plunges us into a world beneath the waves. At first, I was astounded by the lure of what resembles a 40-fathoms deep Las Vegas but that’s all smoke, mirrors and an unhealthy dose of make-up. The hidden truth is that Rapture is a rundown world full of nothingness. With the exception of the odd scripted moment where of a shark swims by one of raptures many dirty windows, we never truly get to experience life on the ocean floor. All bar one level you’re indoors and even that brief flirtation with the water is just you trying to get from one building to the next. The entire game could be set in a rundown motel and you wouldn’t really notice the difference – as you spend most of your time going room-to-room in the hope you’ll find a shred of ammo, a half empty Adam refill or an Audio Diary to give you a resemblance of backstory.

See, the well-hidden Audio Diaries are very important to your gaming experience since Bioshock is not driven by cinematic cutscenes. Rather frustratingly, there’s a couple of Quicktime moments at inopportune times and you really have to rely on your own discovery to advance your understanding of the plot. Many first-person games have taken the collectible route, classics such as Doom, Half-Life and the recent Fallout sequels are advocates of this technique, but in Bioshock, this doesn’t have the same effect and instead makes the story feel stale. When you have to stop to search every room in the building to make sure you don’t miss a second of the story, it prevents you from feeling fully immersed in the survivalist nature of the game. This might work fine in an RPG where you there’s a slower pacing, or you can return at a later date if you miss something, but in a linear FPS the collectible aspect really feels out of place.

Mechanically, Bioshock isn’t a bad first person shooter but what makes it feel stiff is the lack of dual wield functionality. BS2 clears this up, but theirs a gaping hole in the first game that the plasmids alone can’t fill – as your ability to react to deadly situations is severely limited. The choice between going into battle with a plasmid or a pistol often leaves you frantically switching back and forth as quick as you can to avoid ending up dead. This is particularly annoying when fighting Splicers that love close quarter combat – by the time you switch over to your gun, you’re already dead.

Mind, I shouldn’t really complain about the difficulty of this, especially when you consider how easy Bioshock is to complete. Even playing on ‘Hard’ difficulty, you know that the worst case scenario post-death is waking up in a Vita chamber with no re-spawned enemies or reloaded checkpoints. Getting out of your chamber and carrying on as you were doesn’t have the same impact as the Borderlands model where one wrong move and you’ll have half of your wallet wiped out – now that’s a real fear of death!

Despite the lack of slots available for your plasmids, forcing you to choose the few you want to carry at the annoyingly scarce vending machines throughout Rapture, I concede the biotic weapons are pretty cool. Sadly, the more these plasmids level up the more you realise just how easy they make the game. Those cold, dark alleys where you would usually approach with caution become a breeze if you fire off the Insect Swarm and send a hive of Bees off to attack any of the targets in the room. That particular strategy gives you the heads up of who is hiding and creates ample time to prepare for your assault. Checking out the terrain in Bioshock is an indication to whats ahead and gives you fair warning of what’s to come. If ever you see a pool of water on the floor, you can be guaranteed to encounter some villains up ahead – so best get the Electro Bolt ready and prepare to zap the floor. The copy and paste nature of the environment in Bioshock makes the game too predictable and you become lackadaisical, often ploughing through each level with an air of invincibility, hardly breaking a sweat. What should be a taut, suspenseful thriller ends up feeling like a joy ride and while that can be enjoyable in the right setting (a la Bulletstorm) Bioshock just isn’t that kind of game, often it feels like that movie that you end up laughing all the way through, not realising it’s supposed to be a dark drama.

The little sisters are an eerily odd touch. They’re designed to play with your morals and emotions. You can waste an entire cache of ammo defeating a Big Daddy protector, only to be presented with an obvious choice. While killing a child or rescuing her might seem like a no-brainer, this isn’t a straightforward Paragon/Renegade decision. Atlas tells you to kill them, after all, they’re just husks masquerading as children and they’re no different to your average splicer. They even have this evil Gollum look about them to try and push you to making the right decision. Atlas also informs you’ll be heavily rewarded for harvesting them and have a shed load more Adam at your disposal. So at this point, why wouldn’t you kill them? You’ve trusted Atlas implicitly to now – so why would you go against him? He’s your ticket out of here… your voice of reason… What Bioshock fails to tell you is that IF you follow him – you’ve made one major wrong move and it’s effectively killed your game. Sure, you can still carry on to complete the game – but harvest one Little Sister’s power and you’re condemned. There’s no majority winner, there’s no chance of redemption. No matter what you do after this point you may as well just kill them all. The only way to get the good ending, is to Rescue every single Little Sister you meet and making even one ill-informed or uneducated choice kills any chance of that for you. It’s feels a bit unfair…

Their Big Daddy bodyguards are seen to be ruthless, killing machines. You’re shown not to mess with them very early on as you see them mercilessly take down a group of splicers through the safety of some unbreachable glass. However, in reality, they’re not all that hard to defeat. Firstly, a Big Daddy will only respond when provoked or when his Little Sister is under attack. If you have a few villains on your tail then, fear not, just lure them toward a Big Daddy and take the easy way out as he’ll destroy them without opening fire toward you, allowing you to hide behind them like it’s your big brother on the school playground. When it’s time to kill them, you get time to set up the room and catch them off guard. You’re given free reign to set traps and hack turrets to make stabbing the Daddy in the back all the easier. Again, this makes the game very easy to beat and takes any suspense out of the level. You’re even given a warning the first time you encounter one which I absolutely hated. The first encounter could have been magnificent and been a trial and error of terror, where you brick it and open fire without realising what you’ve done. Instead, the mood is well and truly killed!

The antagonists are quite frustrating and neither are really Raptures Darth Vader. For the first part of the game we’ve been solely focused on killing Ryan. Sure, we’ve had our head filled with conflicting stories from both him and Atlas which does add a bit of mystery to the plot, but when you finally encounter him it’s all a bit pointless and surreal. After an astonishing plot twist, Ryan gives you a command that you can’t not obey. While this is certainly apt and helps the story to pick up some much needed pace, it’s incredibly frustrating not being able to pick a side. Despite his cries of “a man chooses – a slave obeys” you end up obeying regardless and you are unable to do anything about it – even though you know your impending actions are inherently wrong. It’s such a pivotal moment that sends you off on a revenge driven rampage, but being given a choice and only having one option seems a very dated mechanic. It would have been much better had we acted without knowing the truth and only discovered it afterwards.

As FBT argues, Bioshock is as close to art as gaming gets – and that’s certainly hard to disagree with. The art-deco paintjob throughout the halls mixed with a 1920’s soundtrack is certainly something we’d not seen in shooters before and has undoubtedly inspired games which have come after it. It won a number of high profile awards and it does have a distinct style that is very unique in the marketplace. However, like all art it’s true worth lies in the eyes of the beholder and one man’s Picasso can easily be another man’s Damien Hirst. So for FBT, this game is a timeless classic that he looks on with great fondness. For me, it’s a glass case of maggots feeding on a rotting cow’s head.

2007 | Irrational Games | 2K

win, xbox 360/One PS3/4