Borderlands 2

Recently I’ve been trying to give a little time to actually playing some of the games I’ve bought, and so I’ve been catching up with Borderlands 2.

I’ve currently completed the main campaign, and am now working through some of the downloadable content. I really enjoyed the first game, and Borderlands 2 is more of the same so if you liked the first game you can’t go very far wrong.

Borderlands 2 begins with a choice of character class. Normally I would have stuck with the soldier character that I used in the first Borderlands, who has a deployable turret specialism. However, taking a leaf, quite literally out of Raph Koster’s short but insightful book “A theory of fun” this time I chose to play as a Siren. Koster argues that we should diversify our choice of player characters in order to take ourselves outside of our comfort zone and learn something new. I think I did learn something, which was that my choice didn’t really seem to matter very much. I have experimented briefly with other classes, and in the end the type of character you end up playing depends more on how you allocate your skill points that the character you choose in the first place! Many of the characters can be moulded to suit different play styles.

Borderlands 2 also offers you the opportunity to change your skill points at any time (for a fee). This is nice, because it means I can still experiment with new characters without needing to start over, and I can still learn something about playing using different styles for the cost of a few in game coins.

If you’re a fan of Borderlands then I heartily recommend Borderlands 2 for more of the same – just remember to change it up once in a while!

New Indiegala looks like the best yet!

I just purchased the latest Indiegala offering and it looks excellent.

Head over to indiegala.com to check it out!

With a total of 16 games included, all of which might have potential and some of which look like they could be really good I don’t see how you can go too far wrong.

Beat Hazard boast gameplay driven by your music collection!

I like these bundles because even though I never really give the games the time that each one deserves often they give me an experience that’s a little different from the more commercial offerings that I usually play. For example Beat Hazard (shown above) apparently uses your music collection to influence the game play! I just hope I can get round to trying some of them out properly.

Atom Zombie Smasher

I’ve been done playing Atom Zombie Smasher for a while now, but I did enjoy it so I figured it was worth talking about. It highlights yet again that you need not have a ton of complex graphics to deliver a good game playing experience. In fact, in some cases stunning graphics actually obscure, or worse, replace gameplay.

Die pink zombie cuboids, Die!

In atom zombie smasher you take on the role of the military, evacuating tiny cuboid people from cities before they are infected by the descending hordes of pink zombies. If a zombie touches a person they become infected, adding to your problems. You can use terrain and a number of offensive and defensive units to destroy the zombies and help airlift the people to safety.

It’s a pretty enjoyable experience and fun to play for a few minutes now and then. If you watch zombie films and think you could do a better job at setting a perimeter, funnelling the zombies into traps and making difficult decisions about what constitutes acceptable collateral damage I recommend you take a look at Atom Zombie Smasher.