Killing Skags in Pandora

Game: Borderlands
Company: 2K Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Number of Players:1-4(co-op)
Developer: Scaleform
Genre: RPG,Shooter
Platform: Xbox 360, playstation 3, PC
ESRB Rating: Mature+17
Borderlands Review
Premise: You play as one of four mercenaries that explore an alien planet for a treasure.
Story: In the beginning you arrive on the planet of Pandora and are greeted by a very mysterious girl that wishes to help you on your journey. Throughout the game you have to do many MMO style quest in order to gain EXP and level up your character. Each character has their own personalities and attributes that help make them all feel unique, such as Brick whose special ability is to go on a rampage while another character such as the soldier can deploy a sentry turret. The game goes up to four players allowing the players work as a team as you deal with the large numbers of enemies and harder bosses. Pandora is a wide open world encouraging sidequest and exploration while encouraging you to search for the unknown treasure. Each part of world feels more complex and different than the last making each region feels its place. As the story progresses you are given little pockets of clues from the mysterious girl. Overall Borderlands isn’t story driven and the last level isn’t something to push for, but rather how you get there is what makes borderlands all the more engaging.
Challenge: The games challenge is handled through your level, as you level up the enemies get harder and larger in numbers. Each boss fight will be more complex and challenging because of the increase of the boss's level and the henchmen. As the game progresses you will level up your character giving you a wider variety in gameplay and make your experience different than someone else’s.
The Transformation of Time/Engagement: The game is engaging thanks to the open world and unique characters. The game also has a unique art design that helps it stand out from other titles. Every time you level you feel as if it means something as you see your character become more and more powerful. Thanks to the variety in weapons and quest you are sure to spend hundreds of hours on your first playthrough alone, but thanks to the much harder second playthrough the world of Pandora will become your home away from home.
Resources: Borderlands offers the play literally billions of guns. Throughout the game you will uncover an unprecedented variety in weapons from a lightning shooting shotgun to an alien sniper. Whenever you kill an enemy you get loot that includes ammunition and money which allows you to purchase more weapons and shields. Shields give you extra health and protection from the other enemies.
Information Structure/Clear Goals and Feedback: The games information structure is handled through menus and quest. In your HUD it will highlight where your quest is and how to get there. In you menus it will layout how many quest you have and where to go on the world map. As you complete quest your character levels up and a new quest is available to play. The game had a simple information structure and a even more rewarding feedback which helped make each quest more engaging.

Killing Locust

Title:Gears of War 2
Designer: Epic Games
Company: Microsoft
Number of players: 1-2 (co op) 1-10(multiplayer)
Platform: Xbox 360
ERSB Rating: M+17
Genre: Action/Adventure
Gears of War 2 Review
Premise: You play as Marcus Fenix the leader of a rag tag group of soldiers, whose sole purpose is to save humanity from the locust horde.
Story: The games story takes place a year after the first game giving players new incite into the war, along with new characters that help to make the overall conflict seem more emotional. Throughout the game you play as Marcus Fenix with the option to play as Dom if you play in (co op). Each mission has meaning as it gives you objectives ranging from saving a tortured soldier or riding a Brumak into the Locust hive. Throughout the game you are mostly pushing the assault on the Locust as you and an army of COGS move underground in order to stop the Locust assault. As the campaign unravels you see the real loses of the war, such as the scenes where the main characters have to pay the ultimate price in order to push the fight forward. In each level of the campaign your given little back story of what happened in the year in-between the first and second game. The game even gives you a side story for Dom which implies that his wife is captured by the Locust, which begins to unravel more and more as the game goes on.
Challenge: The games challenge is handled through the pacing, which has you holding off an impending army or killing a Locust general. Each level is harder than the last mostly due to the increase in enemies and of how each level gives you a new creature to fight. Throughout the campaign the difficulty is also increased by set pieces and environments because of the games cover system which allows the player and AI hide behind cover in order to avoid fire from their enemies. Each map gives you different options of where to hold off and how to get to each objective which range from destroying an enemy camp or even saving a captured comrade.
The Transformation of Time: The games campaign is engaging giving you different stories to each characters back, along with giving you a better over view of the overall conflict found in the game. The inclusion of (co op) makes each level feel like a completely different experience which makes the campaign much longer and easy to spend hours on. The new multiplayer mode called horde is highly addictive, as it puts five players up against wave upon wave of enemies. The competitive multiplayer is even more addictive as each mode goes up to ten players allowing them to duke it out, while using many of the elements found in the games campaign which allows for different strategies and makes time fly by.
Engagement: The games story and characters are more engaging than the last game mostly due to a better back stories for each character along with different incites to each of motives for fighting. Each level has a sense of lose as you fight through ruined cities and abandoned warehouses making each part of the campaign feel emotional and more fascinating as you see how the world ended.
Characters/Player: Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago return from the first game, including their fellow Delta Squad COG soldiers, Augustus Cole and Damon Baird. These four characters are the characters that you will see throughotu the game, but for the most part you are accompinied by Dom. Each character has their own unique story and motives for fighting in the war. The game also gives a wide variety of Locust enemies which gives the game another side of the war making the enemy encounters feel more meaningful and unique.
Information Structure/Clear Goals and Feedback: The information structure is handled through the HUD as it gives you different objectives and weapon ammunition. The game gives you clear goals as it marks on the screen where you have to go making each objective seem easy and clear to get to.
Authors Note: I found the game to be a lot of fun when playing with a lot of friends. I found the campaign to be a lot of fun and really satisfying compared to the predecessor. Each character have their own unique personality and look which helped make each encounter meaningful and help make you care more about what happens to them as the story unravels. I would give the game a 9/10 mostly due the engaging campaign, but the games multiplayer was unbalanced compared to the last game.