As I recall, the zombie island content scales with you on PT2 as well, but not quite as well as it does on PT1. If you've lost interest in the main game PT2, I would just jump into zombie island on PT2 and see how it goes. You should be able to check the first few missions to check their scale and see how you're sitting. Playing through zombie, you'll likely get close to 50 by the time you're done and then you could just jump into Knoxx and play it on PT2.
My soldier is sitting at level 44, I believe. Last time I played was some co-op with Greg on my second playthrough. Still have a good amount of story missions to get through again. Thanks for the progression suggestion!
If you don't do multiple playthroughs, all the DLC scales correctly. You can play the main game, then zombie, then knoxx and you'll get EXP and levels the entire time.
The problem happens with PT2 and PT2.5. You can either sacrifice your DLC experience, or your PT2.5 experience. In either case, if you do it right, Knoxx will still work out on PT2 and PT2.5.
borderlands is only fun in Multiplayer, with a group. I've adamantly disagreed with that on several occasions. Having played the game mostly in single player and loving it, I totally didn't understand that complaint.However I did come to recognize that in the Zombie Island DLC. I had a few opportunities to play it in a full group and it was more fun that way. I actually did enjoy the DLC solo, but mostly just because I loved the game and I found the zombies to be incredibly challenging when played at max level with a LVL50 character. I enjoyed the quests even though I wasn't getting experience, to see the new areas and listen to all the bizarre voice recordings. To me, zombie island was much like Left 4 Dead, in that it was the survival that made it fun.
You make a good point that there's no good spot to put zombie island in your playthroughs. This is absolutely true (and I hope they find a way to implement the scaling you talk about). Being someone who enjoyed the game most when my encounters were of an appropriate level, I found playing it on LVL50 to be perfect. The zombies would swarm, you'd get nailed by a few spitters and things would get quite hectic. I liked that. Personally, I fell so in love with the game, looting and killing with my various guns that LEVEL EXP actually became an after thought for me. I was focused on leveling up my capabilities with certain weapons, maxing them out, (which I'm still not completely done with btw). Leveling up your weapons is nearly as important as leveling up your characters. But I can totally see what you're saying.
My biggest gripe was in the loot dept. I absolutely loved looting in Borderlands. Even when the guns were not as "good" as what I had, I liked finding quirky features, or bizarre stats. But I found almost none of this in zombie island. It was like they put absolutely zero work into weapons for the DLC. Same thing in Underdome, the weapons seemed like they got totally forgotten. When a games awesomeness is so closely tied to the weaponry, the DLC needs to focus on that as much as it does on new levels, new enemies, or new enviroments. This was a definite failure of zombie and underdome.
I'm still pretty uncertain about DLC for Borderlands. Like you, I would have a hard time playing if I wasn't...accumulating experience points or getting better weapons. That's where I stopped in Fallout 3 during my first playthrough, once I hit the cap of 30. The only DLC here for Borderlands I'd consider is the one that raises your level cap, but even then, I might be a bit bored by shooting the same things over and over again just to ding 61 or whatever it is.
Wow, I'm amazed. I normally agree with your reviews, but I have to disagree with this one. Zombie Island is the first and only DLC I was glad I paid for. It was long, humorous, challenging, and it had great art and atmosphere.
For you to say that and give it an 8, that truly shows you're not a biased reviewer. Well done.
With regard to Toad and Boo, yes, absolutely as you're talking about defending with your controllable characters, but I'm talking about when they go up against your goalie, in which case, not much you can do when they jump right over him or phase walk through him. The trick I found is that you've got to get very good at off the ball defense, slide stealing, intercepting, and using your power ups. Amazingly deep gameplay experience, that's for sure.
Yeah that's what I loved about playing online. I was pretty solid with a no-tricks strategy (my go-to guys were Yoshi, two Shy Guys on offense, and Dry Bones on defense) but it always amazed me how good people would get with characters that seemed mostly harmless like Toad or Koopa. Still, once you figured out their tendencies, it was usually a matter of timing and head games trying to get the ball away from them, since the Toad jump or the Boo invisibility was just a split-second advantage: if you delay the tackle just a bit, they'll often use the dodge too early and you can swoop in as they hit the ground/reappear. And once you hit a Toad or Boo with a solid tackle, it's down for a few seconds. Then when they figure YOU out, the process repeats! It's incredible how much the game evolves over the course of a single four-minute match.
Definitely one of my favorite games ever, it has its flaws and foibles (hence the 8) but it certainly raises the bar for Mario spinoffs.
Just kidding, great review, I LOVED this game. It's probably, to this day, the game I've played the most online. Every night for a few hours, for close to a month I believe (my wife was pregnant with our first child and enjoyed watching me destroy and get destroyed). When it first came out, there were TONs of people playing. Too bad they're all gone now as some great matches could be had, with very little lag, if any. My only real complaint of this game was that there are a few moves that, if done correctly, were incredibly difficult to defend against. If you played against a team of toads, and the player has toads jump timing down, they could devastate you pretty quickly. Personally, I would use the Boos "invisible" pretty effectively which was also somewhat "cheap" feeling. Otherwise, the game had pretty amazing balance, and a wide variety of specials to accommodate most any playing style. Playing online was a virtual cornucopia of bizarre strategies and player usage, that would open ones eyes to concepts and plays that you never would have come up with alone. Over time though, these amazingly versatile gameplay techniques were distilled down to the 3 or 4 most effective. That's when I started getting burnt out, when everyone was doing the same things online.
I actually wouldn't mind seeing a roster entirely made of Capcom characters starring in a Vs style game. There's an enormous pool of characters for them to grab, especially among their many fighting games. But as long as I get my team of Wesker, Radd Spencer, and Phoenix Wright, I'll be happy.
Having never experienced Rez or any of his other crazy-looking games, I don't quite share the anticipation that other Mizuguchi fans do. But the game certainly caught my eye, not just for the Kinect use but for its audio-visual package. It really looks like a trip for the senses that I'll want to take when it hits PS3.
If you don't liked the game, why'd make such a large review for it? I mean, there are a lot of game that I don't like, but I don't keep telling people that they suck, I can't change people's opinion. If you don't like, all you have to do is not play it. It's simple.
Now go get a life instead of saying shit about things you think is right.
I had a demo for that game, it came with my X-Wing and TIE Fighter bundle. I never did get to play it online, which is probably a good thing, since I would have been dominated based on my performance in the two singleplayer games. Still, people are clamoring for a TIE Fighter rebirth even today and I'm sure I'd be on board that vessel if it were ever announced.
Yep, that sounds exactly like mine! I thought the same thing, that they had been released overseas, so I knew they were bootlegs or whatever, but didn't expect them to be rips of a laserdisc. They were really cheap too!
Hey, I bought those too!
At the time, I assumed they had been released overseas, but not here yet (Lucas is strange like that). But yeah, found out later they were bootlegs of the laser disc. The ones I bought were in nice gold packaging, had good menus etc, but the picture quality was not so great. Hehe, funny I was not the only one who got caught on those. :)
I agree with many of your key points but would have to give it more like an 8.5/10. The only thing holding it back in my book is the medicore "My Player" mode - which you touched on in detail in your review. Still the most complete baseball video game I've played in the last 2-3 years.
My only regret is that I didn't win the Major League Baseball 2K10 contest's $1,000,000 jackpot. It took me 3 weeks of playing almost non-stop to finally throw a perfect game. Unfortunately it was too little way too late. In any case, it was still a heck of a fun game that was definitely worth buying.
I once bought bootleg copies of the original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. I pretty much knew they were bootlegs, since the movies hadn't been released on DVD yet. Turns out they were rips of the Eastern Asia LaserDisc edition, and came with lots of handy subtitles such as Mandarin, Thai, and Malay.
Yes, I did the same thing. I bought all the seasons of Star Trek TNG off ebay and they ended up being bootlegs. Tried to get my money back but the seller had already been kicked off ebay. It's funny, because there was art work from DS9 on the discs and boxes. REALLY bad bootleg.
I'm a huge D&D nerd from way back. Was introduced to AD&D in 1984. Played pretty heavily until 1991 or so. Then totally fell out of it. I'm just now getting back into it, as, literally, I bought all the 4E books in the last 3 weeks. I'm totally loving it. I have found a local group to play with and I actually have a game night set up for tomorrow night. After we finish that adventure, I'll be DM'ing which is hugely exciting for me.
If anyone has the change, I STRONGLY urge you to give it a try. In fact, Wizards of the Coast (the publisher behind D&D nowadays) has created a new thing, called D&D Encounters. They are full length adventures hosted at local comic/game/trading card shops, broken up into 2 hour segments to make it easier to play. They get together every wed night and you can find one near you on the WoTC site here.
Check it out. They're very newbie friendly, specifically designed to help new people get into the hobby. Also of note, the game has changed in the most recent incarnation and has become easier to get into than in the recent past.
I honestly haven't played a Zelda game since Windwaker, and even then I played it in 2007 and I didn't finish it. I don't know what it is, but I just don't enjoy them as much anymore.
Though I still feel, personally, that A Link to the Past is better than all of the Zelda games I've played.
I've only gotten two bootlegged games before, and they were PC games (the easiest to bootleg, and the hardest to sell, I think. I was really stupid at the time.)
Now, Anime on the other hand, is an entirely different subject. I bought several full series, only to find that they were all bootlegs. $200 worth of bootlegged anime. It was hilarious. Woe is me.
I know what you mean. Several times my friends forgot to tell me a game was going on. They weren't being mean as much as being stupid, but I can relate to what you're feeling.
I know that they are coming out with a DND game that is online. Not the MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons online, but the board game version where you can edit the maps, roll the dice and everything. If that happens, we might have to have a monthly First Hour DND game or something, considering all of my DND buddies are 600 miles away. :-P
As I recall, the zombie island content scales with you on PT2 as well, but not quite as well as it does on PT1. If you've lost interest in the main game PT2, I would just jump into zombie island on PT2 and see how it goes. You should be able to check the first few missions to check their scale and see how you're sitting. Playing through zombie, you'll likely get close to 50 by the time you're done and then you could just jump into Knoxx and play it on PT2.
My soldier is sitting at level 44, I believe. Last time I played was some co-op with Greg on my second playthrough. Still have a good amount of story missions to get through again. Thanks for the progression suggestion!
If you don't do multiple playthroughs, all the DLC scales correctly. You can play the main game, then zombie, then knoxx and you'll get EXP and levels the entire time.
The problem happens with PT2 and PT2.5. You can either sacrifice your DLC experience, or your PT2.5 experience. In either case, if you do it right, Knoxx will still work out on PT2 and PT2.5.
borderlands is only fun in Multiplayer, with a group. I've adamantly disagreed with that on several occasions. Having played the game mostly in single player and loving it, I totally didn't understand that complaint.However I did come to recognize that in the Zombie Island DLC. I had a few opportunities to play it in a full group and it was more fun that way. I actually did enjoy the DLC solo, but mostly just because I loved the game and I found the zombies to be incredibly challenging when played at max level with a LVL50 character. I enjoyed the quests even though I wasn't getting experience, to see the new areas and listen to all the bizarre voice recordings. To me, zombie island was much like Left 4 Dead, in that it was the survival that made it fun.
You make a good point that there's no good spot to put zombie island in your playthroughs. This is absolutely true (and I hope they find a way to implement the scaling you talk about). Being someone who enjoyed the game most when my encounters were of an appropriate level, I found playing it on LVL50 to be perfect. The zombies would swarm, you'd get nailed by a few spitters and things would get quite hectic. I liked that. Personally, I fell so in love with the game, looting and killing with my various guns that LEVEL EXP actually became an after thought for me. I was focused on leveling up my capabilities with certain weapons, maxing them out, (which I'm still not completely done with btw). Leveling up your weapons is nearly as important as leveling up your characters. But I can totally see what you're saying.
My biggest gripe was in the loot dept. I absolutely loved looting in Borderlands. Even when the guns were not as "good" as what I had, I liked finding quirky features, or bizarre stats. But I found almost none of this in zombie island. It was like they put absolutely zero work into weapons for the DLC. Same thing in Underdome, the weapons seemed like they got totally forgotten. When a games awesomeness is so closely tied to the weaponry, the DLC needs to focus on that as much as it does on new levels, new enemies, or new enviroments. This was a definite failure of zombie and underdome.
Fortunately, they fixed that with General Knoxx.
Great summary! Braaaaaaaaaaaains.
I'm still pretty uncertain about DLC for Borderlands. Like you, I would have a hard time playing if I wasn't...accumulating experience points or getting better weapons. That's where I stopped in Fallout 3 during my first playthrough, once I hit the cap of 30. The only DLC here for Borderlands I'd consider is the one that raises your level cap, but even then, I might be a bit bored by shooting the same things over and over again just to ding 61 or whatever it is.
Wow, I'm amazed. I normally agree with your reviews, but I have to disagree with this one. Zombie Island is the first and only DLC I was glad I paid for. It was long, humorous, challenging, and it had great art and atmosphere.
"Definitely one of my favorite games ever"
For you to say that and give it an 8, that truly shows you're not a biased reviewer. Well done.
With regard to Toad and Boo, yes, absolutely as you're talking about defending with your controllable characters, but I'm talking about when they go up against your goalie, in which case, not much you can do when they jump right over him or phase walk through him. The trick I found is that you've got to get very good at off the ball defense, slide stealing, intercepting, and using your power ups. Amazingly deep gameplay experience, that's for sure.
Yeah that's what I loved about playing online. I was pretty solid with a no-tricks strategy (my go-to guys were Yoshi, two Shy Guys on offense, and Dry Bones on defense) but it always amazed me how good people would get with characters that seemed mostly harmless like Toad or Koopa. Still, once you figured out their tendencies, it was usually a matter of timing and head games trying to get the ball away from them, since the Toad jump or the Boo invisibility was just a split-second advantage: if you delay the tackle just a bit, they'll often use the dodge too early and you can swoop in as they hit the ground/reappear. And once you hit a Toad or Boo with a solid tackle, it's down for a few seconds. Then when they figure YOU out, the process repeats! It's incredible how much the game evolves over the course of a single four-minute match.
Definitely one of my favorite games ever, it has its flaws and foibles (hence the 8) but it certainly raises the bar for Mario spinoffs.
Very nice writing (yet again)
Just kidding, great review, I LOVED this game. It's probably, to this day, the game I've played the most online. Every night for a few hours, for close to a month I believe (my wife was pregnant with our first child and enjoyed watching me destroy and get destroyed). When it first came out, there were TONs of people playing. Too bad they're all gone now as some great matches could be had, with very little lag, if any. My only real complaint of this game was that there are a few moves that, if done correctly, were incredibly difficult to defend against. If you played against a team of toads, and the player has toads jump timing down, they could devastate you pretty quickly. Personally, I would use the Boos "invisible" pretty effectively which was also somewhat "cheap" feeling. Otherwise, the game had pretty amazing balance, and a wide variety of specials to accommodate most any playing style. Playing online was a virtual cornucopia of bizarre strategies and player usage, that would open ones eyes to concepts and plays that you never would have come up with alone. Over time though, these amazingly versatile gameplay techniques were distilled down to the 3 or 4 most effective. That's when I started getting burnt out, when everyone was doing the same things online.
I actually wouldn't mind seeing a roster entirely made of Capcom characters starring in a Vs style game. There's an enormous pool of characters for them to grab, especially among their many fighting games. But as long as I get my team of Wesker, Radd Spencer, and Phoenix Wright, I'll be happy.
Having never experienced Rez or any of his other crazy-looking games, I don't quite share the anticipation that other Mizuguchi fans do. But the game certainly caught my eye, not just for the Kinect use but for its audio-visual package. It really looks like a trip for the senses that I'll want to take when it hits PS3.
I think you should get spirit tracks. I've played both games and had more fun with spirit tracks. It is also newer and has better graphics.
If you don't liked the game, why'd make such a large review for it? I mean, there are a lot of game that I don't like, but I don't keep telling people that they suck, I can't change people's opinion. If you don't like, all you have to do is not play it. It's simple.
Now go get a life instead of saying shit about things you think is right.
I had a demo for that game, it came with my X-Wing and TIE Fighter bundle. I never did get to play it online, which is probably a good thing, since I would have been dominated based on my performance in the two singleplayer games. Still, people are clamoring for a TIE Fighter rebirth even today and I'm sure I'd be on board that vessel if it were ever announced.
Yep, that sounds exactly like mine! I thought the same thing, that they had been released overseas, so I knew they were bootlegs or whatever, but didn't expect them to be rips of a laserdisc. They were really cheap too!
Hey, I bought those too!
At the time, I assumed they had been released overseas, but not here yet (Lucas is strange like that). But yeah, found out later they were bootlegs of the laser disc. The ones I bought were in nice gold packaging, had good menus etc, but the picture quality was not so great. Hehe, funny I was not the only one who got caught on those. :)
I agree with many of your key points but would have to give it more like an 8.5/10. The only thing holding it back in my book is the medicore "My Player" mode - which you touched on in detail in your review. Still the most complete baseball video game I've played in the last 2-3 years.
My only regret is that I didn't win the Major League Baseball 2K10 contest's $1,000,000 jackpot. It took me 3 weeks of playing almost non-stop to finally throw a perfect game. Unfortunately it was too little way too late. In any case, it was still a heck of a fun game that was definitely worth buying.
I collected all the figurines in the game, meaning I had to find tons and tons of seashells. People with no lives indeed! Wait....
I once bought bootleg copies of the original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. I pretty much knew they were bootlegs, since the movies hadn't been released on DVD yet. Turns out they were rips of the Eastern Asia LaserDisc edition, and came with lots of handy subtitles such as Mandarin, Thai, and Malay.
Yes, I did the same thing. I bought all the seasons of Star Trek TNG off ebay and they ended up being bootlegs. Tried to get my money back but the seller had already been kicked off ebay. It's funny, because there was art work from DS9 on the discs and boxes. REALLY bad bootleg.
I'm a huge D&D nerd from way back. Was introduced to AD&D in 1984. Played pretty heavily until 1991 or so. Then totally fell out of it. I'm just now getting back into it, as, literally, I bought all the 4E books in the last 3 weeks. I'm totally loving it. I have found a local group to play with and I actually have a game night set up for tomorrow night. After we finish that adventure, I'll be DM'ing which is hugely exciting for me.
If anyone has the change, I STRONGLY urge you to give it a try. In fact, Wizards of the Coast (the publisher behind D&D nowadays) has created a new thing, called D&D Encounters. They are full length adventures hosted at local comic/game/trading card shops, broken up into 2 hour segments to make it easier to play. They get together every wed night and you can find one near you on the WoTC site here.
Check it out. They're very newbie friendly, specifically designed to help new people get into the hobby. Also of note, the game has changed in the most recent incarnation and has become easier to get into than in the recent past.
Thanks so much for posting this Ian!
I honestly haven't played a Zelda game since Windwaker, and even then I played it in 2007 and I didn't finish it. I don't know what it is, but I just don't enjoy them as much anymore.
Though I still feel, personally, that A Link to the Past is better than all of the Zelda games I've played.
I've only gotten two bootlegged games before, and they were PC games (the easiest to bootleg, and the hardest to sell, I think. I was really stupid at the time.)
Now, Anime on the other hand, is an entirely different subject. I bought several full series, only to find that they were all bootlegs. $200 worth of bootlegged anime. It was hilarious. Woe is me.
I know what you mean. Several times my friends forgot to tell me a game was going on. They weren't being mean as much as being stupid, but I can relate to what you're feeling.
I know that they are coming out with a DND game that is online. Not the MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons online, but the board game version where you can edit the maps, roll the dice and everything. If that happens, we might have to have a monthly First Hour DND game or something, considering all of my DND buddies are 600 miles away. :-P