I was quite excited to see the new DLC for New Vegas available for purchase, though I immediately regretted starting down the Lonesome Road, not for the reasons you’d think.

I have no idea what is going on with the Fallout series and the continuous technical bugs/glitches that plague the inhabitants of the wastes, but it is getting ridiculous.

SLOOOOOW DOOOOOOOOW — – - — NNS……..

The amount of time I’ve waited between open/closing containers and entering/exiting VATS between the last two DLC released surely outweighs the time I spent commuting to work for the entirety of a month. How can you fail on the process of looting containers? That’s the sacred cow of the Oblivion/Fallout series. I’m actually avoiding opening containers and joy they contain because I know that it will mean sitting and waiting for 1-5 minutes to return to actual gameplay. I should write it as “gameplay” because all I’ve been doing since I entered the Lonesome Road is waiting for the game to catch up. I even tried installing an SSD into my PS3 to hopefully avoid the sort of lockups and freezing problems I had with Oldworld Blues. It maks no difference. The Fallout wiki states that the PS3 may exhibit lockups when too many games saves are “in memory”. I deleted tons of game saves and even proactively deleted the game data force a reinstall and it makes NO DIFFERENCE. Such a waste of potential. I really LOVE this game but it’s become so laborious that I don’t even care about the storyline anymore. I just want to PLAY the goddamned game. I’d say I have to reboot the console every 15 minutes in order get the game into a state that’s tolerable. That is unacceptable. Maybe a software update will resolve these issues, maybe it’s a problem with the ever-increasing size of the gamesave file and not being able to fit into the PS3′s limited RAM, thus forcing swap-o-rama. I don’t know, but something has to give. I’m starting to lose faith in the Bethesda know-how. If Skyrim is anything like this, count me out.

Ok, I’ve looked at Borderlands and it’s probably not the pickup and play variety. It seems like WoW without the crowd; pure shoot and loot. You run around doing missions and tend to accumulate lots of guns with different specs. shoot, loot, sell, repeat. There’s experience points and tons of upgrades.

The art style reminds me of Crackdown, so does the drop action. You off someone then hit point numbers, XP, ammo, guns, and money shoot out of his ass. The gun’s are fucking cool and each attribute definitely makes a difference when using them, plus there are fun little perks like “chance to set on fire” and I hear that there are sweet amalgamations of weapons like a missile-launcher shotgun.

One thing I noticed was that the FOV is really tight, like claustrophobic style. I don’t feel like I’m fully out of sniper scope view for some reason. That make firefights a little tense, since she can get right up on you without a good peripheral hint that they’re getting close. The compass shows bad guys as red dots, large red dots if they’re aggro, but I found myself whipping around to make sure I wasn’t being jumped by a midget psycho. (Yes, midget psycho’s are bad guys that crop up every now and again, squealing and giggling like a clown, extremely funny the first time when you don’t expect it)

Also of annoyance but technically more “realistic” is when you utilizing the automated ammo, gun, medial vending machines, up to your nuts in stats comparisons and equipment, you can still be attacked. I was shopping for SMG upgrades, and hear this giggling and howling, then I started taking damage. I closed out the shop screen, spun around and blew the head off of whatever was bothering me, but it just shows that this game’s a little different than your average FPS or RPG. When you go into your inventory screen it also doesn’t pause the game. So switching weapons apart from your two currently equipped ones during a firefight may cost you some health. You can pause the game by hitting escape at least.

Oh and respawn. Like an MMO the enemies you brutally murdered respawn in just a few short minutes. I butchered an entire Skag nest, went over the hill to loot some shit, then shot a few more things, and when I went to leave the original nest of Skags was repopulated. It’s good in one sense because it gives you a nice/fast way of grinding for gear, money, and XP but for an FPS I wasn’t expecting the Doom3 Monster hole effect. As far as your death, when you die you respawn back to the last respawn point you physically walked past for a small fee. If you run out of fund I’m assuming your totally fucking dead.

In true RPG style as you level up there’s skill tree’s for different things. Just how Team Fortress characters have different abilities, depending on which core class you pick when you create your character (Hunter, Siren, Soldier, or Brick) you have a different set of abilities that you can train as you play the game. The solider is all I played so far and he has this auto turret called the scorpion that he can drop that has a shield you can duck behind. Add points to the scorpion to add more firepower, longer duration/damage, healing of teammates near the turret, added damage for player near the turret, that kind of stuff. Skill points are can go to your core skills, like weapon specialization and passive stats.

Along with Skills, leveling up increases your core stats, and allows you to use weapons with higher level requirements. For loot whores out there this gave follows Diablo-style loot rarity colors. From the Wiki:

Borderlands uses a classification system for gear that follows the standard color-coding system for RPGs. A common (white) gun would be average, an uncommon (green) would be slightly above average, a rare (blue) would be a premium gun, an epic (purple) would be a very strong gun, and legendary (orange) guns are the best of the best.There 3 type of orange,Light Orange, Orange and Dark Orange. Dark Orange being the rarest. The rarity of each gun is indicated by color as stated on the page of each gun. (See Category:Weapons)

White < Green < Blue < Purple < Light Orange < Orange < Dark Orange

For those who like to cut to the chase on loot value, the game gives you the trade-in value of the item at the bottom of the stat sheet and the specs are color coded (like in mass effect) to let you know what stat is higher (green) or lower (red) than your currently equipped weapon.

Like in Wow and other RPG’s if you trying to fight a character with a skull next to their name and health bar, you are in for some hurt. It’s best to grind up or do other quests until you’re about the same level. There is definitely the same WoW damage/difficulty ramp when fighting slightly higher level characters that are skulled. You may blast through their shield, but they won’t take anywhere near the physical damage you think that they would with the amount of lead your feeding them. All the while your shield and life is being pulled out of you like a nightmarish happy-ending.

It has 4 player coop, in sort of the same vein as diablo battle.net matches, since it’s an RPG. Monsters get stronger with more players entering the world, weapon trades are possible, and joint XP. it’s great for me because I like soloing games anyways, but there is the opportunity to team up if you’re the social butterfly of headwounds.

Anyway, I’m interested in seeing where this game goes as it’s pretty fun, but I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, due to the RPG structure of this FPS. I loved Mass Effect, and this covers the combat (minus the non-realtime strategy portion), the weapon lust, and the character building, and it has a WoW open world (level gated) and grinding/loot model. An interesting mix, indeed.

On a scale to 1 – 100, I’d say, so far, it’s about an 85.

Drummed for the likes of !!! (chk chk chk) and LCD Soundsystem, and is now no more.

“Fuck you Luigi” — Captain Lou 1989

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. [...]

Among the graphic statements…is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.” [...]

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Now the “kid” in the above example was male, as was the translator who was allegedly busting up his bowels.

Also from The Daily Beast:

A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. … Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position. [...]

Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.

So the decision that Barack made to block the release of these photos is a little more justified. No matter how many “My Bad”‘s you issue after revealing that your government condoned and permitted sexual assault on male and female (sometimes underage) detainees in your charge, you are going to have a tough time “focusing on the future” without answering calls to prosecute military and CIA personnel and also civilian contractors. I really don’t think that there’s any way around prosecutions and further investigations, because I think that there isn’t way to ignore this any further. I read a story yesterday that said essentially Maliki was briefed on these photos and stated, “Bagdad will burn” if the world were to see these images. Releasing the photos without any actions taken to apprehend or answer to the crimes these images depict would probably rush the United States out of the region much sooner than planned, for good or for ill. The longer Obama hesitates to sort out these crimes and bring perpetrators/planners/instigators to justice the more he is complicit in the coverup.

I love how these bastards parse the phrase “pain and suffering” and choose to view both terms as a joint concept with which waterboarding was conveniently not compatible. I’m sure we would all enjoy to have our “pain and suffering” discounted in such a detached and calculated manner. As we all know, suffering = prolonged event. As long as you break one’s suffering into several “seasons” of “episodes” then something like watching “the hills” could not be considering “suffering”, I’m happy to say, by John Yoo’s definition.

Seriously, all these guys need a good stiff jab in the balls.