T w e n t y S i d e d
The latest Stolen Pixels is about the broken Borderlands multiplayer we talked about yesterday. Some people will find this strip to be really moving. Enjoy.
The Best of 2018
I called 2018 "The Year of Good News". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
Deus Ex and The Treachery of Labels
Deus Ex Mankind Divided was a clumsy, tone-deaf allegory that thought it was clever, and it managed to annoy people of all political stripes.
I noticed that the incorrect “You can’t ever kick anyone ever” line was still in there.
The multiplayer via Gamespy is annoying, but once you get rolling in-game, I’m much more annoyed by how difficult it is to judge how far away I am from mission goals while I’m looking through my quest list.
I usually like to go to an area, do everything that’s available within walking distance, and eventually turn everything in at once back in town.
As it is, to figure out which mission I should optimally work on next, I have to:
1: Open the quest list
2: Select a quest
3: Close the quest list
4: Open the map
5: Note how far away a waypoint is (and try to tell if I’ll have to switch areas to get to it)
6: Repeat for every quest.
Annoying.
Ok, this appears to be a list of some valid points of what’s wrong with the game, but as for the comic, I don’t get the punchline at all. I’m assuming this is just one of those “you have to play it to get it” moments. Is the dancing robot some sort of “waiting” animation that happens in the game?
Blackbird71: The little robot appears throughout the game. He’s the first character you meet, and he sort of acts as the icon for the game. And he does that dance every one in a while when you’re not talking to him.
So yeah, you kind of had to be there.
“And he does that dance every one in a while when you're not talking to him.” aka all the freaking time.
@Shamus (3)
I figured as much. It just kind of fell flat when I had to stop and try to figure out what was going on. I guess that’s always the danger with inside jokes and the like.
Does anyone else find the Claptraps really annoying when they talk to you, but hilarious when they’re sitting around doing their own thing?
Claptrap reminds me of GIR from Invader Zim. <3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r258Jca9e0A
Moving, definitely.
I almost laughed my ass off rereading this:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/93665-Gearbox-PC-Borderlands-Destroys-Console-Versions
There’s no way in h*ll I’d suffer the likes of Gamespy. So I use LAN. Problem is none of my friends are on my LAN. So I use Hamachi. Problem solved.
Not that it makes the situation any better, but… do they even sell microphones without an ‘Off’ switch in the cord? I’ve never seen one without that little Mic On/Off switch.
So while having a mic with an inline on/off switch would help a little, my PC brethren did get shafted on the multiplayer.
The single-player is good enough for me, though. And I’ll be lanning it this weekend. “The online multiplayer is powered by gamespy” is the same to me as “This game does not support online multiplayer”.
As TehShrike notes, the host can kick players from the lobby. Agreed on the quest tracking
And along the lines of Don K’s post, it’s fairly trivial to mute your mic in the Windows Volume control panel…
Loving the game – single player is awesome, and multi doubly so (with the mic ON) once you jump through a couple of (one time) hoops – it’s not seamless, Shamus (ow) but it’s pretty damn hawt, no?
I thinks its not so much about muting your mic – it’s about muting other players mics. If someone is shouting into his mike you should have the option to mute him. From what I understand PC version of Borderlands lacks this option, which is yet another fail on Gearbox part.
The most epic fail is not being able to read all bonuses that a weapon has because the text gets cut off.
And about the microphone thing… I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. All my friends that I’ve played with have microphones on their tables/headsets and they’re always connected, at least when we play. I know this because we use Ventrilo when we play. And we have never heard anything from the in-game system, and we have tried. Is this just a GameSpy thing, which doesn’t happen in lan? If it is then I’m even more glad that we use Hamachi for online playing.