The president of gearbox, the company behind Borderlands, said that in the face of its unexpected and resounding success a sequel seemed like a no-brainer. However, if they make it just like the first one, the critics aren't going to excuse its shortcomings again. So, I have a few points to bring up:

1. Fire the person behind the level design
The level design in Borderlands is absolutely horrible. Wide open spaces for no reason just annoy the players and detract from play time. Sporadic twists and confusing overlays make the map next to unusable at points. Whoever did the level design in Borderlands can't redeem him or herself. They must be fired, and someone with experience needs to take over. This is non-debatable.

2. Fire the person behind enemy and NPC design
Firstly, the slack-jawed yokel accent was a little bit funny at first, but when it repeated over and over and over and over again throughout the whole game, it just became annoying and embarrassing.

Second, the enemy situation. Most games will rely on one or two enemies referred to as annoyance enemies in the business. Let's make a list of all of the annoyance enemies in Borderlands: spitter skags, alpha skags, midget shotgunners, midget psychos, rakks, spiderant gyros, spiderant... everything on playthrough two, turrets, guardians. I'm sure that's not even all of them, but honestly, three is too many in any game. Add this shortcoming to the fact that there are a grand total of four types of main enemies in the game and it's clear to see that these people need to be jobless. Bring someone in with real creative talent, and, better yet, experience.

3. Hire someone to write the story, don't let your nine year old son do it
This is self-explanatory. The story in Borderlands is near non-existent. What's there, plainly and honestly, sucks terribly. I realize Borderlands isn't the type of game that others such as Mass Effect 2 are, that is, they don't look to draw you deeply into the story and characters. That's fine, but at least have a story and a little more background than, "you heard something might be here, look for it."

4. Mini-map, waypoints and more fast travel points
These two things can probably be left out if you get a decent level designer, because he won't be half retarded and make the maps enormous for no reason. However, I insist that at least the mini-map be put in. There's no reason not to have it except laziness on the programmer's part. Borderlands currently requires you to check the overhead map every ten seconds or so, and that, sadly, is not exaggeration. The fast travel system in the game sucked too. The locations really need to be more specific and more plentiful.

5. Get rid of vehicles
The vehicles in this game are horrible. They add nothing to the game except the ability to move around the maps quickly, which is usually hampered by bad level design anyway. Again, getting a real level designer will get rid of the need of vehicles.

6. Actually playtest this time, and implement the suggestions and fix the bugs
The amount of bugs in the initial game release and the subsequent downloadable content is inexcusable. We don't mind waiting a few more months for you to actually fix your game. Also, when your playtesters tell you something sucks and needs to be changed, listen to them. There's no way anyone played Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot and thought it was good.

7. Regarding add-ons such as The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
This one wouldn't have been so bad if a little more time, thought and effort had been put it. Too many bugs, disheveled level design (seeing a trend here yet?), random, nonsensically placed quests, etc. Again, listen to your playtesters.

8. Regarding add-ons such as Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot
If you ever have thoughts of implementing another add-on like this, sign the rights to the game over to another company, seal the windows in your office, lock everyone inside and pump it full of carbon monoxide.

9. Regarding add-ons such as The Secret Fortress of General Knoxx
There was absolutely no reason not to have fast travel points in this. Driving around in the awful vehicles with annoyance enemies fluttering all about you all the time while fighting against the buggy controls of the vehicles that would randomly make them flip when you tried to turn with the afterburners on does not equal fun. Running back and forth from quests to T-Bone Junction was total garbage. The whole add-on was a step in the right direction, but you had to screw it up by making the whole thing annoying and inconvenient.

10. Ease up on the quest reminders
Who thought it was a good idea to get reminders about side-quests every thirteen seconds? Once when they become available, once when you load your game after not playing for a while. That's more than sufficient.

11. Give an option to turn of certain drops
Players should be able to adjust whether or not they want certain colored items to drop, most especially whites. I'm not suggesting that the other rarities drop more, just that if the player had selected not to have white drops, whenever one is randomly generated by the game, it just doesn't appear. It doesn't affect game balance and helps save the player's sanity.

12. New classes, more skills
The classes' skill trees are so similar to each other that it's not even funny. Everything about them is so cookie cutter on top of that. Variety at end game is almost non-existent. Make more skill tree branches, make the choices more complex. Everything's too over-simplified.

13. The bloodwing
Honestly, why didn't you fix this? Half the time the stupid thing just flies around in a circle above the enemies. Even when it does hit, it doesn't do enough damage to be worth anything. This really crippled Mordecai's usefulness. Give him a better special ability.

14. Get rid of grenades
Grenades are barely passable in the usable category at the very beginning of the game. Towards the end of playthrough one, they've become next to useless. Starting during playthrough two, there's absolutely no reason to have them. Just get rid of them, nobody uses them anyway.

I have rehauled the site since it was getting a bit bloated. Granted, I'm the only one who is going to notice or read this news post, but it makes me feel better.

I finished playing through Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier. I have to say that early on, the game hits you hard with a great battle system with intricacies that keep on coming. However, later into the game battles can be tedious, long and boring. The boss battles are particularly guilty of ridiculous length. Let me just say that if you're good at RPGs you will be able to optimize your characters to the point that you know for sure they aren't all going to die. However, bosses can take of thousands of hits (literally, as you'll easily be doing 30+ hits on an average, non-power-up attack) to defeat, and the boss battles are plentiful.

All in all, though, this 30+ hour game does manage to hold your attention. It's definitely something new, and adds some good features to classic RPG gameplay (when I mention classic RPG gameplay, I don't mean the battle system, which is innovative and unique). This is a very notable point, as the story line is not captivating in any way once it starts to unfold. It's entirely too confusing and disjointed, and the dialogue, while entertaining, is disjointed and does little to keep the player moving along in the right direction on the intended path.

If you're a fan of RPGs with unique elements and can handle the lack of a solid storyline (which is something I generally rate as unforgivable), I really recommend you pick this game up. The battle system will keep you busy until you finally master it a few hours in. Even then the minor details will continue to reveal themselves to you, generally keeping battle interesting. Towards the end it will seem to drag on needlessly, but I felt accomplished when I was done. The learning curve is based almost entirely on your grasp of the intricacies of the combat system, and the difficulty is a bit high at the begining. Those who aren't discouraged by the harsh start will be rewarded.

I noticed there has been a real lull in portable releases. The PSP could practically be considered dead at this point, and nothing exhilarating has been released on the DS since Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier. Other consoles aren't fairing too much better, with a very notable exception: UFC 2009: Undisputed. The president of the UFC, Dana White, realized that the last few UFC offerings for the PS2, Xbox and GameCube were very disappointing. That out of then way, UFC 2009 is absolutely brilliant. The strategy of MMA is captured very well, while still maintaining an arcade-like pace to keep players from getting bored. Fans of fighting games who are interested in a very high level of depth or gamers who are fans of UFC or MMA in general have no excuse for passing this one up.

I've been looking at playing some Free Realms. I've played several free MMOs in the past, with various levels of satisfaction. Free Realms really looks like no other MMO offering, whether free- or pay-to-play. I'll definitely have to give it a few hours of consideration.

Finally, I'm having trouble admitting to myself that I'm just not that excited about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was great. The single player was fresh, although very short, and everyone knows the multiplayer trumped anything else at the time. Keeping this in mind, I gave Call of Duty: World of War a try. My issue with the WW2 Call of Duty games is the difficulty ramp. You can always tell when you're on the final level of a Call of Duty game, and it has nothing to do with the storyline. Suddenly you're dying at every twist and turn, and you end up seeing the same checkpoint dozens of times before you can see the end credits. The multiplayer, while good, didn't offer the same ground-breaking presentation of Modern Warfare. It seemed as though they took Modern Warfare and dialed the time scale back instead of coming up with new innovations. The replacement of the helicopter with dogs is a good example. While offering the same type of benefits, the dogs were just ridiculous. Very poorly done indeed, and I apologize for not going into more detail.

My point is that I feel Call of Duty is falling back into a rut. I realize Modern Warfare 2 is going to feature new experiences. But overall, it seems like it's going to be more of the same, and that's unfortunate, but it's what series like this do. I hope they come up with enough new ideas to make the multiplayer feel fresh, but I just can't see how it can be done without a complete overhaul, which is something I realize the developers are not going to be willing to do.

I'm beginning to think that I can't be let down by the God of War series. I haven't played the mobile game, probably never will and don't really consider it part of the series. But at any rate, this is one of the best video game series I've ever had the pleasure of playing. The only down side to this game is that it's short; it only took me about six hours to complete. However, it's non-stop action for the entire six hours. Although the PS2 versions are longer games overall, there are lulls in the action, which are the only faults I find in those games, so there's your trade off.

At any rate, if you own a PSP, play this game. It's amazing. Now I'm going to finish up Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier on my DS. Yes, that's one amazing name.

So it's no secret that Fallout 1, 2 and 3 are awesome. I know a lot of die hard fans of the original two were worried that Fallout 3 was too much of a deviation in game styles, and I certainly was too. But I trusted Bethesda, because Oblivion is freaking awesome. And it turned out very well. It's not just the modern generation of gamers who appreciated it. There was so much of the first two games reflected in the third that it wasn't just a great Bethesda game, it was a great Fallout game too. The downloadable content is another story, but we'll leave that alone since I already covered it.

Some people liked Fallout: Tactics. I did not, but plenty of legitimate Fallout fans did, so that is what it is. For those of us who had the misfortune of playing Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel... well, I'm just not going to get into that, either. It was absolute garbage and was tagged with the Fallout name just to generate sucker sales. I bought mine for $4.99 in a Media Play bargain bin, and I'm not really sure it was worth that.

Now, to segue to my next topic, let me tell you about a little development team called Obsidian. Did you play Neverwinter Nights? Awesome, right? Right. What about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic? Fantastic, as well. Did you play the sequels to those two games? If you did, you will have noticed that it's like the mechanics that made them really stand out were removed. What you were left with were two games that on their own could have been called decent, maybe even good. But since they were the sequels to two absolutely amazing games, it just felt cheapened.

Who was responsible for the first of each amazing series? BioWare, another of my recent favorite developers. BioWare, like Bethesda Softworks, is really good at making games that seem familiar enough that they're easy to get into and play, but have new ideas implemented that just keep drawing you back. Unfortunately, they're also good at passing off their sequels to Obsidian. Yes, Obsidian's development team is like a trivialization engine. You put something great in, you get something decent out.

Which leads me to my final point. Fallout: New Vegas (wasn't that the name of a town in that awful live action Double Dragon movie?) is being developed by Obsidian. Now, if you're really into the series, you'll know that some of the original developers of Fallout 2 work for Obsidian. My fear is that being around all of the mediocrity that powers Obsidian has made the point irrelevant.

Alright, the actual series that this one falls into is a bit complicated, but not too much. When playing it you'll notice a striking similarity to the Paper Mario series. As you've seen, the Paper Mario series isn't actually a coherent series. Everything is touted as a "sequel in spirit" to the last one, so that is what it is. When in comes down to it, this game is a sequel to Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and technically those are the only two games in this particular series.

At any rate, this one is great. I finished it at just over 16.5 in-game hours, with about 1.5 lost hours due to the epically poor end game design. Without spoiling it too much for anyone, after you rescue Princess Peach, for the love of God, don't listen to those lying toads. Save your game before you go to the back room to see the Professor. And a fair warning, the last "boss" battle took me an hour and fifteen minutes, and that was my second play through. Being my second play through, I was skipping straight through the dialogue and I didn't have to waste time finding the method for defeating the boss. Although I didn't time it the first time, I'm willing to venture that it took over two hours. So buckle down and button up when you're going for the final push (you'll know when that is, they make it painfully obvious).

I guess I should probably think about playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for GBC now. I remember putting about an hour into sometime in 2003 so maybe I'll have to wrap it up. For now I think it's time for some God of War: Chains of Olympus.

At last update, I installed Mass Effect, which I played for all of about five minutes before going to The Pitt. I still haven't finished The Pitt (although I'm close) because, quite frankly, it's not that good. Operation: Anchorage was better, but neither is a very solid offering. Also, it didn't up the level cap to 25 like was originally planned. It was supposed to up it to 25 and the next DLC release would up it to 30. Instead, they just omitted the feature and are moving the cap to 30 next time, as planned. Finally, the Xbox Live version was so riddled with bugs, the original release was completely unplayable. They're worried about money now, and it's really showing in the quality of the releases.

But for now I've been focused on Mario & Lugi: Partners in Time for the DS. It's really great, goes right along with the Paper Mario series (not including, of course, the unwanted stepchild of the series, Super Paper Mario). I'm waiting on my PSP stuff to get here so I can tear apart the firmware and start playing games on it for free. The greatest part is all of the PSX2PSP releases you can find on private/public BitTorrent trackers. The wait's killing me.

It's been a while since I posted an update, and I'm sure that means my one faithful reader (me) has been wondering what's going on (don't think about this statement too hard). First, there was moving, which is always a giant pain. But really, I've been playing Fallout 3 in the day time and Golden Sun in the night time (about an hour or two before bed). I have once again restarted on Fallout 3. Bethesda games make me obsess about perfecting my character. I reached level 20 on the last one that I used to run through Operation Anchorage and realized that I could do better. I think the third time's the charm. Now with the release of The Pitt, I can get him to level 25. It's odd to think I had to wait for the level cap to increase, since the first time I played through I finished the game with a level 13 character.

At any rate, I've just installed Mass Effect again. I'm going to do exactly what I've been doing in Fallout 3: avoiding the main quest for the most part and just doing everything else. I'm not sure how long it can keep me from Fallout 3, though, especially since I purchased and installed The Pitt yesterday. But from what I've read, there are bugs galore, in true Bethesda fashion.

I started up a new game in Fallout 3 after downloading Operation Anchorage. It starts out in true Bethesda expansion fashion: as soon as you get out of the vault you have the option to go to the quest. From start to finish the simulation took me probably around three hours. I know when I first heard about how the integrated it (the whole thing is a simulation, like that creepy 1950s utopia you go to) I was a bit worried, but honestly, that's one of the few things they did well with this Operation Anchorage.

I'm not going to say it was bad, it just really wasn't great. It was lackluster and didn't have a lot of the charm that made everyone love Fallout 3. Honestly, it's more like a first person shooter than and RPG. I don't know if that's what they intended, and it's quite reasonable that it is, but the whole game does not suit itself towards being a first person shooter. Anchorage lacks direction and isn't very involving. It's worth the download if you're as big a fan of the series as I am, or even if you're not, it might be worth your time due to the wealth of gear you get at the end.

So at first this game seemed pretty neat. Honestly though, it doesn't really have anything to offer to have kept me playing past the fourth hour. All of the concepts and the game play seemed passable at the least, and some were quite interesting, but it sputtered out around hour two and totally died at hour four. So, once again, I have hit a bump. I started up Final Fantasy 2 on Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls. Hopefully by the time I finish it I will have found something out.

HarmonyBox has officially bitten every piece of the proverbial dust. That means that my EarthBound Zero save game was trashed, which really sucks. I still feel like I can start it over and play through to where I was again without losing interest and getting frustrated, though, once the new HarmonyBox gets assembled.