Ezio Jensen The 3rd

So I played Borderlands 3 last night, checked socials later to find.... Atari have announced for winter the 7800+, a new version of the old console.

So Borderlands is a series i've followed for a bit, having played since the 1st game which was a bit a chore to get through. Most of that game was fighting bandits and wildlife for 80% while traipsing through the brownest scrapyards in the galaxy. Its
In my opinion the worst borderlands in the whole series... and my most completed game of them all. Funny how that works.

So starting in Borderlands 3, I found a legendary grenade mod in one of the first vending machines you come across. I did the quest of fixing the vending machine for marcus and I find the legendary pistol infinity in a red chest... all before I even met the twins at the broadcast center... hmmmm I'm sure this wont devalue the excitement of finding a legendary in this game.

One of the biggest complaints you'll hear about borderlands 3 is that the writing is... awful... cringe... tries too hard to be funny. I think its because there was a push to make sure everyones line of dialogue had to be somewhat "funny". Its like the awkward kid who thinks people will like them if they're funny but they dont know how to be funny, so they just mimic characters they've seen that they think are funny in the hopes people will find them funny.

The Calypso Twins aren't great villians. Yeah everyone felt they were weak as antagionists. Infact thats something that the borderlands series has an issue with, they only had 1 great villian in the whole franchise, Handsome Jack. He was a narcissist, megalomaniacal, sociopathic jackass who will mock you in the early game and dehumanise you as a bandit. He very much hypes himself up as the saviour of pandora, destined to cleanse pandora of its bandit crisis which to him, is everyone on pandora who isnt groveling to him. He taunts you with glee as he watches you fall into his plan but then afterwards when you've assaulted the "bunker", you manage to land a serious blow against him, and he stops mocking you, instead makes it clear he wants you to suffer. His psychotic tendencies come out, unmasked, as he calmly tells you that once he awakens "The Warrior" he is going to go after everyone you've ever known before killing you himself, all in retalition to what you dared to him.

Jack was memorable, hateable and there hasnt been a single antagionist to match that level of vitriol. Steele in the first game didnt do much other than a couple of messages and dying at the end. Knoxx from the 1st games dlc was more interesting as an antagionist given how much he suffered under such incompetent, nepotistic leaders. The presequel had Zarpodon who was more of an anti-villian and at the very least, a neat contrast to jacks descent in that game. The Twins just acted like cocky "haha funny, please laugh" kind of characters that dont have much beyond being sirens. But to gearbox's credit, the general idea of the main antagionists being based on streamers is actually a pretty neat idea.

Given the influence that a lot of online personalities have nowadays, with roving masses of fans supporting, villians who were influencers were a pretty great idea for an antagionist in the borderlands series. Just a straight up literal cult of bandits who sees themselves as a family, supporting their "godqueen" as they wage galactic war on her behalf. Yeah that wouldve been a great way to explore aspects of streamer culture and even a bit on toxic family culture. Unfortunatly they didnt really manage to realise that fully and insteasd the Calypsos were just underwhelming.

So is there anything good about Borderlands 3? Yeah its hands down the best playing borderlands game. The combat in game feels more active compared to previous entries, I used to just stay behind cover and aim for weakpoints, occasionally using an action skill but in 3? I moved around a lot more and played more aggressively and I enjoyed that. The guns feel at their best with the unique gun quirks being fun to play with. And the skill trees? The fact you can choose from different action skills rather than just one with going down the skill tree opening up addons that can add more effects to your action skill and that the vault hunters in this being the most mechanically interesting. Yeah no this is honestly the best borderlands in spite of the dialogue and story.

And you can solve the dialogue problem in some way, you can look up on what files you need to remove to get rid of the dialogue on pc or you can just go into settings and turn the dialogue volume and subtitles off and prepare to wait a bit during some sections.

Hopefully Borderlands 4 ends up playing just as well if not better than 3 and the dialogue becomes a lot more bearable and less trying to be funny... because the only thing thats funny is the movies rotten tomatoes score.

Anyway onto news. The entity that is currently puppetting the corpse of Atari has announced a new version of the 7800 for winter 2024: the atari 7800+.

So you know how Nintendo released the NES Classic and it created a whole boom of mini consoles aimed at exploiting nostalgia? It was pretty big withb a number of stuff like the psone classic, a c64 mini and even a small dos pc that can play the oregon trail. Nowadays thats died down though something does come along to try and capitalise on nostalgia again. But at the very least this one looks to have a bit more to it.

For one it comes with a wireless controller for your use, a new game for the console with the news that more games are coming soon and that the console works with any 7800 game along with any 2600 games. So if you're interested in retro gaming, I guess you might be interested.

Thank you all for reading. Wont be a post tomorrow as i'm going out tonight. Feel free to leave feedback or game suggestions, anons are currently on.

So last night I played Metroid Prime Remastered, checked socials later to find.... Cat confirmed for Monster Hunter Wilds.

Cat

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Where was I? Ok yeah, Metroid Prime.

So Metroid Prime is pretty much my first Metroid game that I've played and to completion. A fine game for the Gamecube, it and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes were for me a big introduction to that style of game, often reffered to as Metroidvania. Perhaps that was why I choose to play this last night after covering castlevania the night before.

Now, while the games are highly praised now with the prime trilogy serving as an example of a trilogy done right, that'll soon change with a 4th entry coming soon turning it in a quadrilogy. Then again maybe it'll be a second trilogy like the star wars sequel trilogy.... oh I dun jinxed it didnt I?

Thing is, while the games are great now, y'all recall how people felt when it was coming to release? It was a pretty chill reception towards the news that this new metroid game would be departing from the classic formula and be a first person game. See, after super metroid, people were waiting for a new metroid game on the N64, hoping to see Samus jump into the 3d space. Nintendo however wasnt sure how to best do a metroid game in 3d so the N64 was skipped for the metroid series, smash bros being the only case of seeing Samus on the system. So when people hear that a Metroid game is coming soon to Gamecube, there was some hype over the announcement, people were excited but when the news about it being 1st person was out, some folks had a change of tone.

There was quite a bit of groaning over this change, people felt that this new direction wouldnt work for the series and that this new Metroid Prime would bomb hard. And then the game launched amd everyone agreed it kicked ass. I bring this up because this isnt something new, people are still doing this thing of writing something off and saying its bad before its even out. Its pretty common to see in the comments of trailers and previews of folks just dunking on what was shown, decrying it as garbage or bad before the feature is released to the public.

People have dunked on Deadlock based on unfinished assests that were leaked. People have dunked on GTA VI back when the only thing shown at the time were test footage leaked from hackers. People were already writing off the Silent Hill 2 remake by bloober team because of Konami's track record and Bloobers awful storytelling but are quick to change their minds with the recent gameplay trailer and news that a lot of the original devs are on board to handle the story aspects and are expanding on certain things they themselves wanted to expand on.

It's just, is it not common sense to atleast wait until something is fully released before critiquing it? Maybe dont judge a meal on raw ingredients alone? Because when its not dunking on something for being another rouglelike, another pixel art game, another hero shooter or another soulslike, its stupid shit like "dei"...

Maybe Cynicism has grown to become everyones goto mood these days. Why bother with getting excited for something when it'll likely bomb. If you adopt a negative attitude, then worst case you'll feel justified for writing it off and if its good, then you get to be pleasantly surprised. Its win-win right? Except, when you assume the worst about anything, about everyone, you end up going down a very nihilistic rabbit hole where you dont feel hopeful about anything out of a belief that it'll only let you down.

Cynicism may feel like a safe bet but it should never be a replacement for optimism.

Where was I? Right, Prime. So Metroid Prime has a remastered version which is honestly just damn fine. The original game had some wonderful enviroments to explore with some fantastic visuals that made the gamecube just shine compared to its... more successful... contemporaries. So booting up the remaster and finding the visuals look even better here, damn, kudos to the devs who handled the remaster, this is just impressive.

Storywise the game does seem a bit sparse in that department, at least in my opinion. You go to the frigate, find out ridley is alive again and chase him to tallon iv and.... bum around ruins I guess. I mean there is the impact crater and the goal of getting the artifacts to open the way to the source of the phazon but... what was samus's main goal throughout the game? Was it to find Ridley and put him down, again. It seems like you mostly forget about him until the Phendrana Drifts cutscene where he flys over and at his boss battle. To be fair I havent really took a deep dive into the lore in game so my memory might be hazy.

One thing I can definatly recall from the original and in this remaster is a lot of points where you're are required to backtrack to a lot of areas to get essential items. You beat the major boss at Chozo Ruins, you move on from there throught Magmoor and Phendrana and then you're required to go back and deal with ghosts to get the ice beam, and you'll have to come back again once you get the X-ray visor so you can deal with them back at the ruins boss room. I can maybe recall a lot reviews crticising this about the game but maybe this is just a moot point since it gives you an opportunity to grab any missle expansions and energy tanks that you werent able to get before.

Something new with the remaster is a selection of controls, allowing the classic controls from the original release, motions controls similar to the wii port, a hybrid set of both controller and motions and finally a twin stick layout thats based on more convential controls. I mainly just stuck with classic since its what im used too but also because its what the original game was designed around.

One feature that this game started is the scan visor which your feelings on it will depend on whether you're doing a 100% or a casual run. On a casual run the scan visor is useful for learning about enemy weaknesses and learning about the emviroments, gathering bits of chozo and pirate lore to learn about the world you're exploring. On a 100% though, it can be a bit of chore to scan anything that counts towards your percentage, power ups, enemies, bosses and any lore you come across. You're gonna need to whip that scan visor out frequently at times just to make sure you don't miss anything.

You know what, as good looking as this remaster is, I wonder why they did this and not just port Metroid Prime Trilogy, the collection of games bundled for wii? They even brought it over to the Wii U's Virtual Console. Why not port that instead of this remaster? And are they planning to remaster Echoes and Corruption later? I'm not entirely sure but in the end, one thing is certain...

They didnt include any of the unlocks from GC Prime... no NES Metroid.... not even the fusion suit.... lame.... still nice tho..

Thank you all for reading this, feel free to leave game suggestions and feedback. Anons are currently on.

Everyones horny on some level, some people think its just normal to have a moral crisis over it.

Have this pic I took from muskrat site

So given the recent teaser trailer announcing BL4, does anyone want to see a post for midnight gaming on any of borderlands games and if so, which one?