PixlBit

    I’m a little late in posting this because of funk I’ve been in. More of that below.

11:01 am – Arrived at my friend’s place, this time with the Kinect device I bought a few weeks ago. I hooked it up, calibrated it in a space about half the size suggested (I was five feet from the screen not ten), and started manipulating the menu system with my voice and hand gestures. I found it worked pretty well. I got to the sales & specials section with just my voice and figured out how to navigate the tabs with a specific flicking movement of the hand.  My only issue with it is that anyone’s voice can make a command and my friend, as a joke, told my system to navigate to something unsavory and I had to shout at my Xbox to stop. But I think I’ll integrate it into my usual routine and see if it speeds up how I get around on Xbox Live.

                Then I booted up Mars Rover Landing, which is free from Kinect Fun Labs by the way, and watched the slide show and video explaining the rover and its complicated journey and landing procedure. I was surprised at seeing a picture that showed the size of the lander. I knew it was the size of a small car, but in my head it always seemed small to me. It’s not. For something called a robot, it’s big. It’s amazing to me that we were able to launch it and then land it on Mars in one piece. And it’s got a frickin’ laser! How cool is that!

     Anyway, the game itself was very simple but fun. You first have to keep the capsule in the center of the screen as it is buffeted by turbulence on entering Mar’s atmosphere. You do this by simply stepping in any direction, your body controlling the capsule’s thrusters. Then you have to activate the explosive rivets (or were they thruster blasts, I’m not sure) by moving your hands to each of four boxed areas of the screen right when the electric signal lights them up. I found this a little tricky getting the timing right. Then you raise and lower your arms to control two thrusters that guide the lander down to the surface. You have limited fuel for this and so you don’t want to come down too slow or too fast just like Lunar Lander in 3D. Cool! And that’s it. That’s the whole game. Yea, it’s simple, but what do you want for free anyway. I liked it because I’m an Astronomy freak and can’t get enough of this stuff. The Kinect controls seemed to work just fine. I’m excited to try other Kinect games now like The Gunstringer. I only wish I had a bigger room to use it in.

12:00 pm – Started up Borderlands 2 with my level 50 Assassin on True Vault Hunter mode with my friend who’s got a level 59 Gunzerker. We mopped up some of the missions from the main story and I tweaked my equipment, a never ending task in this game.

1:41 – Break for lunch. I went out and brought back hoagies, but we kept playing while eating. Usually I watch some videos while munching, but I didn’t want to exit the game. B2 is too fun.

2:30 - Then moved to the Mr. Torgue’s DLC. The balance of difficulty seemed just right. The enemy was challenging to me but not overwhelmingly so. My friend was doing most of the mayhem of course, so maybe that’s why. He was having a pretty easy time of it, and just dashing from mission to mission as he has played this DLC several times already.

4:17 – We're near the end of Mr. Torgue’s and about to fight Piston. I’m halfway to level 51. I’m leveling at an ok pace. At some point, near the final mission, I start getting frustrated. I get lost in a level while my friend blasts through everything and is off to the next mission already. I’m feeling unnecessary in this fight. I’m also feeling rushed and unable to explore or really listen to the funny dialog. “This whole game feels meaningless to me”, I say. We finish off the final mission fighting Piston and the credits start rolling when my friend just clicks through it. I yell, “Hey, I haven’t seen that!” And here we have one of the problems with playing co-op in this game with two characters not precisely the same level.

     I muddle along a little more in co-op and then quit out to play on my own, thinking, "I’ll play through the whole Mr. Torgue DLC again by myself on Normal mode in order to see and hear the final screens.". I start it, but it is way too easy for me on Normal mode. Every shot is a one hit kill. This isn’t fun at all, so I stop and switch back to True Vault Hunter mode and start the Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt, still on my own. It’s very challenging - too challenging. I really struggle and die a lot. I’m just not doing enough damage to enemies. I quit out feeling even more depressed.

6:05 – I start up a new character of the Psycho class. I play through the first boss and try to think of a strategy that simplifies all the choices I need to make along the way. This game makes you think too much about equipment and skills, and I want to focus on gunning. I think I’m doing a good job, but when I get to the first boss, Boom and Bewm, I struggle. The Psycho’s skill of going into a rage and then regaining health on each melee kill, is pretty cool, but at level 3, I can’t keep it going for very long. I keep dying, my best weapon doing poor damage. I keep at it and get past the boss and onto the next town, but I keep struggling there too. I feel like it shouldn’t be this challenging so early in the game. I’ve taken advantage of everything I’ve come across, and I should be cruising along pretty good, but I’m not. It’s like I’ve been put too far above my skill level. I quit out of that, put my Xbox away, and leave my friend’s place early, completely fed up, frustrated and angry. I think about quitting gaming all together.

Tuesday 4:00 pm - It seems like Borderlands 2 is only best with multiple players all at the same skill level. Single player is a chore, and being in a group with higher level players doesn’t give you enough to do.

     Why does this game, which I should love, push me to the edge of rage quitting every darn time. Even Borderlands 1 did this to me. It’s something in the base design of this series that must bother me. Maybe it’s that it promises a run-and-gun experience, but then makes you fiddle with stats to make it work; it gives you hoards of enemies to fight but then offers a huge world and engaging characters to explore and talk to. Which do I do, run-and-gun and endlessly shoot enemies or manage stats and explore the landscape talking to every NPC? I like stat managing when I’m in a turn-based RPG, because I have time to think about it. Here it’s like making you do math on a timer. I want to explore this world and take in the story and dialog, but enemies keep showing up to make me dash around to survive. Or a co-op partner of higher level drags you from place to place at break neck speed so you have barely enough time to think.

    I’ll get over it, but Borderlands 2 is going in the backlog for a while.