My Borderlands 2 Review and Guilt.

First things first, I am not a FPS type of gal. I doln't care about COD and all its avengers, I really don't understand Halo, and I'm just not too fond of anything else that resembles a scenario of which "this is what it would be like if you were drafted into the military!"

In some cases, I am willing to put my motives aside and try one of these FPS games, because they have a sort of significant back-story behind them. One example would be Fallout 3, which has a plot so engrossing that it should be made into a feature-length film.

Borderlands 2 is also one of these games. At first, I wasn't too sure about trying this game. Even though the cover art is what made me interested in the first place, the whole idea of playing a FPS made me hesitate, but when I read the plotline on wikipedia,  I figured, ehh what the hell. Here is the plot copypasta'd from wiki:

Five years have passed since the events of Borderlands, when vault hunters exposed the secrets of the Eridian Vault. A man called Handsome Jack has taken credit for the vault hunters' actions and claimed the wealth of the Vault, allowing him to take over the Hyperion Corporation and effectively gain dominion over Pandora. Promising to clean the lawless planet up, Handsome Jack embarks on a campaign to exterminate Pandora's existing colonist population and industrialize the planet. The main symbol of Handsome Jack's rule is a massive supply base built in the shape of an "H" on Pandora's moon. The base is always visible, and can deploy Hyperion forces to any point on Pandora. Borderlands 2 begins with the player fighting to the death to win a priceless cache of loot in a gladiatorial tournament run by Handsome Jack for his personal amusement. The player succeeds and gains notoriety, but Handsome Jack sees this as a threat to his popularity with the people. At the tournament's end he denies the reward and leaves the player for dead in a tundra. The mysterious Guardian Angel from the first game then contacts the player and explains that Handsome Jack must be killed, directing the player to rescue the four original vault hunters from Hyperion's clutches to accomplish this. Although Jack's full intentions are unknown, part of his plan involves finding an ancient evil named "The Warrior" that is located somewhere on Pandora.

 
See? interesting, huh? In the beginning, I wasn't really looking forward to playing this game (since I had already bought it, I felt obligated to play it), but I figured, hey, if it doesn't work out, I can always return it, right?


Wrong. This game isn't going anywhere. People claim that this game is addictive, and I'll tell you why: When I first began the game, I breezed through the first few parts so fast that I became confident in my abilities to conquer any enemy at any cost. At one point I became so engrossed in the game that I started yelling "come at me, bro!" to my television screen. Now here is where you realize that the game has got you. At one point I died, and instead of re-spawning near where I left off, somehow I re-spawned all the way on the other side of the town. For at least 3 minutes I felt like I was being jadded, and wondering why I was transported into a vast wasteland instead of where my save point was, only to find out that I WAS near my save point, but the camera was angled to make me think that I was supposed to go in the opposite direction. HAHA funny, ok, I see what you did there. Even though I WAS mad, I had realized that if I weren't so damn into this game at the moment, I would have just shut off my Xbox and went to bed.
This game isn't without its faults, though; the boss fights are too much for tv. Borderlands 2 is clearly not a game welcoming to newcomers. The boss fights are really difficult and are time consuming, please be expected to die at lease 10 times during this round. I find that cowering in a corner and waiting until the enemy comes to you easier than running into combat head-on. The enemies in this game are brutal, and they level up every time you level up. The amount of violence and hostility in this game is so epic it makes the wasteland in the Fallout series look like the fucking garden of Eden.

Overall, I really, really like this game, a little more than I should, because like I said before, I don't play FPS, they SUCK, and normally they lack plotline, but this game is better than most FPS in my opinion. Yeah there's enemies, and there's parts where you wont know what the hell is going on, but the game wont let you down, there are marker points on your map, a cute little robot named claptrap whom I will defend at all costs, and GUNNNSSS, loads and loads of guns.

Now here is the guilt. I kinda gave up on Borderlands 1. I did. As I played through several days of Skyrim, Borderlands just sat there collecting dust, because I had played through it and found myself frustrated at the fact that it just seemed to throw you into the game, whereas Borderlands 2 eases you into it. I recommend this game for anyone

Being A Girl Gamer.

I'm just curious. When did girl gamers become a heated topic of controversy?

Seriously, google "girl gamers" and you'll see a bunch of stuff come up about why it's controversal and then you'll see pics of naked chicks with controllers and a caption that says "girl gamer". But what does being a girl gamer REALLY mean?

When I was little, I practically grew up around video games. First we had a computer, then we had a super Nintendo that my older sisters played ALL the time, and then when the playstation first came out, I was fascinated by it's open worldness and freedom. In elementary school, I enjoyed playing the little computer games when they had nothing else for us to do, and when the sims came out, I HAD to have a computer, even if it means not eating a full dinner for a few weeks. Now, I know that some girl gamers are quick to say that they've always hung out with the guys and never played dolls, I had a better relationship with guys in school, but outside of school I had female friends, and we didn't play dolls (I have always been scared of dolls) we played with our build-a-bears. But eventually I because the social outcast, and no one wanted to hang out with me, all of my sisters had grown up and moved out, so it's always been me and a kick ass video game. Video games have always been my best friend.

But some of us "girl gamers" just downright infuriate me. There are 2 1/2 types that annoy me.

The first one is the attention whore FPS player. This chick ONLY plays Call of duty and/or Halo and the only reason she plays them is because she wants to seem like the relatable-datable chick that all the guys want. These are the girl gamers that I used to experience in school, but that's because I went to a school full of sluts. I can't even begin to explain how many times I have been in a group conversation about video games where the only other girl is going on and on about Call of duty. And she never says anything other than "oh I play call of duty!" like that's the only video game to ever exist on Earth, and she doesn't say it because she really wants to talk about it, she just wants every guy in the group to have an epiphany and think "GASP! That's my dream girl" but no, honey. This chick knows nothing else about video games. This is the girl who you see pics of online with some lingerie holding a controller. Note: the quickest way to call this girl out on her BS is to throw questions about the game in her face: " what's your highest kill streak? what weapon do you use the most? do you use any cheats?" and if they somehow manage to answer those questions, then ask them this:

"what other games do you like to play?"

The second "girl gamer" that annoys me is the one that likes to say every five minutes how much of a tomboy she is and how she's never played with dolls and blah blah blah.. I understand how gender stereotypes are sometimes still in 50's housewife and we DO have to state our place in the gaming world from time to time. For an example, when I used to live in a small town in Arizona, the employees at the gamestop practically KNEW me and everything, but once I moved back to Atlanta, no matter how many times I go into the gamestop near my house they still assume that I'm shopping for some imaginary boyfriend or imaginary little brother instead of myself. These stereotypes are alive and well, but the stereotype of the badass girl gamer annoys me even worse. Sweetie, we are aware that you like boy things, but you don't need to piss on every single tree; seriously, every single forum, every single youtube video about video games, every single live podcast, there is a bunch of girl gamers reciting what seems to be some sort of creed:

I never played with dolls when I was little

I have more male friends than female friends

I like doing things that boys do

and I am a girl.

Congratulations. However, I WOULD be contradicting myself if I didn't say I wasn't guilty of this (I just stated like, half of it in the first paragraph) but it's like spam and it's irritating, it's just another way some girl gamers make us look bad. 

Another type of "girl gamer" that has the potential to annoy me is the anime freak. Back in the sailor moon - namco - konami - pokemon days of my childhood I loved anime, but if you ask me a question about which character from Total Blade Power I liked the most, Ranuke or Ishuamuki, you wont really get a response out of me. There is nothing wrong with loving anime, it is fucking hilarious and a lot of it is cool, but I guess since a lot of the makers of video games are Japanese it is assumed that I'm supposed to religiously know the name of all anime series ever to exist. Plus I kinda grew out of my anime phase a while ago. 

Disclaimer: girl gamers are indeed, awesome people, and while we are the minority of the gaming world, there are some people who hear the words "female gamer" and roll their eyes, because there are "US" who enjoy games because it's always been a part of who we are and sometimes it's a world we can escape to when the real world gets too tough to deal with, but because it IS a modern trend, some people just want to hop on the bandwagon and go "oh yeah I like video games too" but no, I LOVE video games, I love how it takes me to another world, I love how I can accomplish more in a game than I can in real life, and I love it so much that I am going to school for video game development. For me it's not just a thing, It's all I have ever really had. 

And for the record, there is nothing wrong with playing FPS games, after all, they are "games" but real gamers play all type of games, regardless of the nature or genre, however, I don't really care for FPS; they lack story depth and if I wanted to play a game where I am in the military, I would've just joined the military FFS. I used to play FPS back in 2004. And I have played COD: hated it. That's for the stereotypes.

BTW check out the article The Different Type Of Girl Gamers by ComicalDisaster. And this clip from family guy about girl gamers. Sad but true: