Speed Gamer

When someone plays a game from scratch, they run through the game rather comfortably. You trundle about firing off your gun at the various enemies that come into your view, and mow through quirky bosses who have this idea that you'll never figure out how to pump enough bullets into them while they do their darndest to shoot you down with nearly no effect in the end.

The other day I read an article about John Romero's upcoming MMO Shooter, where he was getting a bit tired of the Bullet Sponge games. When he mentioned that, the first thing that came to mind was Marcus Fenix actually expanding and then sweating bullets. And it's rather spot on. Halo, Gears of War, Borderlands. All of them are what you would call Bullet Sponge games because you just get hit over and over and over then walk it all off.

I'd been getting bored with my Xbox lately. I had finished Deus Ex Human Revolution again, and while I had fun being stealthy and sneaky, and I really enjoyed that final boss (even though I had powered through it because I was so well upgraded), I didn't have much more to do after that. I tried to play Borderlands for a bit, but lost interest in that again rather quickly. And scanning through my other games, I had nothing else I really wanted to play. Halo, Gears of War, Rainbow Six... I just didn't have any interest in playing them. I had Kingdom for Kieflings and ran through that in about 7 hours gameplay... and that was it. Was rather disappointed that there wasn't anything more to the game than "Build yourself a Town", but I knew that was all it was going to be.

But after loading up my computer, the first in a LONG time, I checked out the games on there. I had quite a few games, most of which came from a pair of game packs that were on discount at the time, namely the ID SUPER PACK, and a special edition Portal 2 pack, which was a number of Indy games that had DLC features based on Portal 2. Because I like both Portal 2 and most ID Software games, I picked them up.

So this left me with a few games that I didn't have before, but also a few games that I DID have before, but had never finished. So I downloaded and installed Quake, from the 1996 era. Now that's an old game, almost 16 years old as I discovered (22 June) and while I have played it several times over, I have never actually sat down and played the full game. So that's what I decided to do.

It was like riding a Fiend again. Though you don't really ride fiends, you just dodge them as best as you can while they jump about like madmen, and if you're lucky and there's two or three of them, they'll start attacking each other. And it wasn't quite the same as riding fiends, because I found out how to turn on the Mouselook, which changed the game significantly for me.

But the overall experience, was running around like crazy trying not to get cut in twain by Death Knights, blown up by Ogres, and electrified by Shamblers. That last one is hard to fucking prevent, too. Bastard usually pops up right behind you while you're on low health, goes "ZAP" and you're done.

But running around and trying NOT to get hit by bullets in a fast paced game really made my head spin when I put Quake down for a bit so I didn't get sick of it (and didn't have fucking nightmares that afternoon) and loaded up Borderlands. And the only thing I realised is that this game, which I had thought was a fast paced game of it's time, heck it even compared the experience to the offspring of Quake and Diablo, felt extremely sluggish. Sure, the guns fired off like mad, the effects were much prettier, but Jesus christ did it take forever to circle-strafe someone. It was a strange experience and I quickly turned back over to the 1996 shooter so I could continue to dodge Shamblers chasing after me, and escape the Vores Fire Pod attacks. (Fucking homing bastards they are)

This hasn't turned me off Borderlands 2, though. I won't be playing Quake forever, I'll be happy just to finish the games two mission packs, and there's no motivation to be perfect or anything. (No Achievements, y'see) Borderlands 2 is also making itself very appealing, aside from the obviously awesome Teaser Trailer.

The developers at various interviews and panels have said various improvements will be in Borderlands 2, such as a greater narrative, more customizable characters and vehicles, more varied weapons, and improved AI and NPC's. On top of that, there's a fifth character Class coming which is particularly exciting, and then there's the prospect of their DLC's, of which will be expansion packs rather than some piss poor overpriced game feature.

But the question still comes up though: What if the game were more like Quake?