Gametastic
Been playing a lot of PC games recently. Could be for a number of reasons but escapism springs to mind.
Anyway the two which have caught my attention are Borderlands and Warhammer Online. Now yes I did work on the old Warhammer Online many years ago (and left before it got canned I hasten to add) so its been amusing to see what they’ve made of this version… and its pretty much a shifting of the World of Warcraft model. Yes there are significant differences and things I really like (such as different ways to get XP etc).
It falls down slightly given that this kind of game demands a high userbase. Realm vs Realm (or massive PvP to put it another way) only works when you have a large player base online at the same time which is not usually the case I’ve found. So much so that they seem to have lumped all the races on the “Destruction” side into the same newbie area (Chaos). This fails to work for me playing an Orc, but you are given a nifty scroll to teleport you to the right area. Sadly its not actually explained when the best time to do this is and as a consequence I’ve now done nearly 2 newbie areas!
Its a pity as there are some really nice touches but it seems … lacklustre in a way. Also of note is how on earth Paul Barnett (a man brought in to the original WO project as an advisor but his CV only listed text based games as his experience) landed the job of “Creative lead” on the project after he had a hand in the originals demise…. Suspicious? I think so. Bitter? Nah I would have liked to see my stuff come out but the project had more than one issue 
ANYWAY the other game of Note is Borderlands (by Gearbox). A nice little meld of RPG and shooter with some 4 player coop action thrown in. I quite like it. Sure it has its quirks and some things are a little broken but its good fun (which is all you can ask from a game). I’ve not tried the online content yet but the single player is gripping enough to warrant continued play. I love the characters in the game and theres some great humour and film / game references in there.
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