Day One Hundred thirty-seven: evening of December 17th 2009

Borderlands is additive. I wrote that yesterday, and I stand by it today. I have found that in thoughtful video games that offer multiple characters to play through the game, really expand the nature of the game. Although the scenarios are the same and the game moves through those scenarios in about same sequence, the tactical solutions made to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses are intriguing, to say the least. This takes the game’s trial, error, and retry in new directions.

So today I finished with the stealth character, whose comments reflecting her enjoyment of her empowerment were funny in the beginning, but I wonder if those comments change as the game progresses (see, an addicting factor). Anyway, I shifted to the ‘tank’ character, the last of my selections. Don’t make the mistake of assuming there is a diminishing of intelligence with this character. You, and I, supply the intelligence to the character. But I will say that, after an initial session of running and jumping around the opening staging area, I started doing a stupid thing. My character, called Brick, is a tank type character and I began acting like a tank, which means that I moved straight at some foe straight on, taking all the bullets, until I’m close enough to strike out at my opponent. Of course, my health line is slowly disappeared (no shields at the start). Later on you can purchase a shield, but there are a few adventures before that occurs. After the shield, your special talent is attained. For the tank, it achieving a Berserk nature. Your only weapons are your hands, which become very powerful damage dealers. You still take damage, it doesn’t register because of the blood haze that your actions are filtered through. This talent actually permitted me to act out of normal approach. I actually went up to two of the early bosses and ‘duked it out,’ face to face, toe to toe, mano a mano. . . you get the picture don’t you. It was fun, and was not as threatening because I had gotten used to checking the impact of the boss and his henchmen on me. I think that I reached the ninth level before I stopped. How does this character do later on, when he takes on the ultimate boss (see another reason to stay hooked into this game.

Well. It’s late and I want to get everything squared away, before I hit the sack.