Ghosts and Guns: Blackwell and Borderlands

Well it's been well over a month since I last wrote anything g so HERE WE GOOOOOO

What's my favourite genre of game, I hear you ask? You didn't? Well, shut up I'm telling you anyway. It's point and click adventure games. As of recently though, nothing has managed to encaptivate (that's a word right?) quite like the halycon days of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango. I mean granted, that's because there's never really been anything quite like Monkey Island or Grim Fandango, but you see the point.
All of the TellTale games have never quite sat right, being enjoyable but not particularly memorable. Machinarium, made by the irrepressible and often incomprehensible Amanita Design, was beautiful to look at but felt very modular in its puzzle format.

Enter Wadjet Eye Games, run by Dave Gilbert (who I like to imagine as an adventure game creator amalgamation of Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman) and his ongoing AGS series of Blackwell Games. It's about ghosts and solving ghost crime, sort of, and if that's not enough to get you playing it, then I don't know what else to do.

Bookish redheads and ghost 1920's types.
Is it possible this game only exists inside my mind?

I'd previously encoutnered the work of Dave Gilbert in "Gemini Rue", another of his point and click adventures. I didn't particularly get on with it, since it featured more shades of grey than your average Waterstones. This might not seem like a legitimate complaint, but when ALL the pixels are THE SAME DULL COLOUR, it makes the gameplay a little tricky.

The Blackwell games, all four of them, don't have that problem because they feature a wonderful array of art styles. Normally, I'd find it jarring if the art between games kept switching, but it's actually a really smart idea for a small developer like Wadjet Eye Games. Each game features fantastic refinements to both mechanics and the art style, with the ones that work well being brought forward, and the ones that don't being scrapped or further improved.

Also, ghost crime. Did I mention that? Yes? MOVING ON!

You should be hearing a guitar riff about now.

SO BORDERLANDS RIGHT? The sequel is out in a little while (just under two weeks I believe) so I thought, YOU KNOW WHAT? I'm going to finish my playthrough 2, and also finally get started on that DLC.

I have actually done neither of those things, but fuck it, I've been having fun shooting shit in the face with a variety of ridiculous shotguns.

I honestly used to be dreadful at Borderlands, and for one reason; I kept trying to avoid fighting. THis was a retarded idea in retrospect, but hey, I was 18 and young and naive or whatever. Anyway, now I'm a grizzled twenty one with a neckbeard and muscles, so now my strategy is more about running as close as I can to an enemy, jamming a shotgun under there chin then pressing the right trigger until the numbers stop. It's deceptively easy and rewarding.

Take 10 minutes out your day, crank this up to 1080p and watch full screen. Borderlands 2 y'all. WHOO!



I'm out.