Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Handsome Collection Review

This is the latest review ever. In fact, it's so late that it is not only the latest review ever, but also a sort of late review of a new game, too. :/

I bought Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel as soon as it was available for pre-order, and we picked it up the day it came out. We started playing, but didn't make much progress and then forgot for a while. Both my husband and I tend to play games in stretches and this is one we play together so it just seemed like neither of us was in the mood to play at the same time. Hence the delay. It also starts slow, but having played through three games now, it's obvious that you can't really tell how a Borderlands game is until around level 20, when it begins to pick up and feel less repetitive.

I loved the first Borderlands game. We played three times all the way through, including all the DLC, and there would be random nights even after that we would start over with new characters just to play for a bit. Borderlands 2 was better in many ways, although not as fun in others. The story in the sequel was far superior (was there a story in the first one, really?) and the Tiny Tina DLC was the best ever. Plus there was more from Torgue, Handsome Jack, and Tiny Tina. The final few missions were better overall, but we got a little sick of the endless raid bosses. They lose their impact and fun when every mission has one. Crawmerax is still a bigger achievement than any of the ones from the second game.

But I digress. So I've had this forever, but really only started playing in earnest about a month ago. Then I just was slow at writing this and the Handsome Collection came out for Xbox One. My husband wasn't sure it was worth buying, since really, we have Borderlands 2 and TPS and hadn't even FINISHED TPS yet. But one of my favorite things about Borderlands is its multiplayer, so when our friends got an Xbox One, we jumped on board and got the HC (already had the One).

Life is Strange Episode 2 Review

When I saw the trailer for Life is Strange a long time ago, I had a feeling this would become a favorite game - despite knowing almost nothing about it. It said it was Gone Home meets The Walking Dead, which was already awesome, and there was a definite Twin Peaks feel to it as well, so combining my favorite things is a good start. Then I saw it was being published by Square Enix, and I am still a big Square fan. Finally, I do really enjoy the episodic games because they give me a unique playing experience. Each episode can be played in one sitting over a couple of hours - and then the wait ends up giving me time to process specific events and even to talk to other players about what happened. When you have games where choice affects outcome, too, this is great because you can see what you and a friend do differently and then talk about why.

The first episode was fantastic. I loved it from the opening, because the gameplay is straightforward, the graphics are beautiful, and the music is so fitting for the game. I was incredibly impressed by the storytelling, although I found some of the teen dialogue and slang odd (specifically the overuse of "hella"). In discussions, though, I have come to find out that people on the West Coast are still using that word a lot and so it's even better - because there are clear regionalisms being integrated into the game as well.

It's hard to write a review without spoilers and I am posting this a little late simply because there's no way to avoid spoiling it entirely. I will stay vague with the specifics, but it's still hard to be totally spoiler-free, especially in the second episode.