New Tales from the Borderlands: Review

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I love Tales from the Borderlands, I mean the first one. I have played it through too many times to count. I love everything about it, from the music to the story and humor. 

I had read all the bad reviews and comments about New Tales from the Borderlands, but of course I had to check it out myself. But I couldn't get it from the library because someone had stolen it. After a very long time I finally decided to request that the library get a new copy, but someone else had beat me to it.

While playing through the first episode I nearly fell asleep. Is this game really that boring? Probably.

 

 

Characters 

Anu is annoyingly anxious scientist. Octavio is her annoyingly stupid little brother. Fran owns a yogurt shop, and suffers from sweet rage syndrome.

But the best new character is... the sexy intern.

 

 

Out of the old characters Rhys is most prominently present. Fiona makes an appearance in the end. And Marcus of course narrates the whole thing. 

 

Robots 

And of course there are some robots, which once again are more interesting and entertaining than the humans. But of course they can't be as great as Gortys and Loader Bot in the original game, nor as Claptrap in the main series. No offence, Louie.

 

 

Endings 

Unlike the original, this new game has missable trophies, and many different endings. I was so pissed that I managed to get a good ending, but not the best one. There's no way I'm gonna play this again, especially when guides dictate every dialogue option, and still people comment that "this didn't work for me". 

 

  

Animals 

Juniper is Paco's little ratch, who helps to find the vault. Unfortunately she can get killed, if the relationships between the playable characters aren't good enough. So that's even more reason to keep choosing friendly conversation options.

 

 

The best part: Kicking a skag puppy warrants a death penalty. I loved it! 

 

 

 

New Tales from the Borderlands: Gameplay

 

 

Resident Evil Requiem: Return to Raccoon City

"Tom Cruise and the Crying Woman" 

When Resident Evil Requiem (affiliate link) was finally announced, I was interested in a Resident Evil game for a first time in a long time for some reason. RE7 and RE8 didn't interest me, of those I only played the RE7 demo, which was disgusting. I only played through RE2 Remake once, even though Claire Redfield is my favorite game character. I didn't want to play RE3 Remake at all, even though it was on console. The only exception to the most recent ones has been RE4 Remake, which I managed to play through several times.

Why did I want to play Requiem? There are actually two reasons for that. The return to Raccoon City, and the option to choose a third-person perspective when playing. If this had been a 1st-person game like RE7, for example, I wouldn't have played it.

I reserved the game from the library, and it took a month and a half from the release date to get to the first reserver, which was me.

 

 

Resident Evil Requiem

Grace, the daughter of Resident Evil Outbreak's Alyssa Ashcroft, works for the FBI. For some strange reason, her boss sends her alone to investigate the hotel where Grace's mother was killed years ago.

Meanwhile, Leon S(exy). Kennedy suffers from the effects of the tea virus, and of course gets involved in the events.

 

 

Raccoon Cityn Ruins

For me, the highlight of the game was the return to Raccoon City, and specifically to its police station.

 

 

When the familiar music started to play...

 

 

Leon is still welcome, 28 years later.

 

 

I had tears in my eyes when I found the same photo of S.T.A.R.S. at the police station as in the original Resident Evil 2 game.

 

 

Spoiler: Tofu has survived in the ruins of Raccoon City for decades. That's what a true survivor is!

It's certainly unrealistic how much of Raccoon City remains in this game.

 

 

Grace Ashcroft 

Grace is like Ashley 2.0. I hate how helpless and insecure Grace is. What if we reversed the gender roles sometime?

 

 

The worst part is that the game doesn't try to scare you, it tries to make you vomit. The amount of gore and blood in Requiem is disgusting. This trend has been seen in Resident Evil games since at least RE7. And why the hell do the characters have to curse all the time? I already complained about it in RE2 Remake.

Unfortunately for me, Resident Evil Requiem has no replay value. The first (and last) playthrough took me just under 13 hours, and I was pretty lost at times.

 

 

Cats? 

But Resident Evil Requiem also has cats. At least in a painting that I managed to miss, of course, even though I tried to look for it. Does anyone have a screencap of Resident Evil Requiem's cat painting?

 

Resident Evil Requiem: Letters from 1998 

And in letters. These letters are only available in the deluxe version of the game, boo. Marvin's daughter Meryl used cat-themed stationery to write to her mother.