Quest Accepted: Bordering Dungeons and Random Loot

Attention adventurers! You have entered the realm of Ryan Moore and his incredibly nerdy love of all RPGs. Quest Accepted is my look at the world of roleplaying games, from the fantastical to the futuristic – if there is an RPG element to it, I'm going be interested in it. This week I venture into the world of Dungeon Defenders and partner up in some Borderlands.

Currently Exploring: Dungeon Defenders

It would be an understatement to say Dungeon Defenders is a game I've been wanting for a long time; I vividly remember the original January 2011 release date, I was as giddy as a school boy to finally play it. Tower defense, good. RPGs, awesome. Dungeon Defenders has all of that combined? Woah, this sounded pretty great.

When that January release date came and went with no actual release I was saddened as Dungeon Defenders slipper farther and farther away – each new release date seemed as unreliable as the last. Ten months later when I saw Dungeon Defenders was finally coming out I was skeptical, but still excited.

When it came time for me to make my character I wanted to lean more on my tower defense experiences – those experiences told me area of effect (I like explosions) was the way to go. I decided on the Apprentice class, partly because he is a wizard with a lot of area of effect towers, but mostly because he looks like the black mage from Final Fantasy.

It must be the floppy hat.

On the first level, much like most tower defense games, I had to set up defenses before the enemy hordes would be unleashed to destroy the 'Eternia Crystal'. Apparently evil people really hate those Eternia Crystals and will try anything to smash them to pieces, so it was up to Sidewinder the Apprentice and his magical defenses to stop 'em. On the first wave I quickly learned that my single puny magic missile tower (it was all I could afford - Sidewinder does not live a life of luxury) was not going to be enough to stop all the enemies on its own; luckily, and much to my surprise, the Apprentice's magic attack ripped through goblins early on.

Two things quickly caught my eye as I went through a few waves. The first was all the lovely randomly generated loot that poured out from the burnt and electrocuted corpses of my foes. Any game with randomly generated loot means there will always be something better to find. The other was that when leveling up I could choose to either add points to my heroes stats, or to the stats of my towers. A player can go through the game with a super-powerful hero capable of destroying swathes of enemies quickly if they want to, or if they invest in towers they can sit back and let their constructions do all the hard work. Naturally I choose to spec in towers – I never said I wasn't lazy.

With a few missions under his belt Sidewinder accumulated a nice bit of wealth and loot. His now relatively puny beginners' staff has been replaced with one that can shoot out five magical projectiles at once. His towers stand more than twice as strong as before, with all sorts of new ones unlocked. Even with all of the upgrades, Dungeon Defenders still was capable of throwing out a challenge. The later missions get extremely tough, with multiple crystals to defend and just so many different spawn points that trying to cover them all alone may be a hopeless task. If there is one small piece of advice Sidewinder can give you, don't play Dungeon Defenders alone – it goes a lot smoother with some friends.

Co-opportunity!: Borderlands

A while ago a buddy of mine and I picked up the collectors edition of Borderlands via one of those fancy Steam deals that come about. For whatever reason Borderlands decided that it was not going to be a part of our shenanigans and no matter what we tried we were unable to actually connect online. This did not please me, but eventually a couple patches were released and we decided to try again. We found that if we were in the same room on the same wireless signal we could play together – it kind of ruined the point of playing it online, but at least we could finally play.

The point of this isn't for me to rag on Borderlands' online capabilities being terrible (they are); it's to talk about how much fun Borderlands is when you can actually play with a friend. I've played Borderlands before, and when playing alone the game feels so empty – sure there are enemies trying to kill you, but they all feel like copy and pasted target practice images.

Borderlands is really about the awesome guns; and the only thing better than one guy with an awesome gun is two (or up to four as is the case). At its loot-whoring heart is yet another randomly generated weapon loot system complete with loads of different weapon categories, an old school color to rarity value loot system and more wacky descriptions than you can shake a stick at. When you and your friend have to compete to get the best guns, the game gets a whole lot more interesting. Playing alone, sure getting all of the gun drops are nice, but who if cares you're playing alone? Half the fun of having an awesome gun is the ability to show it off!

Item of the Week: Deathclaw Gauntlet (Fallout 3)

Deathclaws are the most deadly creatures you will come across in Fallout 3. Nothing shows the world that you are the most dangerous man in the wasteland quite like wielding a piece of a Deathclaw on your fist. In order to craft a Deathclaw Gauntlet you are going to need to kill a Deathclaw (quite a task in its own right) and harvest its hand for your grim instrument. Once crafted you are rewarded with a melee weapon capable of tearing through the toughest of power armor – and you get a kickin' Freddy Krueger style fashion accessory to boot!

That is one mighty fine looking... glove.

It might not do the most damage or have the futurisitic appeal of a power fist but the Deathclaw has all the right intangibles. It has the 'home made' feeling that I love so much. It has armor piercing capabilities.You can wear it with your casual and your formal wear. It looks pretty freaking menacing as well - what's not to love?

For news, reviews, previews and updates on your favorite games, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Have something to say? Duke it out in the GamerGaia forums, leave a comment below, or connect with other gamers and start your own blog using MyBlog, GamerGaia's new social networking feature.