Borderlands

Review from Jae - Friday, 22 January 2010 @ 11:11am

My thoughts on Borderlands has drastically changed after giving it a second and third go. Yours can too if you haven’t bought this game yet. At the time of release Borderlands was one of the first in the Christmas influx of games and as such could’ve been easily forgotten. This delayed review will give you a good reason to go back and get into one of the best games of last year. I think it’ll be worthy of your time.

There was quite a fair bit of hype going around about Borderlands before its release last October. The famous butt shot was all over the net and the idea that the developers, Gearbox (Half Life expansions and Brothers in Arms fame), were creating a first person shooter like no other meant it got heavy press. Of course none of us buy into heavy press otherwise we all would’ve bought Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball . I didn’t think much of this game at first but after spending a bit more time with it I’ve done a complete 180°.

Nobody likes crabs

In case you’re wondering what the storyline is about in Borderlands, join the club. The story is kind of like that child you love the least or that Baldwin brother no one cares about. It gets little attention and takes a back seat to the rest of the game’s other quality features. No matter, once you get into the swing of things you can really enjoy the adventure that awaits. You will start off choosing your class of character, one of four different types. There is the Hunter who specialises in snipers, Berserker who can bash the hell out of anyone, Soldier who plays rifleman and the Siren who can use a mean elemental gun. Don’t worry too much about choosing your initial character as you will want to create more than one character throughout your travels online. Just because one character is great at using snipers doesn’t mean your character can’t. The thing that separates characters are their special abilities.

Customisation is fairly standard but enough to keep you distinguished from someone else that may be the same class as you. Graphically this game looks sweet. You have to admire a developer that can change graphical design from realistic to cel-shaded midway through development. Cel-shading with a few more mature colour palettes and thick black borders is something I’ve been a fan of since the Jet Set Radio days. Gearbox have done this well and can hopefully carry its style forward for sequels to come.
The thing that sets Borderlands apart from other FPS games is its sheer amount of weapon choices. It’s as if Gearbox spent a few months creating a bunch of random shotguns, rifles, snipers, pistols and rocket launchers and chucked them all into the game. In the first few hours of the game you will go through weapons faster than a Chinese man with algebra. Don’t get too attached to the look and feel of a weapon because you’ll most likely drop it or sell it once you run out of space or find something better. At first you will find weapons that are really powerful but you won’t be able to use them till you get to a certain level. Then there are weapons that make you feel invincible but can only load 2 bullets at a time with a slow reload. All these types of guns need to be factored into your strategy to complete missions. Don’t worry though because you will most likely find a sweet gun which you will hold dear as long as you can.

The bastard child of a man and a mechanical bull

If you’re not a fan of repetitive enemies then you might want to blitz through the game and avoid doing every single mission. You can easily spend a large amount of hours killing skags which are like roaches from Fallout 3, only more annoying. The enemies thereafter do vary and have to be tackled differently. Sometimes its unavoidable, you need to complete additional missions to kill time and level up in order to face the next big mission. As repetitive as I initially found this, things varied the more you play and the more fun you have. Borderlands was built to be a multiplayer game so you will get a lot more enjoyment when you go online. There is so much loot that you generally have no problem with sharing. Feisty arguments you can have when choosing to be driver or gunner are comical and can usually be settled with a friendly duel. Be prepared to die in missions sometimes, you can lose a big chunk of your money respawning so try your best to revive each other or get a second wind. The second wind is a unique mechanic, when you’re almost dead you kneel close to the ground and have about 20 seconds to shoot as much of your enemies are you can before you have to respawn. If you kill an enemy within this time you get a second wind which gets you some health back and back into the action. Its always satisfying to get up after a victorious kill.

Duels are fun and break the ice between a long mission. They can also make for a great drinking game! In multiplayer you can instigate or accept duel where for a short moment you can duke it out against each other in a match to the death. When you’re finish you return back to your original health so there’s nothing to worry about except for your shattered ego, which mine did like a plate of glass.

It astonishes me that a developer can invest time overhauling the graphics of a game but not improve the things such as split screen play. I’ve played Borderlands on the 360 and like to do so in split screen. Looks fine at first glance but when you open up the menus you are suddenly bitch slapped with a whole lot of fail. All that has been done is that the menu stays in its proportionate size so it is impossible to view the entire menu. You or your co-ponent (my made up word of the week) will need to use the right thumb stick to move the menu around so that you can see the part of the screen you want to see. In this mode you can’t view your equipped weapons and spare weapons all on the one screen. Gearbox try to help by giving you a comparison view but it’s just not convenient. A game that relies heavily on opening up a menu frequently should make it convenient, not a burden. For this reason I’d recommend the PC version or never playing split screen on the 360.

Pros

Perfect for fetch quests and an intriguing art style.
Plenty to do and to keep you coming back.

Cons

No story and awful split screen mode in the 360 version.
No more skags!