Apparently there are some of you out there who haven’t heard of Borderlands. Apparently there are some of you out there who are skeptical of Borderlands. Well let me give you the scoop, because this game is freaking awesome! You know me, though, I love me some Role Playing Games and I love me some First Person Shooters, and Borderlands is the beautiful love child of the two. Thank you 2K Games for providing me with a copy of this wonderful game. Released on October 20th for the 360, PS3 and PC by Gearbox Software and 2K Games, here’s my thoughts on Borderlands.
Borderlands is all about the search for ancient alien treasure. Growing up and hearing the tall tales and rumors of and ancient alien vault that grants its finder fame, wealth, power and women, the game’s four characters begin on a bus roaming around the planet Pandora. Upon selecting your character, a guardian angel, communicates with you telepathically letting you know that the vault is in fact real, and that she will guide you to it.
From here, you enter the starting town and fight off bandits that are raiding it. In appreciation, the town’s doctor gives you several quests for you to do and the story really picks up from here. There are a total of 160 quests in the game and only 30 of them actually have to do with the main story line, so there is a TON of stories to partake in. The side-stories are very well developed and usually have some great voice acting with them to get you drawn right in. Keep in mind though, that a lot of the content is very mature. There is a lot of swearing and vulgar, yet hilarious things that both the good and the bad guys will communicate with you.
Borderlands should take you roughly 30 hours to complete depending on how many of the side quests you partake in, but the fun doesn’t stop there. There is a lot of replayability here because you will want to try the game with all of the 4 characters, and the experience is different every time, especially when you take the game’s co-op multiplayer into account.
The 4 character’s in the game are: Mordecai the Hunter, who has the ability to send a pet Bloodwing to attack his foes, Lilith the Siren, who has the ability to turn invisible and move very quickly, Roland the Soldier, who has the ability to create turrets, heal teammates and spawn ammo, and Brick the Berserker, who has the ability to take lots of damage and use powerful melee attacks. Each character will offer a drastic difference in play style. It’s important to note that every character can use every type of weapon though.
The design of the game reminds me of World of Warcraft with guns, or Tabula Rasa. Each of the 4 character classes has a skill tree and their own special abilities. As you level up you gain additional stats that make you stronger, and the items in the game have a rating system just like WoW, in that they are colored white, green, blue, epic, legendary, thus describing how powerful they are.
Borderlands is freaking hard. It is important to do lots of the side quests to level yourself up and gain better loot or else you’ll be too low level to tackle the primary storyline quests. Remember, this is an RPG, you can’t run straight through the story line like you could in Halo. You gradually get stronger over time, and if you run into enemies you aren’t capable of yet hurting, you’ll see skulls above their heads, just like in WoW. And by god, watch out for the crazy hard boss fights, especially if you are solo!
The trailer to the game spouts off that there are something like 67 bazillion different guns. Well that’s an understatement. Like in Tabula Rasa, there are different types of weapons and attribute combinations. Like your standard shooter, you have your pistols, shotguns, snipers, and machine guns, but you also have different types of rounds that they fire including incendiary, shock and corrosive. On top of that, each gun has it’s own stats letting you know how much damage it can do as well as modifiers like zoom, critical damage and rate of fire. You also will gain various Master Chief-like shields to equip. Finally you’ll get to equip and swap out class-based modifications that grant you and your team members passive buffs.
Pandora itself is massive. It will take you a long time to travel across the game’s many levels. Luckily early in the game you gain access to a vehicle with rocket launchers that you greatly increases your ability to travel. Later you’ll also gain access to an instant teleportation system to transport between the various save points.
There were a couple game play features that annoyed me though. One, I couldn’t figure out how to drop a quest. Also I sometimes found it difficult to pick up loot on the ground, as you have to look at it just right before you can pick it up. I imagine this is so you don’t have players in co-op games loot-whoring, but frankly, I’d rather have someone loot-whore than not be able to pick up a necessary health pack in the heat of battle.
Borderland’s presentation is simply beautiful. The cell-shaded graphics make you feel like your playing the lead role in your favorite comic book. It’s important to note that while the graphics are stunning, you will never have a drop in frame rate, and the only time you’ll notice texture popping is when you are loading into a new zone. While the majority of the environments are barren wasteland, they never cease from being spectacular. The look and feel kind of reminds me of the movie Waterworld, well, without all of the water.
The music is excellent as well and it really gets you in the mood, especially when things start to get hectic. The music adjusts to the situation and plays louder and faster. Along the same lines, the voice acting is awesome and hilarious. Some of the stuff some of these characters say to you will have you laughing out loud.
Borderlands is really unique in that it combines all of the best elements of a role playing game with all of the best elements of a first person shooter. I think that this is the game that could bring some of those adrenaline-happy shooter fanbois over to the rpg genre. You’ve got TONS of quests to partake in with lots of replayability including multiplayer co-op. The art style is beautiful and the voice acting will keep you hooked and wanting to see what is going to happen next. All in all, Borderlands is a wonderful game, and I absolutely recommend it to every gamer!
I thought the game was great, but the grinding was unlike anything I’ve ever seen! This is coming from a gamer that’s played Torchlight, Diablo, Sacred, Titan Quest, Space Siege, GREED: Black Border, every Fallout game, and many, many more. I’m a big fan of the hack ‘n slash sub-genre, but this really surprised me. I haven’t played it in months because of the grind. Speaking of which, I think I’m gonna go play it. Nah, I’ll be playing Fallout 3 until New Vegas hits, then I’ll play that for another 3000 hours (yes, I’ve put 3000 hours into Fallout 3 and I’m still playing it). If Borderlands is lucky, I might lay it after that. It is gonna have to wait a while.