Borderlands

Borderlands is an original First Person Role Playing Shooter that combines the intuitive reward systems of action role playing games and the frantic-paced shooting combat of first person shooters. The game features a groundbreaking content generation system allowing for near-endless variety in weapons and item drops. Borderlands allows for 4 players to share the same game experience simultaneously online in co-op gameplay. Players can freely join or leave each other's games at anytime, or choose to play in the full single-pler mode. These features, along with a rich and deep fiction that touches upon the mysterious buried beneath the surface of a danger-filled planet, combine to form a breakthrough experience that challenges the conventions of modern shooters.

With its addictive action, frantic first-person shooter combat, massive arsenal of weaponry, RPG elements and four-player co-op, Borderlands is a breakthrough experience that challenges all the conventions of modern shooters. Borderlands places you in the role of a mercenary on the lawless and desolate planet of Pandora, hell-bent on finding a legendary stockpile of powerful alien technology known as The Vault.

After you disregard the silly talk about borderlands having gazillions of guns, and its Diablo 2 with mad max stars play-style. All you really need to know about Borderlands is that it’s Mario Party for FPS lovers. This does not mean that Borderlands is full of little men in red hats, fluctuating rules and silly little mini games, it’s that Borderlands single player can range from large scale gun fights to boring running around to get to the next gun fight. However when you add the multi-player aspect to the sessions, it becomes an action packed fusion of cooperative mechanics, simple but very effective reward scheme, and some solid game play. It’s the secret party game for the FPS lovers.

The traditional description for Borderlands is “cooperative FPS with Diablo-esque mechanics.” You start the game on a bus travelling along a lonely road. You Have to pick between 4 different characters. Roland the gun-toting soldier, Lilith the stealth femme, Mordecai the sniper and Brick the boxer. Then you need to guide your character through the grand journey that is the land of Pandora. The first play-through doing just the needed missions takes about 27 hours on your own. The overarching story of "Find a secret vault by following the instructions of a mysterious woman who talks to you in your mind" works to push you from one kill to the next.

While games like Fallout 3 or Diabolic use under-the-hood die rolls to determine the results of damage for both you and the enemy, Borderlands, thanks to Gearbox's experience in the FPS market, uses actual skill in determining if you hit the enemy. If you aim center of mass of the enemy then you actually hit, unlike in Fallout 3 where if you unluckily manage to get a bad roll and miss, you actually just hit in Borderlands. While there isnt V.A.T.S like in Fallout 3, a shot to the head does count as a critical hit and does much more damage then a hit any other place of the body. The guns in Borderlands are well designed where the Shotgun will clearly cover the enemy in damage, the sniper has a satisfying crack after each shot and the sub-machine guns dispense bullets like their going out of fashion.

Just like in World of Warcraft each of the four characters has three distinct skill trees that you use the skill point that you get every time you level up. So if the player was to use Roland, one player might spec him to be an all out damage dealer whilst another player may spec him to be able to heal the team. At a cost you can respec anythime.

The loot system of Borderlands is pulls its ideas from Diablo, in the way that you can simply look at the name of the weapon to find out the factors of the weapon, making it easier to find out the factors of the weapon in question. You can open a special weapon chest or loot that enemy that you just killed and be surprised by a super powerful SMG that is fully automatic, has a massive round per second and can shoot shock rounds. Apart from the guns there is also randomly generated gear which includes support mods that give you more stats on your skill tree allocation, grenades which have a number of different factors like if they fire out more toxic covered grenades and power shields which can even give you slow health recharge. The colour system for the rarity of the weapons is just pulled straight from World of Warcraft, white, green, blue, purple and orange. If the huge amount of randomly generated weapons wasn’t enough there is also a amount of unique weapons that are tuned to the boss-like character that you have just killed. And someone who after both play-throughs and the 4 dlcs now has a chest full of weapons and my money maxed out the inner loot whore has definitely won out.

Borderlands at the beginning was not going to look anything like the current iteration. but thankfully Gearbox and 2K changed the visual style of the game. It now uses strong lines and bold colour which is of a painterly style, this style does make it stand out from other Unreal Engine 3 titles, and does help the game's environment not be so repetitive as so many post apocalyptic games are. The visuals do serve well to draw the player in and to act as a gateway for the game which is over-the-top silliness that this game uses that does give it a charming but goofy style of play. It a game where you look at enemy’s like piñatas with damage inflicted acting like confetti and guns, money, shields and ammunition as candy. And even being the medic doesn’t get you out of shooting things, instead of giving your team mates health packs, you shoot them to make their health go up. All these things make a game where a psychotic little person who wears a makeshift crown can become a leader by force and where to get the enemy to give you more loot you throw a bird at them.

So when you add in co-operative mode with up to 3 other people, the game simply works. Its strangely exhilarating when the team starts to panic as you see as "badass level 40 angry shot gunner midget" which is an actual game term. As players joing and leave the world gets harder and softer and these also represent the levels of the players. So if your a level 4 player who has just got a level 50 player come to help you in the game you will find the enemy’s far too hard for you to kill. If you’ve got a team which has all the 4 playable characters in they complement each other brilliantly. Lillith can sneak past the enemy and shoot them in the back, followed by Rolands gun turret and finally Brick running in and punching the pixels out of the enemy.

Playing Borderlands alone is just a ticket to boredom, But when you add in even just more person the game comes alive. Most of the A.I. are pretty stupid as they just run at you while shooting or will stand there in the open shooting. When you get nearer to the end of the game the Crimson Lance come into player who do use the environment to help them try to kill you. And just like the guns and every other item in-game there is many types of each enemy some may be sporting a shotgun while another a rocket launcher and another may be a badass (harder type of enemy) with a SMG.

The death mechanic which is a well though out one, gives you the chance to kill and enemy while bleeding out to gain a second wind as the game puts it which gets you back up and means you don’t have to respawn. This also means that if a friend gets to you while bleeding out they can also try and get you up. When alone though this mechanic can get annoying as your behind cover and cant see any enemy's to shoot so you just have to respawn and pay.

The vehicles in the game can be thought as strange when in the main game there are only two seater vehicles in a 4 player co-op game however you can get two of these. In The Secret Armory of General Knoxx which is a DLC there is a 4 person vehicle. If you manage to get 4 people into that vehicle it can own the highways ( but ill let you find that out).

You can call it a first-person Diablo or a party for the FPS gamers. Borderlands is a ok single-player FPS/RPG which becomes epic once you get some friends on to play with you, and you really do need to experience the sheer fun of having a midget rush while playing with others.

Final Thoughts