Borderlands Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)this is my first review, hope it's helpful (feel free to leave a comment and tell me what i did wrong/right). anyway, on with the amateur ramblings!

when i first saw the trailers for Borderlands a couple of months ago, i said to myself "that looks amazing (in both the graphical and gameplay departments), but it seems to be trying way too hard". i also thought it looked like what Fallout 3 would've been if it was a FPS with RPG elements as opposed to the RPG with FPS view that it is.

as a bit of side information, i got Killzone 2 a week ago and have been playing it nonstop. i've already beaten it twice and i've spent pretty much every waking moment (to my girlfriend's annoyance) playing the campaign or the multiplayer. when i woke up today there was a delivery on my stoop. i told myself i'd open up Borderlands first (i also bought Resistance 2 and a few old school PS1 games (FFIX!)) and play it til the first save or checkpoint. this was at 11am, i'm writing this review at 11:30pm and save for going to dinner with my friends and dropping my sister off at the dorms, i've played the entire time. this game is just that engrossing and sheer fun

i don't think i can explain exactly what makes Borderlands so fantastic... there's just something about it. reviews i had seen on a few sites said that it takes a while for the game to get going and that by the 10th hour or so it really starts to be fun. well, if the game gets much more fun than this, it will be close to my game of the year. everything about Borderlands oozes style and love (meaning you can just tell how much the developers cared about this project). the pacing of the game is fantastic, the difficulty is a little up there, but it works and is never frustrating. the controls are spot on as far as responsiveness, but some of the button mapping is a bit strange (who maps fire to L2?and there doesn't seem to be a way to change it). the AI is fantastic with weapon-based enemies finding anyplace they can to duck behind and fire for cover, while the dog like creatures just get right up in your face. this can be frustrating, but it really makes you feel good when you finally blast them away.

the RPG elements are just kinda... there. while i don't think they detract from the game, i also think that they could have been implemented differently without the overall game changing on a base level. that being said, Borderlands does a great job of Diablo style leveling-up. part of the reason i couldn't stop playing is cause you're ALWAYS building up your character in some small way. it's just incredibly addictive and fulfilling. the one minor nitpick that i can throw in here is having to press square every. single. time. you wanna pick up an item. you can hold it down to pick up multiple items that are very close to each other, but you'll be pressing square A LOT. i know tehre's some things you might not want, but you spend so much time in your inventory screen anyway, they may as well have made it so you just run over something to grab it.

Borderlands sells itself on the concept of it's "87 Bazillion Guns". i've heard real estimates that say there's at least a few hundred thousand and that sure seems to be true. you'll NEVER stumble on the same gun twice. it's both a good and bad thing. obviously it's fun to try out all sorts of different combinations, but a lot more often than you'd like, you'll wind up with a weapon that, while not useless, is just pretty lame and underpowered. when you do find that perfect sniper rifle that shoots lighting, has a 500-round clip and a 120x zoom (just as one of soooo many examples), it'll all be so very worthwhile.

the rest of my nitpicks, and by the way, that's all they are, cause i don't see a single legitimate big complaint with this game, would be as follows: while the game looks cool in it's own way, it think it's almost like a cop-out art style, maybe they didn't feel like doing textures or something. there's also severe framerate issues where you're in the middle of large battles. the vehicles, which make getting around so much easier,don't handle good at all and you get less Exp when you kill an enemy with your car as opposed to being on foot. i wish there were large online multiplayer deathmatches and CoF battles and the like. i'll have to check out the online "duels" at some point, see if they almost make up for that.

when you get right down to it though, this is just an amazing game all around. the graphics have a sheen and polish that not many games have (it's fun to see little HP numbers rolling off someone as you shoot them in the face). i still think Borderlands is trying a bit too hard to be "cool" in the way a Tarentino or Guy Ritchie movie would be, but it just works anyway (much like a Guy Ritchie movie haha). in the end there's just something about Borderlands, some intangible quality, that makes it such a worthwhile experience. i haven't played the online co-op yet, so i can't speak to that, but the single player is one hell of a ride. the areas might all look a tad samey, there's only four character classes to choose from. the driving physics are pretty bad and there's not much variety in your enemies. thing is, none of that matters, Borderlands is amazing in spite of all of it's very minor flaws.

if you've ever liked an FPS, if you've ever liked level-up-fests like Diablo, etc, hell, even if you wanted more action from Fallout 3, you owe it to yourself to at least give Borderlands a chance. this, along with Killzone 2, BlazBlue, Uncharted 2, Dirt 2 (and i can only assume the new Ratchet and Clank game) is one of the top 5 best games of 2009. there's a damn good chance that this game is considerably better than any other videogame you're looking to get on Amazon... pick Borderlands immediately. you won't be let down.

enjoy. hope this helped. =)

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Product Description:
Gearbox Software has developed revolutionary new technology to create Borderlands' incredible layers of gameplay depth. Borderlands features a groundbreaking content generation system allowing for near-endless variety in missions, environments, enemies, weapons, item drops and character customization.

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Borderlands Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Borderlands has so far proved to be an immensely enjoyable game delivering in many ways where Gearbox promised.I feel it will be equally appealing to fans of shooters and dungeon crawlers alike.

You start the game going through a little story intro and a bit of a bus ride.Shortly after a bit of introduction you'll be asked to select one of the characters and exit the bus to start your adventures.The game doesn't come right out and tell you these are your "classes" but for the interests of the RPG elements of the game that's what they are.Your choices are basically between stealth/special weapons, sniper, support/healing, and tank/melee.There unfortunately isn't a vast amount of customization in their looks available but you can alter a 3 color scheme for their outfit and customize your name almost immediately after stepping off the bus.

From here you do a short and sweet tutorial which throws you right in to the action relatively quickly.The controls are tight and will be very familiar to fans of popular FPS games such as Halo, Resistance, Gears, Unreal, and many others.You have the ability to jump, duck, melee, shoot, toss grenades, and eventually use a class specific special ability such as placing turrets.Aside from the general control of your character menus are easy to navigate for all of your weapons, the map is easy to read, and the HUD is simple and informative.

Following the tutorial you progress the game from doing various quests.These quests can be found on mission boards, from NPCs, and occasionally from random stuff lying around.The quests themselves so far haven't been anything particularly noteworthy in the grand scheme of RPGs.It's still a lot of "kill XYZ" "collect a fistful of whozawhatits" or "go talk to random NPC" but they have streamlined them enough to where the don't feel forced but rather serve as more of a beacon of where you should realistically be taking your character and scoring some nice exp and loot while you're at it.Quest objectives can also be tracked and objectives are clearly marked on your compass.

Outside of questing there are a decent number of monsters to kill.I still don't really have much of an idea as to what dictates when an enemy will respawn but it seems if you wander around enough you will likely run in to something to kill.It's typically not a mindless slaughter either, I would highly recommend trying fighting tactically much like you would in a shooter.Until you out-gear or out-level your opponent you will find that the game can actually be quite challenging at times and reward clever use of your equipment and abilities.The game did a great job of encouraging this too by making your enemies respond to grenades logically, implementing cover well, and of course rewarding you with devastating critical with our beloved' HEAD SHOT!

Sizable amounts of experience can also be earned through completing various challenges which are like in game achievements, some of which are actually tied to achievements/trophies.It's mostly killing various things with various weapons but early on it's a great source of experience and you can track your progress on them.

Starting at level 5 you will start to acquire skill points every level.These are used to boost various abilities of your character via a talent/skill tree.There aren't a lot of choices and you can get quite a few of them with the number of points you wind up with but most of them are fundamentally decent options allowing for some individual diversity in how you build your character without having to over-think it.Aside from that each level your character will get a generic health, defense, and attack boost.

The weapons are pretty cool but I will state that some of the "87 Gazillion" claims were perhaps a bit exaggerated.While it is true that many of the weapons can do quite a bit of unique things, the vast majority of the weapons and gear you will find are going to be slight variations of each other much like any other similar dungeon crawler such as Sacred, Titan Quest, or Diablo.Perhaps later in the game the unique generation of weapons becomes more apparent but I could so far fairly compare this to the way the weapons were in Hellgate: London.As for the size of the actual database and possible combination of weapons, I'm sure their claims are accurate but I can only comment from a practical standpoint of what I've seen.In addition to weapons you also get shields which can do various things such as regen health or do elemental bursts when depleted and grenade modifications which allow your grenades to do all kinds of things such as teleport, stick to things, and bounce.

Looting is probably one of my few mild gripes with this game.You can't simply auto-loot everything in your proximity.What the game has you doing is finding in item, hitting the loot button, and then holding it to pick up other relatively close items.It's not game breaking annoying but the range on it isn't very great and holding the loot button to pick up a weapon will auto-equip it which is something that can be frustrating at times.

The graphics will most likely be a love/hate thing for most players as they are highly stylized.I personally love them and think they're quite well done but there are certainly realism junkies out there that won't care for the cartoon approach at all.I will say that only decent videos of this game should be used to judge the graphics, still screenshots don't do this game any justice at all.Graphics aside the environments are very interesting, the characters are well done albeit a bit generic, enemies are pretty decent (Tremors anybody?), and the animations are high quality.

Multiplayer can be done with 2 player split screen couch co-op and online with up to four players I believe.I haven't gone online yet but the split screen was easy enough.Rather than scaling all of the menus down in split screen they opted to leave them full size and movable so that text wouldn't get smushed together which I thought was a pretty clever move.What this means is both players don't have to squint to read everything thing, simply centralize it in their field of view.Also as you do quests objectives/turn-ins will be shared meaning you don't spend your time waiting for everyone to catch up all the time. In multiplayer you can also duel each other which I haven't tried yet.

Vehicles haven't really been much more than a way to get around for me yet.They can be customized in color and weapon outfit but my brother and I both agreed that they weren't a very good way of killing anything aside from running them over which seemed to always been an automatic kill.For a giant vehicle mounted weapon they seem completely inferior to even the worst weapon you could collect at that relative level.The controls are very similar (identical?) to that of a Warthog in Halo.They'll probably take some getting used to for new players but they're relatively easy once you've figured them out.I personally find them to be a bit floaty and awkward but at the moment I don't see myself needing clutch control out of the vehicles for combat so they are passable.

The story regards something involving finding a long lost vault of alien technology.While I'm sure it's interesting I honestly haven't paid much attention to it aside from parts of the story which I couldn't avoid.This sort of game doesn't really bank on the story for me.

That's basically it.Quest, kill, loot, level, and become the destructive juggernaut that Pandora always needed while searching for the vault.

Pros:
Great implementation of shooter mechanics
Lots of fun loot
Good multiplayer
Straight forward and simple RPG elements
Graphics

Cons:
Graphics
Wonky loot controls
Maybe a little clich