Role Playing Shooting with four players, online co-operative play, splitscreen and 87 bazillion guns.
That's the question behind role-playing-shooter Borderlands. But Borderlands brings more than just an excessive amount of choice for blowing your foes away. Vehicles, classes and quirky characters are all present in this Science-Fiction role player that feels like a first person Diablo.
Far in the future, Pandora is a planet reported to be packed with riches, but later found to be a barren wasteland. But there's still one legend left on Pandora: a vault filled with alien technology more powerful than anything seen before. You take the role of one of four characters destined to head for Pandora in search of the vault and its weapons. Each class of character has their own benefits, such as the big bruiser that can launch into a punching frenzy or the sniper who can learn to bypass shields and attack with a falcon. The skill trees for each character are rather diverse with over twenty different skills for each. Also in traditional RPG style, you'll be accepting quests from people throughout the world, which involve killing, collecting and killing some more. The storyline itself doesn't drill too deep and surely won't be winning an award anytime soon, you'll be wanting to get back into the fight and collect more guns.
Guns are everywhere in Borderlands and after a single play through I had been in possession of over 350 guns, all of which 'unique'. The problem with all these procedurally generated guns is that although they may technically all be different you'll eventually become detached from the random look of the guns and more interested in their specifications, after all, that's what matters. Guns are rated on many factors: damage, accuracy, elemental effects, fire rate, zoom... All these features and choice builds a loot fever that is exactly what makes games such as this so addictive. Oddly however the randomness stops at the weapons. Locations aren't randomized as originally expected and there's no random armor, actually there's no armor at all. For defense you'll have to buy and upgrade shields which regenerate but your health does not. Should your health run out you'll have to 'Fight for your life' and quickly take down an enemy to restore your health, unless you have a companion around to revive you.
Insane guns, lush graphics and a bunch of mates; Borderlands can be hard to put down.Multiplayer is truely Borderlands' best feature, splitscreen and four player co-op is available throughout the game, although playing with random folk online has a few issues. Playing through the game online is great fun and specializing and cooperating to take down different enemies gives the game a whole new dynamic that you don't have in the single player. The problems arise when you're playing with someone you can't trust. Unlike most modern RPGs, Borderlands doesn't have any loot policies or trade windows, so anyone can grab a weapon that may have dropped from an enemy, then to trade guns you'll have to drop 'em and swap 'em rather than use a trade window. Settling disagreements in a duel or in the area is one way to go, except that some character classes are far better suited towards PvP than others, fortunately this isn't a major part of the game.
Perhaps borderlands' greatest failing is that tedium can set in at a few points due to a lack of variety in the landscapes and the creatures. You will come across a few caves and structures but on the whole the landscape doesn't have much more diversity than you'd expect to find in Fallout 3. You'll also be fighting variations on the same handful of foes throughout the game, except they'll have more health and drop better weapons. This is the floor with most Online RPGs and if these failings don't bother you there then you'll likely feel at home on Pandora.
Borderlands is a great and unexpected game, it's definitely not to be experienced alone and it can wear down on you a little somewhere shortly past the midpoint, but with the different classes to choose from, interesting characters and enjoyable combat there's plenty of reasons to reasons to grab a few mates and enjoy the world.
Mark Dell
Originally posted to CitizenGame.co.uk on November 6, 2009