I played this game on my own. No multiplayer. This review will therefore be a different perspective to other reviews.
What story? Oh, right that one. BL doesn't really have much of a story to be quite honest. The story is essentially one of the many fetching tasks you are given. It really is quite terrible. On the other hand, does that really matter? I didn't get too bothered by it. A better story WOULD have been nice.
==GRAPHICS==
This is the PC version I am reviewing by the way. The graphics are great I think. I played this on my laptop in the university library when revision gets me down. One annoying thing is the screen tear but I was able to fix this mostly by enabling v sync (there is no option for this, you have to open up a bunch of config files to do so.......took me a while of internet trawling to find out how ¬__¬). But yes, the graphics are definitely nice.
==DESIGN==
The world is a kind of cell shaded universe that also has some grittyness to it. Cell shading is often linked to games aimed at younger audiences but this game has a lot of swearing, brutal dismemberments and macabre humour. I found the extreme twist on things quite hilarious, an awesome juxtaposition.
The sound design in this game is a real let down though. It is eerily quiet most of the time you have nothing but your footsteps for ambient sound. The sounds that the guns make are also not great. Its hard to describe but if you listen to them (and have played other shooters) you will know what I mean.
==GAMEPLAY==
Hmmmm. I personally am not a fan of FPS's. I always consider them to be the same old thing. This game however was very playable for me. It really is just an RPG in FP view. Although an RPG with no story and items.
You have a few characters to choose from and all of them paly very differently. I personally went for Roland. I haven't really had a chance to play as the others though because once you choose your character, you are stuck with that choice....even in subsequent playthroughs (on the same game save). It would have been nice to be given the choice to switch characters on the second playthrough. What do you do in this game though? You shoot stuff and collect stuff. That is all. This all revolves around the mission mechanic where you are given a mission and you must go out and complete it to collect a reward. The missions can get very boring though and I had to stop playing for a while because it really got to me. They are very monotonous. The enemy AI performs quite adequately. They take cover, shoot when they see you etc. One thing though is if I shoot an enemy from quite a distance away they can hear the shot, pinpoint where I am, move to cover and shoot back ALL before the shot even gets to the target!!! Ludicrous. ¬__¬. Apart from that, it is quite fun to play this game.
Collecting weapons, armour and grenades are another big part of this game. During my first playthrough the weapons I got were quite lackluster. But on my second way through they seem much better. The reason being that on the second playthrough all the enemies are much stronger and hence drop better items. =D
==OVERALL==
I like this game. It is by no means a great game but its also not a bad game. It is something that will keep you occupied and is quite easy to jump into as there are no advance game mechanics to get your head around. I recommend this game to FPS fans and those that liked games such as Fallout 3 and Bioshock.
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==PROS==
+Great re-playability
+Excellent world design
+Great graphics (with some tweaks)
+A steady stream of add ons
==CONS==
-Terrible sound (from music to the guns)
-Single player is not as fun as multiplayer
-Joke of story
-Can get repetitive at times