With lame RPG-lite gameplay and heavily flawed game design issues, Borderlands is a disappointment.
I was expecting candy. Lots and lots of candy. But what I got was loads and loads of lard sprayed painted to look like candy.
No, I am not reciting an anecdote about my experience to an American lolly shop.
No, I am talking about one of the most anticipated games of 2009.
Borderlands was forecasted to be THE fps-RPG of all time. Design by prominent studio Gearbox, Borderlands promised exciting FPS gameplay with the ingenuity of a terrific plot with RPG goodness being its core. Oh how wrong we were. The game is a complete farce if not the worst RPG of 2009. Okay, I am a bit of a hater but seriously how can you not be when the game itself is basically an insult to the RPG genre. Okay, okay I will start with the positives so not to completely destroy the game. Believe me, this game is a worth a shot if you are interested but dont expect to shell out for it (like I did. Which I regret. Which I REALLY regret!).
So Borderlands is a pretty game. Pretty in an artistic style which provides an alternative to the many heavy-duty, realism-FTW games out there in today's society. This reviewer played both the PC and Xbox360, and can 100% confirm that the PC version is miles ahead of the 360 one terms of graphical goodness. Performance wise...that's where Borderlands loses its nail. Even on a Corei7 3.2GHz processor, 4GB RAM and 1GB RAM graphics, Borderlands has some serious performance inconsistency issues. Sometimes it'll run at 100fps+++. Other times it'll drop to as low as 20 fps. This is especially evident in indoor areas. And we do not know why. After many critics citing this problem, Gearbox has yet to release a statement or even a patch to fix this irregularity. Even after 5 patches. Even after 5 DLC's. Which I dont recommend you to buy unless you're a diehard. Which there aren;t many.
Technicalities aside, the gameplay of Borderlands has been screaming 'Fallout3-copycat but more emphasis on FPS' ever since I first landed in Pandora. The world is extremely bland and lack in detail as well as life (apart from its native wildlife) despite obviously taking plenty of inspirations from other open-world-type-ish games like Half-Life, Bioshock & Fallout 3. The world is feels dead apart from bandits and monsters with towns being almost completely deserted saved for like half a dozen people. One settlement about the size of Megaton from Fallout 3 just has one guy! Characters are cliche' 90's-RPG-type 'quest vendors' who will be in the same area for the whole game and saying the same lines over and over. Quests are given via a noticeboard or through 'interactions' with characters. Not only are they boring and repetitive (go to this place, kill everything, grab this item/perform this action/kill this boss and come back. Rinse and repeat. For the WHOLE game), the travelling they entail, even with a vehicle, is tedious and confusing. Firstly, the map is useless as the world is separated into different zones with travel portals in between (*cough* CONSOLE WHORE *cough*) and the map itself only shows the zone the player is in. Secondly, the enemies killed in one particular camp will respawn when you come back, forcing you to put your life on the line unnecessary. So what you're saying is Borderlands is hard? No. Just bad. This leads to the dodgy life-death mechanic of the game. You get a shield bar and a health bar yes. When you die, you get about 10 seconds to kill an enemy to get a second chance at living. Cool. But the point is, you're immobile and crouched when you're 'fallen'. So what if there're no enemies around? What if you 'fall down' right behind some obstruction, blocking your view to shoot? You cant change guns, you cant zoom in either. Okay,so you die. You do get respawned to the nearest safe area. But guess what? There's a $$$ penalty. You guessed it. Everyone you die you lose about 10 % of your current $$$. You cant save in Borderlands as it's a very console game with autosaves /checkpoints (another down point. WHICH RPG HAS NO **** SAVE OPTION? WHICH RPG ONLY GIVES YOU CHECKPOINTS?). So basically, its best to avoid detah at all costs. Which is hard in the first 75% of the game. There's a limit to your inventory space. Health kits provide slow reg while with small health improvements. Health kits are expensive. And you dont get a lot of $$$ in this game purely because everything like ammo and upgrades cost so much for some odd reason. And than you die sometimes. Which you can loss a heavy amount of cash. This poorly-designed system of gameplay is one of the central flaws of Borderlands and something that will put many players off.
Borderlands has a horrible inventory design, which makes it extremely difficult to sort, compare and see your loot. Everything in your user interace (not HUD) has some flaw one way or the other. There's a complete lack of character and vehicle customization (yea, changing just the colour of the jacket and helmet of your character/vehicle is going to blow the world away eh Gearbox?). The skill tree of your character is shallow and lacks the incentive for you to level up because the improvements are so minimal & boring. The map is trash and scrolling the map is defaulted on invert mouse movements with zooming in handled by keyboard keys rather than the mouse wheel. The quest 'journal' is mediocre at best with a plain bad layout, an excess of inconcise info and quest difficulty indications being highly inaccurate in most cases . The attempt at humour by the developers in the game is laughable with most jokes and corny statements being try-hard at best while most being annoying. VERY annoying. Like the Claptrap Robots. You seriously would like to have the option to kill NPCs and the like after you have encountered Claptraps. They just cant shut the **** up no matter what time of the day it is and they do and SAY the same lines OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN!!! It's bordering on RAGE-QUIT with these mechanical bastards making the already mediocre game even more unlikable.
Borderlands is best played with 3 other buddies in multiplayer. The combination of different character styles and abilities makes it a far more interesting game to play than as a solo bounty hunter. Replaying the stale campaign to reach the maximum level is only for the fans (Fans? I hear a pin drop) or as a Co-op game. So avoid this game if you're an RPG gamer. Because Pandora isn't the Pandora of Avatar. Because Borderlands isn't Avatar. Because it's not up to the quality of a movie like Avatar. Because the only thing Borderlands deserves is for rent for a multiplayer weekend. Because Borderlands really is Boredomlands. Gearbox is fired.
Pros:
- Unique art style
- Multiplayer saves it from failure
- Combat is interesting at times
Cons:
- Repetitive, boring and lame gameplay & gameplay design
- Horrible, horrible, so very horrible inventory design, quest layout, interface design and world
- Technical issues
Better than: Getting killed on Pandora
On Par with: errr...nothing comes to mind
Worse than: Hellgate London
This is one of the worst, if not the worst, RPG I have ever played in my life. RPG buffs should avoid at all costs while FPS gung-ho's should only get this unless you have three other mates who are willing to venture to Pandora with you. Borderlands is a disappointment and perhaps one of the top most over-hyped and over-rated games in history. Gearbox should really consider quitting their day job.