Loot. Every role playing game experience has it in abundance. It's the life's blood that drives a player to move forward. For that next precious piece of armor, that dominating piece of weaponry, or that elaborate spell scroll with it's twenty minute animation sequence. It's what the love-hate relationship of most RPGs is based on. Why I had so much fun with Borderlands in spite of this is due to the fact that Borderlands is using the RPG mechanism to compliment the existing FPS experience and not trying to cram it down the player's throats. Gearbox made the decision to craft outlandish combat options with semi-customizable skill trees and the result is a really good time.
In the future, many have traveled to this planet, Pandora, to forge a better life with the expectations of abundant resources. When everyone got there though, it was quickly discovered that what they were searching for and what they found were extremely different things. They landed on a wasteland devoid of much save for indigenous life and some ruins spread out across the landscape. Civilization becomes synonymous with lawless living with some small outposts scattered all over. There is a legend though - a legend of a Vault filled to the brim with incredible wealth, power, and technology, built by an alien race that has long since abandoned it. As can be assumed then, everyone has become a hunter of this wealth and that's where you come in. After picking your choice of character: Brick - a Beserker/Tank class that can take a helluva lot of punishment and go into a rage mode that grants him nigh-invulnerability and makes his already punishing fists even more of a threat; Lilith - one of six beings known as Sirens who have the ability to phase into another dimension granting invisibility and heightened speed, and after coming out of the phase executing this area attack that can be extremely useful; Mordecai - a hunter and sniper master searching for someone from his past, whose pet 'Bloodwing' can seek out and destroy multiple enemies at one time; and Roland - a soldier and mercenary from a group called the Crimson Lance, who is looking to fill a vendetta for an enemy he has sworn to kill, and comes equipped with the Scorpio Turret, an automated turret that will save your skin on more than one occasion.
After picking your character you are greeted by a disembodied voice which then reveals itself as brightly blue eyed raven haired female apparition who asks you to trust her, but admits beforehand that you don't know her and probably don't have a reason to trust her. You are then dropped off by someone who looks suspiciously like Roman from GTA IV, and soon after you encounter a small pelvic thrusting robot who helps you get started on your journey.
One wonders though, if so many people have quested for it... Why have there been so few reports as to what even the outside of the structure looks like? This question and more will be answered as you trek through the Borderlands.
Controls:
If you've ever played a first person shooter, you are going to feel right at home with this. Depending on your level of experience, you actually may intensively pick up the title and begin playing and intuitively know where everything is. With the responsiveness that any FPS demands, I never found myself frustrated with the controls (or any of the options for button layout).
Graphics:
Earlier in development the game began with a much more gritty and realistic depiction of its arid wastelands. Along the way however, it moved to a cell shaded style much to people's surprise. I remember seeing early images and marveling and how polished the game looked at that pre-cell shaded stage, and then the quick disappointment when I was confronted with the reality that it wasn't going to be the final design choice. I have to say though - it works. The third Unreal Engine is used well here and coupled with the sense of humor, over the top violence, and character design, the style never becomes distracting and instead gives the feeling of well drawn graphic novel. The first post-apocalyptic game that comes to mind to compare this experience to is Fallout 3, another genre-hybrid with a much heavier emphasis on role playing elements. I assure you, playing through a vault with twenty shades of crap colored brown is not what you'll be confronted with when playing Borderlands. You will find that, yes - even wastelands can have rainbows.* On the flip side,you will probably notice textures issues pop up every now and again, usually when re-spawning from a death or entering a new area. It doesn't do much to distract from the game, but it is there and it is noticeable.
The characters models are solid and there's somewhat enough variation in enemies to keep you immersed and not feel like you are fighting one huge clone army, but there is not a great deal of customization for the player character. Unfortunately, with a use of the graphics engine that's this cool, you really don't get the chance to see how awesome it would be if you could see some variations when you play online. I hope that planned DLC includes some deeper customization options to really show the strength of using this cell shaded style. When you're playing online, it can be like playing with mirror images with different colored shirts.
Audio:
The audio is fairly standard. There's a pretty solid score in place that effectively ramps up when danger approaches and there's a heavy firefight. When things are more tense and you're just exploring new territory, the score is well suited for that as well. As mentioned briefly before, one of the best points about the game is the humor and that comes into play here as well. There's a wealth of speech for the characters and sound effects for the creatures. One of the things I enjoyed the most is hearing the murmurs of the enemies or the snarl of a beast and trying to plan where the attack was going to come from.
The enemies that you'll face have the usual conversations with the player - threats of death, castration, and apocalyptic-level threats of murder. I won't soon forget the first 'boss' that I faced in the game, who incidentally had three testicles, declare that he was going to do some pretty special things to my lifeless corpse.
The other characters that you meet in the game, the quest givers and side characters, do a good job of expanding the mythology and adding more personality to the game with good voice acting. There were times that it came across as pretty stale for some of the characters, but seeing as how I didn't have to speak much more to them after completing a particular quest chain - I really didn't mind so much.
Gameplay:
The games revolves around completing quests to unlock more quests. However, with over 100 quests of different levels of length and involvement it doesn't feel like you are repeating yourself too much. What I mean by that is it doesn't feel like you're playing the errand boy all the time. Additionally, a lot of the quests will lead you into the same area so you aren't completing a quest chain by trekking all over the landscape unnecessarily - an RPG staple I am glad to be without. Although the story won't wow you the game experience certainly will give you some great moments. Those moments though don't include the enemy AI that you'll encounter. Usually, in my experience with the game anyway, the AI can be summarized as "rush hero until shot to death", or "clumsily hide behind cover leaving limp exposed, and if hit, run toward hero until shot to death". You will be surrounded by adversaries though, so what they lack in brains they make up for in number (like zombies). That pissed me off in a lot of games, I can think of a lot of high profile titles I won't bash here, that seem to employ that tactic as a substitute for actual thinking enemies. Thankfully, I was too busy firing off rounds of a pistol that spewed acidic goo while hurling grenades that bounced off every surface until they hit an enemy - all the while I had a friend phasing in and out causing massive confusion and then retreating to snipe our foes with explosive bullets. Yeah, you're going to want to bring a friend along if you can because while the game may be a good time in the single player mode, it's an absolute blast in the multi-player mode.
This mode, fun as it is, also presents some issues that aren't enough to be up in arms about, but are there nonetheless. Trading consists of dropping stuff as opposed to an actual system, and money isn't included in what you're able to drop so you can't really set up any type of store-like atmosphere. Which, actually, is probably for the best. I'd hate to be in the middle of an intense firefight, only to have my way blocked by someone who is AFK and then get assaulted by those things from the Tremor flicks. Also, I'd recommend playing with people you know or at least feel like you can build a nice system with because you can encounter the random jerk who go for the loot and then just take off.
Overview:
If you are looking for a solid FPS that succeeds where so many would be Diablo-esque adventures have failed, then Borderlands is going to be for you. You are going to need to rely on those twitch reflexes for the waves of enemies but you're also going to have to give a little though to how you empower your character to do so. The consistent system of acquiring new loot is just as fun as it always is, and trading that regular gun with white text description for with green, blue, purple, or orange text is addicting as it always is. Pushing forward until that next precious drop that will render your foes helpless and the rest of your arsenal obsolete. An addictive experience best played with friends, and one I recommend without reservation.
* The preceding comment concerning rainbows and their use in post-apocalyptic environments is the opinion of the writer and is not intended to frown upon any organization, individual, or fan of puke colored environments that use VATS. The views of the writer are his own, and do not in any way reflect the views of Aggrogamer.com, other sites affiliated with this site, or the staff involved with the site. Indeed, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the the people who live in the author’s city, country, continent, hemisphere, planet, star system, galaxy, or universe of origin. In point of fact, the author takes full responsibility for his opinions and does not hold his parents, siblings, friends, acquaintances, people in any proximity, or that homeless woman that looks like Macy Gray in the park across from his office responsible for anything in the work, or for anything else the author may or may not have done.
