Borderlands Review
| Game Name: | Borderlands |
| Platforms: | PC, PS3, Xbox 360 |
| Publisher(s): | 2K Games |
| Developer(s): | Gearbox Software |
| Genre(s): | Action RPG |
| Release Date: | October 20, 2010 |
| ESRB Rating: | M |
You have entered the Borderlands…well Pandora. To my surprise I was NOT greeted with giant dancing smurfs (the joke is getting old) or other types of sorcery. To be perfectly clear, you start on a rusty old bus with a very large bearded man cranking some Cage the Elephant. It truly is a terrible land. After you choose your class you get off the bus and say goodbye to everyone as you will never seen any of them again.
Precarious little scamp ain't he?
Borderlands’ first resident (of about 12) that you meet is a precarious little scamp robot named Claptrap. He will be your temporary guide to the unknown lands. You go through some tutorial bits before you finally open the gateway to the rest (more) of Pandora. You finally get to go off and venture to see what you can find that you can either kill or kill with.
Time to backup to classes for a bit. There are 4 classes in Borderlands: the Soldier, Hunter, Berserker and Siren. They each differ greatly in abilities and special and are an important choice before you start playing.
The Soldier is the machine gunner of the group. He thrives of off big guns that shoot lots, to put in a brutish, poorly worded way. His special is the ability to throw down a turret with a front standing shield that will shoot any nearby enemies. You can upgrade it further to enhance its power and abilities. His skill tree consists of strength and damage upgrades. He’s a tough cookie alright.
The toughest cookie around
The Hunter is my go to guy. He’s quick, can handle big guns, and has a wicked meleé attack. He’s a lot like me actually. Anyway, the Hunter’s special is the ability to throw a bird that will circle you and attack a nearby enemy. It is a surprisingly strong weapon and can be upgraded to make it more powerful. He is the sniper of the group but is not restricted to just rifles. He can (like all of the classes) handle any gun. If you’re not into sniping but like his special then the Hunter is right for you!
With all that leather he either owns a bird or is a dominatrix...
The Berserker is the true brute of the force. He is the guy whose arm span is the rest of the classes put together. Very, very predictably, he is the meleé guy. He specializes in punching people’s faces in and using shotguns or as I like to call them, shotfuns. His special is him getting a blast of adrenaline and being able to punch the living hell out of everything while taking little damage. This can be helpful at times when you are fighting stronger enemies although can depreciate in value if not upgraded wisely. His skill tree is as expected, full of meleé and shotfun upgrades.
Scott: Umm, I think he wants money. Sam can you cover it? Sam: Wha...?
Finally we have the Siren. The Siren is the only lady aboard the terrible bus heading to God knows where, so if you’re nice you will get her off there and choose her. The Siren is a quick little rascal who specializes in elemental guns (more on this later). Her special turns her into an invisible ghost like figure and can run extremely fast. The special also creates a radius blast going in and out damaging enemies nearby. This damage can be greatly increased over time. Her tree affects her guns and special.
Classy
The other very important element of the game is guns (of course!).
Yay, shotfuns!
There are millions of guns out there for you to find but here is what you should expect. First off, don’t expect to see too many weird contraptions as although they are different, they still are something we all expect. But anyway, the main types of guns are rifle, submachine, rocket, shotfun, revolver, repeater and alien. Rifles can be scoped or bare, burst, single, or rapid. You see quite a few of these guns out there some are awesome many are not. SMGs are very rapid fire guns that resemble the P90 of today. Rocket launchers don’t really need to be explained. They shoot rockets. Revolvers are those pistols you see in Western movies (or Red Dead Redemption). They are single shot and usually slow but can also be very, very powerful. Repeaters are also handguns but normally shoot, as the name suggests, repeatedly. Some will putter others will just rip. They don’t always hit high but the speed makes up for it. Shotfuns are, well, shotfuns.
Another factor in guns is their elemental damage. Explosion, acid, fire, and electric elemental damages can affect your shots. They are marked with XY factor. X being multiply and Y being a number in the range of 1 to 4. Different elements damage different enemies more effectively than others. The final type of weapon (I didn’t forget it…) are alien guns. They are the rarest of the game and come in 3 varieties: shotfun, rifle, and rocket. They look much different than the other types of weapons in the game but function similarly. A big difference in these guns is that there is no need for reloading. They do overheat though and recharge overtime. The only variety in these guns is the damage which rarely wonders away from the default values.
There is no joke to be had. It's a good picture that conveys the info in the previous paragraph.
So now that we are back at the beginning of this story, we just opened the gates after the tutorial and are now free to do what we want. It’s a glorious day for all. So now it’s time for a bunch of fetch quests and not very memorable characters. Wait what?! Yes, it’s true. The Borderlands story and quests are very lackluster. You won’t care about the story (not that much anyway) and you won’t care about the quests. Luckily, the gameplay is great fun and grinding is a ball. Phew. You have great online and local multiplayer to kill random stuff with your friends.
The story of Borderlands is your quest for the vault. That is really the only main driving point for your existence as a character. Then we go into side quests to occupy the time you are sent to collect things for other people. Again, your character must feel lousy. One of my biggest gripes with the game is that there is almost no one to see! There are very few NPCs out there which can lead to depression and possible in-game suicide. Seriously though, it can be a bit of a downer when no one else is out there. Where the fun comes from in Borderlands is really why we play games, the gameplay! Grinding and leveling up, shooting things and collecting gear, it’s all great fun. Sure you may not care about the characters or story but who would care when you can grind, level, shoot, and collect! Cool style is also abound which there was really no reason to mention as the pictures should show you that. Borderlands is a solid game with lots of other stuff to discuss but as always, I like to let you discover some things for yourself.
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technically it’s an RPS (Role Playing Shooter) or at least as close as anyone has ever come to one
well, seeing as there is no such thing as role playing shooter, I have to disagree
Unless… the English language sucked in the first place, almost screaming for random people to play with it as much as they wanted. Let’s see, Role Playing Game…does exist. So do shooters. What if they made an RPG shooter? And took out the G for game and replaced it with S for shooter. No, no, that’s just not right! Hahaha if an RPS doesn’t exist, neither does 2K.