Borderlands Review

Blowing his own brains out will just save you some time later

I’ll admit to the fact that I was a little skeptical when I originally heard about Borderlands. A game that’s structured like Diablo, but plays like a first person shooter? You probably couldn’t shove the chalk any further into the cheese, as far as pitching a game is concerned.

But the art style did look fantastic, and once there were a few gameplay videos to peruse the concept became more palatable. In the end, Borderlands managed to close the deal with me by emblazoning “splitscreen co-op” on the back of the case, and that was that.

As strange as the idea sounded when I first heard it, everything clicks the moment you pick up the controller. The gameplay is simple, yet addictive, as it simultaneously appeals to both the item scrounging RPGer and headshot focused shooter fan inside nearly every gamer. If you love power-levelling and kitting out your character with the best gear you can find, then this game is for you. If you enjoy fast-paced firefights, then this game is for you.

And what backs you up in these firefights? Well the game boasts an estimated seventeen million different guns (which I believe technically qualifies as a “fuck-tonne” on the metric system). While this is certainly impressive, many people may be a little disappointed to discover that most of these seventeen million weapons are variable instances of the same gun, much in the same way that everyone used to trade different versions of their “Lapis Plate of the Wolf” in Diablo. So while there are millions upon millions of guns, they still distill down into eight or nine catagories, so don’t walk in expecting to discover a gun that shoots guns or anything equally crazy (like a certain reviewer did). 

Right in the face with a flaming sniper rifle

That slight disappointment aside, this does still leave you around eight million worthwhile weapons to start searching through, which is more than enough for any item hunter or collector. Collectors may find this game a little restrictive, however, considering the trusty magical “travels with you everywhere” Diablo storage trunk wasn’t one of the elements that was copied over into Borderlands. While your backpack will eventually be fairly expansive, it’s a little limited at the beginning of the game, which means if you do like hoarding your gear you’d better be satisfied with not picking up too much spare loot.

Players can choose from four different character classes. The Soldier (assault weapons), the Hunter (long-range accuracy), the Siren (let’s call her the magic-user of the bunch) and Brick (who likes to hit things … hard). Each class has a special attack, and three specialty-skill trees to upgrade as you gain levels. One of the interesting choices, development-wise, is that at any point a player can choose to revert their skill points (for a fee), and redistribute them all over again. So if you’re sick of playing the team medic as a Soldier, you can easily rearrange your skill tree to improve your weapon damage instead.

Now single-player is fine and all, but given that I purchased the game purely on it’s multiplayer merits, we should probably talk co-op. As far as I can tell, Borderlands is one of those games that almost demands to be played through with a friend. My first full playthrough was split-screen with Moose, and I found that working as a team highly increases your survival chances, along with increasing your enjoyment of the game itself. The different character classes are designed to play well together, complimenting each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We first played a Hunter/Beserker run, and despite being constantly ridiculed for having a “fruity bird” as my special ability, the combination of plentiful punching and a fast, accurate revolver managed to overcome most obstacles.

Also, just so we’re straight on this one, my bird isn’t fruity. It’s corrosive.

Items are automatically listed by their colour-coded rarity

I’d say it was a questionable choice to make the split-screen vertical, because it means that you have to scroll both vertically and horizontally to navigate the in-game menus, but apart from that splitscreen works just fine. You do eventually get used to “menu look” (as I heard somebody dub it), but it’s a real pain in the proverbials when you’ve just started playing.

If you get killed, you’re given a short amount of time to kill another opponent to give yourself a second wind (which restores a small amount of your health).  If you can’t manage another kill, which will happen fairly frequently with boss fights, you’ll be teleported back to the last checkpoint you activated and charged a percentage of your available cash. If you’re playing co-op, you can also be healed by your team-mates, but the second wind system can confuse matters a little bit. Me and Moose had many conversations along the lines of “Are you dying dying, or just dying?”, which is a sentence that really only makes sense in the context of the game.

Now as brilliant as I find the rest of the game, I had a severe dislike of the supposed plot.  Borderlands takes place on a planet called Pandora.  At the beginning of the game, you find yourself on a bus being driven to Fyrestone (the first town in the game) with the hope of finding the Vault, a massive underground stronghold of valuable technology. Before you can even put foot to dirt, you’re got some spectral broad yammering in your ear about how you should (now pay attention here) totally go and look for the Vault. And she won’t contribute one useful element to the game from this point onward.

Even Pandora can suffer from Zerg rushes

The business manager amongst us would call this “horrific double-handling”. The Vault is full of valuable tech that you, as a self-professed “vault-hunter”, want to get your hands on. This should be all the motive we need (hell, compared to a lot of games it’s almost too much back story). So why, oh why do I need some half-arsed Cortana stuck in my head telling me I should do exactly what I was going to do, and offering nothing in the way of explanation? This was only compounded by the game’s ending (which has earned many Twitter commendations for the “Stupidest Ending To A Great Game” award), which explains nothing you haven’t already guessed and then debunks the initial premise. C&C Music Factory should have all the source material they need to add another verse to their hit song “Things To Make you Go Hmm”.

Visually, the game is great. The cel-shading style works well with the edgy yet amusing feel Borderlands gives out.  While you’ll cause a fair few decapitations, acid-meltings and exploding innards on your travels through Pandora, the needless gore feeling is significantly reduced due to the art style.  Health points fountain out of your opponents as damage hits them, along with critical hits, elemental bonuses and finally the XP earned once they die.

Unfortunately, on the variety scale, the planet of Pandora seems to be made up of only four or five factions of enemies, plus a few critters.  You’ll spend most of your early missions fighting Skags (mutant dog-like creatures), then upgrade to fighting Raiders until, close to the end of the game, the Crimson Lance and the Guardians are sprung on you for about twenty minutes.  It doesn’t really take away from the fun, but it would have been nice to have seen maybe a few different styles of Raider, or that kind of thing.

But in the end, if you’re looking for an entertaining title that has good replay value, then Borderlands is certainly a safe bet.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a chalk and cheese sandwich to enjoy.

The Verdict:

Pros: Great gameplay, good range of customisation, excellent visuals.  Missions and XP rewards scale to level difficulty and number of co-op partners.  A solid, skewed sense of humour.  Also, he has three balls.

Cons: “Seventeen million guns” can be a little misleading (although no more so than “millions of customisation combinations” in Need for Speed), and a slight letdown when you find out it won’t be you who’s doing the customising.  The plot is paper thin at best, and at times seems to be hindering the game more than helping it along.

Overall: Despite my misgivings about the storyline, Borderlands is an extremely enjoyable title, especially if you’re bringing a friend along.  I’m quite happy giving it 4 out of 5.  It appeals to so many different kinds of gamer, it’s hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t like it.