03 Nov 09 Borderlands Review

Borderlands (PC) by Gearbox Software
Available for PC 30 October 2009.
Publisher 2K games, also available on Steam.

The lead up to the release of Borderlands in this “Media Hyped” world of gaming was somewhat bland, with only a few followers desperately attempting to lure fellow gamers into buy what seemed like a fantastic concept. This is understandable too, the hype conscious gamer is taking a more cautious approach to their title selection these days, attributed to the volume of games that have failed to delivered on their hype generated by the Media.
Having said that though, there exists the occasional gaming “gem”, that delivers an experience beyond expectation and I find myself thinking Borderlands is such a gem.
This is one of those amazingly rare times in gaming history when a game is developed for all the major platforms and actually works and works well on all of them. But, I better not just sit around thinking about its “orsumness”, this is a review after all, so I better tell you about the game, no?

Borderlands is a game set in baron, futuristic wasteland planet resembling a MAD MAX scene (google it, it’s a movie series from the Dark Ages – yes the 80’s). I bet when you picture it, you’re not thinking cartoon Cell-Shaded landscapes and characters, well, you should be!
Though this game makes use of the Unreal engine, known for its amazing ability to generate detailed characters and textures, the developers (gearbox) decided at some point in the project to dump the realism act and go all Tom and Jerry on us. While this technique has been used before in a number of (mostly console) game titles, never before has it been such a integral part of a games charm. This bold move gave the developers and artists an opportunity to create a zany off-beat world and a platform to deliver strange and entertaining cut-scenes that introduce Boss characters and NPCs.

Let’s get into the game itself and how you setup and play it. Once you’re at the main menu and you’re happy with your settings, you have a choice, single player or multiplayer. There has been a lot of discussion about co-op multiplayer and a number of games out there, Role Playing and First Person Shooter alike, making use of co-op multiplayer, since it seems we little creatures of habit enjoy doing things together more than by ourselves. While the Single player experience is fantastic and will do you well if you are a bit of an emo-hermit, the game really comes into it’s own in the co-op multiplayer format.
Borderlands makes use of gamespy, which dates back to as early as 1996 (the Quake era). There are a number of online games that use gamespy, so if you already have a gamespy account, you can reuse that account for borderlands by clicking the [create account] button and filling in your existing gamespy account details. In it’s current form the functional VOIP on the PC platform is more of an irritation (listening to 3 other sweaty gamers heavy breathing) than a convenience, so I would recommend making use of Teamspeak (there are a number free public teamspeak servers in South Africa) with push-to-talk enabled for your in-game chat.
The next challenge is adding friends (*gamespy ID’s above), you can send out invites and hopefully they accept, what a challenge!
Setting up a game is just as challenging, you can set up a private (I recommend this over public, maybe it’s the xenophobe in me) game host or open your “friends” and simply join them in their current game, when simply joining a friends game, make sure you select the character you want before clicking join.
All the sarcastic technical mumbo jumbo out the way? Great, let me walk you through the actual game itself.

In Single player, the game starts with you driving along in a bus to the 1st area, no history, just a strange bus driver rattling on about something that probably won’t really grab your attention, nor will it stay with you, which I suppose is the point really. After the shortish cut-scene-like intro, you get to chose your character.
1.Mordecai – The Hunter, game-slang for Sniper
2.Roland – Soldier, game-slang for military assault guy
3.Lilith – Siren, game-slang for we didn’t know what to call someone who turns invisible
4.Brick – Berserker, game-slang for albino Hulk, smash, bare-fisted brute(or something close to that)
Once you’ve chosen a character, a strange woman appears and tells you to listen to and follow the robot that you will soon meet, yep, we all fall for that one, every game, we’re such trusting souls.
• If you’re playing co-op multiplayer, you don’t see that opening sequence, you’re choice of character has already been made in the character selection menu before hand.
So you’ve arrived in “town” and get greeted by a robot (shock horror, didn’t expect that!) who hands you a device that becomes your Heads-up display, strange beginnings for a strange game. You follow the robot to a green glowing pole where you customize your characters colour and then it’s off to open the gates into the settlement. It’s from this point (a minute into the game) that the action begins. Some Cars launch into town, by ramping overhead over the gates. Once the Robot opens the gates you’re faced with your first inhospitality, a group of “thugs” who got out of the vehicle and begin shooting at you. Thank goodness you start with a weapon and you can immediately start hurling abuse at the thugs. Once you kill a thug or two, you will note (well, you can’t really miss it) that they drop things like ammunition, money or even weapons and items. There are also loads of things to open, where you can find the same set of goodies.
It may be important to note at this point that the game makes use of a Random item generator engine, this is all scaled on the relative level of the enemies and a little on your character as you progress through the game. The one-liner selling point for the game is “7 gazillion weapons” which, while limited in the beginning of the game, becomes quite apparent later or as you progress and the game gets tougher, where strange (a shotgun that shoots a wave???) and occasionally fantastic weapons and items appear.
OI, back to the game! You’ll find yourself (or your crew) fighting your way into the small town and eventually meeting a Doctor who ask you to do some things for him. This is essentially the format of the game and where the RPG story line comes into play. Along with many side quests, you’ll find you progress rather quickly at first and getting your first Character Skill tree unlock at Level 5.
The skill tree is what makes you character unique in this game, the Soldier with his turret, the Siren with Her Cloaking, The hunter with his Pet and the Berserker with his Rage. Without taking too much away from you with the self-discovery of the game, let it be said that the skill tree is not as simple as it first appears, since there are essentially three main branches to choose from for each character and it may or may not be beneficial to concentrate (specialise) on a branch.
It really is up to you to make the choices as you go through the game by yourself or with friends. Suffice to say that during the couple of nights I’ve played in our 4 player co-op, the choices have been difficult to make as the game changes so drastically constantly.

• Co-op multiplayer difficulty does not scale in a linear fashion in this game either. The more players (Max 4), the more difficult the enemies become. The up-side to this quirk is that as the difficulty increases, so the power and value of item drops increases, in other words, a 4 player co-op game will find better items, but will find the game exponentially more challenging.

Let me wrap this up by saying that you won’t be disappointed if you get Borderlands. It’s a great game in single player, but truly an epic experience when accompanied by friends. If you have communication tools like Steam, XFire and/or Teamspeak, setting up a co-op game is quite straight forward. The unique artwork and quirky characters along side a huge world, the sheer volume of Random weapons (and the pursuit of the perfect weapon) with a enormous side order of secondary quests and a lengthy main quest, will keep you entertained for hours and keep you coming back for more. -- addictive
9.5/10 GAME
Review by Slipperyduck (aka Lee Logan)
03 November 2009