Source main site: www.borderlandsthegame.com
Gamespot review: http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/borderlands/index.html
Incidentally, I never watched the trailer for this game. Just watching it makes me want to go jump back into the game for more of everything. I hate to sound biased early on, but it’s a good game and my review pretty much speaks for it, I mean me, it meaning me of the game for… me. Ok. Read on. Please.
Short Summary: Borderlands is a game that I keep coming back to, even after Modern Warfare 2’s amazing glitch-filled deathmatch-torture fest. Even after Diablo 3 comes out and I’ve played Halo: Reach, I can be sure that it will still make my thumbs numb and callused from hours on Borderlands. Why? A terrible ending and just running around blowing up bad guys with guns is nothing new, what’s to keep hype24x7 interested? CO-OP. What good is a shooter game without being able to bring your friends along. The human element makes this game ten times more fun, whether it be trash talk or the endless complaint that, yes, you were in a menu for the 450th time while the rest of your group was trying to move on to the next zone. After the rate-down, I’ll highlight some of the things I felt really stood out and made this game enjoyable even after 90+ days after release.
The Rate-down:
-Comparison to other games of its type / genre: Borderlands can be thought of as a Co-Op FPS RPG. Consider Gears of War or Halo, which provide a co-op playable campaign and multiplayer competitive play as well as a “horde” mode for multiplayer online co-op play versus waves of enemy AI monsters . Conceptually Borderlands is that last mode, expanded into a loose story / campaign with your RPG elements of random weapons and class-based character leveling. In that respect its both unique and mundane at the same time, making it a ton of fun when you play with other people or incredibly boring when you play by yourself. The only game that strikes me as remotely similar but in a slightly different genre is Too Human, which is a action game but it also had random weapons / armor.
-Biggest Fail: Player vs. player, the arena system. You can duel any other player at any time during the game for a single 1v1 match or enter any of the arenas in the game, however the classes don’t totally balance well. The fighting boils down to a cat and mouse, however sees the other person first and gets a shot off usually wins. Also there is no separate PVP mechanism, if you want to test your skills against the world it must all be done by finding other hosted games and joining to see if they would like to duel or join an arena. There is no arena-matchmaking system and there is no reward or benefit to being able to kill other players. PVP is a very simplistic experience that seems to lack any real strategy or functional element to the game; it’s still fun to kill your friends.
-Biggest Win: Co-op gameplay. This is the one part of the game that really shines. If your teammates are smart, focused and coordinated you can easily save each other from dying, rip through hours of gameplay without any notice of the time. Borderlands is clearly designed for this type of gameplay and it is easy to join another players game, select a character and begin leveling up. This ease of play and simple formula make the game fun the first time or the 1000th time.
-Replay Value: There are a total of three DLC’s for this game: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome, and the Secret Armory of General Knox. Each adds either to the story or gameplay experience and are all generally fun. However after those are all finished and you’ve been through them all, there isn’t a whole lot of content to go back for. The game is essentially the same each time and there are no branching paths to the story or unique hidden story arcs. Nothing. So why do I keep playing it? There are cars to drive around, duels to be had, perhaps even level another character and there are always more guns. I’d put the replay value with friends at effectively infinite and solo at about one half of infinite.
-Worth buying: If I had to pick between this game and any other game as a 1 to 1 comparison, your $50 is well spent on Borderlands. Despite the fun of Modern Warfare 2, if online competitive is not your cup of tea and you like online cooperative play then this game is for you. There are great single player games out, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, and Bioshock 2, but for the money you will always get more value out of games like Borderlands.
Main Review:
Borderlands sort of stands out in the current crop of Modern Warfare grindfests, anti-hedonistic hippy tree hugger emo RPGs (see also JRPG) as well as all the rest of the version 39 of the fill-in-your-sport here sport franchises. The thickness of the game is not really made up by epic story telling or by some massively immersive gameplay. True the game does give you a very post-apocalyptic feel, the sense that you are in fact all on your own in it to win it IF it were not for the fact that the intention in my opinion is that you:
a.) have some friends who play games with you – this is practically the main assumption 2k Games is making. They clearly bought into some article industry hype at E3 or GDC or some IGN review that actually carried some weight that all people want to do is play Co-Op. This is very true. I love me some co-op.
b.) you actually don’t mind leveling up or grinding monsters but you get sick of getting owned at competitive multiplayer. Spawn die spawn die and wait to spawn, think you’re smart and die agin.
There are in fact very few FPS RPGs that come up when you google: “FPS RPG” that are mainstream enough to be on a console and a PC. Given this uniqueness, there are similar titles not necessarily with the Co-OP element: Bioshock / Systemshock, mostly single player in the story progression and until recently with BIoshock 2 there was no multiplayer in the shock games. On the PC side Hellgate: London (failed MMO) sort of covers similar territory but not emphasizing the FPS portion as much. Really, Borderlands sticks out and hence does apply a simple yet decent formula of when people get to kill things, blow stuff up and run over things together they have fun especially if they get XP and tons of random loot. Next on the list would be Deus Ex, but again there’s no co-op. It seems this formula of FPS RPG Co-op isn’t tried and tested, yet Borderlands excutes something that works.
Co-Op play – core function of the game. I’m sure somewhere someone thinks that paying $50 to $60 for a game you can play in the dark and by yourself is the core of gaming. In some ways, many games can fill this role and stand up to criticism both as a single player and multiplayer optional type setup. However the opposite is not always interesting, i.e. single player only. If anything set up the stigma that gamers were anti-social it had to be the pre Meridian 59 / DAOC times where the only multiplayer was on a LAN or direct player to player hosted games. Shudder to think what gaming would have come to without Quake or MMOs. I digress: Co-op makes Borderland, so it fits as a “highlight” and I know it sounds like a broken record, but it bottoms out as this: You can play it solo, but you’ll likely get bored or hate it hours or days into and wonder just what the point is. So its both a fault and a feature, hope you have some fun friends to play with or that you possess the online-gamer wherewithal to make some or sadly, this game is likely not worth purchasing, maybe renting. Strong caution anti-socialites strongly cautioned and e-hermits need not apply.
Random gun generation: I wish there was armor or maybe upgrades but this games doesn’t need it, plus then this would go the way of mass effect 1, instead of focusing on the game, you’d focus on item management. Then again for some people having that extra level of interaction adds to the game. Either way, the lack of it doesn’t detract from the game one bit, if anything it focuses your energy on having fun running around, driving cars and killing bad guys. Hey, does shooting bad guys ever get old in video games? When are we going to be able to kill baddies with hugs not slugs?
Cell-shaded graphics: It’s not really a “feature” that I think I hate or love, but it’s the style they opted for, giving it a cartoony anti-seriousness. I could do without it (after years of WoW) but I think it doesn’t hurt the game at all, it sort of adds to the ambience or atmosphere of the game if it could be said to have it.
PVP / Deathmatch – 2 on 2 or Free for All, gun restrictions I’ve never been able to get it to work. This is really the weakpoint of the game unless you count the story as some sort of key point that you weight FPS games on, then well prepare to be disappointed the best part is the narration. My favorite quote: “You’re not the police of me!” by the voice of Jakob from the vendors / machines in game. Really, this is the one single most frustrating part of the game. Sirens tend to own everybody and the game has no multiplayer only match-making mode which is probably why the devs didn’t bother to try to balance the PVP. If they did well, sorry not so sorry to be a harsh critic on this one but they did a poor job and it shows in a game with other features polished off. Maybe I could nit pick more but who likes that anyways and it doesn’t sell games when you tell people you hate the game you try to get them to buy by hating it… wait what? Exactly!
1st major caveat – the game pivots around its core elements heavily: Co-op play, guns (item generation) and the run / gun playstyle. Leveling does seem secondary once you hit about 30 or so, things don’t really kill you that bad and really with about 10 million credits / dollars / simoleons who needs to worry about dying? That is the funniest part though, the game really makes you want to LIVE and not die, why is beyond me. Somehow it ropes you in enough that running to save your teammate at the last possible second is inherently worth the comments that player characters make. Everything from “Stop fooling around” to “Let’s get things done” can be heard upon your dying breath being shoved back down your lungs for the umpteenth time.
Buy it or not? I’d have to say this is a love it or hate it game so you have to know in advance if you are a love it or hate it gamer. I’ve explained where I sit (in front of my pc with my xbox hooked up) and I love playing Bordlerlands. I’ve got about 5 to 8 friends I can play online with and it seems even if we just jump on run around and blow things up… it’s more fun that GTA 4 because the controls are better, there’s more guns, and instead of cops we’ve got bad guys. Really what better formula is there? (I could run around for hours in GTA4, just wish that someone got to play the cops while someone gets to play the bad guys, sounds like if you made a Crackdown + GTA4 = ultimate cops / robbers game.) Hmmm::: that gets me thinking::: Notice to all game Devs: Appeal to all boys “inner child” see also FREUD.
Now for a bit of point / counterpoint, here is Yahtzee’s a couple of minute or so review where he tells you how he hates everything and everything sucks but in a funny way: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1448-Borderlands