The road leading up to Gearbox and 2K Games’ Borderlands was turbulent at best. Its release date was pushed back numerous times, and not too long ago it was announced that the game’s graphics were being completely redone to favor a more cel-shaded art approach. However, after being pushed back almost an entire year from its original release date, Borderlands is finally here.
Sporting a unique art style, innovative gameplay that combines role-playing and shooting elements, intense four-player co-op and a gazillion guns, Borderlands is easily one of the best original properties to be launched this holiday season.
The wait, suffice to say, was well worth it.
Borderlands starts off with gamers choosing a class (Hunter, Soldier, Siren or Berserker) and then embarking on a quest to find the fabled Vault, a hidden location lost in the wastelands that will grant riches, fame and power to the one who discovers it.
You’ll begin your adventure with just some basic weapons, but as you take on new quests, find more gear, level up and obtain a vehicle to cruise around in, you’ll quickly be able to deal with the more deadlier threats that populate the desert.
That’s really what Borderlands is all about. You’ll explore, complete quests to gain experience, kill enemies and loot their corpses for money and weapons. It follows a tried and true formula established by games like Diablo, but it’s still incredibly effective and addictive. It’s often easy to tell yourself that you’ll just complete one more quest or level up one more time before calling it a night, and before long, you’ll have spend countless hours playing without knowing it.
The drive to find newer and better weapons will also keep you hooked. There’s literally hundreds of thousands of guns, from shotguns that set your opponents on fire to grenades that deal poison damage, to be discovered or bought, and obtaining a newer, better gun is always a thrill.
Borderlands is a first-person shooter structured around role-playing elements, and the game manages to strike a nice balance between the two. On one hand, twitch reflexes and a good eye will help score head shots. There’s also a fair amount of running and gunning, lobbing grenades and taking cover --the same things you’d expect to find in any other FPS.
On the other, you’ll get a chance to invest skill points in certain talent trees like in World of Warcraft, increase weapon proficiency and balance stats when you decide what weapons to keep or sell. Additionally, the level of the enemies you encounter also play a significant role in how you play. If you’re a level 5 character and you run into a level 10 enemy, your bullets will do next to no damage and a single hit from him will kill you.
The gameplay feels more reminiscent of a typical FPS when it comes to combat, but there’s a lot of other things, like questing and level grinding, that bear a distinctly RPG flavor. Unlike Fallout 3, which often felt like RPG with periodically broken FPS mechanics, Borderlands takes the best of both worlds and seamless combines it into one awesome game.
The best part of Borderlands is playing it with other gamers. You can create a session and play through the entire game as a party of four. However, it’s important to carefully choose who you decide to group with, and it’s highly recommended that you play primarily with friends. Not only can the weapons that drop off enemies be picked up by anyone, but the quest difficulty (and item level) scales according to how many people are playing. If even one player isn’t doing their job correctly, missions become substantially more difficult.
Creating a well rounded party is also the best way to finish quests as painlessly as possible. Each class has its own unique strength and special abilities.
Hunters, for instance, are masters of long range combat and can summon a pet to deal additional damage from a distance. Soldiers drop turrets and gain support skills, Sirens turn invisible and Beserkers can specialize in distracting enemies and soaking up damage. While any combination of characters will still be able to finish all the quests, it’s usually advisable to vary things up a little bit.
The only real downside to Borderlands is that it doesn’t have much of a story to engage gamers with. There’s no real reason to complete quests and find new loot if there’s no concrete objective to drive gamers towards. Borderland’s gameplay is perfectly suited for multiplayer in the same way that MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft is. There isn’t much of a story, but there doesn’t really need to be one. It’s the fun of playing with friends that keep gamers coming back for more.
As a multiplayer experience, Borderlands is a lot of fun. Playing it solo without any sort of social interaction with others players, however, is pretty bland and tedious.
Final Verdict
A couple weeks ago, College News predicted why Borderlands would be better than last year’s post-apocalyptic RPG/FPS, Fallout 3.
It turns out only some of that prediction was true. Borderlands definitely lives up to the hype and has the same caliber of quality gaming that Fallout 3 has, but simultaneously, they’re two very different games. Fallout 3 revolves around story, atmosphere and role-playing. Borderlands is a little more simple and focuses on killing things with friends.
Regardless of the comparison, though, Borderlands is an amazingly crafted game that has the potential to keep gamers busy for quite some time. The barren wastelands in Borderlands may be teeming with mutant, rabid dogs and insane, ax wielding midgets, but it’s well worth taking the time to explore.
Final Grade: B+
Borderlands is developed by Gearbox and published by 2K Games. The version reviewed was for Xbox 360, and it is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC now.
