Borderlands Review
PrintA stunning combat experience diminished by a series of small flaws
Borderlands is an undeniably fun game with a killer concept, innovative game mechanics, a gorgeous art style, and kick-ass cooperative gameplay, but it also includes some frustrating design choices that require the player to bend to the limitations of the game. If you can do that, and you enjoy shooters and Diablo-esque action RPGs, you’re going to love this game.
The sales pitch for Borderlands is simple: It’s first-person Diablo… with guns. While exploring a large, open, post-apocalyptic world, you complete quests, collect loot, and go on adventures with up to three of your pals. While it may sound like Fallout 3, Borderland’s shooter heritage is obvious—the combat is fast and furious without the maddening influence of a random-number generator to take your shots off target. The game feels more like Quake than any RPG.
Killing bandits is both fun and satisfying, whether it's with acid, electricity, explosives, fire, or just good old-fashioned bullets.
In the beginning, you’ll choose from one of four characters—sniper, stealth, tank, or a gunner/support hybrid—and progress through a series of quests, gaining experience and leveling up. With a WoW-esque triple-branched skill tree, you can customize your character with skills to increase your damage, improve your survivability, or help your pals.
Borderland’s dynamic loot-generation system is awesome. After every encounter, you’ll pick up weapons, shields, grenades, and other items that are randomly created by the game using beaucoup modular components. With millions of possible combinations, you’ll never see the same gun twice. Ultimately, though, the more powerful weapons are balanced by shortcomings in clip size, accuracy, or firing rate.
With a few friends, the game gets even better. The baddies get stronger, forcing the players to work together in order to succeed. As the difficulty goes up, the loot gets better, too. With four players connected, you’ll see rare drops after nearly every fight. Unfortunately, in order to advance your character when you play with your pals, you need to be within a few levels of them, and at the same point in the main quest (or further along). If you get too far ahead or behind, you won’t get any experience and won’t be eligible for any of the quests or the experience and loot that comes with them. The solution is to have the player who is furthest behind in the story host the game, but that can be a hassle.
It's usually more effective to hop out of your buggy to kill mobs than to use the vehicle's weapons, but if you don't mind taking a little damage, you can run over almost anything.
Travel can be difficult in Borderlands. There’s no mini-map on the HUD, which left us frequently jumping out of the action to consult the full-screen map to find our goal. To make navigation even more difficult, the full-screen map shows only the area that you’re currently in—there’s no in-game map that shows how the different zones connect.
Despite these problems, the combat, boss fights, and weapons are a ton of fun. For the player willing to work around some minor flaws, Borderlands delivers a lot of value. In order to reach the level cap, you’ll have to play through the story multiple times, but the game is designed to reward players who take the time with more challenging baddies and ever-better loot.
Borderlands
Iceland
Amazing combat; millions of possible weapons; fun mashup gameplay.
Greenland
Friends must be same level for multiplayer; no mini-map; no world map; no goal marker in fast travel.
8
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15
Comments
bingojubes
December 22, 2009 at 5:55pm
is there such a thing in this game? i thin kit would be a good addition, so when one character finds good guns, we can then transfer them across other characters.
i just picked up the Zombie DLC, but was surprised when it was not an added feature.
Atech66
December 14, 2009 at 11:26am
Atech66
Moeny well spent.. the game is long and fun, might be a tad easy on the first play through solo but the second play is the meat of it along with co-op its a blast.
I saw no bugs at all and did every single quest in the game as well as roving all over.
I had no PC issue's at all with the game or co-op play and the humor in it and refferences to cartoon characters, games and movies is awesome.
9/10 for me and my buds.
If you like a Fallout 3 type environment with Diablo 2 bazillion guns loot and alot of humor mixed with feeling like your playing a Heavy Metal comic book you won't be sorry.
I do have OCD I have CDO.. its like OCD but in alphabetical order AS IT SHOULD BE!
rlynker
December 09, 2009 at 6:58pm
I have to say I agree with your review of this game. It's an AWESOME game and I enjoy it a lot...for SINGLE player. However, you guys dropped the ball on the review for multiplayer. You must have been playing LAN games. I have a FreeBSD server for a firewall so I can allow/block/portforward/you-name-it. Can NOT get multiplayer to work for online private game with my friends. I tried with 2 different friends and we both tried it while connecting in from 2 different places (1 of which was our homes where the proper ports were opened and forwarded).
I have 1 friend that I play a fair amount with and we have to use a freeware VPN to connect to each other and then play a LAN game. Adding in 1 or 2 more friends becomes a lot more difficult. I am SO disappointed with Gamespy. Remember when they used to actually be GOOD? I never have any issues with Valve games or Infinity Ward games.
Anyway, until they address this problem I have been advising people against buying this game if they want multiplayer. I keep hearing they (and I don't know if "they" is Gamespy or Borderlands) know about this and a fix is in the works. For me, that can not happen fast enough!
aben2
December 22, 2009 at 4:23am
-Technology... will kill us one day.....
Weird i play/host/private online almost everyday and all i did was go
to portforward.com and opened like 5 ports thats it really........
TheMurph
December 10, 2009 at 11:50am
fwiw, i've had the same problems in multiplayer. it's annoying enough that one has to open a billion ports just to be able to host/connect to a game. worse is when... that doesn't work. or when it does work, and you realize that the game's "voice chat" is not much more than a "hey we're leaving your mic on all the time, huzzah" kind of deal. and, uh, that you have to use gamespy's service which is borderline annoying at best.
I digress. the horrible multiplayer connectivity of this game makes the xbox 360 version look quite compelling...
jihnn
December 10, 2009 at 5:44pm
with little to no help on how to actually get online i figure borderlands is just a single player shooter....there are times it is quite satisfying the hunter kinda sounds like "bender" nice touch.
2nd play through is better
thing is the reason i got the game was to play with friends and that just isn't going to happen... so for me game really sucks!!
Member2600
December 07, 2009 at 6:22pm
I've seen this game at the store been curious about it.. anyone have any thoughts on the multiplayer for the 360 version..
Trooper_One
December 07, 2009 at 1:37pm
It's not a bad game and I had fun playing it. I had fun blasting the creature but gets repetitive at times. The bosses were fun and the style has an in-your-face attitude. The ending was slightly disappointing. Playthrough 2+ is quite hard.
The multiplayer is powered by GameSpy - big mistake. Even with the right ports opened and even demilitarized, it's still a pain to connect to anyone.
Wasn't worth the full new release price but if you can get it a half-price or budget, it's a great game to pick up.
DOOMHAMMA
December 07, 2009 at 11:59am
I bought this for myself and for my 3 roommates. There was a solid 3 weeks where it was the only thing being played, and I am pretty sure their grades suffered for it lol. It is a great game, but it feels a little empty on the repeat plays. DLC and B2 should help remedy that though :)
Victom
December 07, 2009 at 11:15am
I haven't played this game yet but it doesn't seem that innovative. This seems Like Hell Gate London just with fewer class choices
Digital-Storm
December 07, 2009 at 4:36am
I think an 8 is fair, but I think you should also achnowledge the companys ignorance of PC errors such as mouse smoothing has to be disabled in a configuration file, the limit of only 5 attributes making guns seem less desirable then say a gun with like 10 different attributes. DLC released for consoles but not PC's yet and it has been out for consoles for a while now. It was fun playing it with my friend, and you dont have to be the same level as your friend. The host just has to be less far in the quest line, but can be higher level.
linkmaster6
December 07, 2009 at 3:25am
Absolutely love the game but the way the menus are controlled I could care less for
Netram
December 07, 2009 at 1:39am
Just as grindy and not fun like RPG's.
More like an RPG than Quake tbfh.
GFC
December 07, 2009 at 1:56am
It's REALLY fun, I enjoyed it sooo much (and I played most of it alone, so I bet it's even better with friends).
You, sir, do not know what you're talkin' about!
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