Borderlands

Developer: Gearbox Software
Year of release: 2009
Platform: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC
Official website: http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/
Date finished: 11 November 2009
Playtime: +-35 hours, played local split screen and finished the game at level 36.


I heard good stories about Borderlands from my brother and colleagues a few weeks before it was going to be released. 'A FPS with Diablo elements' which sounds awesome, but I was not planning to get Borderlands; I still had Batman Arkham Asylum to play and Uncharted 2 on pre-order. It was a coincidence that a colleague had bought the wrong version, PS3 while he wanted the Xbox360 version. So he sold the game to me for a fair price.

So the first time I started up Borderlands I was really surprised about the looks of the game. It has a unique toony cell shaded look, which looks pretty need if you ask me. In the first ingame movie, in the bus, I could immediately notice that they put some humour into the game.
The way how characters are introduced and the things that are said are often funny.

Shortly after it, you get to choose which class you want to be; soldier, hunter, siren, berserker. Each class has its own favourite weapon and unique skill tree and require a slightly different approach to play. Of course I did some research about each class and to me the soldier is the most all round class so I chose to be a soldier.


The story goes that there is a legendary treasure, called The Vault, on the low populated planet Pandora. You as a treasure hunter are determined to find the vault.
The game starts off in a slightly futuristic dessert area, like in the 'Mad Max' movies. Later in the game you go to grasslands, and snowy planes areas. Each area has its small towns where you can buy and sell items and caves and building areas. There are vehicles that you can drive to move to a certain area and later on you can also teleport to areas.
Each area is populated with creatures; there are small adorable and funny robots called Claptraps, skags (wolf like creatures), insect like creatures, flying dragon like creatures etc and other humanoids that are looking for the vault.

The game is a mission based sand box game. You have different areas and you are free to go where ever you want. Each area has its own mission that you can get from inhabitants and bounty boards. You have the story mission that you have to complete to progress in the story and you have the extra mission which give you experience, money and sometimes weapons and items.
Mission goals are often; looking for and item or person and killing a certain enemy along the way.
A mysterious woman will tell you what your overall story goal is and will contact you whenever you reached a mile stone in the game.


The game plays like a FPS shooter with lots of weapons. There are like 8 types of weapons from assault rifles to pistols to alien weapons. Each type of weapon has its own level, its own brand and often its own special magical ability. This is where you really notice the Diablo element. The special abilities can be improved damage, fire rate, reload speed, accuracy, elemental damage etc even crazy abilities like bullet regeneration. Just like in Diablo there is a weapon rarity that colors from white (normal) to orange (super rare). Some rare weapons have a red phrase that give the weapon some secret special powers. You have to look up on the internet what power each red phrase stands for.

Next to weapons there are also shields, grenade mods, class mods and artifacts that can be bought in the store or found on the fields. Class mods are specific for each class and can be very powerful. As a soldier I had class mods that would regenerate bullets for the entire team and improve my class skills. The weapons and magic items are a important part in the game. As a player you are really looking forward to find new weapons and items that are better than your current ones.

The game also has a experience level up system. You gain experience from killing enemies. You want to go level up to improve your stats, which is automatically done, and to improve yourself in a skill from your skill tree. Your skill tree consists of three parts. Each part is from a certain subtype; as a soldier I had the subtypes infantry, defender and medic. Each subtype has 7 skills, in total 21 skills. You are free to chose in which subtype skill you want to improve. You are free to build up you character how ever you want, just like in Diablo. Something that Diablo does not have; you can spend money to redistribute you skill points. So if you don't like your character build up you can easily change it.


The best part of Borderlands is that you can play the entire campaign in multi player; either 4 player online or 2 player local split screen. I played the entire campaign split screen with my brother, who chose the hunter class. As a soldier I would be the tank; fighting the close enemies heads on, while my brother was snipping from a safe area. Playing with more players will make the game harder, but your reward; rare item drops, will be bigger.


The good

• Items, there are a lot of different weapons, shields, grenade mods, class mods etc. And all these items can have magical abilities, like in Diablo. Every time when you see a weapon box or an enemy dropping an item, you get excited and wonder if it is something better than what you currently have.
• Class and Upgrade system, it is always nice to have different playable classes in a game. Especially when they have there own distinct skills tree that you can upgrade. Another nice thing is that you can chose in which skill direction you want to go. If you want to change your skill direction, you can always spend money to redistribute you skill points.
• Multi player campaign, it is always good when a game has multi player functionality and even better when you can play the entire campaign in multi player. There is nothing better than teaming up with a buddy and share the game experience.
• Humour, the game has quite some moments that turn a smile on your face; character introductions, funny phrases that are said when you land a critical shot or find a nice item, nicely phrased mission texts and dying claptraps.

The bad & improvements

• Story, the story is very thin and uninteresting. It would have been nice if they paid more attention to the story e.g. use more cut scenes to tell the story, to give it more detail and impact on the players.
• Bosses, there are a few story bosses, but they aren't that interesting. They often were only slightly different than any of the regular enemies. It would have been nice if they were more distinct and had more impressive behaviours and require a different approach to defeat. Especially the final boss was really a let down. I was able to kill it by standing behind a rock where I could shoot it, but it could not touch me.
  
• Overpowered class mods, a good example is the soldier class mods that have high ammo regeneration for the entire team. Since I got this class mod I didn't have to spare or look for ammo anymore. I also didn't have to switch weapons anymore to save ammo. All this made the game much easier and killed a part of the initial gameplay.
• Good item drop pacing, I noticed that from level 20 to level 30 I would only find weapons that would sell from 1k to 12k, but in the last 5 levels, 31-36 every weapon I found was often selling from 10k to 50k. The issue I have with this is that during level 20 to level 30 the game became less interesting, because the item rewards were not interesting enough. It is than that you will notice that the missions can get a little repetitive. At the end, last few hours of the game, it gets interesting again because of the good item drops.
  I had rather seen a more steady good item drop, making the game stay at an interesting level from start to finish.
  
  

In overall, Borderlands is a solid FPS that is quite fun to play and really fun in multi player. The fact that there are so many different items to be found can make Borderlands quite addicting. The skill upgrade system is also nicely done and drives you to get more experience to unlock or improve a skill. The humour is well done often putting a smile on your face.
Next to all it's good points the game also has it flaws, but the good points outweigh them.

8.7/10