I’ll be the first to admit that as the opening cinematic played, I was nervous about what Borderlands was going to do with its premise. Namely: you’re a scavenger looking to make it in the wasteland.
Like many people, I thought, “Hm, I’ve been playing Fallout 3 for a damn long time.” And then I heard the voiceover say “vault” and I got anxious.
Thankfully, that nervousness was ill-placed. Borderlands shares only the most minute things in common with Fallout 3. It is very much its own game.
Yes, it is a weird hybrid shooter/RPG. Yes, it is set after the world goes (even further) to crap. Yes, there is a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor.
But Borderlands is most accurately described as a totally insane and hyper-violent party game. That’s really where its heart and soul are. And it’s damn good, too.
You’re introduced to the four possible character classes as soon as the cinematic ends. You have your soldier guy, your sniper guy, your brute guy and your mage/elemental lady. What the character classes do is focus abilities, but they don’t limit them. The sniper, for example, excels off the bat at using pistols and sniper rifles, but you can develop his SMG or shotgun abilities, too. The only real difference between the classes is their ‘special attack’ and their aesthetic properties.
Once you’ve picked your avatar, you’re treated to a brief firefight, some tutorial points, and then it’s up to you to make your way through the wastes.
The story is basically non-existent.
Ready for what you need to know? OK. Here it is: This is the Borderlands. You need to survive. You need to kill a lot of people/creatures. You need to level up. You need to find cool new things to kill bad things with.
That’s the process. That’s your focus. And that, unfortunately, brings us to one of my first major gripes with the game: it can be frustratingly repetitive.
The game missions are all the same, by and large. Get task. Kill/collect a certain number of baddies/things. Return to guy who gave you mission. Get XP and new junk.
Now, that sounds almost like a game-ending complaint, but Borderlands is so freaking addictive that it doesn’t hamper the fun you’ll have while playing. I can’t explain it in any other way. You just find yourself wanting to play more and more and more.
But be sure that you invite some friends along.
Borderlands’ strongest point is the drop-in, drop-out cooperative multiplayer. And given how lonely/boring searching the apocalypse can be at times, it’s a good thing the developers got this as right as they did. Running amok with three other people really makes up for the shortcomings of the game. It makes everything mroe interesting.
When you the player increase the number of humans working together, the game increases the number of totally crazy enemies looking to make you not-alive. It makes some enemies stronger, and adds some enemies you maybe haven’t seen before.
Which is good, because during the single player, the enemy tactic tends to be, “I’m gonna stand in front of you and shoot.” Or, in the same vein, “I’m going to run right the hell at you.”
This works when there’s a mob of psychos heading towards a small squad of human fighters, but it does not work with it’s a mob of psychos heading towards one lone guy looking to level up. When it’s mob versus squad, there’s a sense that the group needs to develop tactics to combat the new threat. When it’s one dude, you’ll probably die.
And that’s the problem. The game scales the difficulty up for multiple players, but never scales it down for the single player. It can lead to serious frustrations.
Thankfully, the death process helps soothe some of that. When you die, you get a few fleeting moments to kill the jerk to killed you. If you succeed in this, you stay alive. If not, you respawn at a nearby checkpoint in one of the game’s many shanty towns.
Which, by the way, are quite beautiful in their own destitute way. Borderlands’ graphics are frankly fantastic. The whole game has a weird almost-cel shaded look that makes it stand out strongly against other games using the Unreal engine. The art upheavel that happened during the development process (and worried a few journalists as well as fans) paid off very well.
Borderlands is a gorgeous, violent fantasy world that should be experienced by all gamers.
Just make sure you bring some buddies.
Final Grade: B+
