Woo~! Finally another review of another game recently released!
If you happen to live under a rock, and doesn’t know what Borderlands is, go check the .wiki page it’s linked to.
But what is Borderlands ?
Borderlands is basicly a brand spanking new innovative combination of my personal favorite game styles, First-Person-Shooter (FPS), and Role-Playing-Game (RPG). Generating a completely never before seen gameplay style, Role Play Shooter (RPS) makes Borderlands stand out from the crowd. Lately the games market has been overflown with single-/multiplayer editions of RPG or Shooter games for the consoles and also for PC.
This review will be focused on the Playstation 3, version of the game. So take that in consideration if you’re reading this review for consideration wether you’re about to get the game.
If you happen to be one of them losers who haven’t already gotten it!
You have the ability to choose a character, each character have their own special skill, the Hunter (Sniper) has a pet Bloodwing, he can summon to hunt down his prey, by adding skill points in the skills trees you can have the pet do various things, like drop more items, attack multiple enemies, or you can boost your sniper rifle damage.
The Siren (Scout/Hit ‘n’ Runner) is an support type with Phasewalking skill, it lets you shift into another dimension creating a dimensional blast when you enter, allows you to run very fast while in Phasewalk, and when you leave the dimension you create another blast, combine it with an melee attack for extra damage.
The Soldier, can spawn a Scorpio Turret, a small selfcontrolled automated gun turret that’ll shoot on it’s front field-of-view enemies, can be upgraded and powered in skill trees.
The Berserker, well the name speaks for itself, basicly a huge piece of meat with near-superhuman strength whose skill is to go Berserking and beat up your target with added damage.
You definately have a wide choice of gameplay, and you’re definately not restricted to use the weapons each character specials in, my Hunter does fine with an SMG (Submachinegun) and using a wide variety of Sniper Rifles whenever appropriate, and with the latest expansion you got about 8 ‘Bazillion’ (!!) weapons to choose from provided they drop first-hand.
The Review! OMG!?
Yours truly absolutely loved the game, I’m completely hooked on the game style, and do add !!!!!!!!! to hooked. It definately caught me first-hand as I’m a huge, HUEG! RPG player and I really love FPS games, having played serveral years of Counter-Strike, Quake series, for RPG I’ve been playing alot of the Final Fantasy series, Legend of Zelda and much much ! MUCH! More of the like.
Merging the FPS and RPG gameplay really got me hooked on the game at an almost instant, first character I played was Mordecai (The Hunter/Sniper). I got immediatley tossed into the action and was quickly introduced to the game, as always I’m a shitty gamer that reads the manual before starting new games, however with this it just wasn’t that neccessary, the manual doesn’t even state much except the purpose of the game, the HUD items, weapons, proficiency and basic stats.
I’d wager that a person with absolutely no RPG or FPS experience would be able to turn on the game, pick up the controller (or grasp the mouse and keyboard for PC version) and play this game very efficiently.
With 8 Bazillion weapons to choose from provided at their own droprate dependent on your own level and your targets levels, you can get anything from crude/raw weapons (White), Uncommon (Green), Rare (Blue), Epics (Purple) Legendary (Yellow/Orange).
Hey wait’a'minnit!?!? White, Blue, Purple, Orange… Where do I know that from … HHHHHNNNNGGGGG!!! … World of Warcraft maybe ?
Picking out an already working system from a world-class MMORPG ? Wow, that’s really bold and very well functioning! At first it really wondered my head, why would they take the item level color system already present in World of Warcraft, and add it to a supposedly ‘Completely new and innovative game?’. I’d think that the philosophy of keeping it simple and using systems that already exists and works like a charm is a very good idea.
And it does, I was immediatley able to because of my World of Warcraft experience able to grasp the item levels pretty instant, I knew that my starting crude/raw weapons had to be swapped for a green/blue weapon off the get-go, mind you that weapons/items have level restrictions. I’ve experienced with my Mordecai character, after I grabbed an purple SMG at level 24, SMG being a level 24 restricted weapon would last me to level 50, why ? It had some amazing stats, and it seems that the color codes have something to do with the amounts of item stats your weapon/item can have.
The basic stats of every weapon in the game are Damage, Accuracy and Fire rate, these stats are constantly adjusted by the level of the item and also certain skill trees have skills that will boost up stats like fire rate by x pr. skill point, and so on. Also certain weapons as the one shown on the right, have an elemental property, “Chance to light enemies on fire”, this weapon would at a certain multiplier be able to literally light the enemy that’s been shot at on fire, causing a burning damage on the enemy, there are other elemental properties like “Chance for explosion” or the like, also lightning elemental property works very well against shields, it just rips them apart with a single shot.
Enough about weapons and the gameplay, graphics, music?!
ALLRIGHT DAMMIT ! Take it easy !
I don’t have any complaints as far as the graphics goes, it does have a cellshading feel however without the cartoonish look to it. Take a look at some screenshots;
The graphics really made the game far more interesting by using a different cellshading technique than we’ve seen in earlier game, and it also goes very well with the “Marvel superhero” like theme the characters have, speaking of the music theme/ambient sound.
Apart from being rather a action game, it’s a shooter dammit! we’re thrown some of the best matching soundtracks ever, for example this title; “No Heaven” performed by DJ Champion which got featured in the Trailer videos before launch, it is also the credits tune used in the game.
The most familiar tune in the game is probably the introduction film music; “Ain’t no rest for the wicked” performed by Cage The Elephant. The music really tunes into the hillbilly theme, and it matches up with the game theme very well for my taste, I got immediatley hooked to the music. However to my dissappointment, during the game you will be faced with listening to very quiet ambient sounds matching the area you’re in, the first area “Arid Badlands” is an open-scaled desert, and you’re faced with some very low and deep tune, the tune just makes you feel you’re completely into the desert and you’re alone or if you’re on a multiplayer game, that you’re still in the desert. The ambient tunes changes if you move into an enclosed location, for example a dungeon where you have to get from the entrance, to the end for a boss fight. While you’re running/idling in the dungeon, you get the eerie tunes, while in combat you’ll get a faster tuned ambient rather than the other, I really have to say that it dissappoints me, the game itself is pretty repetitive, and then the tunes get very repetitive too, and I found myself going to the options, turning the volume for music/ambient to zero, and hooking up my iPod for some other music, I mostly chose to listen to Megadeth or Disturbed, which completely off topics the game. So don’t go hoping for good ambient tunes, but you’ll get satisfaction from the soundtracks.
Recap the damn review !
If you’re another RPG-junkie, and/or FPS-junkie, you’ll definately get your fix in this game, you get over 20-40 playtime hours just from the basic game, the game just got expanded with an expansion “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned”, a review of the expansion will follow later on in a separate post.
You can connect up to 3 Xbox Live/Playstation Network buddies for multiplayer gameplay, which works really well as well, except you may want to get a DSL boost, since it’ll use your console as an host, and pull your own broadband. Be prepared for alot of time spent on this game, the achievements/trophies are extremely easy to get, within my own first 6 hours of gameplay I’ve acquired at least 50% of the alotted trophies for now, Gearbox does claim that there will be more expansions with their own separate trophies. I will be looking forward to them.
If you’re interested in a different styled and fast paced role playing shooter, then get Borderlands, it does live up to my personal expectations, and my friends are asking me why I’ve left them for Borderlands, they literally does, and calls me a Borderlands-junkie, which is true.
Faced with over 8 bazillion weapon, great surroundings, great variety of enemies, tunes, soundtracks and much more, this game will linger for quite a while, with the expansions to follow it’ll linger more, also with a sequel on the drawing board, I bet we’ll see another Borderlands by the end of next year or in 2011.
So what’re you waiting for numbnut ?! GO GET THE GAME NOW!
