8/10
The shooter genre needed this. Elements of role-playing games have been creeping in all over FPS games in the past few years, but in Borderlands it's a wholesale hybridisation. Not, I should point out, in terms of choices, story and consequences - that remains with the likes of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - but with loot, levels, stats, skills and fiddling about in your inventory to max out your character. Gearbox says it's created a role-playing shooter, an RPS (which sounds strangely familiar to my ears), and that means you'll be playing a shooter that feels a lot like, well, like an MMO.
The common touchstone for talking about Borderlands' RPG influence has been Diablo, but I think until the third Diablo game comes out it's probably just as - if not more - valid to mention that Borderlands exhibits a large number of MMO-like characteristics. This feeling is at its strongest in the opening areas of the game, where you're picking up missions, running back and forth across small areas of the map, collecting loot and killing low-level punks and mutant dog-lizard things. Just like most mainstream MMOs, Borderlands takes time to hit its stride, and you're hours in before you really start to appreciate the approach Gearbox has taken. That's not to say it's not an entertaining game from the outset - because it is - just that it really does take time to unload all its tricks and have you revel in them.
There are a couple of reasons for this slow build. One is that you're probably going to play the first bit of the game on your own. And that's fine: single-player in Borderlands is entirely valid, and fun. But the sense remains that there's something missing. This is filled when you start playing co-op, because one of the most obvious mechanisms in the game suddenly makes sense.
That's the "second wind", in which you're granted some time to try and get a kill when you're reduced to zero health. Murder a bad dude and you get back to your feet and continue to fight. However, when you're playing solo this often means you're dying in some corner you've retreated to, with nothing to shoot, or no hope of killing what's in front of you. In co-op, it's the window in which friends rush to your aid and pull you to your feet. It suddenly becomes a sensible idea that boosts the experience for everyone involved. All signs point to co-op.
Co-op is arguably how Borderlands is meant to be played. While the quests in the single-player are adequate to the task of keeping you occupied and entertained, the ludicrous ramping of enemy numbers and power when friends join makes the experience far, far more chaotic, and therefore more entertaining. Being able to keep each other going in that Gears-of-War-buddy-system way means that large fights can roll on without you have to beat a hasty retreat from heavy resistance. The way the game scales, the character types overlapping, means that any number suits the game. Two or three players is just fine, no matter what the task at hand. The soldier character can even act as a healer, shooting health into his team-mates, while plenty of other passive effects from each of the characters boosts the group in various ways.
With four players, it's a riot, and they can drop in and out as you go. Campaigns are set up so you can get three other people to come in and join your particular quest arc. As the host it's your storyline people will enter, but they still benefit from being there: levels, weapons, and missions collected in the online game transfer back to everyone's single-player game, with anything that's out of your level band simply inaccessible until you've got to a higher level. I suspect playing with strangers might be a bit of a task, mind you, as there's no loot binding, and anyone can pick up anything. So watch out for loot-hoovers.
It's worth noting that playing a high-level game with a low-level chum as sidekick means that you power-level the low-level character. They will, of course, get hammered by the high-level enemies, no matter how much you tweak and add shield capacity to that newbie inventory, but it's a very speedy way to get someone to catch up, and to get their inventory full of new kit.
And this is very much about tweaking in the inventory. Borderlands drops loot like a brain-damaged burglar. The entire world is heaving with money, weapons, health vials, shields, grenade mods and class modules - all of which you have to slot into limited inventory space. You're constantly examining stuff - via handy pop-up dialogues - to see how it compares to this sniper rifle or that sub-machinegun.
You develop favourites as you play, and start to actively seek out particular mixtures. Weapons have a number of variables, including rate of fire, accuracy, reload rate, damage, and various other modifiers, such as whether they deal extra "elemental" damage. That means setting things on fire, corroding stuff, and so on. This loot-gathering becomes compulsive, especially since the possibilities for drops are so vast. You just have to keep searching for that perfect rifle, that suitable shield that happens to heal as you play. (Pro-tip: get that kind of shield.)
The other reason the game picks up after some time investment is that it expands slowly. The starting area is surprisingly large, but you run out of novel things to do rather rapidly. As the game moves into its core hub, the town of Newhaven, you begin to see the true scope of it, and to genuinely need the fast-travel system you've unlocked, and the weaponised buggies that can be procured at outposts across the landscape. Borderlands is a towering slice of gameworld, larger than half a dozen straightforward shooters put together.
The Borderlands world, as you've no doubt already seen, is a kind of science-fiction post-apocalypse. It's an alien world covered with the trash of war and messy colonisation. While the tech level is high, thanks to shadowy space corporations who once exploited the world, the state of things is backward and mangled. It's a world of robots and computers filled with shotgun-toting rednecks and cannibal mutants baying for blood. Gearbox has realised it beautifully, and it's a fantastic place to go adventuring.
By this stage in the review the shooter fans are probably screaming to know what Borderlands is actually like as a shooter. Well, it's a better gun-game than Fallout 3, and that's because it is in many respects an fairly traditional FPS. It's got a Halo-style shield recharge, and whether you hit someone largely depends on your personal skill, although there is some spread and wobble in the different guns, which I presume is defined by the accuracy stat. Headshots do more damage, although it's a "critical" in this case, and that may or may not be a kill depending the other factor the game introduces: level difference.
It's not the case that the game simply levels up with you, although it does to some small degree. Enemies will be higher or lower level than you depending on the area you're in and the mission you are doing. Fighting enemies at a similar or lower level than yourself makes the experience rather like a typical FPS, with enemies taking just a couple of hits to go down. Higher-level or "named" enemies, however, will need to be pumped full of damage to be defeated. It's not realistic, but it is highly entertaining. Weapons feel right: the effects are beautifully moderated so that when you get something more powerful, with a higher rate of fire, you really know about it. Fast-firing bazookas are a near-comedy mode of killing things.
The enemies are generally rather entertaining too, but they do run out of interesting tricks long before the game is finished. The non-human creatures are often boringly straightforward - they have one area you need to aim for to take them down with criticals, and they'll generally just charge at you. Humanoid enemies are rather more challenging, as they will retreat, use cover, and fire at where they last saw you.
There is a modicum of intelligence to them, but it regularly fails, with enemies freezing or failing to use cover in a useful way. They are entertaining to fight, however, especially when you're up against a selection of bandits. These come in a pleasant range of mutated varieties: slow-moving bruisers with heavy machineguns, flaming hatchet-chucking psychos, and nippy little midgets with shotguns that blast them onto their arses.
Nevertheless, the repetition in Borderlands is basically unavoidable, because the game is so long and so huge. While most shooters are over in a few hours, Borderlands demands considerably more time to get through. Despite the pay-off of ultraviolent gun action, it does get grindy, especially in a solo game. I lost track of quite how long it took me, but I'd estimate 30 hours, possibly less. This is enough time to get to the mid-30s, at which point the game is reset at a higher level. It's quite possible, therefore, to keep playing up to the level cap at 50, against a much tougher gameworld. This should allow you to max out the skill trees, which define the focus of the special abilities you exhibit in-game.
There are some other problems too, such as the character design. The four archetypes really aren't different or interesting enough. Sure, they all need to be suitable for single-player, but they're not cut out for classic character status, nor do their powers extend much beyond simply pumping out damage in different ways.
Mordecai, the hunter, has probably the weakest special ability, which is a bird. Initially I found this useful because it deals a significant amount of damage, but as time goes on it seems relatively unimpressive and often fails to connect with a target. I abandoned it and respecced (yes, you can reset talents and spend your skillpoints again, like in an MMO) for a more sniper-focused build.
The soldier character, Roland, has a turret. That alone makes me think that plenty of co-op games are going to see gangs of Rolands (as you can play with any mix of characters) running around together. The turret can pump people's health and ammo back up, as well as acting as cover. Lilith's phase walk, meanwhile, where she becomes a damage-dispensing ghost, is an interesting idea, as you can end up electrocuting and burning people with an hybrid area-of-effect attack. It's an odd mode of play, however, and some players are definitely going to focus on guns.
The one character who genuinely seems to play differently in an entertaining way is Brick, who can smack the living s*** out of anything with his berserk mode. Pump this up as you play and you end up with a close-range punch-monster, or a tank. Either makes for an entertaining mode of play.
I should also mention that I spent most of my review time on the PC version of the game, but also spent some time on Xbox 360. I've played a range of characters across both, and finished the PC campaign with a Mordecai - who I think gets an easy ride on the final levels due to his sniper spec. Anyway, I believe that this review will serve reasonably well for both platforms, as they seem suitably balanced towards their particular control styles.
The PC, obviously, ends up looking a bit better, but it has a few tough edges. There's some menu-weirdness which means that you're expected to use the keyboard some of the time, and the mouse the rest of the time, which results in confusing inconsistency. Hardly a fatal flaw, but it's there. The PC version also needs some voice options (it's always-on, voice-activated only), and if it's not patched within a few weeks of release I'll eat my hat.
Borderlands is unusual, playable, and an artfully violent step in an interesting direction for Gearbox. The story aspect of the game could have been better - I'd love to have seen the role-playing influence extend beyond stats, levels and loot - and the ending is a disappointment. Even so, this should be a favourite game of the year for a huge number of people, since it plugs into gamer impulses at such a fundamental level. We blow things up and collect the goodies. That part, at least, Gearbox has nailed.
UK version
2009-11-08 16:44:41 - xenzon wrote:
A blend of Half-Life and Fallout3! Superb online too.
shame it's cheaper everywhere else!