Borderlands is a strange one for me. I started off by, quite frankly, disliking it. I went off about how playing through the game in single-player would be a chore, and so the only time I would actually play it would be at my friends house. Preferably only after a decent amount of drinking. Nothing really struck me as truly amazing about it, and whined that the original version would have been so much cooler/more epic/a better RPG/whatever the hell else my mouth decided to spout.
This is pretty much how it played out until one day I woke up with a copy of Borderlands in my hand, and a dead horse in my bed. I’m still trying to figure out where that copy of Borderlands came from.
Synopsis
The storyline to Borderlands is, at best, weak. Well, not weak, but straight-forward. You and your (potential) band of merry mercs are off to Pandora to find the legendary Vault. No one knows what’s in the Vault, but everyone wants whatever’s in it. You get to choose from one of 4 characters, all typical in nature:
Lilith the Siren
- Support class. Basically the ‘mage’.
- Bunch of self-preservation skills.
- A whole whack of alterations for her main ability.
- Uses the SMG mostly.
Mordechai the Hunter
- The sniper, or otherwise long-range character.
- Has a bird for his special ability that he can launch at enemies.
- Mildly psychotic sounding.
- Sniper rifles and pistols.
Roland the Soldier
- The all-rounder.
- Special ability is a deployable turret that can be upgraded to heal/replenish ammo.
- Decent balance between skills and health.
- Probably the best choice for solo play.
- Machine guns.
Brick the Berserker
- The wall of meat. Angry meat.
- Special ability turns him into a high-speed murder-machine, delivering justice and agony with his fists.
- Ability can be upgraded to replenish his health with every punch.
- Hilariously large in comparison to anyone else.
- Pistols and fists.
It doesn’t matter who you choose, the story remains the same. You basically have to go around fulfilling an unreasonable amount of quests for other people in order for you to reach your eventual goal: The Vault. I’m sure the different characters originally had more character behind them, but that ends up getting a bit lost throughout the game.
Gameplay
The gameplay is fairly standard fare for the shooter RPG series. You get guns, you point them at things and you riddle them with bullets. In reaction, the things you are trying to murder will then try and tear your face off. You have a health bar, a shield (which is like a health bar, but not nearly as resilient), up to 4 weapons, augmentable grenades, and your special skill. You run around the country side fulfilling quests and generally causing mayham.
Ironically a lot of the quests you complete are rather grey in nature, and not simply a good vs. bad. There’s no morality system in Borderlands, which is good because adding such a system would have ruined a lot of the fun that Borderlands brings to the table. There’s only so many midgets a game would let you get away with murdering before you’re character would either start to develop PTSD or at the very least an unhealthy gleam in their eye. Thankfully Borderlands assumes you’re going to be murdering an unreasonable amount of people, so they just let you get on with it.
As you murder people, complete quests, and personal achievements (like shooting 100,000 bullets) you gain experience. This experience in turn levels your character up. When you level up, you get skill points. These points can be applied to a selection of trees that alter the way your character fights. Generally they are split into ‘special skill’, ‘combat’ and ‘support’. What actually resides in those trees changes completely from character to character. They allow you to augment your character to best suite your combat style.
Weapons are plentiful, and many of them feature a variety of alterations. Some have scopes, some have extended magazines, some are shotguns that shoot rockets, etc. etc. It isn’t uncommon in Borderlands to have what you thought was an amazing gun, only to toss it away 10 minutes later when a totally different but equally awesome one lands at your feet (fresh out of the hands of the bandit you just wrecked). You also have access to grenades that can be augmented to do a wide variety of entertaining and damaging things (MIRV is my personal favourite).
Oh and of course each of the playable character has their own special ability they can use to change the course of the fights.
Graphics
The graphics take on a sort-of-but-not-really-cell-shaded approach. People, guns, and cars seem to have a cell-shaded effect applied to them. You don’t really notice it unless you get right up into someone’s grill. At that point though, you are either taking advantage of the unintentionally funny dialogue that the NPCs spew out, or you’re too busy putting bullets into said persons grill.
The detail is surprisingly high, though in a weird surreal sort of way. Of course, the whole game is supposed to feel a bit other-worldy, so giant mushrooms and 100-story wind turbines only have to have so much thought put into their rendering.
The enemy and NPC designs are stylized, but it’s a style that works for the game. It really comes down to the little details that make the user designs. Badass psychopaths are beefed-up versions of their non baddass counterparts, but their one arm is shrivelled up and tiny, making for a comical offset to the giant murder-ax that they’re swinging at your head. The different types of skags all have brilliant little details that separate one from another. As you go up the scale, they not only get bigger, but their armour changes, and they start to develop more ridges and their colours change.
The environmental effects that guns and certain enemies give off should be mentioned as well. With the slight set back of occasionally lagging out my Xbox when you have roughly a billion of these things going off around you, they make for far more interesting (and gratifying) combat situations. There’s nothing quite like watching an electrocuted enemy’s head explode to make you enjoy your work, or watching them turn to ash from the fire you turned them into.
Sounds
There isn’t much to say for the typical sounds. The music was an afterthought, not that you really notice it all that often. The guns sound like guns. The vehicles sound like vehicles, with revving engines and the like. Where the sounds really shine is in the actual voice acting. The scripts they got people to read from had to have raised some eyebrows. phrases like “You gonna squeal before we fuck ya?” are thrown around with nigh-reckless abandon.
The scripting for the main characters (that is, not your character, but the main ones you interact with) is quite good, and in many cases quite funny. Anything that comes out of Tannis’ mouth is always worth waiting around to listen to.
Your own characters are pared back to a couple of reactive statements. When you stand around for a while, find some loot (awesome or otherwise), spawn a vehicle, etc. These sorts of actions will reward you with a passing phrase. That’s it though. Borderlands takes what I call the ‘Legend of Legia‘ approach to conversations, wherein you never actually say anything, but your actions apparently handle all the gabbing for you.
Issues
Two things really got me about Borderlands. The first is that the vehicles all perform as if on ice. And the driver is severely impaired. And the developers that made the physics engines just gave up on life half way through the vehicle portion. Your control is spotty, and it’s surprisingly easy to wedge your car into invisible barriers or walls or other cars, which results in you having to get out and punch your car back onto the ground. It can get pretty annoying in a multiplayer game when your partners have cars and decide to be dicks and just drive into you which results in both cars getting stuck.
Fun times.
The other is a mild annoyance with your character and their general excitement whenever you open a chest. They say things like ‘This is amazing‘ or ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before!‘ But you know what? You fucking have seen things like this before. Like a million goddamned times. You see a lot of guns. statements like ‘This is amazing’ should be reserved for weaponry that is actually amazing. At the very least something on par with your current equipment.
It’d be so much better to be a high level player, open a box, and have your character spout something like ‘Well this is useless’ or ‘More junk for the shops’ or even ‘What the fuck is this? They actually put this in a chest? Assholes!’ I would love for my character to become more jaded the higher level they became.
Extra Goodies
If you invest your time into Borderlands, and enjoy the overall environment, might I suggest you invest some more money and pick up any or all of the expansions? They add an easy 10 hours of gameplay to the game per DLC, and the writing in them tends to be as good, if not better than the originals.
The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
Not Dr. Zed. Dr. Zed, his evil brother. Seriously. The moustache is totally convincing. This one is your typical Zombie expansion. You have to aim for the head, corrosive and electric weaponry don’t work very well, and you will get swarmed. Lots of fun, and probably one of the funniest DLCs in terms of writing.
Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot
This expansion features arena battles. Basically an endurance run regardless of how many players you have in the arena. The point of this one is to go rounds with the local folk and try not to die. This gets harder the longer you stay in the arenas. Basically get this one if you’ve done everything else and you hate yourself just a little bit.
The Secret Armory of Generall Knoxx
Remember how much fun fighting the Crimson Lance was in the original Borderlands? No? Annoying as shit you say? Well get ready to do that all over again, but more! This expansion brings in a bunch of new vehicles (oh boy.) and pits you against the Crimson Lance for most of it. It also comes with a secret extra boss that you have to be level 60 or so to even attempt.
Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution
Easily has the best writing of the DLCs. This one features Claptraps revolting against their masters, and your job revolves around stopping them. As an added bonus the local populace becomes assimilated by the Claptraps, which results in some weird-looking enemies that say things like ‘please just let me die‘ and ‘come with me if you want to die.‘ Oh, and you get to shoot Claptraps. A lot of them. And they drop panties that you can collect for achievements. Yup.
Overall
It took me a little while to fall in love with Borderlands, but in the end it’s been the one game in my collection that has utterly succeeded in its ROI. It’s legitimately entertaining, doesn’t really lull that much, and has a great selection of DLCs that all feature game mechanics that will appeal to everyone.
8/10
Leave a Reply