Borderlands Review

The idea of running, or driving, through a barren wasteland of mostly sand and rotting towns to complete an objective or look for someone to to kill may not be to appealing. Add it to Borderlands’ highly-addictive leveling system and RPG style character-building elements and you have a game that any First Person Shooter fan can instantly fall in love with.
Lets be honest, Borderlands looks awesome. The “concept art” style shaded graphics creates a completely new look. The style adds vibrance to a barren wasteland of dirt, and that is saying a lot in itself, but the players and enemies look great too. I played the Xbox 360 version, which surprisingly held up well, only slowing down when action got extremely intense with a lot of enemies on the screen at once.

Unfortunately, the storyline lacks, well… a story. From the beginning, you are thrown from quest to quest searching for fragments of a key to a vault, all instructed by a girl who randomly pops up in the upper right-hand corner of your screen to give you instruction. She never tells you who she is, why she is talking to you, what is in the vault, or why you are collecting the pieces.

When you begin borderlands, you are introduced to a planet named are asked to choose between one of four main characters, each of which comes with their own special abilities and weapons of choose. The four main characters are Roland, Mordecai, Lilith, and Brick. I chose Mordecai because his weapon of choice is the sniper, and I always enjoy sniping in other FPS games. After choosing your character, you meet a claptrap, a small robot that you will encounter several times throughout the game you are thrown into a small battle where you will learn the majority of the very basic, FPS-style button controls.

Now that you are accustomed to the controls, you will start taking on quests from non-player characters or bounty boars that you find throughout the world of Pandora. Players start the game with the ability to use two weapons, but later gain the ability to carry up to four weapons at a time, as well as slots for energy shields, grenade modifications, and a class modification that gives specific upgrades that provide bonuses to your character’s and/or teammates abilities.

weapons, class mods, shields and a host of other things can be purchased at vending machine style stores throughout the game. Items, as well as money, are dropped by your opponents when they are killed. You can also find money and items hidden in small boxes and chests in the game. For the most part, items dropped by opponents are pretty regular, unless it is a boss.

Weapons are one of the best things in this game. Weapons and items are randomly generated when you kill foes, find them in storage chests, buy them from vendors, or get them as a quest reward. Estimated, the random weapon generator can generate over 17 million variations of weapons. This randomly generated content is also used in other aspects of the game for other items, money, and even with the characteristics of the foes that you meet in the game.

Completing a quest is ofter awarded with a cash reward, experience points, and sometimes a special item. You also gain experience points throughout the game when you kill a foe, small or large. Experience points help you level up, which allows you to use more advanced weapons. When you level up, you are also rewarded with a specialization point that can be distributed among three specializations for each character; for example, Mordecai can become specialized in sniping, gunslinging with revolvers, or going rogue and using his pet bird Bloodwing to assist in kills and gathering.

The game can be played single-player, or multi-player with up to four players at a time. Single player will take you a long time to complete, and will get a little boring. Multi-player can be set up and played in a custom game with friends, or you can choose a quick match, which will pair you up with the best possible people in the same area of the game that you are in. While in a multi-player game, you can also duel someone you are playing with by male attacking them. A ring will pop up around you and it’s a fight to the death.

You will also find some downloadable add-on packs associated with the game. So far, The Zombie Island of Dr. Zed and Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot. If you plan on getting Mad Moxxi, plan on having some friends to help you, because she is one tough opponent.

When it comes down to it, this game is one of those games that you and your friends will continue to com back to time and time again just for fun. It has highly addictive gameplay and you will need to go through the story line three times with a single character to get a hold of the rarest weapons. This game is a blast, so definitely buy it or stick it on your GameFly Que.