Borderlands [PC, PS3, X360]

Posted November 4, 2009 by Benjamin Blank in Featured, Featured Home, Game Blog, PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360.

Reviewed on Xbox 360

Mixing genres is nothing new to the video game industry. In fact, it’s a tried and proven formula that some of the biggest selling games have used to build themselves up. But what we find time and time again are games with tacked on RPG elements. Nine out of ten games these days will have some kind of leveling up system lazily applied to it. It’s becoming more and more common to see these traits originally found in an RPG in all sorts of games.

From the surface Borderlands can appear to be one, and indeed it was marketed as such; just another FPS with RPG leveling elements stuck on for good measure.  But spend some time in the harsh wilderness of Pandora and it’ll soon become obvious, the RPG elements here aren’t tacked on at all, they are the game. While it may disappoint some, Borderlands is anything but your normal FPS, despite being governed by many conventions of the genre.

The game begins with four mercenaries who have traveled to the distant planet of Pandora in search of alien treasure, hidden in something known as “The Vault”. These four are the classes in Borderlands, each with a distinctly different set up but based upon RPG stereotypes. You’ve got your magic class, the Siren, your heavy hitter, the Berserker, the all around guy, the Soldier, and your gun expert, the Hunter. The character you choose cannot be changed in anyway or shape aside from simple colour palettes.

While each character will have small differences, such as health and weapon proficiency, the main appeal of each are their skill trees. Each has a unique ability that, throughout the course of your adventure, you’ll be able to upgrade and completely customise, in turn creating a character that’s built around your play style. However, the level of customisation ends there, though it is quite flexible and works perfectly in terms of gameplay.

But what do you do with your badass merc? Well, shoot, and shoot a lot. From start to end, you’ll be aiming down the barrel at a whole array of different bad guys, from wildlife to crazy bandits, with vehicle sections that are a straight copy of the Halo buggies (albeit far stronger). You’ve basically got a shooter on your hands with a brilliant RPG system, and the hugely hyped loot hunting system.

And for everything that’s been said, it does live up to its reputation. There are a lot of guns here, which, like the skill trees, really push players to do that extra quest, search that bandit hideout, and move along. And while the shooting mechanics are fun, the guns are simply awesome, featuring some brilliant alterations and elemental effects.

It’s here that Borderlands shows its true colours with all the shooting you’ll be doing (and trust me there is a lot). It’s all a grind to create a stronger, and all around more badass character. In fact, all of the missions just seem to blur into one after a while; the characters you meet are nothing more than sign posts for them. All you’ve got as an incentive to push through is to find that bigger gun and level up. Luckily, multiplayer helps this, as the co-op here is superb, featuring a carry over system that lets you create a character and level him/her up in any offline or online game.

However, in solo, the game does lose a lot of its kick, and it’s down to the fact the focus is on levelling up. Doing this alone becomes redundant as the story doesn’t push you and you’ve got no one to really show off this character to. And for all the good the co-op is, it doesn’t feel as well implemented into the gameplay as it could have been. The game has been designed to be played solo, and there are no parts where you have to work together beside camps and various areas with multiple entrances. If Borderlands had pushed the co-op and gone for a game in which, even in solo, you have CPU buddies with you, the co-op experience would’ve been even stronger.

Graphically Borderlands is a bit of a mixed bag; while people will be split on the cel-shaded style, it works and it’s done well. But there’s late texture load throughout, and the biggest problem is that there isn’t much variation between areas. Everything looks quite similar until the end stretch where the game picks up visually, after offering hours upon hours of bland wastelands, which are also just too small and confined.

Borderlands should’ve been a bigger experience and far more open, offering huge landscapes like in Fuel or the Terminator Salvation movie, with locations more spread out, giving you the feeling of exploration. But it’s too boxed in, and the vehicle sections, which cry out for long stretches of road, are reduced to cramped terrain that force the player to get out of the vehicle every thirty seconds.

In the end, if you’re going alone, you’ve got to ask yourself if spending hours doing seemingly pointless missions to create a stronger character appeal to you? If so, then Borderlands, will not disappoint; if no, then you’ll really need some friends to get the most out of Pandora.

Tagged as 2K Games, Borderlands, Gearbox Software, Playstation 3, Xbox 360