Borderlands - Socoder

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Socoder -> PC Gaming -> Borderlands
Mon, 02 Nov 2009, 22:47
Mog	This is a rarity for me - i got out of reviewing things long ago because i usually just raged out. This won't be the case here. Bit of a long one, sorry about this, but i thought i should say something Beforehand... Me and 2 friends recently snagged Borderlands, gearbox's new mind-vomit out of their 'shooty, killy, alien world everything must die' sense of gamedev. It reeks of their style, right down from the HUD, sound effects, weapons styles, and that vwooooom noise shields make (Halo, anyone?) - Couple that with strange art styles, flowing movements, wide open areas, and coops, and it becomes something worth squawking about, so here goes. Initial thoughts I saw this game advertised on steam a few weeks ago, and in honesty, i panned it down as shit. What's with these graphics? why so high specs? another coop game, fuck that - everyones copying L4D, hurrggh... I shelved the idea of ever wanting to play it. Scrubbing won't help your exposure Our friend, thinking he was bringing something new to us, flies into the door with his newly boxed copy of Borderlands. I frowned pretty hard thinking he got suckered, and oh god he wants us to play it. I reluctantly let him install it on our media center, and then we passed the CD around (yeah yeah, multi-install, crucify me pirate hunters, the game doesn't need a CD key, but we could only play on LAN unless you have an account) - So we embark. Queue an intro with your 4 roles, You have the soldier - machine-gunny black man, the hunter - this weaselly looking fellow with a sniper rifle, the berserker - some crazy woman, and well... this hulking mass named Brick who wears his dead dogs paw around his neck. Title screen pops up, and something is afoot - I'm impressed by the GUI effects immediately. Into the wastelands We load it up, make a coop game and do our characters, thankfully it's not like l4d where everyone fills a role - you can have clones. 2 hunters and a soldier file out of the bus, and we go through the tutorials, which consists of you shooting up some raiders and making your way into town. I hang my head in reluctance - joy, you just shoot things all day and dart around ... well, yes, but there's more... Shooty shoot shoot DIE DIE We run the first quests, kill happy things called Skags, which are like armored dog-predator mixes who love just popping out of nowhere. We dart about back and forth learning the ropes and getting new things, filling in our roles and playing the game in our own little styles. It dawned on me that this isn't L4D clone, it's something much more in-depth - It's like what i wanted in Fallout 3 - Sort of a Fallout meets Diablo clone, and the action just keeps getting more and more intense. We foam at the mouth, yell, scream, cheer, damn the screen, and overall buzz with excitement as we mow down countless enemies with newly acquired guns, happily filling in our characters through the games simple leveling system. The hours tick by and we keep progressing - i find myself paralyzed, a feeling i've lost long ago when games began sucking. I feel a sense of joy come over me when we finally stop, and i nod my head with a sense of accomplishment. Today We finally begin playing today at 7pm, continuing where we left off. After some more grinding around, we acquire some vehicles and merrily run down every enemy between us and a new area. These huge spaces are filled with a ton of little knick-knacks for you to find, but you're often swamped out by enemies. It's spectacular seeing all of the firefights going on, enemies dying, things exploding, blood flying everywhere and people screaming - it was gleeful. The game finds it's own little ways to keep you on your toes. We revisited our old skag shooting gallery, and it was soon infested with the adults looking for who killed their young, with one forboding looking thing called 'Badass Berserker Skag' with a death icon. It kicked our asses, but we managed to take it down in our 'fight for your life!' phase, the games way of you pulling a coup de grace just as you're breathing your last. We all ended feeling satisfied that we're up to our first major boss - some guy we have to go kill, but we decided to turn in for the night and embark tomorrow, todays vicious firefights took a lot out of us. Final thoughts As i said, i didn't expect a lot from Borderlands - it just didn't spring up at me. It seemed to quietly roll in and sit there amongst all the other co-op games coming out, but somehow it has defined itself with me as something that will keep me glued to it for the coming weeks or months. If you're looking for something to fill your time with and have a few friends looking for some shooty/rpg'y mayhem, Borderlands seems to fit the bill perfectly. -=-=- I am Busy Mongoose - My Website Dev PC: AMD 8150-FX, 16gb Ram, GeForce GTX 680 2gb Current Project: Pyroxene