Very few games enthrall me to the point where I play them for days and days on end. But Borderlands does to the point that this review would have been written a long time ago if I could have just put the controller down long enough to start typing. The game has all the elements that I really love, and I think should appeal to a heck of a lot of gamers despite a few questionable choices in terms of game build.
Borderlands is a shooter with role-playing elements. It bills itself as both, but it’s like 90 percent shooter and 10 percent RPG. There is a somewhat engaging storyline and lots of interesting characters to meet (a few of whom you won’t blow up) but no dialogue or moral choices to face. Every mission is pretty straight forward, so you won’t have to decide whether to take bread back to the poor orphans or the rich landowner or anything like that.
The plot is that you’re a treasure hunter, plain and simple. It just so happens that the treasure you are looking for is sitting in a hidden vault on the planet Pandora, which is a cross between a Mad Max-type wasteland, and well, that’s pretty much what it is. Apparently different corporations once mined and exploited the arid wasteland until most of the resources were gone, then pulled out and moved on. They left thousands of outlaws (presumably their slave labor force) behind when they left, which makes for a lovely set of neighborhoods that makes Tatooine look like Park Place. There are a couple little outposts of nice people scattered throughout the planet, and a few corporations still exercise control in places, though for the most part it’s pure lawlessness.
But Pandora has a secret vault filled with alien technology that would make anyone who finds it one of the richest and most powerful people in the universe. A little story like that can make even a planet like Pandora turn into a hot spot. It’s why you show up. Right at the beginning of the game you are given a vision from a "guardian angel" who pops into your head and tells you that the vault does exist. She gives you helpful advice along the way from time to time and keeps you going even though most people you meet tell you that the vault is nothing but hogwash.
There are four character classes to play and each represents a different style of play, so you are almost certain to find one that tickles your gamer fancy. The brick is a tough SOB who likes to pummel people into the dirt or blast them to paste with his shotgun. The siren is a stealthy gal who can go invisible and add elemental damage to her attacks, so she can get behind enemies and then melt their faces off with acid. The soldier is the most balanced combat character and uses assault rifles with deadly efficiency. He also has a turret that can be deployed to automatically attack enemies on his behalf. The final character is the hunter, which is what I mostly played. The hunter is a sniper par excellence who has a deadly hawk-like creature as a pet that can tear enemies in half better than most machineguns. Whatever character class you play, there are no weapon restrictions. So a hunter can use shotguns and a brick can use sniper rifles, just without the chance to add too many amazing bonuses as you level up, though with use you will get better with any weapon type you shoot a lot.
The first thing you will notice about the game is that it’s all cel-shaded, so the graphics are cartoon-like, as if they were ripped from the pages of a graphic novel. This was the biggest determent to me playing the game actually. I enjoyed XIII back when it came out, but generally prefer realistic landscapes to drawn ones. When I first started playing, I thought that if the developers went with a realistic look, that the game could have been a fast-paced Fallout 3 type of world. But those thoughts only lasted for about a minute. You see, the world is hand drawn so well that it’s very easy to forget that that it’s not realistic graphics. You just kind of start thinking that this is how Pandora happens to look. It gives the game a stylized appearance that is hard to beat, and quickly became one of my favorite games in terms of graphical flavor. You won’t find anything that looks quite like it.
Graphically, the cel-shading unlocks a lot of options. When you hit an enemy in the head, it generally explodes. Also elemental weapons, of which there are a lot, trigger graphical effects. Whether it’s immolating, dissolving, electrocution or general exploding, hitting an enemy with an elemental-enhanced weapon looks great.
The coolest aspect of the game for me is the variety of weapons. Borderlands is gun porn at its finest. The game says there are a bazillion different weapons types, and on this one, I tend to believe them. Other than a couple base unmodified weapons, I’ve not found two that are exactly the same. The game actually randomizes the different guns so that no two games are going to be the same. Guns vary by clip size, fire rate, what if any environmental effect is added to the bullets, how quick it is to reload, the type of scope -if any- that it has, special attachments like knives for melee attacks and general damage power. And then there is the actual weapon type. There are automatic pistols, revolvers, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, missile launchers, submachine guns and grenades. There are even various companies in the game that make the guns, and each manufacturer has a reputation, like fast firing guns or those that do huge damage. So again, depending on your play style, you will probably end up looking for a favorite manufacturer once you learn the layout of the land.
Some guns also add weird effects to their bullets, like shooting them out in a wave pattern or a whirlwind, or having bullets bounce off walls. These are extremely rare, but lots of fun if you can find them, or take them off an enemy who was just shooting them at you before you put them down.
In addition to guns, you can also buy different shields to help your character. They are of various strengths and some have added effects, like healing their users or discharging a defensive inferno when depleted. And there are class modifications too, which mostly increase your character’s skills, like making a soldier’s turret more effective or letting a hunter’s bird attack more enemies before it returns to his shoulder.
You can pick up guns and other equipment off of dead bandits or buy them in vending machines. The vending machines even have special deals on powerful weapons that only last for a limited time. So if you want the special sniper rifle displayed, you need to buy it before the countdown timer reaches zero, which is normally less than twenty minutes. The good thing is that if you don’t like the stuff the vendor has, then when the timer expires, new things will pop up. Of course there is the pain of knowing that you couldn’t afford that cool revolver with massive damage and an electrical environmental effect (which will drop an enemy with a shield) before the timer clicked down and it went away forever. It’s painful, let me tell you. Most guns you find will be leveled to your character, though sometimes you will find ones that are too high to use. Given the variety of weapons, a higher level gun does not always mean a "better" gun anyway, so this is not too much of a problem.
There are also vehicles in the game, though they are a lot more limited than the guns. Other than changing the color and the main weapon type, there is not too much variety. But it is fun to tool around the wasteland in your own little combat vehicle, and you even sometimes get into scraps with bandits riding in their own vehicles, which adds car on car combat into the mix.
You can’t really die in Borderlands. If you get shot up, you are regenerated at a New-U station, which costs money but otherwise doesn’t hurt. Expect to die a lot at first before you figure out how everything works and what types of enemies you can and can’t handle.
The single player game is a lot of fun and if you do all the side quests and missions from the bounty boards, you will be entertained for about 45 hours of play, a rare gem in a world of games where the single player experience lasts less than 10 hours on average. You can even go back and play again with the same character, and all the enemies will level up to match you, giving you better loot and more challenge.
Borderlands also has a really cool multiplayer side, which mirrors the single player mode. If you want to go online, you just select it and can jump into a game being hosted by other players. Then you play alongside up to three other players. The multiplayer game follows the main storyline of the host, so you can see what stage your new friend is on and jump in to help. Weapons found playing in multiplayer are brought back to your single player experience too. Given that the fights are tougher, but the rewards are more spectacular, it’s worth it to fool around a bit in multiplayer just to get some better gear to bring back to your single player game.
When in multiplayer you can choose to fight other characters in arenas too. I didn’t really like that aspect of the multiplayer game too much, because playing a hunter with a sniper build means you are way out of your element in a tiny arena where someone like a brick is going to clean up. Unfortunately a lot of bosses in the single player game also reside in arenas, which made going up against them a real pain. At least in multiplayer you can avoid fighting other characters if you want. And you can enter and exit multiplayer games at will. Since I reviewed this game on a PS3, it was nice to see how easy it was to enter and exit, given that the PS3 network is not as advanced as say, the Xbox Live one. But it does show how the free PS3 network can easily handle multiplayer if it’s built into the game correctly.
On the negative side, enemies in Borderlands respawn quite a bit. You can never really clear out a bandit camp for example. If you leave and come back, all the bandits will be back again. This gives the game a bit of an MMO feel where you don’t really think you are affecting the world, but does prevent starter areas from becoming completely empty if you have to revisit them for side quests. I’m kind of on the fence about that feature. I think enemies respawn a little too quickly, where if you are in a cave and have to fight to get to the back, they are all in place again when you try to leave. I think this is done to keep the game action-packed at all times, but sometimes too much of a good thing can get too repetitive.
Borderlands is a great game that will enthrall any shooter fan, and might tempt a few RPGers too with its light but lively RPG elements. It’s also a bit of a stat-heavy game where comparing one gun to another becomes a science that gun-nuts will enjoy. I certainly loved my time on Pandora, and can’t wait to get back there.