Review: Borderlands

Borderlands is the recently released “Role Playing Shooter” from Gearbox Studios, creators of the Brothers in Arms series. They’ve set out to release a game similar to the PC classic Diablo II, but with guns, guns, and more guns. The result, however, is a game that does not live up to it’s much touted genre as Gearbox would like you to believe. This game is largely just your basic RPG that happens to be in the first person perspective and puts an emphasis on the guns. Unfortunately, even with the guns in the equation, even the most novice player of first person shooters will be able to shoot the brain-dead AI present in the enemies, which makes it feel more like a point-and-click mechanic that even a tactical-lite shooter. Combine that with the fact that not even the most devoted first person shooter junkie will have much luck against an enemy just a couple levels higher than he and it becomes clear that this game is MUCH more RPG than Shooter. The letdowns keep coming when you discover that the game has a mere 160 side quests, most of which are simple “get this” or “kill that” quests, and very few of them have any kind of connection with each other or the main story. When you consider that other RPGs (for instance, this years’ Sacred II for the Xbox 360) has upwards of 600 side quests, Borderlands is a game with few objectives.

You start the game by choosing your class. You have a choice between...

• Mordecai the Hunter, who specializes in sniper rifles and pistols. His special action is to throw out his pet Bloodwing to attack your enemies.

• Lilith the Siren, the magic-infused character, who acts not unlike a mage in other RPGs. Her special action is to enter into Phasewalk, an ability that makes her invisible and vastly increases her run speed for a short time.

• Roland the Soldier, a well-rounded character whose special ability allows him to throw down a turret to help clean up your enemies.

• Brick the Tank who acts like his name implies. His special ability sends him into a state of blood lust where he whips out his fists to deal damage as nature intended.

The classes are all pretty fun to play as, the special abilities for all characters refresh fast enough to really mix up the action, and since the shooting is so dull, it’s very much appreciated. The skill trees are fun to advance up and offer a variety of different ways to change your character up. For a small fee you can even re-spec your character in case you ever want a change.

If you’re a person who enjoys the loot hunt of other RPGs, you’ll be hard-pressed NOT to love this game, as loot is literally everywhere. Everything from new weapons to class upgrades can be found everywhere, and the game’s tagline, “87 Bazillion Guns”, is probably not far off. It’s pretty impressive when you pick up eight different sniper rifles and not one fires or feels like another. That means that if you ever feel like you need a change in what gun you’re firing, you won’t have to look for long. Finding that gun that you won’t get tired of, however, is a different story. Take for example the sniper rifles. Each gun has an accuracy rating, and a “good” sniper rifle seems to run in the 95 or 96 percentile of accuracy. In this game, what that means is even with the sniper rifles you’re going to have a hard time consistently hitting the critical spots of enemies who are even 100 or 200 yards away, so close you can see their facial features through your scope. It doesn’t matter that you have your cross hair right on his melon, the accuracy rating throws your shot off. This then boils down to using sniper rifles like high-powered semi-automatic assault rifles, ones with high fire rates. While this may be fun for some, those of us who picked the Hunter class probably wanted to feel like a sniper, which this game makes it hard to do so. This shortcoming isn’t restricted to the Hunter, too many of the guns just aren’t that much fun to fire. It keeps you invested in the loot hunt, but sooner or later it gets monotonous going from one boring gun to the next. It doesn’t help the fact that you can’t help but feel like you don’t have to go into cover or focus fire in a co-op game or any of the other mechanisms other shooters have made normalities. Dull shooting with dull guns against dull enemies all in search of slightly less dull shooting with slightly less dull guns against still just-as-dull enemies gets... well... dull.

The never-ending train that is this game’s dullness continues with the story and settings. Each character’s ultimate goal is to find “The Vault.” Why each character is looking for the vault is never really explained in-game. And it’s hard to spoil anything because the story quests are all so very forgettable, you’ll have a hard time actually piecing together what happened in the story outside of “I went and collected this, then had to go kill that.” It’s compounded by the fact that none of the settings stand out from one another. Pandora turns out to be a pretty boring place, regardless of the creatures and bandits roaming around it. None of the areas really have anything to distinguish it from the places you’d been before in the game. Even when you get to the snowy areas later in the game, the terrain looks like they simply took all the sand-colored areas and made them white. This does, however, bring me to the absolute best part about this game. Even though all the settings look the same, you likely won’t get bored because the game is dripping with style. The character designs, art style, comedy relief all have a distinct style that you won’t find in other games. You could pick out designs and go “yep, that’s Borderlands alright.” If only they had more diversity in climate and level design the settings themselves might be fun enough to walk through.

Co-op mode is only somewhat of a saving grace for this game. Four people can take in any combination of the characters into the same game. It increases the loot your party as a whole gets and it boosts up the enemies health and damage output, but sadly not their brains. You’ll still see a complete lack in teamwork on the enemies’ side and the best “AI” you’ll see is a bandit hiding behind cover for 2 seconds then popping up and showing that big beautiful head for 20. It does not make the shooting any more fun, but the loot addict in all of us will get a kick out of the increased loot drop. There are PvP arenas located at various places throughout the world, but it’s a wonder they even spent the time on them with the game being so frustratingly outnumbered. You can enter the arena in teams or all for all, but the Siren vastly overpowers the other characters. Three of the skills in her skill tree can “stun” her target which amounts to her having a nuclear bomb in a battle of rubber-band guns. Two of these skills can be increased to give a 100% chance to stun, while the third can increase each bullet you fire to have a 25% chance. So if a Siren is firing a submachine gun or assault rifle at you, simple math dictates that it’s not going to be long before you’re at the mercy of the Siren. When you get stunned (and mind you there’s no counter to it), you slow down to a near crawl, your guns are woefully inaccurate, and your fire rate decreases to almost as slow as your movement speed. Heck, even the rockets from a rocket launcher can be outrun when you’re stunned as they too are slowed down to a crawl. Why Gearbox spent the time on these arenas instead of working on, say, more sideline quests only implies that hopefully they have plans to improve the PvP with DLC.

In the end, this game falls victim to the problem that most games have when they try to mix two completely different genres. What it ends up being is a painfully mediocre shooter with some painfully mediocre RPG elements, and you can’t help but feel they made some sacrifices to mix both in, like the basically non-existent AI or the woefully inadequate number of boringly designed side quests. The stylistic approach taken to the game is very welcome, even it makes it feel even more like a missed opportunity. If all you’re interested is the loot hunt, there may be some fun in this game for you, but for those who want at least some objective or are looking for a more refined game (shooter, RPG, or otherwise) can do a whole lot better.