Borderlands Review
PROS:
- Weapons AI creates millions of weapons
- Drop in / out Co-Op play
- Combination of FPS and RPG game styles
CONS:
- Weapons AI creates millions of weapons
- Drop in / out Co-Op play
- Combination of FPS and RPG game styles
“Oh, there ain’t no rest for the wicked…”
“What made you want to live this kind of life?”
Borderlands is a title in the revival of a genre, the hybrid First Person Shooter / Role Playing Game (FPS/RPG). You select from one of four Treasure Hunters
“…and puts a gun up to my head.”
The big focus in Borderlands sits squarely on the weapons. With its own AI, the game randomly creates weapons found throughout Pandora. There are eight basic types of weapons with random modifiers to attributes like damage type, amount of rounds fired, and scope zoom level. The weapons are also arranged by rarity using a white, green, blue, purple, orange scale, with white as common and orange as legendary. The game creates some very interesting combinations, like a shotgun which loads one round at a time, but fires a rocket and explodes into smaller rockets, or a pistol that shoots three acidic bullets at once. It
I was walking down the street…”
Exploration in Borderlands is done either on foot or in a vehicle. Some of the areas can get quite large and having a quad with a mounted missile launcher can make traveling less arduous. Locations are handled with connected maps, selecting a zone activator to load in the next map. Travel between all zones is permitted at any time, so game progress is not only a forward linear path with no turning back. Environments range from deserted scrub land to street mazes in shanty towns with plenty of variety in-between.
Many were worried about the late change in graphic style Gearbox adopted. At first they were going for a realistic look, but chose instead to go more stylized instead. It
“If you can pay the right price, your evening will be nice”
On the multiplayer front, Borderlands has co-op mode, but the game handles it a bit different. You are able to take your character with all of its levels and weapons into another player
“There ain’t nothing in this world for free.”
All of the style, story, and shooting aren
GAMING TREND SCORE:
- Graphics: 80
- Audio: 90
- Controls: 90
- Gameplay: 90
- Value/Replay: 95
- OVERALL: 89
n/a
