There are very few videogames on the market that this particular gamer has played. At one point, he mostly played racing games – particularly the old Need For Speed series on PC. He excelled at G-Police on the PC – a game many other gamers found alarmingly frustrating. He was hooked on Halo and Halo 2, but was somewhat disappointed with Halo 3 and, thus, never returned to that franchise thereafter. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3 held his attention for a long time, but no game has kept him involved longer than Borderlands.
Borderlands is the type of game that gamers love or hate. Some dislike the cell-shaded graphics that create an almost comic-book feel to the game rather than the more realistic approach of other first-person shooters. It contains a satisfying amount of violence, a sometimes-disturbing amount of gore, a plethora of weapon combinations, and a fair amount of humour.
One of the best features of Borderlands is the replay value combined with the number of downloadable additions. It takes many days of gameplay to complete the primary storyline, many more sleepless days to complete all of the sideline missions, and many more days strung out on Red Bulls and amphetamines to complete the expansion missions. It will take even further gameplay for a character to reach maximum level – this level was originally 50, then raised to 61, and finally raised to 69 as of the latest game addition. The fact that there are four rather diverse character types, it will take a considerable amount of time to attain level 69 with all four characters.
One of the poorer features is the nearly complete lack of in-game character customization. As mentioned above, there are four character types and each is somewhat unique, but customization is truly limited to the colour of their clothing. It could be argued that distribution of skill points allows for further customization since every character type has a unique skill-set. However with the level-cap now raised to 69, it is possible to have at least 3 skill points allocated to all 21 skills reducing the possibilities of a “unique” character. A small amount of customization is also gained through “Class Mods” - a method of adding special abilities to a character – but this really could simply be considered as “skill overloading” and class mods can be easily swapped for a different class mod at any time during play – however, it should be mentioned that the correct class mod can make all the difference between a strong character and an insanely strong character.
The plot and storyline of Borderlands is secondary to the main point of the game: find guns and kill things; find better guns and kill things faster; find insane guns and blow the living shit out of anything that moves. Hundreds of enemies lie between you and your goals and only mass firepower will solve the problem. Shotgun diplomacy is the only language understood on the planet of Pandora – Borderlands' primary setting.
Each character in Borderlands begins with the weapon-type that they favour. However, there are four character-types and seven weapon classes:
Pistol – favoured by the Hunter.
Submachine Gun (SMG) – favoured by the Siren
Shotgun – favoured by the Soldier
Combat Rifle – also favoured by the Soldier
Sniper Rifle – also favoured by the Hunter
Rocket Launcher – favoured by the Beserker
Eridian Weapon – an alien weapon-type not favoured by any character
It is necessary to note that the favoured weapon-type means very little if skills pertaining to that weapon are not invested in. With the Siren, this becomes slightly confusing. Her favoured weapon is technically not the submachine gun, but she does have an available class mod that favours her use of a submachine gun. Her actual favoured weapon is any weapon with elemental capabilities. All weapon-types in Borderlands have the possibility of being an elemental weapon: causing fire, shock, corrosive or explosive damage in addition to standard bullet damage. This elemental damage has saved this gamer's bacon on innumerable occasions and is highly recommended unless a weapon's other characteristics outweigh the benefits of elemental damage.
One might think that elemental damage in a weapon would trump all other weapon capabilities, but this is definitely not the case in Borderlands. Weapons have five major characteristics that affect usability:
Damage – the amount of damage a weapon can potentially cause
Accuracy – how much a weapon recoils
Fire rate – how quickly a weapon can fire
Magazine capacity – how many bullets a weapon can fire before requiring reloading
Elemental damage rating – if a weapon has elemental capabilities, it will be rated from x1 to x4 strength
If a weapon has elemental capabilities, damage will almost always be lower than a non-elemental weapon. Accuracy may also suffer slightly. This is especially true for common weapons, but rare weapons will occasionally have high damage, high accuracy and elemental capability. High accuracy, high fire rate and magazine capacity – or a fast reload speed if the magazine is small – are essential characteristics for any weapon, but there are certain characters that can turn mediocre weapons into great weapons and great weapons into weapons of mass destruction.
The Soldier is, arguably, the deadliest character-type in the Borderlands world. His skill-set and class mods are specifically suited to increasing the destructive capabilities of all weapons as well as giving him the fastest regenerative properties. Providing a soldier with a fast-charging shield, a high-magazine shotgun and a strong class mod makes him virtually unstoppable.
The Soldier also has another weapon in his arsenal that gives him a huge advantage over the other character-types: the Scorpio turret. This turret is the Soldier's special ability that gives him a large number of options in combat:
Deploy the turret and run away or hide – let the turret kill enemies.
Deploy the turret and then flank the enemy – you end up firing at them from two locations.
Deploy the turret at any time to heal or resupply your character – this depends on having ability points applied to the necessary skills.
The Scorpio turret ability far outweighs the benefits of any other character's ability:
The Siren's ability is to use elements and to turn invisible for a short time; abilities that aid close-combat and quick retreat. The Siren is a powerful character, but she does require a little more finesse to play than the Soldier.
The Hunter's ability is a hunting hawk known as a Bloodwing. The Bloodwing is not particularly advantageous until a high number of skill points have been allocated to the Bloodwing-specific skills. Even then, the Hunter/Bloodwing combination is not nearly as physically strong as other characters. It is often difficult to take down beefy opponents simply due to lack of sheer firepower.
The Berserker's ability is to...well...go beserk. Sheer bloodlust and close-combat is the name of the game when using the Berserker. Activate his ability and he flies into a rage. His guns are holstered and his big, meaty fists are up and ready for action. He is a complete killing machine and does pack a mighty wallop, but playing this character takes on a bit of kill-or-be-killed attitude. Dive into a large group of foes and hope there are not too many left when your beserk action runs out.
Bandits are the most common enemies you can expect to face on Pandora. These bandits prey upon the marginally more peaceful citizens in a variety of ways. For this reason, your character often ends up being a bounty hunter of sorts since a large number of side missions are dedicated to helping those people who have been wronged in some way or other. Bandits are generally responsible for whatever mayhem has ensued and it is your job to blow them away, pick up the pieces and collect the rewards.
Jakob's Cove missions give you the opportunity to battle with the undead. Considering North America's current fascination with zombies, the creators of Borderlands decided to cash in on the craze. Zombies, wereskags and large Frankenstein-like monstrosities are all after you in their attempts to rend your tasty flesh from you bones.
T-Bone Junction brings in the soldiers. The Atlas Corporation has designs on turning Pandora into a military dictatorship. The citizens, of course, do not want this and develop some rather elaborate schemes to get you to cooperate with getting rid of the invasion. Of course, they dangle a pretty big carrot in front of your face: promises of great wealth and unlimited firepower. Unfortunately they forget to mention that this promise comes with a huge catch. You can figure that one out for yourself.
The latest downloadable content for Borderlands pits you against a diabolical group of robots. All the old enemies are back with new upgrades: borg-like implants that turn everyone affected into the robot's slaves. Yes, there are missions that require much death and dismantling to collect spare parts for various, nefarious schemes. It all ends in a battle with the largest, freaking battle-tank in existence.
At this point, you have to be wondering how to survive this mass mayhem. Is there anything you can do to increase your chances of survival? There are, in fact, numerous techniques you can apply to each situation. The first is, obviously, choice of character: try each one for a short time and see which one suits your playing style better. Second, find decent weapons quickly: it is best to find weapons with high accuracy, high fire-rate, large ammo-capacity and fast reload time; damage is secondary to these qualities in this writer's opinion, but again you must choose what suits your play-style best. Third, find a great shield with a fast recharge rate. Recharge rate will save your ass far more often than a high capacity shield will. A couple of well-placed shots will deplete your shield immediately. The faster it charges back up, the more likely you are to survive the next well-placed shot.
Hopefully this little overview inspires you to check out Borderlands. Welcome to Pandora; hope you brought your big guns.
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