Borderlands
Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 5:06 pm
Borderlands is a 4 person Co-Op First Person Shooter/Role Playing Game hybrid. It features 4 playable characters
Roland- The Soldier
Mordecai- The Hunter
Lilith- The Siren
Brick- As Himself
The game is completely centered around the hunt for loot, which is primarily better weapons, Class Mods and shields. While it is a very shallow premise, it works for this game, as all Gear is Procedurally generated from a pool of existing parts, this comes to roughly over 17 million possible weapons and gear. The story line itself about the hunt for the vault is decently written and carries the weight of the game well enough. The game can be soloed, but its really fun with a good 4 person team, and as people are added to a game, the monsters get tougher and the quality of found items increases.
Each character has a skill tree that can be used to alter play style and abilities, and has a major impact on combat performance. Additionally, the option to reset the skill tree exists in game via respawn points that allow purchase of the reset using ingame currency. This allows for multiple playstyles on one character without the need to start a new one.
Each character also serves a specific role.
The Soldier; He is the support, he carries around a deployable auto-turret that provides suppressing fire, shielding and healing. There are various upgrades for it that add damage types. His class mods also serve to support the team by providing various weapon based bonuses such as ammo regen. His skill tree has options that make him better in combat, upgrade his turret, or make him a medic to heal team mates. He deals with primarily Combat Rifles, Light Machine Guns and Shotguns.
The Hunter; Long Range support and DPS (damage per second), his special is a trained attack bird that is upgraded in a similar fashion to Roland's turret. The Hunter specializes in Sniper and Pistol weapons, and has class mods and skills to reflect this. Out of all characters he has the lowest health.
The Siren; She is the primary damage source in most cases and has a Phasewalk ability that allows her to move faster and turn invisible and intangible. Entering and Exiting Phasewalk creates a damaging burst of energy, which the effects can be modified using the skill tree and other upgrades. Easiest Character to solo the game with. Her primary weapons are Sub Machine Guns.
Brick; He is the tank, his Berserker ability allows him to rush in and absorb and give out large quantities of damage. His purpose is to draw fire and allow The Hunter and The Siren to lay damage in, and The Soldier is there to keep him active and provide support. His Berserker ability is upgradable in the same manner as everyone else, and his skill tree is focused on high damage weapons like Light Machine Guns and Rocket Launchers.
All in all I personally found the game to be quite enjoyable, and the loot mechanic though shallow makes the game quite fun, as its always interesting to see what the game will give you next. 4 person co-op shines though with a good team and a stable host, as everything becomes much tougher to encourage team work. Despite the following drawbacks it is still a fun and enjoyable game to play.
Drawbacks to the game include;
Skill tree is actually kind of shallow, and could've been larger and with a larger level cap.
While there are 17million possible pieces of gear, it still follows a certain pattern.
Items are capped at 4 lines of description, there is a PC fix to display 5, but thats the hardcoded limit, some items have more then 5 lines of attributes.
PC Specific Drawbacks;
Co-Op is local host and requires manual port-forwarding
Menus are console ports and server browser is not very efficient
No user definable options for some controls and microphone options
Server Browser does not show ping
Uses Gamespy for matchmaking/server browsing (is it 2004 still?)
If you have the PC version and want to play sometime, my Gamespy id is; vf501
im buying by bro a copy tonight so we can kill stuff until l4d2 is out