Borderlands : Review

So this is a supposed weakened economy ? Troubled times and troubled cashflow? You want that to change. You want your life to take a different direction ? My friends. I have a solution. Take every rand thats lying around. Skip on a few packs of smokes and take your girlfriend out to MacDonalds a few times. Then you take your hard earned cash and you go buy Borderlands. Yes. That is the plan. You might regret it a few weeks later. You might ask yourself "Why heavens o why?" but the truth is you would have spent a few hours of satirical crazy badass shooting fun. What ? You live with your mother?




The game sets out on planet Pandora , a wasteland filled with creepy monsters and social degenerates. Your character is lured by the promise of wealth , fame , and women. Locked in a secret alien vault believed to be legend are riches unknown and this becomes your primary quest through the whole game. What makes this quest different from say tomb raider or Call of Juares ? Its fast. Its furios. And you dont have to stop to listen to every nagging clue thats could slow down your bullet blazing. And guns. There are a lot of guns. The engine has a random weapon generator thats takes a bunch of stats and models , measures it up to your character level and gives you randomly generated tools of destruction. Ever imagined a shotgun that shoots explsove rounds ? Ever hacked away at enemies with a pistol equipped with a blade ? Okay. Perhaps you have. But surely not in the same game. The producers claim the the game features weapons in the millions. Imagine weapons like your favorite rpgs like diablo. Except that its in first person. Add to this recipe some good cenery, different critical deaths and a pinch of colourful explosions and you have a meal for fit for a king. The gameplay runs as smooth as you would expect from any other shooter with characters also being very mobile. This makes squeezing of head shots an easy task once you have mastered the correct weapons for your class. The game also features four different character classes. This makes for a very replayable game but you will soon find yourself very attached to your character and very reluctant to restart the game with another.

The game also features a damage score for every hit you make. Very early in the game spraying your enemies with bullets causes not only blood but also numbers to pop up indicating the amount of damage being dealt. I must mention that it is pretty gratefying to see your early low damage hits ( between 5 and 10 ) to multyply into the hundreds. ( Try scoring up to 47k with a critical hit multiplied by a lethal blow ) This doesn't unbalance the game however as the enemy also come in higher levels in later areas. Warning ! Going back to earlier areas where the creepys havent evolved yet will make you feel immortal.

Enemies difficulty also multiplies with multiple players. Yes friends. Coop action for the masses. Okay. Four player max. But hey ! Imagine having baddies with four times the power. Also playing with your friends will reap higher level item drops. The down side is that you might get stuck with a powerfull weapon for a long time and only having four weapon slots max makes it even more so. Soon you'll be selling more and more guns making it them feel kinda redundent.

All in all. The game has pretty good graphics, a badass sense of humor and a lot of replayability. The things that fall short is the fact that weapons can't be modified and there is no room for mass deathmatch action. But this only leaves room for an expansion and or sequal. Good old 8 out of 10.