Borderlands: One Word, Badass.

I couldn’t really tell you how many games I’ve played over the years that made me think “The only thing that would make this better was if I could play it with my mates”, I.E. good old fashioned co-op. I haven’t said that much to myself recently though as more and more games have some kind of multi player aspect to them, although few still allow you to run through the main story with a friend by your side. Borderlands is one of those few and after spending a week or so slogging through it and finishing the game at the tender level of 37 I’ve found myself wanting more of the rockstar-eque game play feel where you can truly be the bad ass of the wasteland of Pandora.

Rewind back about a year or so and something appeared on my PS3 that I didn’t recall downloading: the trailer for said game. Turns out that my housemate at the time had been browsing the trailer section of the Playstation store and happened across it. Back then though it was a very different beast to the game it has become today:

That trailer alone was enough to sell me on the game although I barely thought about it until several months afterwards, when they decided to make the jump to cel shading. I wasn’t too sure how that would work out for them as most cel shaded games I’ve played in the past failed to add anything to the game apart from hiding bad texture jobs.

The first day after I had the game downloaded and installed I decided to give it a romp through, starting with single player. I had not been playing more than 10 minutes before one of my friends messaged me over steam to join them in a multiplayer game. This was the first let down for Borderlands for two reasons: first it needs around 4 ports opened to function properly, which is fine but an annoyance none the less. Secondly having to sign up for a GameSpy account is another small annoyance which could have easily been removed from the game since it added no benefit when the game is played via Steam. It is much the same problems that plagued Dawn of War II as you had to run 2 separate game networking programs to actually play multiplayer. Once you get past these difficulties the game does start to come into a world of its own.

Choosing Mordecai as my class I set off with the rest of my team (we had one of each class). After slogging our way through the beginner missions we finally got into our first instance, Skag Valley. I was instantly drawn back to 2004 where I ran my first instance in World of Warcraft and the memories came flooding back. Nothing is more exciting than grabbing a couple mates and beating down a challenge that a game developer has set up for you, and Borderlands is no exception. The instances are well designed and feel expansive whilst not feeling too long to make you dread the walk back to the start (in fact most of them have a quick return path). There is also, of course, the loot.

If there’s one thing that will keep gamers coming back for more its the prospect of getting that next great widget to help them slaughter their enemies with and Borderlands does this with impressive finesse. You can instantly recall the first moment when you see your first blue, purple and eventually orange drop. Even better are the weapons that function abnormally like the shotgun that shoots 8 bullets at a time that bounce off walls or the revolver that can shoot as accurately as a sniper rifle (with scope to boot!). My character managed to finish the game covered in purples with all but one weapons being orange, something which made him an almost unstoppable force when it came to shooting his share of bad guys.

This was were Borderlands really shone for me, the atmosphere set by the graphics and music made you feel like the ultimate bad-ass rockstar that’s decended upon the world of Pandora to make it your bitch. From the first time you see a head explode in a flurry of gibs to the moments when you’re surrounded by 10 raiders only to set them all on fire with your elementally enhanced SMG Borderlands makes you feel like everything’s going to hell in a handbasket, and your the pilot. I can’t tell you how many times our party was wiped almost completely out only to have one of us score a second wind and then proceed to mow down everything that took us out. Even more hilarious would be when Brick would be the one doing it, since he was usually screaming his head off and punching the crap out of something.

I’d love to say the vehicles were an important part to the gameplay but they’re really not. The FPS genre has always struggled with putting vehicles in game as if you make them too weak people don’t want to use them. Make them too strong and it can break the game. In Borderlands they feel more like a means to an end, serving as a fast means from A to B whilst still giving you the impression of a very large and open world. They are a hell of a lot of fun co-op though, but that’s mostly because I’m an ass with them and tended to ram my fellow Borderlanders off the road and flip them at every opportunity I got.

The experience is marred (but not ruined by) a decidedly made-for-console like interface. Now I’ve seen my share of console ports before and apart from those ones developed at the same time as each other the port will always suffer some lagging parts of the UI from its predecessor. For instance many of the game controls in Borderlands require you to press a key to use, instead of the more intuitive mouse click. Confirmation happens with the enter key for most things when again a mouse click would be far more appropriate. Whilst the majority of the action isn’t hampered by this all the menus, vendor interactions and inviting friends to play are plagued with illogical button choices that only serve to slow you down. Had I played this on the PS3 rather than the PC the story might have been different, but then again I don’t think I could have enjoyed it as much (there’s no cross platform multi available).

Overall Borderlands is an amazing game just for the times you’ll share with your friends romping through instances, slaying skags, raiders and Lance infantry. The loot makes the game so enjoyable that you’ll spend hours recounting the times you found that sniper rifle that could one shot enemies from across the map or that shotgun that shot rockets. The game doesn’t take itself seriously at all and this shows with the characters that, whilst shallow from a plot perspective, always bring a smile to your face when you see them.

Rating: 9.0/10

Borderlands is available for PS3, Xbox360 and PC right now for AU$96.00, AU$98.00 and AU$54.00 respectively. Game was played on the PC through to level 37 finishing the game once with the majority of it spent with others doing co-op.