Following four years of development, in comes Borderlands, Gearbox’s latest creation which combines their vast experience in FPS gaming with a whole lot of RPG elements, which ends up feeling a hell of a lot like World of Warcraft, of all things. While this may seem strange, it's certainly not a bad thing though, because after our extended hands on and a nice chat with Gearbox president, Randy Pitchford, we were yearning to hit just one more level.
The story of Borderlands has you playing the role of a Loot Hunter on the planet of Pandora, and your mission is to find an ancient alien treasure, rumoured to be hidden in a legendary vault. Pandora itself is very bleak and desolate, looking like something out of Mad Max. While on the way to finding this treasure, you end up going through several other story chains and side quests, giving a lot more depth to the world of Pandora. Once you’ve picked one of four character classes to use throughout the game (each having distinct play styles and character builds), you’re on your way, starting off with killing and gathering quests, much like any good Western or MMORPG.
I'm looking at what the robot's looking at.
There is something about Borderlands that manages to maintain a certain appeal; so from the moment you start questing, you simply can’t stop. Objectives are simple and not too challenging initially, and level progression is extremely smooth and enjoyable, particularly because the shooting mechanics are so good. It works just like a traditional shooter, however damage is counted as you'd expect in a shooter, in numbers and HP gauges as opposed to a dice roll. So critical strikes such as head shots are on your ability to aim, not on percentages: if you manage to lodge a sniper bullet directly into the face of an enemy, you’re going to score a critical hit (on the high level playthrough’s with a sniper/critical strike build, we were pulling off criticals hitting into the 20,000 damage range), so loot and such will not dictate if you win a fight or not, but your own skill and accuracy, which is hugely rewarding in a game like this.
Loot still plays an important part in sustaining the addiction and satisfaction of the game however, with over 16 million different weapons to loot. Yes, you read right, over 16 million. Borderlands uses a loot AI system, which randomly generates weapons of all kinds, all with different stats. It works much like Diablo or more recently Too Human, where the amount of loot and weaponry available is ridiculous, and they also drop in random intervals, so one day you might just get a legendary item (orange coloured) drop and you’ll suddenly be a walking powerhouse. It’s a system that works exceptionally well for a game such as Borderlands. It not only keeps you playing, but also encourages you to take on the quests involving bosses, which drop the really good stuff.
Bosses are not just in quests however, but in caves and other secluded areas as well, which are basically the same as instances in many MMO’s. Here you can blast through elite mobs (which are named ‘badasses’ in this game), pick up loot and take down the bigger and badder bosses so you can get the ultimate kinds of loot. And if you’re struggling with taking down some guys, your buddies can instantly join in with the press of an invite, with up to 4 players being able to join. The build we played was on the Xbox 360, and suffice to say multiplayer was seamless and fantastic.
Seriously, nothing cooler than calling enemies 'badass raiders'.
Apart from the polished and addictive gameplay, Borderlands also looks freaking awesome. Using a cel-shaded style of rendering, everything stands out and looks vibrant, giving the game a very comical but gritty feel. It’s also insanely gorey and very dark in its humor, an example being us blowing the arm off a midget with a chaingun, which we then set on fire. It has quite a unique art style too, giving off a very Mad Max kind of feel and great sense of mystery in the barren world of Pandora. We didn’t get to hear much in terms of sound, however guns were loud and crisp, as you would expect, and screaming midgets that are on fire never sounded better (though we admit, we don’t know if we’ve ever heard that before).
We could easily write a lot more about the content available in Borderlands, with things such as vehicles, the PvP and Arena systems and individual classes, but we figure you’d best want to discover most of it for yourself. From what we have seen in our play time with it, Gearbox seemed to have successfully captured the addictive feel and nature of the most popular MMO out there, but also blended their experience in FPS into it, to create a vivid and immense world which is easy to get consumed by and hard to leave alone. Out on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the PC on October 23rd, Borderlands is definitely one to keep an eye on, as it could very well be the surprise hit of the year.
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