It is now suitably clear that the current generation of consoles have, as a consequence of constantly developing technology, become inundated with a wide array of highly sophisticated shooters. These range from first-person shooters loosely grounded in realism, such as the highly successful Call of Duty franchise, to epic, if not occasionally ridiculous third-person science-fiction titles, with the Gears of War series for the Xbox 360 providing the best example. Yet, in spite of this increasing saturation, Gearbox’s 2009 release Borderlands has, through its slick gameplay, stylised visuals, and elegantly intertwined RPG elements, carved its own niche amongst the major players of console shooters. On paper, this description is likely to draw comparison to the highly acclaimed Fallout 3, however, after spending five minutes on the world of Pandora, one can see that these two titles are poles apart, as Borderlands is largely an arcade first-person shoot-and-loot experience, where the objective is to consistently upgrade your arsenal and level-up your character by defeating hordes of enemies. And by hordes of enemies, I mean prepare to play a game with an insanely high body count.
The game begins with the player being hurled onto a bus in the middle of an arid wasteland on Pandora, a world on the edge of the galaxy that has been left to decay following an unsuccessful search for the vast mineral resources said to be contained underneath the planet’s surface. Therefore, as the mining corporations leave, they let loose the criminals that they had employed as forced labour to prey upon the stranded and helpless colonists. This is where you enter as one of four loot hunters, looking for the much revered Vault said to house riches, alien technology, and other such fortunes. Your mission is aided by the rather clichéd female, ethereal figure, who has chosen you to seek out this vast collection of treasure, before it may fall into the wrong hands and somehow prove perilous to the existence of life. As you may be able to tell, Borderlands is not a game to play for its intricate and deep plot, as it almost seems to have been fabricated as an afterthought to provide an excuse to shoot as many bandits and native creatures in the face as possible. Funnily enough, the rather flimsy story arch actually serves to benefit the game, as there is more incentive to explore Pandora for loot and search for that that all important ‘perfect’ weapon, than to race through the main quest to discover the contents of the Vault.
Yet, initially the most enticing aspect of Borderlands is its bold and quirky art direction. ‘We wanted to make a game that looked like its concept art’ Gearbox Chief Randy Pitchford explained, adding that his team successfully took an ‘ugly, terrible world and brought a beauty to it’. This is a perfectly agreeable sentiment, as what is largely a rubbish heap of a planet still contains some stunning vistas, with the wonderful orange skylines bathing the craggy and desolate Pandora in a congenial glow. This is especially accurate in the well designed boss levels, with areas such as Krom’s Canyon and Headstone Mine providing the gamer with several unique points of interest. However, despite the game’s graphical prowess, Borderlands does suffer from a lack of diversity amongst its many areas, as most spaces seem to be a wide and vacuous wasteland, occasionally dissected by a junk landmark. Only in the latter part of Borderlands do we see colour on Pandora, as green and yellow hues are introduced on the Trash Coast. Nevertheless, even with the game’s unremarkable colour pallet, the stylised visuals do enough to ensure that Pandora, a principally grey, brown, rusty, and often featureless world, is still a joy to explore.
But when all is said and done, Borderlands is chiefly a shoot-and-loot experience. And there are masses of loot for your treasure hunter to wade through, which, fortunately for our explorers, the local population are keen to store in unlocked chests. This abundance is due to the title’s ‘Randomisation’ system, a system that behaves similarly to Diablo’s item generation engine. This guarantees that the there is always a motivation to pursue the 80 side-quests, as the promise of new and distinct weaponry is a constantly exciting prospect. The game is said to generate over 17,000,000 guns, with the variables such as barrel length, round type, round size, scope, colour, building material, and even additional damage, such as incendiary and corrosive rounds, being altered by Borderlands’ fantastic engine. Game Director Matthew Armstrong notes how ‘we [at Gearbox] saw a ridiculous amount of guns, but perhaps the strangest was a revolver that fired shotgun shells’, combined with ‘rifles that shoot anything from homing darts to rockets’. Although I personally have never experienced such wacky incarnations, it is needless to say that Borderlands provides you with a lot of guns. In order to help organise your ever growing arsenal, all loot is colour coded ranging from white and green, being the most common, to purple and orange, being rare and subsequently more valuable. Generally, the more prized the weapon, the better it is at inflicting damage on the battlefield, with this desire to constantly upgrade your instruments of death stemming from the necessity to survive. This means that old guns need to be sold to free up inventory slots, but more importantly to buy new weaponry, along with armour and grenade MODs. This constant alteration of your characters setup means that when you finally find a gun that truly works for you, it is a wonderfully momentous occasion. For instance, a personal highlight during my play-though was the discovery of a SMG with a 2.4x optical zoom, and a 4x incendiary damage bonus, ensuring that any human enemy that stood in my way would scream as he fell in a blazing inferno. Sadistic, yes, satisfying... Hell yes! Yet Gearbox has made certain that the gamer does not get swallowed within a sea of statistics, by keeping the HUD clean and clear, as when hovering over a new item, 2 separate windows appear on screen so there can be an easy comparison between your current and prospective weapon. Therefore, the action is always face-paced, and there is very little need to keep pausing the game to check your current inventory. Of course a lot of attention has been given to the huge array of arms in the Borderlands, but that does not mean that there is nothing to say for the other upgrades in the game. As any first-person shooter fan knows, grenades are often the way out of a tight spot, and the grenade MODs in Borderlands mean that that they can behave in a number of different ways. Perhaps you would prefer proximity grenades, or grenades that explode on contact, or even grenades that detonate in a shower of corrosive rain. Clearly Gearbox has spent a lot of time and energy into devising improvements that should make you an extremely proficient combatant.
With this vast amount of weaponry, there are many ways to play through Borderlands. However, the same is also true for the character classes, which should not only suit everyone’s playing style, but also provide reason to replay Borderlands. There are four in total, which include Roland the soldier, Mordecai the hunter, Lilith the siren, and Brick the berserker. Not only does each individual have their own weapon proficiencies, with, for instance, Mordecai favouring slow firing but accurate guns, such as revolvers and sniper rifles, but they also have their own unique action skill, which is often necessary for progression in the game. During my initial play-through, I chose Lilith and her action skill was the ability to Phasewalk, which cloaked her in invisibility, whilst giving her vastly increased speed to evade danger or sneak up behind unsuspecting enemies, depending on the way you chose to play and levelled-up your character. Other abilities include Roland’s scorpio turret, which when deployed provides cover and an extra gun on the field, Mordecai’s pet eagle Bloodwing, which attacks foes and draws them out of cover, and Brick’s berserk skill, which as expected increases his damage resistance, whilst giving him fists-of-fury to punch enemies into submission.
But what is interesting is how the RPG elements, notably the ability-trees, offer players different means to utilise their characters and their action skill, and particularly with the level 50 cap, players are encouraged to specialise in one of three areas exclusive to the character which you select. For instance, with Lilith, she has the ability to become a controller, an elemental, or an assassin. The titles are pretty self explanatory, as a controller helps Lilith manipulate the battlefield through dazing enemies to reduce their movement speed and rate of fire, whilst decreasing the cooldown time of Phasewalk and enabling the recovery of health whilst in this mode, making Lilith the ideal hit-and-run strategist. The elemental tree increases Lilith’s damage, and resistance to fire, shock and corrosive damage, even giving her the ability to attack several foes with a single shot. And finally we have the assassin, a mode which gives Lilith the ability to increase critical hit damage, and the power of her force palm whilst exiting Phasewalk, ensuring that Lilith can deal masses of damage from the blindside of enemies. Therefore, whether you want to play a defensive, offensive, or stealthy game, Borderlands provides you with the options and tools to customise your character in such a way.
Yet, what would be the point of all these weapons, options, and statistics if the gunplay in Borderlands was mediocre? Fortunately, this is not the case, as the overall gameplay in fantastic, with every individual weapon looking, sounding and feeling great and distinct to fire. For example, shotguns feel muscular with revolvers sufficiently thumping in your hands, making the kill, and more importantly the headshot, feel extremely satisfying. This element of satisfaction is magnified as Gearbox have ensured that there is a steady feel of progression during your game, as the more you kill, the more proficient you become with each weapon. These proficiencies manifest themselves in additional statistical boosts to damage, accuracy, rate of fire, and reload rate, which helps to carve out an individual style of gameplay, and, more importantly, help to make you feel more badass as you wield your favourite guns with an increasing degree of skill. Therefore Borderlands, through the astonishing weapon variety and unswerving feel of progression, provides players with the facilities to develop new and exciting ways to deal death.
However, despite all the great aspects of Borderlands, it is far from a perfect game. Along with the largely mundane landscapes, another of the more cited problems with the game is the shortage of enemy variety. Aside from bosses, players are expected to trawl through hundreds of Skags, Rakks, Spiderants, Schythids, Bandits and Crimson Lance mercenaries, which may not sound like an unreasonable amount of foes, yet when you consider that a play-through can last way beyond 30 hours, the predominance of bandits may become a little stale. Although the guns guarantee that this gripe does not significantly tarnish your Borderlands experience, it is a problem that Gearbox should have addressed during development. And whilst on the subject of weaknesses, it is impossible not to mention the rather drab and lifeless vehicular sections. My first problem is that these junk machines are supposed to handle similarly to the warthogs in the Halo franchise; however they are overly sensitive, making them difficult to control without a lot of practice. And whilst the cars are largely supposed to serve as a method to speed up transport, certain missions require a large element of vehicular combat, which is not only too easy, but also seemingly rushed and consequently rather boring.
Certainly Borderlands is a fantastic game on your own, but the experience is heightened by the introduction of other characters in co-operative gameplay, either in split-screen or online. As the game’s loading screens frequently remind us, more players equates to more enemies, and more enemies equates to more loot, which makes it extremely worthwhile to team up with three other friends, and battle your way through the hordes of foes. Without taking anything away from the solo experience, which is still fantastic in its own right, the game really shines in co-operative, as defeating bosses such as Sledge, the Skagzilla, and the Rakk Hive is not only more satisfying, but also more rewarding. For me, it was also interesting to see other character builds, and team up with players who used the different classes, as it not only emphasised Borderlands diversity, but it also gave you more options to tackle the enemy hordes. And if you’re done being amicable, you can even take to the arena and challenge others to a duel.
Conclusion
A unique title in many respects, Gearbox’s Borderlands manages to successfully straddle the gulf between RPG and First-Person shooter to create a fluid, enthralling, rewarding, and ultimately exhilarating experience. Not only is the player treated to many customisable options, stylised visuals, and a plethora of randomly generated and distinct weaponry, but, most importantly, Borderlands is underpinned by a slick and satisfying gameplay mechanic. Along with the key feature to team-up with your friends to overcome the game’s many challenges in co-operative mode, it is therefore easy to recommend Borderlands as a must-own for anyone serious about their gaming. Although it may be far from a perfect title, its many redeeming aspects ensure that Pandora is a world you want to enter over, and over again. SCORE: 9/10.
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