Is it perfect, no. Is it the most fun I have had playing a game, too right it is! This is a game for the hardcore RPGers, the ones who used to sit around a table rolling dice, and squabbling with their friends about who was going to get the +5 holy Avenger. You were with your friends facing off against improbable odds, and when you got into trouble you cried to your mates for a healing potion or some sort of cure wounds so you could get back off the ground and back into the action.
Borderlands is that game. This is a thoroughly enjoyable experience by yourself and that is magnified when played with up to 3 of your friends. This is an RPG that uses a first person shooter style to keep the action and the pace ramped up. Working together is the biggest thing, with looting and quarrelling about that loot a close second. It has been said how many guns this game has got, and with it’s random generation you will rarely see a gun twice, although I did happen to have 3 sniper rifles that were identical apart from the fact that 1 had a slightly different moniker because of its stock. That was a one off and because the guns were so awesome when I hooked up with my buddies in the excellent drop-in, drop-out system I just off-loaded the extras to them, at which they were very happy, and we then went out-a-huntin’.
Comparing this to other games that are out at the moment and using them as a benchmark is quite difficult and made me question what reviews are based on. They tend to be based on technical things, like graphics, gameplay, sound, innovation, replayability, whereas I think there should be more emphasis on those more elusive qualities like fun, immersion, and style. There are games like Forza3 which is incredible, great graphics, fantastic physics, brilliant settings, control scheme and that I will play for a long time. It would probably out-rate Borderlands in all those categories as would some other games yet I can’t put down Borderlands to play other games. If I have a choice, Borderlands seems to be the disk that goes into the tray.
Borderlands has style and flair. Little touches of both class and classlessness, humor and horror, violence and, well, violence, guns and more guns. The setting hasn’t got the best graphics, they are good but lack a little polish such as water effects and shadowing, but the style is unsurpassed as it is both fresh and interesting taking what would otherwise be a Fallout3 type world of repetitive terrain and making the world a unique and revisit-able place. Character depth seems okay at first glance but when you combine it with gun specialization and your favorite hardware it gains a whole lot more depth. Not only that but because of the depth and choices for specialization you can’t be the best in every one of your skills (A la Fallout) making another play-through with that particular type of character appealing and then you have 4 of the suckers to do. And you can also play again with your same character in an effort to get them up to the level max of 50. Where am I going to find the time to put Modern Warfare 2 into my console???
I don’t know what it is about this game, but it is probably the first game since Halo (the first one) that I have completely lost track of time while playing it. There were four of us playing it on release, linked up via system link. We had started at 8pm and decided after playing for a bit that we should order some food and so someone asked what the time was, it was 1:30am. The other 3 of us thought that guy was having us on and so checked for ourselves, they weren’t, so food had to make way for coffee. Other games that are out and coming out are intense and you feel tired playing it, often games are punctuated with breaks and food. Borderlands is not a game like that, playing it with your friends will result in fun and laughs.
You want my opinion. Some of you are not going to like it, some of you are. However if you are the type that loved Fallout3 and just wished you could play it with your friends, or you want to play more adult type games that are insanely fun, then this game is for you and me. And with it’s zombie island DLC coming out and Gearbox wanting to listen to what it’s players want to see come out for later DLC, I can see this is going to be a hard game to take out of the tray.
As for a score, well you've seen the metacritic scores so I'm giong to give it my fun score, and it gets my "this is insanely fun" score of 10 out of 10.
