ScoringCriticals

I´ve had Borderlands for two weeks and after starting over and over some 6 times I finally managed to get my berzerk to level 26, while that doesn´t make me an expert on the game I think I have enough insight to write a review.

Here we go then…
BORDERLANDS takes place in a barren wasteland planet called Pandora where all there is are guns and squishiy targets to shoot at with said guns. It features the combined elements of a FPS and an RPG so i think this is the first true RPS or Role Playing Shooter (you don´t have Electronic Stability Control like Fallout 3′s V.A.T.S. system). Basically this means that you have real intense gunfights and the game rewards you, after causing death via pumping 2 mags worth of smg rounds into your Raider-at-hand, with a brand new shiny level. That´s basically it oh and the promise of a new better gun. This is what made games like Diablo 2 so addictive, the promise of finding a better more powerful artifact that could further your killing rampage. So the key element here being “grinding” which is amazingly fun in Borderlands since instead of clicking on a whole bunch of skills and let your character do the killing for you, in Borderlands you get to hold the Anarchy SMG with extended clip and with a grin in your face and proceed to empty your whole backpack worth of ammo on the poor bastard, just watching those little numbers and the occasional CRITICAL popping out of the target is a delight. If you´re lucky enough to have a gun that deals elemental damage you can see (depending on the gun’s flavor acid, shock, fire or explosive) the raider/skag/etc burn, melt, explode or get all sparky.

The world is HUGE but somehow you don´t get to fully grasp the whole concept of world as you did in say Fallout 3 which you could access the world map. In Borderlands you get to see only the area map, which for me really flawed the whole concept of continuity within Pandora.

The story line here is as they say paper thin basically non-existant. It´s something like: blablabla-shoot 7 shades of shit out of someone-do something else other than shoot 7 shades of shit out of someone-get back-blablabla rinse and repeat. People are going to say “what´s the fun in that?” Well somehow the shoot-7-shades-of-shit-out-of-someone never gets old. Plus the whole leveling up and loot reward system make for a damn fun game.

In terms or replayability you get 4 different classes with 3 skill trees each so if you want to experiment each class fully and taking into consideration that each run of the game will give you 100+ so you could very well be looking at a 400+hour game. That good enough replay value for ya?

The music is forgettable at best, the only thing that i loved about the music was the weird sounding guy that started to sing when your shields went down. The sound EFFECTS now that´s something else! I love the sound and feel of the guns.

To wrap this up I give Borderlands 4.5 out of 5 cracked heads because of the story, and definitely a buy.

oh! almost forgot the graphics big wow with the whole cell shading thing. loved them really bright and colorfull a much needed break from all that brown. (don´t get me wrong i like depressing brown games say hello Fallout 3!)

cheers!