In Retro Retrospect of Borderlands, Some kind of half arsed journal

I know it might sound as if I’ve beaten this horse as much as I have stalker here, but I think I’d like to add a few comments with a severely less hype-minded approach here.

At the moment, I’m around the midpoint of Borderlands and it’s starting to show its blemishes. The previous time I wrote about this game, I was fresh faced, bushy tailed and all that crazy bullshit, but after experiencing approximately around 20 hours with of gameplay, I’d like to share what I’ve experiences, with a maximum of 1 digression, what I’ve experience, and what I feel about it.

When I previously mentioned all that glorifying hype about side quests, I meant it, at least at the time. The beginning of the game really sucks you in. Then you get to the next area and it feels like you’re starting all over again, except the quests really fail to capture the magic, the essence that they did at the beginning. Maybe it was because the world was big, vast and mysterious, and you’re only poking your head out of the doorstep, but it really felt as you were just an errant item, stalking around the shadows and crenulations of Pandora, trying to get by without being noticed and not trying to upset too many people. This is up until just after you defeat this bastard of a gangster type Sledge in his domain when you realise that you can pretty well walk through everything, a destructive utensil of the enigmatic bounty board, with little fear of death. Or maybe this is because I had a revolver that fires exploding bullets.

It was a combination of the ease of the game, the pace, and boring AI and the ever increasingly collecto/kill-fest quests that really detract from some very nicely thought out level designs, but in a large part, it was really the soul of the game. I draw comparison to stalker, in which it actually has quite a few basic similarities. In stalker, people will fight tooth and nail for their small bit of territory that they call home. It all feels very real; they sit around the fire, talk, tell stories and tell jokes, whereas in borderlands, they sort of just randomly wander around until something turns up the kill them, this is why you never have any concern or interest for the denizens of the wastelands, and they really just feel like well-armed obstacles without personalities. This not only breaks immersion, but makes the places they inhabit feel dead and pointless. And the level design is really quite nice, and deserves complimentary elements, did I already mention that?

The design of the side quests is somewhat inevitable, somewhere along the line they’re going to run out of ideas, but since you spend the vast majority of your time engaged in a sidequest of some description, it would seem only sensible to give them more variety. In the second area, you had to do something similar to the first, except rather than visiting a gangster, then retrieving a key, then doing battle with the man himself, and everything in between, you merely piss off a few of his thugs and challenge him to one big ridiculous vehicular dual to the death. It would appear that they’re trying to persist with giving each area its own issues and personalities, but considering that the relevant plot was so curtailed, it hardly had any impact at all.

The final issue that I think deserves some attention is the games difficulty. Sure, it’s meant to be a hard game played with 3 other chums, but that really isn’t much fun with all the communication issues. So even with one other friend, the game really proves little challenge, especially if he steals all of your XP by killing a boss when he’s four levels higher than you, however it is quite fun, particularly with the Rakk boss, devising a strategy and screaming at each other down the mic (we use Skype) in the midst of the madness. There it is, my one digression, I hope you enjoyed it. But when playing singleplayer, which is sometimes a nice change of pace, the game is a breeze. And I mean REALLY easy, there is essentially nothing trying to stop you from reaching all of your objectives, and when they try; they’ve evolved to the stage of merely disrupting the scenery.

That and the fact that the sniper rifle, when scoped moves about a bloody millimetre every time you do as much as NUDGE THE MOUSE. This is infuriating, please fix it, it feels as if I’m playing with a man, made out of plastic with preset grooves of articulation in his joints that cannot be glossed over UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

This is a bit of an update because now I’ve played a considerable part further into the game, and I’m glad to say that it returns to its original ideals of the grand quests comprised of even more well designed levels. Although the gameplay is much the same as it was earlier, the level design really allows you to feel like the badass mercenary you are, regardless of your playstyle, and I think this is what is really sustaining the game for me, not necessarily the endless blood lust, or the story. and it does a lot for the game by building very well orchestrated worlds with interesting features, yet the best of these only really shine around the 25 hour mark when you start doing jobs for people around Newhaven, allowing you to explore the dockyards of a moonshine outfit, or the canyon city of Krom the gangster, a couple of great examples of thorough playtesting and design collaboration, but I wont spoil them for you.

So, I think I like borderlands in a sort of love/hate way. The art style is lovely, the gameplay is consistently fun, even in respects to the way the weapons sound, let along how they feel and look; and the level design is stellar. All in all, now that the hype engines have settled, I first recommend you try it, or if you’re a PC gamer, bug a friend who did buy it, at least he’ll speak his mind.