Game Spotlight: Borderlands

After playing the hell out of this game over the last couple of weeks, it’s about time that I got around to actually writing an entry about it…

I didn’t pay much attention to Borderlands when it was released and it ended up taking me a year or so to actually get it and play it. Though once I actually got my hands on it I couldn’t put it down for two weeks and ended up spending 170 hours on it… yeah I’ve done the math already, I realise I spent LITERALLY half of those two weeks playing Borderlands…

If you’ve heard anything about Borderlands, you’d know by now that it’s pretty much an RPG with guns… lots and lots of guns. Though technically it’s a collection of different guns that have different variables that make them different in terms of the different numbers attached to them. How much damage they will deal, how accurate they are, their reload speed, elemental effect and how much elemental damage dealt, etc.

However, what really drew me to the game was the ability to burn everything to death. I dunno, for some reason I felt the need the need to kill stuff with fire and watch them scream in horror (or for their mommy’s) while they’re being incinerated into ash. Oh but it’s also fun to shower enemies with acid as well and make them explode, that’s always nice too. But for me, it was all about the fire… and naturally that drew me towards choosing Lilith since she’s the elemental specialist of the four characters you can choose from.

At its core it takes all of the addictive and fun from the RPG realm and smashes it into the realm of FPS games by adding the simplicity and enjoyment of emptying an entire magazine of bullets into someone’s face just because. It’s also not the type of game that takes itself too seriously… Just take a look at the intro for the first DLC, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, to see just what I mean…

Of course, you can’t talk about Borderlands and leave out the multiplayer aspect of the game. While you can easily experience the entire game by yourself if you choose to, the entire reason why anyone would really get into Borderlands is so they can play with their friends and share the head exploding, body incinerating, ass kicking moments as a team. I played through most of Borderlands with Mav and a bit with Jeff, though he was too busy with WoW (sigh). But if you can gather up 3 other friends, it’s a blast to kill stuff, loot weapon chests and help each other find better weapons so you can kill and loot even more.

I chose to play the PC version of Borderlands instead of the 360 and PS3 versions simply because I got it through a sale on Steam… which some people may find silly considering that this game is said to be best played on a console since it was made with consoles in mind rather than a PC. Lucky for me, I came late enough to the game that all, or at least most, of the problems the PC version faced initially have been ironed out and whatever was left could easily be tweaked with a couple of changes to some ini files. Despite the console origins of Borderlands, I still feel that this game is better off on PC for obvious reasons.

The 4 DLC packs, which come in the Game of the Year (that’s such a silly name for these things), were all mostly pretty awesome. The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and The Secret Armory of General Knoxx are both pretty awesome. Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution is amusing and Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot is a hit or miss depending on your tastes. I liked it but most people think it’s a waste of money… though that really didn’t make a difference for me in a Steam sale.

All in all, Borderlands has been great value for money and I’m still not done with it. I’ve levelled up but I still haven’t reached the level cap and I still have better weapons to find to replace the ones I have now… there’s still much more burning to do… the only problem is that I have other games to play too.

Heh, glad I was able to get that done before Dead Space 2 comes out tomorrow… hopefully I’m able to have a Game Spotlight posted for that before the end of the month.