I tried Borderlands a few weeks ago when it was released with some mixed impressions - with the ultimate first impression being 6.5/10. The underlying core concept for the game is well deserving of praise however several really major elements bring the game down from what could have easily been an 8.5 or 9 out of 10.
The very, very first thing you notice when you start up Borderlands is an overwhelming sensation of console-itis. Lots of [PC] games nowadays are developed either concurrently with their console ports or are, as evident with Borderlands, a direct port of a console games. Let there be no mistake that console-itis is bad. Now whether it was poor coding (usually because of insufficient programming resources) or it's simply poor management (usually thinking it's not a big deal). For the most part, they're right as the majority of games nowadays only have a minor amount of console-itis. The usual (tolerable) symptoms are:
- One or two short movies at the startup: usually the publisher's video is unskippable and everything else is
- Softer aim and possibly the inclusion of autoaim and/or having autoaim enabled by default
- Input smoothing and/or very poor aiming/movement mechanics
- Checkpoints and loading screens
- [±] Expansive world. The game world is pretty huge. I've read around that it dwarfs Oblivion's game world. This is pretty great however (and you knew there was going to be a catch), before one can begin to compare to the benchmark that Oblivion has set down, it should be mentioned that Oblivion's "smaller" world is, well, populated. Borderlands is, for the most part, a vast expanse of plain old wasteland. There's the occasional doodad here and there but no roving bands of marauders, no forests (I suppose that's befitting) but it just gives the impression of a great expanse of nothing. It should also be noted that in many areas, the edge of the gameworld (where you die if you cross), just kinda happens.
- [+] Very well detailed settlements. It's important to note that while the spaces in between "zones" in Borderlands is, for all intents and purposes, barren, their zones/cites and such are meticulously designed with all sorts of stuff. It very much gives you the feel of a rustic old world. Is there more detail in the towns than Oblivion? That's a tough call: it's pretty close.
- [-] Checkpoints. Checkpoints (used as respawn points) can be a mixed bag: too many and you remove any need for caution or skill however, too few and it becomes a pointless novelty. Borderlands gets the number (and for the most part, placement) just bang on. That being said, their mechanism for fast-travel is kind of dumb. I can understand making the fast travel a quest line (you don't start off with the ability to fast travel, it's a quest) however if they simply had a non-barren world, there wouldn't nearly be so much need for fast-travel as the old-fashioned route can often be more entertaining. Worth mentioning is that you dont reall have fast-travel per-se as you still need to go to "warp nodes".
- [±] Combat mechanics. The combat in Borderlands is sort of a mixed bag. On the one hand, there is a reasonably reliable means of scoring critical hit after critical hit (i.e. headshots) and there is a great degree of variance (i.e. not all creeps have a vulnerable head). This aspect of the game is absolutely awesome. Also, seeing the numbers (indicating damage) rain down around a target as you light them up with a SMG is both awesome and amusing. There are two downers, the first being that rocket launchers are absolutely and utterly useless (unless you're being a Medic soldier and healing friendlies), I've not seen a single creep go down from taking 3-10 rockets. They have tiny magazines, obscene reload/launch times, their hit detection is a cointoss (many times, the animation shows the rockets going through the target with no explosion or damage) but the aggravating one is how rockets dont really kill anything. The second and much more aggravating problem is that combat virtually revolves around levels with no [usefully] visible indicator. So if you're level X and you're attacking a level X+10 creep -- that creep looks identical to the level X and level X-10 creep. The only difference is that the level X+10 creep can take shot after shot of sniper rifle fire to the face and not die .... oh and he can probably one-shot you too. As much as people ragged on the Oblivion scaled-monster levels, at least it doesnt suffer from failures like this (i.e. the higher level versions of lower level creeps look different and have different gear, name etc).
- [+] Respawns. When you inevitably die, you get to respawn and there is a fee. It appears that the fee is a percentage of how much money you might have on you at the time, so fret not for the scenario where you cant afford to respawn!
- [-] No replayability. Sure the game comes with a second play through (think of it as nightmare difficulty in more traditional rpg environments). But this aside, there is no boss farming, no reason to play the game again, once you've played through the maximum 8 times (2 difficulty levels, 4 classes). No reason at all. The basic creeps respawn but by the time you've done the first pass of the game, you've seen everything you're going to see.
- [±] Loot. There's tons of loot. They advertise millions of different weapons. This isnt even close to the truth. Sure, we all knew that the "millions and millions" would just be variations on templated guns and such but two things detract from this. The first being that bosses don't respawn and as such, either there's no point in getting better weapons once you've played through and secondly, it's just stat variances here and there -- and theres like 15 or so different stats for a weapon that can be modified.... so really, it doesnt take a lot of true variance to get "millions" of different weapons. As for loot, there's physically lots of it but due to the cripplingly small inventory size and lack of fast travel, it's kind of useless.
- [-] Vehicles. So much fail. For a game that advertises four player co-op, the vehicles have two slots and your buddies cant even jump on a stationary vehicle for the highground advantage. It should be pointed out that in a vehicle, you can fire rockets/bullets at a level X+10 baddie all day to no avail but you can run him over and instakill him. There is lack of keyboard steering meaning you can't drive one direction and shoot in another (I suppose that this forces teamwork etc and that's fine, but you should still be able to LOOK somewhere else).
- [-] Interface. Mouse smoothing. Really? Really???. The retarded amounts of mouse-smoothing contribute to a "why is my mouse moving like im pushing it through tar?" feeling. The overwhelming amount of consoleitis rears it's head as you try and sort through your inventory and realize that scrolling the mousewheel doesnt do anything, you have to use the scroll buttons and you cant drag to equip/unequip, there is no 1-click option to equip to empty slot. You also cant use a medkit via hotkey (you have to open your interface in combat).
- [-] Widescreen Support. The game runs a 70 degree field of view. This is abysmal even for nonwidescreen users (which default to 90) and worse for widescreen gamers (who are used to 100-110). Gives a whole new meaning to "I didnt see them coming"
- [±] Shared everything. On the plus side, you can sit in town/safe spot as a level 1 while your level 50 buddy runs off killing things -- you get shared experience and shared money -- no matter how far away they are. On the downside, it also means you're stuck together as a pair: when one player leaves a zone, they drag the other one with them. Now this is something I expect from a splitscreen console game, not a game in a day and age where multiplayer has been well established.
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