I've been playing Borderlands a bit lately and although all of my complaints in my initial review still stand, I think the game's three DLCs have subtly brought some polish with them. Dont get me wrong, the game is still chock full of console-itis -- that's a bad thing. By far and large that is still the overwhelming impression from start to finish. However, if you overlook this aspect, it's actually very enjoyable. While this game will never be a totally rockin' FPS-RPG and even though I will always have more complaints than praises for it, it still can be a total blast to play. Now that I've got the three DLC packs, let's have a look again...
Console-itis.
Let's get this out of the way. The total experience wouldn't be so much of a damn pain in the butt if the developers bothered to test it with actual PC gamers (seriously, Borderlands has PC support for an Xbox controller -- who in their right mind plays an actual fps with anything by keyboard+mouse?). That being said, this wiki is your friend and will help you sort out many of aggravations. Of note:
- 'Show hidden weapon/module stats'. While the wiki says this has been fixed, it certainly has not been for the Steam version. That and it's worth noting that some weapons can have well in excess of five stats -- and no matter how small you make the font, the game is hardcoded to limit displaying only five stats. Yeah. Hardcoded. Bad form.
- 'Disable ALL movies'. None of the movies are worth watching more than once really; that and even with this tweak, there are still (hardcoded no doubt) movies left in the game (that you can't skip). Thankfully the remaining movies are all exceptionally short and relevant. If you really want to watch the movies grab the Rad Game Tools player (which all serious multimedia power users should have anyways) and watch them independant of the game.
- 'Disable mouse smoothing' A definite must, the game's interface is so totally broken and inconsistant when it comes to mouse sensitivity in the in-game and in-menu elements that you'd think there was something wrong with your mouse. While your cursor will still feel like it's wading through mud, it will be much more bearable.
- 'Enable VSync' If you're getting a headache while playing Borderlands, this may help lots.
- The game has a display limit of seven digits for money values. This means that, for all money values, the maximum is 9,999,999 -- even though the player can carry more and even though actual items may cost more! This is just another case of hardcoding. I don't know if it was laziness on the part of the developers or that the developers think with a console mindset (not a good thing) but little things like this aggravate the developer and gamer in me.
- The movement/physics mechanics (jumping, vehicles etc) is very consoley. Jumping is very floaty and the collision models are primative at best. Vehicular steering via mouse is also lame. You can find a partial fix for the floaty jumping here.
- If you have the Steam version and you launch the game directly (i.e., via the exe) -- the game fails to save your character or settings! You have to launch the game via the steam interface for the game to initialize. After you've launched it via Steam (and suffered through the unskippable videos) you can go back to launching the game directly.
- Players have to stick together. Nothing says 'console' quite like having a game force you to teleport to different zones when one player teleports (and on the same note, having the teleport not work because one player is in menu is so 1990). For a game built on unreal engine 3, this is an embarassment.
- Not having a shared stash, ability to drop money, or a mechanism for trading is so pathetic, I cant think of an RPG pre-1995 that didnt have at least two of these three features.
- The Mad Moxxi DLC is a grindfest. You simply play three different levels 125 times each. /fail
So what's good?
Well there are three DLCs for now, and the individuall have quite a bit of polish and flavor to them. This begs the question of whether or not I would enjoy the game this second run without the DLC.... probably not. Regardless, the DLC is relatively a blast:
- 'The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned' takes place in essentially Halloween-town. It's very well themed and storywise is very polished. I am a bit sad that there isn't so much of a zombie-hoarde mode as that truly would have been a total crate of win.
- 'Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot'. This is essentially Oblivion's Arena (times 3). There are three different arenas you can play in. You have to survive 5 wave in each arena (each wave having 5 rounds for a total of 75 rounds) to unlock the "second pass". For the second pass you have to survive 20 waves (again, each wave having 5 rounds for an epic total of 300). If there wasn't a bank (aka "item storage chest"), this DLC would be an utter waste. Playing through this, I cant help but think the developers were rushed to get a product out the door (accounting for the sheer repeatededededdednes)
- 'The Secret Armory of General Knoxx'. Like Zombie Island, this DLC adds lots of content -- and if it wasnt for the bank storage, it'd be the first DLC I would have gotten. The story is a bit less polished than Zombie Island but it certainly makes up for it in the sheer variety of badguys and new environments (and the new skillpoints help too!) Definitely worth the money simply for the farming opportunities that exist.
Conclusion?
I started this post by suggesting that perhaps my initial review of Borderlands was a bit harsh. Thinking about it now, I don't really think so -- the console-itis is that bad but the fun factor (when playing with friends) generally overcomes those aggravations. I think I'd up the score to 7.5/10.
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