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Sunday, February 05, 2012

Posted by Serated in Video Games December 11, 2009 at 06:38:00 AM

There is something oddly mystifying about treasure hunting. To go out into the wilderness, slay some baddies, and loot a treasure chest with glee. Borderlands, by 2k Games, tries to emphasize just that. You are greeted to the world of the Borderlands by arriving to the planet of Pandora, which is basically a desert hell-hole full of psychopaths and monsters, but having plenty of treasure and a mysterious ancient alien Vault that must be looted. Honestly, what more do you need?

The beginning of the game is my main praising over anything else. You start off by choosing any one of a group of 4 linear characters; the Sniper, the Medic, the Tank, and the Girl. Yes there, must always be a girl, but I love this, it makes the game easy to understand unlike the pain-in-the-arse system that Fallout 3 gave me. In which I spawned into the middle of desert (ironically, just like this game) and was promptly murdered by an enemy some 10 times my own level because the game decided it would be so much more fun not to show me a clear objective. But, Borderlands; you start with what ever class you like, and work form there, and the objectives are pretty free flowing.

The second thing I praise is this utter mass of variety within its weapons. I can happily say I never came across the same weapon twice, and it’s always quite thrilling to find a sniper rifle that fires a shotgun shell and sets enemies on fire. But with that, it is also a downfall. All of the guns are pretty much the same but with different paint jobs, ammo capacities, and damage. It feels like they essentially copy and pasted the same assault rifle, LMG, sniper rifle, SMG, pistol, and revolver some 1000 times each. As fun as it is to find newer guns, it’s also unbelievably boring to sell them all because you will eventually come to the point where you don’t want a new gun. Although money sounds like a good compensation device for this, then allow me to inform you that I already hit the maximum amount of money (some 999,999,999 dollars). And I am not even the maximum level.

In lieu of many other issues, I have 3 main ones. The first is the length of the game. It’s short, although some 15 to 20 hours sounds like a long time, but you can easily cruise through it if you aren’t interested in side quests. The fact that most of the characters are boring, unrefined, and don’t even create much of any storyline to run with. Even the main antagonist doesn’t even feel all that ‘evil.’

The second annoyance is the lack of variety in the enemies. You will kill the same exact person or enemy some 500 times within one play through. By my calculations, there are only about 20 different enemies, all of which aren’t too hard to kill. The boss fights aren’t exactly too thrilling either; I defeated most of them within about 5 minutes without much of any trouble.

The last thing is the multiplayer. In theory, that should be really good, but getting a reliable team that will work with you will become so much of a pain that you might as well just keep it solo. I have been kicked from many games due my not using a microphone, and even then, team work isn’t always as its cracked up to be. A lot of losers have modded their games (i.e. creating an illegal weapon by changing the game, such as a pistol that fires rockets) and usually just create path ways of death, which really defeats the purpose of even playing with other people. But I think the fundamental flaw is relying on people to save you. My most vivid moment of this was me being in the ‘downed’ position, hoping an ally would come revive me. An ally came, used me as a shield, ran past me, and stole all the loot. So much for go team.

All in all, Borderlands is a well crafted game, but lacks a lot. Most of its plot is missing, and 2K is actually expecting me to pay money in order to get new side quests. Why should I pay money for only half a game just to pay more money to buy the other half? Its so annoying to play through a game with the expectation of a really good game in mind, only to find out that its only value is based upon one single highlight instead of making the game equally balanced (there’s lots of guns, but no story). This game reminds me of Fable 2, its looks promising, it sounds promising, but when you finish it and realize you have to buy the rest of the game through the Xbox Live Market place, it leaves me with a bitter feeling of betrayal.

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