Borderlands released this last week on the Xbox 360. It’s been a while since a game has released where I can sign into my Xbox Live account and see my entire list of online friends in the same game, but Borderlands was able to pull that off. Borderlands is a shooter first and foremost with elements of role playing games thrown in. This is a game that really shines though in cooperative multiplayer gameplay, with the ability to play with three other friends.
You start off as one of four possible characters arriving in the town of Fyrestone on the planet Pandora. You have a choice of selecting either Brick, Lilith, Mordecai or Roland. Each of them has different characteristics. Brick likes to use his fists to pound things. Lilith is a siren with a special ability to phase walk where she temporarily travels through another dimension. Mordecai has a pet bird, Bloodwing, that can attack enemies. And last is Roland who has the ability to throw down an automated gun turret. As you level up your characters you get points to place into different skills. Depending where you place your points, you can get some pretty helpful bonuses, such as Roland shooting healing bullets at teammates.
Skill Trees:
Your characters are on Pandora in search of a mythical Vault, left behind by an ancient alien race. The Vault supposedly contains treasure, weapons, magical items, or anything else people can imagine and throw into the legend. Most legitimate governments and corporations have given up on searching for this vault. Pandora is now just a frontier planet with little to no government to speak of. The towns are run by bandits and criminals. As you search for the Vault you need to fight different enemies such as wild beasts, criminal bandits and private security forces that have claimed territories as their own.
As you play through the game you get different missions from different people. The more missions you complete, the more experience you get, and the more you level up. In a multiplayer game, these missions go by pretty quickly. Experience gained seems proportional to individual players skill. Difficulty is scaled up during multiplayer matches as well, so going in with four players doesn’t necessarily make the game that much easier, but it can make it more enjoyable. The looting system in Borderlands isn’t even for all players. If an item drops, it’s a first-come, first-serve on who gets it. This can be frustrating unless you’re playing with friends who can play with an honor system of who gets what.
While playing through the game with a friend, he remarked on how campy the game is. Throughout the course of the game we noticed many pop culture references that developers scattered here and there. There are the boss fights against insanely large creatures Skagzilla and Mothrakk. There are the mini-boss enemies you have to beat later in the game, Hans and Franz, who, after you defeat them, leave you feeling ‘pumped up’. There’s even an entire mission of the game that references an episode of the television series Firefly.
Overall this is a great game that will undoubtedly take up many hours of my gaming time. While the vehicle control could be better and the looting system improved, these are such minor issues that don’t really take away from the fact that Borderlands is easily one of the better games to be released lately. Do yourself a favor and go pick it up if you haven’t already.