Pandora. On the surface the planet appears to be a dusty, desolate place, inhabited almost solely by wild beasts and vicious bandits, but drawing the characters Mordecai, Lilith, Roland, and the affectionately named Brick, is not in fact the chance to band together and slaughter every living thing in sight (this would be my own reasoning), but the lure of a mysterious Vault, leading to “advanced alien technology, infinite wealth, fame, power, and women.”
You must make a selection from four characters, each with their own areas of expertise and unique rechargeable ability; Mordecai can unleash a bird to attack the enemy, Lilith will enter a Phasewalk, becoming invisible and causing damage to multiple targets, Roland can throw out a gun turret which can also be used as cover, while Brick will enter a Berserker mode which accentuates his tank-like qualities, allowing him to pummel the enemy up-close with his fists.
From the minute you step off the bus in Fyrestone it’s clear that the theme and setting in Borderlands has been well realised. The ambient music fits in with silhouetted rocky horizons, shambolic corrugated iron shelters and enormous scrap heaps, and although the locations aren’t massively varied they arguably strengthen Pandora’s theme of a hot barren landscape, with each location enjoying the same sun drenched glow during the day and sinister looks at night.
The graphics have a comic-book style about them; definition is added to the characters and environments with strong black pen-like lines, and you only have to take a quick look at the size of Brick’s inflated torso and non-existent neck to see how Borderlands is stylised.
The combination of RPG and FPS is an interesting one, and Borderlands seems to have found a decent balance with both areas. Head shots aren’t the usual instant kill associated with first person shooters, but are instead translated into a critical hit, which given enough accuracy and damage with your chosen weapon can still become a gory one-hit death. If you continue to use the same type of weapon with your character, your proficiency with that weapon type will level up, typically increasing damage, reload speed and accuracy with each level, so it really pays to specialise from the beginning.
As your actual character levels up, you will be able to invest skill points in one of three skill trees, typically covering areas like attack, defence, and support or healing. This way it is perfectly possible to have two Soldier characters of the same level, but with completely different weapon proficiencies and entirely different focuses on battle, resulting in two characters that play and function quite differently. And rather wonderfully, the points invested in skill trees aren’t set in stone, they can be reset at any time and re-invested, making it perfectly possible to tailor your character to fit in better to specific situations.
This game is extremely well-paced, introducing every element one step at a time provides real progression, rather than dumping every move and ability on your lap, this ensures you will understand how everything you are provided with works; shields, extra weapon slots, grenade upgrades, vehicles and so on. By locking down certain aspects like this, Borderlands only truly opens up towards the level 20 mark.
Due to the frequently hostile nature of Pandora, Borderlands can feel like a lonely struggle at times if you’re playing by yourself. The games’ bosses provide a great challenge, and as a lone player you will have to approach them with more care, and arguably become proficient with a broader variety of weaponry to ensure you can remove a shield, target the weak spot and stay alive.
Teaming up with extra human players can potentially offer so much more enjoyment, and since Borderlands feels designed with multiplayer in mind, it’s no surprise to find that having extra characters alongside you makes the game exponentially greater than the sum of its parts – characters can equip items with special team-only enhancing effects, all the vehicles offer two seats, and there are a wealth of slots to invest skill points in to benefit teams as a whole, or even solely target other players (with the correct skills, Roland is able to heal team mates with his bullets). In addition, downed players fighting for their life can be revived.
Unfortunately there are no features for fair loot-sharing, and while picked up cash is always shared between the team, guns on the ground or in crates are there on a first come, first serve basis, so this will work depending on the generosity of your team members.
Loading times when moving between areas are lengthy on the PS3, both in offline single-player and online multiplayer, but rather than being a massive setback, it simply feels more economical to clear every possible quest within the area before moving along, while the vehicles and teleport posts help with travelling the loading times are a minor annoyance on this format, and not enough to dent on the solid game play.
To summarise, the weaker aspects of Borderlands feel almost completely negated the instant you are joined by another human player. With friends (and particularly a mix of different characters), the idea of killing continually higher-level Skegs throughout the game doesn’t feel as repetitive as it does alone, pinpointing and collecting objectives is quicker, and most importantly if you are hit in the face by a Flaming Psycho Midget there’s someone nearby to help you out. With its gore, guns, smattering of humour and addictive levelling-up system to suck you in, what this game lacks in forgettable story it perfectly compensates for in a massively fun multiplayer experience, and with split screen supported as well as online multiplayer, there’s no excuse to play this on your own.
VideogameUK verdict: 8/10
