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Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition
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Graphics & Sound:
Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition is a year's worth of content that feels more like the "greatest hits" releases we see covering years of great releases. It's just a phenomenal achievement to have packed so much in, and the payoff for GOTY buyers is to get the full dose of Borderlands in one compact package. Of course, it's just like comics and trade paperbacks. Some buyers will also go in for the incremental releases, while others wait for all the DLC in one fell swoop. The problem is, you don't always know in advance when a game will catch fire. The reason that Borderlands achieved the success it enjoyed during the past year is obvious by looking at the screen. We weren't sure originally how the Unreal-based cel-shaded style of animation would work, but it's great once you get acclimated. There's not a huge push for realism, but the environments you'll explore are incredibly detailed and full of interaction. Cartoony, yes, but the amped-up fun factor and speed of Borderlands will win you over if you're a fan of first-person shooting games. The best details aren't in the visuals though, as much as in the sound design and the voice acting. From the beginning of the game, when you're treated to the opening rock number as the credits roll, you can tell Gearbox was going for high style. They got it, not only from the great dialogue and cast of characters in the world around you, but from some inspired sound engineering that helps make everything from the snarl of an attacking enemy to the crump of an exploding grenade that much more realistic. Nothing about Borderlands is all that realistic, but the game does a nice job of bringing you deep into its narrative. Some of the dialogue does loop a bit much, especially when you're dealing with waves of enemies all saying the same thing over and over, but that's just a trade-off you'll gladly accept in exchange for deep gameplay.
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Gameplay:
What Borderlands got extremely well was the shooting action, and the mesh with a traditional RPG-style of character-building just adds to the fun. We haven't been that thrilled with the direction that RPGs have been going in terms of combining action gameplay and elements from other genres. Leading with the RPG stuff, as was the case with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, may thrill RPG loyalists interested in broadening their horizons, but overwhelm gamers looking for deeper action. Stress on action, and you've got the formula for Borderlands. Borrowing from relatively fast-paced games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Faction: Guerrilla, while staying true to the FPS aesthetic of raw shooting action, Borderlands pulled out a mission-based action game that still manages to be plenty deep. The character development is smartly designed to give you three distinct paths along which to establish your ideal playing style. You get four unique characters in the beginning, and these can each be customized heavily through your selection of weapons and choice of skill upgrades. You won't change the fundamentals, as in making a stealthy Berserker...but you can decide what attributes of the Berserker you enjoy most and want to enhance. Between the available characters and the limitless supply of weapons, you'll have an easy time finding the right combination.
Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition includes the core game plus four expansion packs that were available to download through the LIVE Marketplace. Each pack has a unique flavor, but we have to mention the great options for collaborative split-screen gaming during the campaign missions, and the frenetic but fun online play. Digging deeper into the solo experience, you'll want to visit "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned" first. This dark counterpart to the sun-drenched badlands of the core game provides a good amount of extra challenge. This pack opens up along with the others, once you complete the first major mission arc in the core game. "Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot" is like Thunderdome, but better... Moxxi likes pitting adventurers on each other in the confines of an arena battleground, so more like "The Running Man" than anything else. You won't find this add-on nearly as compelling as the others, from a narrative standpoint, but it does offer a much-needed storage feature that should have been available from the beginning. That said, the ongoing combinations of weapon types means you never need to worry about finding a new, cool instrument with which to deal death. The third pack, "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx," is a throwback to the first episode's ultimate goal, but with the addition of a government crackdown that makes things feel reminiscent of Red Faction. Borrowing isn't a bad thing, as long as you get it right. "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution" is somewhere between "Moxxi" and "Knoxx" in its depth, but it will reward you handsomely with stronger enemies and the ability to further develop your characters. The entire production is slick as can be, making it simple for those interested in blowing stuff up to keep tweaking to a minimum and focus on the guns. |
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Difficulty:
There's a good way for players to gauge difficulty, each time they accept a new mission. Mission objectives are rated in plain language, including words like "Impossible" to suggest you have little chance of success. As you improve your characters' abilities, you'll notice more of the missions turning a pleasant green color, associated with a "Normal" level of challenge. Depending on your ability and skill in the FPS world, Borderlands will be more or less playable. Trying to succeed in this game without at least a track record of success in a shooting game would be nearly impossible. Enemies don't pause to wait for you to select the ideal weapon, they roll and flank and rush you with wild abandon. Respawn (for a price) after you expire, and run right back into the fray. The only catch is that weapons don't do much good without ammo, and this can be in short supply if you don't range beyond a limited area. If you commit to exploring the worlds available to you early on in Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition, you'll become very rich very fast. Enemies drop different items and amounts of money, which you'll quickly learn. Scattered throughout the game's world are file folders, chests, and other boxes containing money, ammo, and even weapons. Not being able to carry more than a limited number of weapons is a tough constraint, but it's one you'll grow into, just like those "Impossible" missions. The online multiplayer is, much like the action in the "Moxxi" DLC, really frantic and challenging. Enemies aren't going to just fall down with one shot as they did early on, and they'll use shields as effectively as you, at a certain point. We appreciated the steadily increasing challenge throughout the game, and the relatively painless penalty for slipping out of this mortal coil during a big fight. Lucky for Borderlands that there's no excuses to be made about poor controls; we thought this game performed extremely well in the controls department.
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Game Mechanics:
Smooth tracking, fast response, and a smart heads-up display (HUD) makes Borderlands a simple, elegant experience for its players. Our favorite touches are the cooldown reminders that occur for each character's special action and shield. Both give you audio and visual feedback once they're fully recharged. You'll also find lots of great touches in the navigation system that lead you via the on-screen compass to your next destination point during a mission. Controls can be altered and most of the layout can be customized to fit your needs, but the default control scheme is darned good. The push-left-button sprint feature is a bit of a drag, but it's at least smart enough to let you sustain the sprint without holding down the button, as long as you continue to run forward. The upgrades to your character are handled through a menu screen that fits into your overall PDA view, where you can quickly scan everything from mission status to maps to inventory. We wished for a few more immediate options to view the most frequently used features like the map and the inventory, but that's a small thing. Larger issues come from things designed to be helpful, that end up an annoyance. A perfect example is the rule about grabbing items. Items fall constantly, and you get accustomed to holding down the (X) button to grab everything of value that fits into your inventory. Unfortunately, the way in which this rule applies to weapons means that holding down the (X) button on a fallen weapon immediately equips it, replacing your current weapon. Weapon choice is a big deal in Borderlands, and the system that dynamically generates unique characteristics for each weapon (and enemy) is amazing. You become very fond of a certain load-out, so this auto-switch feature is something you end up working around in the heat of battle. Connected to this point, the inventory in the game seems unnecessarily constrained. With so many weapons dropping constantly, the temptation is to grab them, compare them, equip them, try to sell them, etc. It can almost become a distraction, but this is the RPG side of Borderlands coming to the fore.
Apart from any minor quirks, Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition is a monumental achievement. It's not a life-changing game in the sense that it defies genre or explanation, but it follows several major trends that are working extremely well. The expansion of shooting and action gameplay to include more options for character customization can be traced back to at least Deus Ex, and the mission-driven aspects remind us of being immersed in the world of Grand Theft Auto once that game took the leap to 3D. The story aspects of Borderlands are fairly weak, and it only does an average job with vehicles, but it excels at the raw, mission-based shooting action. Looking down the barrel of some high-powered artillery in the midst of a huge, open game world takes the best of several worlds and mashes them up. Especially if you missed Borderlands during the last year, Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition is a perfect place to jump into the action. |
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-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock |
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