Borderlands PC Review
Borderlands calls itself a RPS - Role Playing Shooter. They say it as if it was new, but I'd say that it has been done many many times, with varying results.
The one thing that is fairly unique about Borderlands is the visual, cartoonish style, which looks great and at the same time seems to bother my eyes after playing for a while.
The characters are pretty well made too, with very different looks.
The gameplay reminds me of Fallout 3 - you go around and talk to people, get missions and fulfill them, while getting stuff you can find around you and getting attacked by the local monsters and bandits. It also has plenty of different weapons, and seem to go on even more about their uniqueness - they all seem to have different bonus on accuracy, damage or recoil, or special stuff such as explosive, fire or lightning damage.
Meanwhile you accumulate experience points. Some guns, shields or class mods require minimum levels, plus you can get improvements to your special action.
For the soldier, the special action is a tower you can deploy that shoots your enemies. You can also improve it with healing capabilities, ammo restocking, fire bullets or rocket launchers.
An interesting aspect is that once you can a place, it gets repopulated. Crates with guns, ammo or cash get restocked, and enemies reappear. That is nice on the sense of making these sections of the game world last longer, but it is fairly annoying when you finish a large mission, and while you are going back all the enemies you already killed are back!
Another unusual thing is that whenever you are killed, if you kill an enemy during a timer, you get a Second Wind - some health is restored and you can continue playing.
Vehicle play is not particularly interesting. You can easily crush enemies, but it feels too plain (you just walk over them and poof they are gone). I don't like the use of look around for controls, either. They are useful for moving around quickly, however, specially before you get Fast Travel.
Overall I really liked the game. The enemies popping back up are a bit annoying, but the guns and enemy varieties more than make up for that. Recommended.
As usual, I'll update this as I play more.
Update: I've finished the game, and it took 31 hours according to Steam. That is pretty good value! I now bought the DLC pack, and will post about them separately.
The one thing that is fairly unique about Borderlands is the visual, cartoonish style, which looks great and at the same time seems to bother my eyes after playing for a while.
The characters are pretty well made too, with very different looks.
The gameplay reminds me of Fallout 3 - you go around and talk to people, get missions and fulfill them, while getting stuff you can find around you and getting attacked by the local monsters and bandits. It also has plenty of different weapons, and seem to go on even more about their uniqueness - they all seem to have different bonus on accuracy, damage or recoil, or special stuff such as explosive, fire or lightning damage.
Meanwhile you accumulate experience points. Some guns, shields or class mods require minimum levels, plus you can get improvements to your special action.
For the soldier, the special action is a tower you can deploy that shoots your enemies. You can also improve it with healing capabilities, ammo restocking, fire bullets or rocket launchers.
An interesting aspect is that once you can a place, it gets repopulated. Crates with guns, ammo or cash get restocked, and enemies reappear. That is nice on the sense of making these sections of the game world last longer, but it is fairly annoying when you finish a large mission, and while you are going back all the enemies you already killed are back!
Another unusual thing is that whenever you are killed, if you kill an enemy during a timer, you get a Second Wind - some health is restored and you can continue playing.
Vehicle play is not particularly interesting. You can easily crush enemies, but it feels too plain (you just walk over them and poof they are gone). I don't like the use of look around for controls, either. They are useful for moving around quickly, however, specially before you get Fast Travel.
Overall I really liked the game. The enemies popping back up are a bit annoying, but the guns and enemy varieties more than make up for that. Recommended.
As usual, I'll update this as I play more.
Update: I've finished the game, and it took 31 hours according to Steam. That is pretty good value! I now bought the DLC pack, and will post about them separately.
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