Soooo, how is it? XP Someone's been trying to convince me to buy this. Is it as addictive as Fallout 3? As fun as Left 4 Dead online? As fun as Rainbow Six splitscreen??? (Sorry, there's lots of comparison's I've heard.)

I've read up some on it and watched some videos, but hm.... I needs more convincing.

I too would like to know... seems like all of my 360 DDers friends are playing it -- yeah YOU! But sucks it had to come out during the same week as Uncharted...

SarahN
Soooo, how is it? XP Someone's been trying to convince me to buy this. Is it as addictive as Fallout 3? As fun as Left 4 Dead online? As fun as Rainbow Six splitscreen??? (Sorry, there's lots of comparison's I've heard.)

I've read up some on it and watched some videos, but hm.... I needs more convincing.

I haven't played it (and I don't really intend to, to be honest) but I heard it's basically a halfway point between all of those. Like, it's not as open-ended and customizable as Fallout, but on the plus side it has solid multiplayer. The co-op online isn't as necessary, since the enemies aren't as dynamic as in Left 4 Dead, but the game lets you do more in the way of creating a unique character. That sort of thing.

The sort of thing that I would probably enjoy if I actually played it, but have no real motivation to play it on my own.

I've got it.... I got'ta say this is one of the most addictive games I have ever played. I don't even like western RPGs so I was sceptical about Borderlands but I'm willing to give anything a go and I'm glad I did. Course not normally playing this type of game I think my skills might be a little behind :/

You don't like Gauntlet? I guess some people might think it's repetitive the missions are all pretty much the same and alot of the environments looks the same. It's one of those games that's just really fun and you can't really discribe it until you actually try it out.

Ozoneocean's not entirely wrong. I've been playing it since it came out with my roommate. It does get repetitive. I'm also kind of disappointed with the customization options. You can learn some basic skills, but they are all buffs except for the one character specific ability you unlock at level 5. The only real customization of your character is to change three colors in their outfit. Beyond that, you have four classes to choose from, one of which totally blows away the other three.

Enemies gradually get more and more HP and stronger shields, but don't really get harder or change their tactics. You'll get sick of fighting the same human characters over and over again, but finding as you get further they take more bullets to drop. Guns fit into a handful of categories and aren't as varied as the developers made them out to be. Technically they can claim an unlimited number of potential weapons since most are randomly generated. Only problem with that is that the majority of guns you find will be well below the level you're at. You're going to spend a lot of time selling stuff to make room in your inventory and checking shops for better guns. I rarely find anything better than what I get from the shops which kind of makes the "bazillions of guns" claim pretty worthless.

The game is basically just a string of fetch quests. On rare occasions they mix it up with a quest to kill a particular baddie or monster. Most boss fights work just like normal fights, though, only longer. This can make them really dull since the bosses generally have very predictable patterns that are easy to dodge. Fetch quests usually involve heading into an area crawling with baddies. When you move into the area, guys spawn from designated spawn points and you can either kill them for the experience or if you're good at dodging or distracting enemies, you can ignore them and just finish the quest. Although enemy aim can be annoying at times. If you have a line of sight at them, they will hit you, even if you're shooting through a hole in a fence. Some enemies do more damage than you'd expect them to with a melee weapon. Others dash at you and send you flying 50 yards but hardly do anything. Later enemies in the game seem to take out shields like they're nothing, which makes me wonder why they bothered with them.

I also don't understand the reasoning behind having the medical vending machines offering instant health. For the same price as a health pack which has to be used out of your inventory, there is no hotkey for them, the instahealth only gives back 1/5 of what the health packs offer. Why would anyone spend that much just to save ten seconds? They should have just kept the instahealth as drops and left them out of the vending machines or at least made them heal in the same quantities as the health packs. It's just inconvinient the way they have it set up and makes it seem like a lousy design decision meant to make things less user friendly.

You get a car, but from what I can see there is only one car throughout the entire game and the enemies use the same vehicle except for some rare exceptions. The car easily gets stuck in the rocky terrain. Anytime you don't have four wheels on the ground, you may as well just give up and get another car. While it's nice to have a choice of color, the choice of gun is pretty worthless. The machine gun doesn't do nearly enough damage to be useful. Plus, while a second player can get into the turret seat and use the mounted gun, if they aren't there, you can control the gun yourself and usually it's easier to aim if you're the one driving. I also get a little sick of my roommate shooting at stuff right next to the car so I can't see where I'm going. No matter which gun you pick for the car, however, nothing does more damage than the front or rear bumper, so you may as well just aim and run down everything in your path. They also use the Halo control scheme on vehicles, which I absolutely hate. It would work much better if they just used one stick to move and steer and other to aim rather than having the aim stick also change the heading of your car.

The death mechanic seems interesting at first, but as you get further into the game, it's just an excercise in frustration as you plug away at an enemy for 30 seconds until you black out and then respawn halfway across the zone you're in. If you can manage to take down an enemy in that time, you ressurect on the spot with almost no health, but you don't get the penalty for respawning. As you get further into the game, though, enemies frequently have excessive HP and once they take you down, they often run away or move to areas where you can't get a clear line of fire to take them down, at which point you either have to rely on another player to heal you or hold down square to skip the bleeding sequence so you can respawn.

Also, moving from one area to the next sports some pretty impressive load times. As you open up new areas, you'll find yourself moving back and forth a lot to complete missions in different areas. The loading screen is usually a cue for my roommate or I to take a bathroom break. We can usually make it back before the next area has loaded.

Visually the game is alright. They seem to be shooting for some kind of comic style look to the game. They do manage to get some level of variety to the locations so it isn't all just deserts and garbage. It looks weird when you walk or drive over water and nothing happens, though. Story is pretty minimal. Some missions seems to establish some story, but for the most part none of it is really important. Most characters don't speak apart from some annoying repetitive dialog that they spout out over and over again. I freaking hate the robots. They are annoying and only seem to have one or two animation/speech cycles which get old really fast. I really wish I could shoot the damn thing every time I hear "I'm dancin'". There are some interesting movie and pop culture references in the game. The most obvious being references to Japanese monster movies and post apocalyptic films like Mad Max. Beyond that, though, the game feels kind of dry and lacking in character. You'll get sick of your avatar pretty quickly. Most seem to be designed to appeal to the tween audiences or are obnoxiously bitchy.

isukun
Beyond that, though, the game feels kind of dry and lacking in character. You'll get sick of your avatar pretty quickly. Most seem to be designed to appeal to the tween audiences or are obnoxiously bitchy.

I thought all four of the characters were so amazing cool that I had a hard time picking which one I wanted to be. I can't wait to play though a second time so I can play as somebody else.

Started playing this with my roommate today. It's both underwhelming and yet oddly enjoyable. I probably wouldn't have as much fun playing this solo. I think there's a Diablo-with-guns feeling to it. Mm, it is by no means an amazing game but a fun beer and pretzels kinda thing for people who like both RPGs and FPS games.

The game has a lot of unpolished aspects and flaws, no doubt. You fight tons of the same enemies over and over. The enemy voice overs are weak and there's very few NPCs to deal with in person. The tone is all over the place, either redneck style humor or moments more befitting Manhunt. Corroding shopping carts handle better than the car does. And when you have to frequently deal with nerdy talking droids who won't shut up about dancing, it'll be agony to realize you can't shoot them.

So what does it do well?

Without a lot of bells and whistles, the tension of combat demands you work with your partner. The enemy is aggressive, numerous, and hits fairly hard. But if you watch your teammate's back, you can pull usually through with the second wind revival system that you can find in other games like Gears of War and L4D. Some missions are rather weak, while others have an interesting 'raid the castle' feel to break up the monotony. I think the landscapes and terrain are quite well designed and it can be rewarding to find good positioning to ambush an enemy. Sniping is a ton of fun and really pays off.

If you can play with a buddy, it's at least worth renting once. The game may be all over the place, but there's something oddly fun to it, perhaps because it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Decided to throw in an IGN review since people were asking about the quality of the game. This guy points out similar problems that Isukun mentions, although he seems to favor the game a lot more. Then again, he's being paid to favor the games that he reviews.

Isukun doesn't like games though that guy in the video probably does.

Oh, I like games, I'm just not paid to like BAD games .

LOL That was a pretty good response. I just like to mess with you dude... You know?

Well, as has been said before this game isn't fallout 3, and it's not half as addictive. I haven't played it Co-Op but I can safely say it's probably not as necessary to do so as in R6V2. Given I went as a soldier, the turret is probably the only teammate I really need.

One cool thing about the game is the millions of different options for guns. One sucky thing about the game is the guns are completely random, so you might not find one that suits you for a while and what you have will be underpowered or outranged. And of course, because of that you can't go hunting for a specific gun and be so glad when you actually find it. And also, with this many different possibilities for guns, would some sort of weapon customization bit be that big a challenge?

Regardless, Isukun said pretty much everything I might have said, but I do still enjoy the game. The shooting is pretty solid, and I'd say it's a suitable holdover until Modern Warfare 2, but there are a lot of things that could have been done better. That being said, I'm still going to play it. If I don't beat it before MW2 comes out, I wont really miss it.

Actually, while co-op isn't necessary per se, I still find you lose a lot without it. The quality of weapon drops tend to be based on how many people are playing and so is the difficulty. The game seems almost too easy when you play solo, while the difficulty ramps up significantly with two people. I do kind of wish they allowed four player split screen, though, and didn't pull that crap where you can't fit the whole menu on the screen when you're playing split screen. I have a 1080p projector, I can read the smaller text, at least give the OPTION to have them fit the screen.

Four player split screen would have been great. That mode seems to be losing favor these days you don't see it much. Which is strange since TVs are getting bigger and more detailed all the time.

isukun
The quality of weapon drops tend to be based on how many people are playing and so is the difficulty. The game seems almost too easy when you play solo, while the difficulty ramps up significantly with two people.

Interesting! Now I want to give it a shot, but the only friend I have who owns the game and has the net is someone I met playing COD4 and haven't played with since that game came out.

You could just leave your game open you might make a new friend.

Boarderlands is fun pure and simple, but it is far from polished. It is the first in the series and much like Diablo one while it broke a lot of ground bring fun concepts from RPGs into faster paced gameplay that you can share with a friend it comes up short compared to games like Fallout 3 which have already gotten their learning mistakes out of the way and have some stuff to build on.

That said while I love Fallout 3 and look forward to fallout Las Vegas, I enjoy Boarderlands more in spite of its rough edges. I'll have much higher standards though for any DLC or sequels now that they've gotten some feedback and had a chance to see what works and what doesn't.

The bottom line is Boarderlands is a fun game with a solid baseline for some a very strong series of game but it is also rough around the edges and could have been easily improved in a number of areas. It is no one things that makes or breaks the game but rather dozens of little things that are great as well as dozens of little things that can take away from the game at times.

Things they need to keep doing well

* Keep the feel going - The fast pace, the humor, the setting, the art etc. etc. are all great and really they are the core of the game. I hope they continue to make these core elements as fun as possible.

* The loot system - Random loot is great! They should keep this going. It might be helped a bit by giving the characters a few more items slots so they have more stuff they want to collect but otherwise I really can't complain.

* Controls - The game is easy to pick up and get into. Unlike many games I never found myself shaking my controller in rage wondering which button did once and it never got too complicated so as to slow down game play.

* Class/Level - The classes and level really worked for the game. While I hate Brick the other three were fun and had a fair amount of latitude considering the relatively small number of advancement options.

Issues the need to fix

* More variety on everything (except maybe guns) - The content they have is fun but not enough. More types of missions, more NPC, more humor, more story, more bosses, types of enemies, more maps etc. etc. The content is a little repetitive on almost every front. While this can be fixed with DLC I'm going to feel pretty ripped if I pay 50 dollars for a game and have to buy a big DLC pack to really enjoy it Fallout: Broken Steel, cause the designs were a bit short sighted in the first release.

* Think about how many times player are going to hear a line and how quickly it becomes annoying. Everyone who speaks a line of dialog more then once pretty much says it waaaaaaaay to much. This pretty much goes iwht more variety.

* Improve the Vehicles or ditch them - While the rides in this game are MUCH better than the Mako from Mass Effect they still kind of suck. Like so many games the designs spent a lot of time making a great game with excellent skills and enjoyable control then want to crap you into a car where you skills and level are worthless, the control are half-***ed and could have been done without if the game just had some sort of fast travel function.

* Better Split Screen/Four play split screen - Split screen, much like PVP felt like it was added at the last minute based on some Beta feedback and doesn't work as well as it should. I don't care about PVP but I do care about split screen and they need to expand and clean this up.

*Let people skip the tutorial crap at the start of the game - A lot of games make this mistake. Make the tutorial nonsense optional or make it a demo game we don't have to play each time we want to start a new character.

Things I'd like them to think about and try and come up with some good ideas for

* More Active Abilities - The game works well, the single active ability is simply but it really works pretty well. That said I don't see any reason they couldn't have 1-4 powers for the characters.

* Make loot management better - Running back to town and having to listen to the vending machine prattle on and on got really annoying at certain points in the game. They need to either make a town portal like in Diablo, or an omi-gel knock off like Mass Effect or something to make both the issue of inventory space and selling items less of a bother.

* Better story/characters - While Diablo 1 had almost no story Diablo 2 manage to add story and character nicely into the game. Little things like ALMOST catching up the wanderer only to be swamped by monsters while he vanishes really worked to keep the story going without slowing down the game. Since Boarderland supports a New Game Plus option you could always drop the story elements for faster play through the second time around so as not to annoy fans who have gotten the story already and just want to raid.