Borderlands: Know Your Weapons

If you've been following our coverage, you've probably heard the marketing line by now. Gearbox's Borderlands has hundreds of thousands of guns in it. The game's release date is very nearly upon us at this point, October 20th for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions and October 26th for the PC, but how much about the game's guns do you really know? Here's a brief overview of what kinds of weapons can be found on Pandora, the rocky, dusty setting of this first-person shooter built for loot hunters.

Each of the game's four character classes, which you can read all about in our Meet the Killers feature, can use all the weapons in the game. So if you want to play as a Berserker, whose special action skill is to pummel enemies with fists, you can still equip a sniper rifle and be pretty decent with it. That's because the more you use a weapon, the higher your proficiency with it gets. By the time you've built up a high level character you should be seeing some nice benefits. At proficiency level 15 for submachine guns, for instance, you'll get a 15 percent damage bonus, 30 percent boost to reload speed, and a 45 percent accuracy increase.

Before digging into the many variations of guns present in the game, first let's back out and go over the general weapon types. In all, you get proficiency categories for pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, combat rifles, sniper rifles, launchers, and Eridian weapons. Now, if you've just read that list, the last one probably jumped out at you at a little odd, so we'll tackle that one first. Eridian weapons are built with alien technology, and function a little different from the majority of the weapons in the game. Instead of having capped ammunition limits and the need to reload, these alien weapons have regenerating ammo reserves. While it means you'll need to wait around for the seemingly slow regeneration to take place, it also means you never need to worry about if you've purchased enough rounds.

The alien weapons differ in functionality as well, and have a distinct visual style compared the more familiar weapon types. Some of these weapon types act like sniper rifles and fire out focused energy beams, some act like shotguns and blast forth clusters of lighting balls, and others discharge large, slow-moving spheres of shock energy that can have devastating results on enemy shields upon impact. If you get the game next week and are wondering where they are, well have some patience. These things don't start showing up until later on in the game so you'll need to put in some time to see them. It's also not like these are the ultimate weapons, either, the other types are just as if not more effective for a number of reasons.

Every gun type in the game comes with base statistics, from magazine capacity to accuracy, fire rate, and damage. These all differ between models, and a few other variations can further diversify how a weapon functions. Some have scopes, for instance, and some don't. Many have bonuses depending on their quality of rarity, including bonus critical hit damage, reload speed, and ammunition regeneration, and recoil reduction. Many also come with elemental effects, which come in varying strengths. Fire elemental weapons are more effective against flesh whereas shock elemental effects quickly take down shields. Corrosive bullets can cause more damage over time, and the explosive weapons cause enemies to, unsurprisingly, explode. As if that wasn't enough, the even rarer weapon types have unique special effects, such as split-second reloads, arcing rocket shots, and bullets that fire in seemingly magical waves and spirals.

Just to go over a few examples, say you come across revolvers with high damage numbers, a slow rate of fire, a weapon zoom, and explosive elemental effects. Since you'll eventually open up four weapon slots, should you decide to equip that pistol, or instead stay with the SMG that does x3 corrosive damage and has a lighting fast reload. Or maybe you're sick of the more long range combat and want to ditch that ultra high damage sniper rifle with x4 explosive damage and a 150 percent critical hit damage bonus for something more up close and personal. Maybe that Caustic Shotgun with the plus 4 additional magazine size and corrosive elemental damage might fit the bill.

Naturally you'll need ammunition for all these guns, and Gearbox made the process of staying stocked up fairly convenient by liberally scattering vending machines all over the game world. Not only can you buy ammo at these machines, but also spend big chunks of cash on upgrading your overall ammunition capacity, which can be pretty helpful if you're deep into a dungeon. From the few types of these machines can also be purchased grenade modifications, class mods, shield mods, and more weapons, and the inventories frequently refresh as you play, so expect to spend quite a bit of time interacting with these machines.

Hopefully that gives you a general overview of what to expect from the weaponry in the game, which will be shipping soon for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC platforms. To find out if the game is actually any good and this information was worth reading, check back with IGN early Monday morning for the full review.

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