Hands-on: Borderlands

Sep 16, 2009

In a parallel universe not too far removed from our own, I'm a fabulously wealthy and ridiculously handsome eccentric type that enjoys nothing more than commissioning talented studios to create games tailored to my own ridiculous specifications. I'd only have a handful of these ultra-rare games pressed to disc once all the work is done, and the gaming community would be green with envy, wishing that I would share one of these custom-made "Oh my God, this is the greatest game ever!" productions with the world at large. In this dreamy reality, I'd have dropped a few briefcases full of cash into the laps of the good folks at Gearbox Software to commission Borderlands -- a game seemingly put together by checking off a wish list of my favorite things.

Welcome to the Apocalypse

The post-apocalypse theme is all the rage these days. Fallout 3 was a smash hit (though Fallout 1 and 2 weren't so bad either) and id Software is working on RAGE, a game that explores a similar wasteland environment. Even reality television is getting in on the fun, with a show on the Discovery Channel called "The Colony" that tries to depict life in post-apocalypse Los Angeles. I'm a sucker for end of the world scenarios, from those depicted in films like "The Omega Man" and "Mad Max," to those in books like Nevil Shute's "On the Beach," Walter M. Miller Jr.'s "A Canticle for Leibowitz," and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Borderlands' Pandora is a world that takes the Mad Max approach and flings it into the far future, with advanced technology in the form of vending machines selling sophisticated equipment, high-powered armaments, and super-charged vehicles. While the tech is suitably advanced, culture and society has regressed to the stone ages, as the world is besieged by savage raiders and hostile beasts. Sounds like fun!

Xanadu for Loot Whores

So it's no secret that I love loot. The allure of obtaining something rare has driven me towards many of my favorite game experiences, from playing a Magic Find Sorceress in Diablo II, to raiding for shiny purples in World of Warcraft, and even ripping open collectible card game boosters, gambling for the chance at something good from that one rare card per pack. It's part of my semi-destructive hoarder nature, this desire to accumulate cool things. Give me an experience system and loot, and chances are that I'll play your game. Borderlands is all about the loot drops, about killing enemies and picking up the shiny stuff that spurts out of their cold, dead corpses. Money, med kits, shields, and guns, I want it all, and in this case, variety is king. Let's start with the kinds of guns you can find:

Repeaters - Fast firing pistols that allow you to pump a lot of bullets into something with good accuracy at short range.

Revolvers - Powerful hand cannons that are made for taking heads clean off. Revolvers and repeaters are both lumped into the Pistol weapon proficiency.

Combat Rifles - Medium range monsters that combine decent power with a high rate of fire.

SMGs - Short to medium range weapons suited for "spray and pray" or "burst-fire" styles of play.

Shotguns - Can't aim worth a lick, or want to shoot down a dense flock of Rakks? Shotguns do huge damage if you get up close and personal.

Sniper Rifles - One shot, one kill? Not always, but sniper rifles are the best option for taking enemies out from long distances, especially if you're skilled at nailing headshots.

Launchers - Slow and ponderous, but who cares? It shoots rockets. For when you absolutely need something blown up.

Eridian Weapons - I didn't see these alien weapons in action, but they should be interesting.

Once you have the type of gun, the next important attribute is its manufacturer. You have Jakobs weapons with their distinctive wooden stocks that deal high damage; the Maliwan weapons I found were highly effective against shields or flesh and imbued with elemental attacks; my S&S Munitions weapons have an increased magazine size, and so on. There are quite a few different manufacturers, and you'll have to find the kind of attributes that work for your play style. You'll want a good mix of weapons (you'll eventually be able to hot-swap between four different guns) to cover your ass in different situations, because you might not always be playing co-op.

The Spice of Life

The sheer variety of different gun modifications is ridiculous. A color-coded system tells you at a glance how rare your weapon is. Whites are common, greens are uncommon, blues are rare and purples are special arms worth holding onto. These weapons are procedurally generated over the course of the game, randomly slapping together attributes that are a good fit for your level range as you play. With something on the order of many millions of guns to be found, this is a loot whore's dream come true.

Randomized shield and grenade mods provide even more variety, so you'll have to choose whether you want a shield with very high capacity, quick recharge, a flame burst effect, healing, and so on. Grenades come in all sorts of types as well, from contact and sticky grenades to bouncing betties and MIRVs: the grenade that releases a cluster of smaller grenades. These 'nades can also come with elemental attributes, so you might find one similar to the Shock Bouncing Bettie that served me well for several levels.

The annoying bit? It can be a chore to sweep up the battlefield after a firefight to scoop up all the ammo, guns, and cash that fell during the fray. While you can hold down a button to pick up all nearby ammo, you have to get a drop in your sights by looking down at it before you can snatch it up, and this can be a pain.

Stay Classy, Pandora

Any of the four characters can use any kind of gun, but their class-specific perks favor certain weapon types over others, and their class abilities give them a unique flavor.

Roland the Soldier

Skill Trees are Infantry, Support, and Medic.

Class ability: Drop a Scorpio Turret that blasts away at enemies and to use as cover.

Weapons: Prefers to use shotguns and combat rifles.

Strengths: Team player, strong support class, capable all-around.

Mordecai the Hunter

Skill Trees are Sniper, Rogue, and Gunslinger.

Class ability: Call upon your pet Bloodwing to attack enemies.

Weapons: Best-suited to wielding sniper rifles and pistols (particularly revolvers).

Strengths: Damage! Long-range killing is his specialty, but he can be a terror up close as well.

Brick the Berserker

Skill Trees are Brawler, Tank, and Blaster.

Class ability: Go Berserk to throw vicious punches and make yourself really hard to kill.

Weapons: Loves explosive weapons and beating things with his fists.

Strengths: The ultimate tank, great at getting up close and surviving to tell the tale.

Lilith the Siren

Skill Trees are Controller, Elemental, and Assassin.

Class ability: Disappear with Phasewalk, blasting nearby enemies when you reappear.

Weapons: Her magic-like abilities allow her to make great use of shock, corrosive, and incendiary guns.

Strengths: Stealthy kills or battlefield manipulation, Lilith is great at controlling the outcome of a battle.

Characters are quite customizable. As you use any one kind of weapon, you'll earn proficiency ranks which grant you bonuses like increased damage, accuracy, etc. You can choose to specialize in the three skill tiers any way you like, and respecs are available at any time for a modest fee.

Don't Tase Me, Bro!

First-person shooters reward your skill and reflexes with the death of your enemies, and Borderlands carefully treads the line between role-playing game and shooter so that neither half of the experience is compromised by the other. You can pick the niftiest skills available for your character, but you're still going to have to learn to aim and shoot. If you pride yourself on your ability to land a headshot on a moving target from a mile away, this is a game that'll make you giddy. Hit an enemy center of mass with a sniper rifle and you'll do some decent damage, but nail it in the head instead and you might see the big red "Critical!" flash on screen, telling you that you landed a painful shot. If damage indicators and flashing combat text aren't enough, enemies die in spectacularly colorful ways as well. I once shot a charging Skag in mid-air with an incendiary rifle, causing it to burst in a huge ball of fire, taking out a couple smaller critters nearby with it. Decapitations and gibs abound, so things can get nice and messy. The first time I electrocuted someone with a shock pistol was also something special -- the violent shaking, the smoke, it was far more satisfying than just a bullet to the brain.

Make Death Awesome

So dying sucks, right? Not in Borderlands. If you're surrounded by a swarm of bloodthirsty Skags, Pandora's dangerous wasteland critters, the last thing you want to do is run. You want to take 'em on and you don't even have to bother strafing. Sure you can go for the more stylish, damage-free combat scenario, sprinting away and popping off shots from a distance, but if you like, you can just sit there in the thick of it and fire away until they chomp away at your shields and health. Instead of dying once your health goes down to nil, Borderlands gives you a chance to fight for your life, giving you a few seconds to kill something. If you can take down a bad guy within that time limit, you'll catch a second wind and pop right back up, ready for more. I found that by plugging away at the bigger, tougher enemies and leaving smaller ones alive, I could conveniently have a target to take out once my health went down, allowing me to get back into the thick of it. This is a more challenging proposition than just avoiding damage, though, as the fight for your life sequences make the screen go very dark and bleed all the color from the world, making it difficult to acquire targets.

Cute Li'l Robots

Borderlands' iconic little robot Claptrap looks something like Pixar's Wall-E and serves as your tour guide, welcoming you to Pandora. Much like how the Vault Boy is used in the Fallout series, Claptrap's adorable form is a large part of Borderlands' flavor. He's shown carrying the different weapon types in the various menu screens, and is a persistent part of the Borderlands experience. You have to save the various Claptraps that you'll find around Pandora in order to unlock inventory slots, so it's in your best interests to seek them out.

It Ain't Easy

Quests in Borderlands are organized by difficulty and suggested level, so you can easily see whether your next objective is a cinch or if it'll be tough. I was cruising through quests at a rapid pace before I encountered the first named enemy I'd face, some raider bastard named Bone Head. His quest was a few levels above my own, and it showed. With one burst of his SMG he'd deplete my shields entirely, and my attempt to pick him off at range with my sniper rifle proved futile, as he'd only regenerate his shields while I reloaded my paltry three-round magazine. I had to go work on other quests for a while, gain a couple levels, and come back to try again, bigger, stronger, and better-geared. This time I dropped Bone Head's shields with a couple sniper rounds, then moved in for the kill, unleashing Bloodstrike and tossing a volley of MIRV grenades at his feet. He went down hard, and it felt all the more rewarding because I knew how formidable an opponent he was from my previous engagement. Some RPGs like to scale opponents to your level, and there are proponents for this approach, as it's closer to what you'd find in a pen and paper role-playing game where all encounters are magically level-appropriate. In Borderlands, however, levels actually mean something. As you gain in power, you become stronger relative to the rest of the world, so you can easily plow through the Skags and raiders that gave you so much trouble early on, resulting in a real feeling of power. Conversely, it's quite easy to wander off the beaten track in the early areas and encounter higher level enemies that are far too hard for you to face, forcing you to explore cautiously, lest you bite off more than you can chew.

Badass Skags and Psycho Midgets

Sure, there are millions of guns in this game, but enemies are randomized as well, and your foes help make Borderlands entertaining. Skags are wild beasts that can be found all over Pandora, and they come in all shapes and sizes. You have the lesser types, the whelps and such that are little more than target practice or a way to hone your melee skills. Then there are the tougher Spitter Skags that launch globules of corrosive spit at you, splashing acid all over your face if you don't dodge away in time. You'll even encounter larger, armored Skag Elders and they keep getting tougher from there. If you thought Skags were easy, try facing a pair of Badass Skags with corrosive or incendiary breath, and see if they're still a walk in the park. Human enemies are similarly varied, and you'll end up fighting plenty of those naughty wasteland inhabitants that shoot first and ask questions later. There are huge bare-chested brutes that are resistant to damage and smarter opponents who'll duck behind cover, popping out to take shots at your skull. My favorite of the bunch are the Psycho Midgets that run right at you while screaming at the top of their puny little lungs, hoping to hack apart your kneecaps with their wicked looking blades. Just try not to smile while you're shooting these crazed midgets in the face, I dare you.

We're going to be playing final review copies of Borderlands in the near future, where we plan to check out the game from the cooperative perspective. This press preview build capped our progress long before our interest waned, so we're looking forward to going deeper and farther into the experience with someone to watch our backs.