Shootin’ Up The Desert
Borderlands is a new game for the Xbox 360 that continues the trend to an open environment “sandbox” where you can pretty much do what you want - with a limitations based upon level.
I started playing it last night and have some thoughts on it. If you’ve read my previous reviews (which you probably haven’t) of Two Worlds and BioShock, you know I skip the graphic stuff and the technical mumbo jumbo and get to the stuff about what I care about.
Here’s the quick summary of Borderlands thus far: Have you ever wanted to pay World of Warcraft. With guns. Alone?
Well, that’s what this is.
You have a leveling bar. You have quest objectives that are similar (find 8 plants, kill 8 bandits). You have skill points that you assign to skills to make your guy a little more unique. Even the weapons have the same color coordination system (white - normal weapons, green - uncommon “better” weapons, blue - rare “good” weapons, purple - epic “awesome” weapons). Playing the thing, its obvious what group of gamers they are going after. There is even an arena system where you can battle your buddies.
From the second I started playing, I was thinking - man this is WoW with guns. Yes, it’s a first person shooter type game, but still. It is what it is.
There is a vehicle system - but it’s awful. Steering the car is near impossible. Or I’m an idiot. The second option is very possible, but it’s certainly not intuitive, that’s for sure.
The shooting is fun. And get used to it, cuz there is just a ton of it. Even after level 11 or 12, you will still constantly be wasting time on level 2 monsters that die in a single hit. It’s weird. And given that you can only carry so much ammunition at a time, it’s a little stupid as well.
The first boss fight of the game is insane. Granted, if you read my BioShock review, I’m not good at first person shooter type games, but I manage. The first boss fight is 1 main dude and 2 adds (using a WoW reference, of course). The 2 adds do the bulk of the damage and jump you from great distances. I assume you are supposed to dodge them or whatever, but man, for the level it is really difficult. I think I’m 2 bosses past there now and I’ve gotten better and the hit and run tactics needed, but still…that was rough.
The environments are nice, the graphics are very good and the speech is decent enough. But really if you’ve played WoW, just accept the quest and read it later. Who cares what’s going on. It makes no difference, really - you already know the game’s objective (find stuff and kill things) so, it doesn’t seem, you have any real choice in the outcome. I wish games were more open ended like that, but anyways …
For me, it’s unfortunate that this game is released so close to Dragon Age Origins, which is the one I really want to play. I feel like this will be back burnered really quickly cuz I find it more frustrating than fun. If there was only one game I wanted to play, I’d deal with it. But there are two. So I probably won’t.
I’d probably give it 7/10 if I were really rating it.
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