It’s very difficult to explain the new 2K/Gearbox game Borderlands. It is a curious mix of RPG, FPS, monster grinding and Mad Max with a highly cinematic narrative style. It’s a very difficult thing to get one’s words around. Or at least that was the case until a good friend of mine said: “It’s FPS Diablo II, except you get a car.”

And that’s basically it.

At the start you choose one of four characters to play. You are then immediately dumped into a tiny town in the middle of the desert on a hostile planet that seems to have been discarded by the company that owns it, and abandoned by everyone with the power to leave.

Naturally, you are attacked by bandits.

This launches you into an opening series of missions that also serve as the tutorial. From there you go off to explore the wasteland, discover the truth behind the rumours of alien visitation and loot bigger and bigger guns.

The aesthetic of Borderlands is remarkably similar to Fallout 3, which can only be a good thing. One is constantly confronted by reminders that the human settlements on this planet, ‘Pandora’ (hint, hint?), are hanging onto life by the thinnest of threads. The sense of decay, and the abandonment that heralded it, is overpowering. This is not a nice place to visit. But it’s a great place to play in.

Borderlands’ gameplay is smooth and uncomplicated. You kill enemies, do quests and complete challenges in order to get experience points, or ‘XP’. When you have gained enough you go up a level. This increases your character’s abilities and allows you to purchase new skills. This is one of the ways in which it is remarkably similar to Diablo II. The ‘treasure’ in the game has also been modelled on D2 lines with all treasure being randomly generated within a certain range of possibility that scales with your level, and the area you are in.

This randomisation system means that most of the weapons and equipment you range from average to crap. But every once in a while the quantum gods will be in your favour and you will find something that kicks so much ass that you wonder how you ever killed the person who was wielding it.

Borderlands also seems to have borrowed the zeitgeist from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. –Shadow of Chernobyl, one of my all time favourite games. This has happened in two ways. Firstly, as in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., you begin in one area and unlock access to other areas by completing certain quests. This system ensures that quests that are integral to the plot of the game are completed in the correct order, and that you can’t get into too much trouble early on.

Secondly, the two games both give the player a sense that they are taking part in something that is far larger than them; that they are in an environment that outclasses them on multiple levels, and that they would do well to simply survive. There are missions in Borderlands that I don’t want to do because I think I’m going to get my head handed to me, fast. And I’m one of the people who turned off aim-assist because the idea that I might need help offends me.

Borderlands perfectly straddles the line between hard and too hard, but if you keep your wits about you the curve is manageable. Overall the game is truly awesome. The storytelling is intriguing and compelling, the setting is immersive and beautifully conceived  and the action is fast paced, continuous and desperate.

Go get one :)

Scores
Game play (1 to 15)     14        (93%)
Graphics (1 to 10)          9        (90%)
Fun (1 to 15)               14        (93%)
Originality (1 to 10)        9        (90%)
Bugs (0 to -20)              0        (I’ve heard rumours of minor bugs but I have not seen any)
Total: (0-50)                46        92%

hf