Borderlands Review

Draenoth graciously bought me a copy of Borderlands for my birthday (thanks man!) and we've been playing it pretty solidly since it unlocked on Steam last week on Monday. While we have yet to finish a full play through of the game, I definitely think we're close enough that I can make a final judgment call on it. In short, Borderlands is Diablo 2 if it had been a shooter with a comic book vibe. It's got shooting, crazy loot drops, and a brilliant comic book art style. There is a definitely a lot to love here.

Love

• Shooting. At its heart, Borderlands is just an open world shooter. If it failed to do that well, the whole game would fail. Luckily, it does a very admirable job of providing an entertaining shooting experience. I was a little concerned that the stats in the game would get in the way of my ability to shoot things in the head, but the only thing that stops me from doing that effectively is my own skill. Whether I'm sniping, shooting rockets, or just spraying and praying, the gun play is continuously fun and exactly what it should be.
  
• Loot. There are rocket launchers, shotguns, various forms of machine guns and pistols, and my long time favorite: sniper rifles. Each performs as you'd expect and there is actually a lot of variety even between guns of the same type. Also, you can pick up stuff that modifies your class, your grenades, and even get different shields. This game spews loot at a rate so continuous, it's absolutely crazy. Additionally, the game does a really good job at providing you both with things that are obvious upgrades as well as upgrades that are trade offs. As an example, my Hunter is currently equipped with a sniper rifle that does absolutely amazing damage (with fire!). While I would normally have only this one sniper rifle, I've found myself also carrying around a less damaging corrosive gun that has a bigger zoom. I keep finding myself switching back and forth between the two depending on the situation. While I'm used to switching between gun types (sniper rifle vs. close range guns, etc), switching between two different guns of the same type is definitely new. There's something about this game that makes nearly every loot drop exciting in a way that was never captured by Diablo or other MMOs.
• Co-op. If you know me at all, you know that I enjoy shooting it up with my friends (hmm... not sure that came out right), so the co-op mode in Borderlands is definitely a welcome setup. While the game is quite playable (and fun) single player, the game doesn't truly start shining until you get a couple of your friends in. Even with one other person, the fun value really hops up a notch, but with 2 or 3 friends, the game is a blast. If any of you all want to play with me/us, just let me know. I'm Morindil on Game Spy.
  
• Art. I'm a big fan of the art style of this game. I think the comic book/cell shaded art style is under utilized in games, so I'm glad to see a game that not only does it, but does it well. The game not only looks great, but actually runs quite well too. If they had taken a more realistic gritty approach to the art (like say Fallout 3), I think the game would lose a pretty big portion of it's appeal.

Hate

• Consolification. The PC version of Borderlands is a console port of the PS3 and 360 versions. A BAD port of them. It's missing all kinds of obvious features: in game microphone controls, anti-aliasing, a proper FOV, text fields that the mouse wheel can scroll, mouse friendly tools for inventory management and item comparisons, and so on. I quite honestly haven't seen a game that was such an obvious and sloppy console port since Deus Ex: Invisible War. With some proper PC fixes, they could REALLY turn the game into something amazing.
• Co-op setup. I am absolutely flabbergasted that a game that marketed itself so heavily as a co-op shooter could fail at co-op so epically. First off, the game uses Game Spy for match making, which in and of itself is sort of a joke. Furthermore, you need to forward half a dozen ports just to allow people to connect to you. I REALLY wish people would realize that the average PC gamer doesn't know how (or want to!) forward ports to setup a match. There are so many games that seem to manage this kind of thing fine (see Left 4 Dead), that when one doesn't, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Draenoth and I spent almost 2 hours the first night just trying to connect to each other and find ourselves praying to the connectivity gods every night hoping that it'll work. (For the record, we've had the best success when we both go into single player games and I invite him into mine).
  
• Skill Trees. This is probably my most minor gripe, but I found the skill trees to just not be all that interesting in general. Most skills just increase damage or clipsize or reduce a cool down of some kind. While it is possible to make some reasonably diverse characters, most characters of the same class really come out to be mostly the same. It's possible I'm missing something here (perhaps the diversity comes in late, late game), but so far, I've been unimpressed.

Despite the sloppy/lazy console port involved here, Borderlands is a great game. It's not perfect, it's not flawless, but it is a hell of a lot of fun. I fully plan to play at least my Hunter main to level cap (takes 2+ play throughs) and possibly others. It definitely scratches an RPG/FPS itch I didn't even know I had. I often find it hard to recommend games at full price, but if you drop $50/$60 on this game, I promise that you won't be disappointed.