Monday, 09 November 2009

• "Bazillions of Guns!": Borderlands Review by Tazeyo

  
  "Lock, load and face the madness!"
  

  
  One night I was playing some games on my PS3 when my mates started ranting to me that I should get Borderlands. I listened to them for a while and decided to go with the flow.
  

  Borderlands is a game set on a desolate planet full of murderous creeps, monsters, and midgets. It starts off with a flashy cutscene (with a nice catchy song by Cage the Elephant) about the supposed story of the game and then you are introduced to Marcus (Roman was he?) and the classes. There are four classes to choose from and each have their own skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Before going into the characters more deeply, I'd want to say that this is an "RPS" (Role Playing Shooter) which means that it plays like an FPS, but you have skills and some sort of level.
  
  The classes are quite typical to normal RPGs, as there's the Warrior (Soldier), Thief (Siren), Rogue (Hunter), and Berserker (Himself). The characters are: Roland the Soldier, who uses mercenary skills and deploys turrets, Lilith the Siren, who can run really fast and look trippy while at it, Mordecai the Hunter, who is a coward and deploys birds, and Brick the "Himself" as the berserker.
  
  You are kicked into the wasteland of Pandora, the desolate planet, and the story sta--ENOUGH! The story can just stay there, the desolate world and the badlands of Pandora is no place for a story. The game is about GUNS, just like the back of the game case promises: BAZILLIONS OF GUNS. You don't need to care about any silly stories, treasures, or anything. Some would say that the game is Diablo-esque on the looting, but basically all there is to loot are guns. More guns behind every corner. Loot = guns, guns = money, and money = more guns that are soon to be replaced by loot.
  
  Point is, you're kicked off to find guns and go trigger happy on poor skags, demented mutants, and psychotic midgets. Alone, the game would probably get very repetitive, unless you enjoy the peace in destroying raving bands of cannibal loonies by yourself. The game thrives on its co-op gameplay of up to 4 players, and this makes the game a lot more interesting. Playing with randoms or friends will make the enemies more evil and the guns more badass. While it might get boring shooting monsters day after day, you can also challenge your friends to duels and see who can fill the other one full of holes faster.
  

  
  

  Any guns in that thing?
  

  The graphics are comic-like and cel-shaded very nicely. The setting is great in my opinion and gives off a post-apocalyptic feel. Even though the story fumbles and is forgotten, the setting still lives on and the musical score consists of ambient and ethnic beats. You should take time to savor some of the creepier places to really get into the feel of Pandora.
  
  The game is absolutely mindless and there's nothing higher to gain from it except the tongue-in-cheek humor on the violence and characters. The game doesn't take itself too seriously and that's a nice aspect of it, you basically are carefree and just roam the countryside... with guns. While the NPC and setting formulate a nice feel for the game and give a brilliant setting, you will soon just enjoy watching the burning midgets run at you while you use an acidic revolver that shoots teleporting grenades to blow them to smithereens, while your character laughs maniacally.
  
  If you like barren wastelands, guns, friends with guns, cannibal mutants, and more guns, you will probably find Borderlands a very nice game and spend quite some days playing it.
  

  Have you tried out Borderlands yet?
  

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