Gearbox's Borderlands takes aim at trite RPGs

By Joe Dwyer     10/29/09 7:00pm

What do you get when you mix guns with free-roaming adventure, over-the-top enemies and more loot than you can shake a stick at? Easy: Gearbox's latest video game, Borderlands.Gearbox Software, a developer out of Plano, Tex., has made a name for itself in the first-person shooter genre over the past decade with its plethora of expansions to Half-Life, Valve's legendary 1998 PC shooter, and its numerous console ports of other franchises, including Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Halo. So when Game Informer magazine revealed the company's ambitious new shooter in the works, Borderlands, to the world two years ago, people were understandably excited.

Now, Borderlands is finally here. And it's the business.

At its core, Borderlands is an RPG unlike anything you've ever played - think Diablo II with less clicking and more rocket launchers and you'll be on the right track. Touted by Gearbox as an RPS ("role-playing shooter"), the game features all the unique items, side quests and leveling abilities one would expect to find in a standard RPG, tossing out all the boring dialogue trees of Oblivion and Mass Effect in favor of thousands of randomly generated weapons.

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What does all this mean in English? Basically, defeated enemies never drop the same loot twice, and opening a chest is guaranteed to be a surprise every time. Also, your bullets' ability to hit the target isn't determined by how many points you've poured into your character's accuracy stat; rather, it's based on your own skill as a gamer.

The game's plot is pretty standard fare: You are a mercenary on the lawless planet of Pandora searching for the fabled Vault, which holds untold alien riches. The colorfully stylized cel-shaded visuals and bits of irreverent humor peppered throughout make the game pop off the screen and prevent it from being another dark, drab shooter.

At the beginning of the game, players pick one of four classes: the hulking Berserker, the psychic Siren, the long-distance Hunter or the all-around Soldier. Each class features different attributes and skills that can be molded to suit nearly any style of play, resulting in completely unique characters, even if they are both from the same class.

In addition to the game's tight, simple and responsive controls, a welcome feature is the ability to redistribute your character's accumulated skill points at a New-U station - at the cost of some Pandoran cash, of course. So if you aren't satisfied with the way your Hunter is turning out, a few button presses will have his stats and abilities completely refitted to your liking. This eliminates the need for hanging on to previous saves in case you suddenly have second thoughts about maxing out a particular skill.

And while the flexibility of the New-U stations is cool, it has nothing on the game's other fantastic feature, Second Wind. If your health hits zero in the middle of a battle, you'll drop to the ground and have a few seconds to ice the closest enemy. If you manage to kill them before your vision goes completely black, you'll pop back to life with partially restored health and shields. Few things in the game are more satisfying than defeating a boss with a critical headshot in the waning moments of life and then being rewarded with a Second Wind.

While the game can be played solo, it was truly meant for multiplayer. Up to three friends can seamlessly drop in and out of your sojourn across the Pandoran wastes - the more, the better. As your friends join, the creatures of Pandora get tougher and they also drop better loot. Not to mention, trudging from waypoint to waypoint all by your lonesome can get pretty boring, perhaps one of Borderlands' main drawbacks. Vehicles and fast-travel waypoints are provided at specific locations around the sprawling game world, but players will find themselves hoofing it the majority of the time.

Inconsistent enemy AI is another sticking point for the game: Though enemies can be extremely cunning and work together to flank the player and overwhelm them, at other times their aim is horrendous and they just line up for headshots. In addition, lacking a central storage chest for your extra loot until you're a high-enough level means you have to lug the loot around in your inventory until the right time, which takes up precious space.

Nonetheless, Borderlands does far more things right than it does wrong, and its fresh and unique approach to melding the FPS and RPG genres makes for a quirky and addictively enjoyable game that is sure to keep gamers playing for weeks - or at least until Modern Warfare 2 comes out.

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