Borderlands: Diablo with guns?

[Rhydderch Hael]

I've just started playing Borderlands this week, something to shake the disappointment of Dragon Age when I found that game less of a tactically-minded slasher and more of a medieval themed chat-room with bots.

Borderlands, set in the future on a desolate human colony world called Pandora, is called a 'Role-Playing Shooter': an FPS with leveled enemies, leveled characters, leveled items.

It's also been called "Diablo with guns." It does fit into hack-and-slash scheme of Kill = Reward. Loot is primarily in the form of guns, though grenade modifiers and personal shields can be dropped as well. The various types of guns in-game have their stats and characteristics determined by the weapon's make and model, each new prefix or suffix in the model name adding a little feature like more damage or one of a variety of sights. They say it results in 15 million different possible combinations of weapons. Of course, Sturgeon's Law means that 14 million of those same guns are going to be recycled for cash.

I haven't gone through one whole playthrough of the game, so I haven't seen everything so far. But I wanted to mention an Easter Egg I have just come across: one of the indigenious creatures of the planet are large flying reptiles called 'Rakk'. While hunting for an archaeologist's notes in a quest, I found one of the recorders being guarded by a boss Rakk with a familiar name. One of the loot items he dropped as it fell from the sky was also a blast from the past: a particularly weak yet insanely fast-charging personal shield called "Cracked Sash".

[vor_lord]

Rented it a while back. At first I was really stoked about it (co-op, loot, FPS mixed with RPG), but it didn't seem to progress much. It was fun, but seemed like there was no variation in setting, and little variation in opposition. The same desertish setting through several levels, and lots of the same three types of enemies.

Does it get any different later?

[ShadowHM]

Hi

I have been happily playing Borderlands since it came out. (It is all WarBlade's fault. :whistling: He got me started. And he is far ahead of me in game play too.)

I knew it would be a stretch for me, because I had not played a FPS before. Additionally, I had not played a game where the foe was human. I am quite surprised at how much pleasure there is in shooting bandits in the head. :blush:

As noted by vor_lord, the world is static, in the sense that the map is always the same for each area. There are enough maps that I still don't know my way around all of them and still get lost at times. (Some things will never change, eh?) The world is dessicated although there are snowy places later, in the mountains.

The opposition includes some animals (skags, rakks, crab worms, spiderants) and some aliens (guardians) but mainly human bandits. Each comes in several varieties with varying defences and damage output.

I like the coop in the game. I like the balance between differing builds. I like how the game difficulty ramps up with additional players in the game.

I also like how the foes clvl ramps up in a decent progression. If you follow all the side quests, you stay at or slightly ahead of the foe. And, after the second pass-through of the game, the third pass through has ALL the foes at clvl 50, so you can skip quests in pass-through two, and do them with more challenge in the third pass. :)

Check the threads at the Realms Beyond forum for a lot more in the line of comments.

P.S. The in-game VOIP is pitiful. Disable it and use TeamSpeak or another VOIP instead.

P.P.S. The in-game achievements are fun too. I have been working on getting up to the five-seconds of air time in a car achievement. So far: 3.2 seconds is the best I have managed. :rolleyes: I have got to the 'School Bus Driver' achievement for running over the foes with my car. :w00t: