GamesRelay

Name: Borderlands

In a Christmas dominated by sequels in major, established franchises, Borderlands is an oddity. A fresh new IP from the studios of Gearbox Software, the game tries to be an RPG while also maintaining first-person shooter gameplay, all wrapped in a drop-in drop-out co-operative system. Does this untried property deliver on its concepts, or does it get smothered under the mass of quality releases?

Borderlands is set on the planet Pandora. At the outset, you finish a bus journey to the settlement of Fyrestone, in the hopes of finding a hidden cache of alien technology reverently called The Vault. The planet had been colonised some time before by corporations hoping to find this trove for themselves. Other companies had found other examples of the Eridian technology on other planets, and became quite wealthy from the discovery. It seemed that The Vault proved difficult to place, and amidst little hope, they pulled all funding from the wasteland planet. Those that remain simply try to survive on what little is left against the constant threats from the harsh wildlife and particularly from each other. It is into this environment that you throw yourself, searching for a myth that most of the populous believe to be a falsity.

As soon as you begin the game, you are asked to choose from a selection of classes. The Soldier specialises in combat rifles and shotguns, and hence medium to short range attacks. The Hunter is a marksman – a long-distance fighter who knows his way around sniper rifles and revolvers. The Berserker is your tank, capable of withstanding a lot of fierce attacks and works with explosive weapons and, uniquely, his two fists that are as lethal as any gun. The Siren focuses on deception and elemental strikes, such as incendiary, shock and corrosive weapons. Each character also has a unique ability that can be used sparingly, requiring a recharge after each use. The Soldier's Scorpio Turret is a shielded stationary gun that fires bursts of weapon fire for a short time; the Hunter's Bloodwing lets loose a bird of prey that soars around the battlefield, catching foes by surprise and talons. The Berserker's aptly-named Berserk ability makes the Berserker go berserk, increasing his resistance to damage and regenerates his health. The Siren's Phasewalk makes her go invisible and increases her speed, and is capable of firing Phase Blasts from her hands to damage foes. These contrasting abilities make sure each play through seem different, and definitely adds to the replayability of the game.

The story in Borderlands, with so much potential in its concept, doesn't fare so well in practice. The game was designed with co-op play in mind, and sadly this led to a focus away from a scripted narrative. The game plays through a mission-based format, with usually little more than a paragraph of text petitioning a mission and a paragraph of text rewarding the player for a task well done. There are sections with dialogue, including main quest mission updates from a Cortana-esque holographic voice insisting that you'll find The Vault if you do this, this and this, and cut-scenes are mostly relegated to introducing bosses. Other story information is told over radio chatter, ensuring that the plot is told in a seamless, uninterrupted manner that lends itself to its multiplayer focus but leaves little impact on the player.

Side missions are prevalent, but suffer from the same presentation issues. There is never a shortage of jobs to complete, and the rewards can be extremely lucrative. The game expects you to do many of them, since they are essential to levelling up in a timely manner. While you may only get a couple of hundred experience points for defeating common foes, experience rewarded for completing optional quests totals in the thousands. The story missions set such a heady pace that if you hope to walk through the story; you will quickly learn that you'll need to level up a number of times to have any hope of defeating the boss at the end of each new area. The game ensures that you can't pick up and use an extremely overpowered weapon to take on your tougher foes by restricting Level Requirements on all arms. It is in this way that Borderlands simply enforces the optional missions on you – luckily for the game, they're actually quite enjoyable. Most follow certain templates that begin to repeat as the game progresses, such as defeating really tough enemies or scavenging for weapon parts, but they're often easy to follow due to a robust navigation system and generally don't last much longer than a few minutes.

It's the weapons in Borderlands that serve as the greatest highlight of the game. Gearbox put a system in place that randomly creates guns with different qualities and effects. One sniper rifle might do more damage, but this one might fire incendiary bullets capable of setting your enemies on fire. Perhaps this assault rifle has a higher rate of fire than this one, but this has a 150% Critical Hit feature. It's in this way that every weapon that lies scattered throughout the wastelands of Pandora could potentially be the best weapon in your arsenal, or a weapon better suited to certain situations. This is also the case with your shield system, which could have a high capacity or a relatively lower one that regenerates lost health at various rates. Grenades are also customisable with completely different features. One may explode into a number of smaller grenades, or perhaps detonates on contact or drains the health of your enemies while refilling your own. The selection on hand is staggering, and there are many different brands of weapons sporting different aesthetic changes as well as comparative statistics – certain weapon manufacturers may have the greatest rate of fire across all their weapons for example. It all totals up with an almost innumerable number of different weapons, totalling in the hundreds of thousands. Don't expect to find them all!