Borderlands Review

Review: Borderlands

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

Developer: Gearbox Software

Publisher: 2k Games

Borderlands, produced by Gearbox Software, is one of a select few games that list themselves under the “RPG Shooter” genre. Based around completing quests, receiving loot, leveling up, and playing with friends, Borderlands puts a fairly new twist on an old classic.

Roland the Soldier, Lilith the Siren, Mordecai the Hunter, and Brick the... Brick

Story

As one of four treasure hunters, you arrive on the barren planet of Pandora in search of a relative, a friend, or a man to kill (although it does not tell you this in-game). However, while you are still on the bus, a pale girl starts talking to you through some sort of psychic communication, telling you that you must look for “The Vault”, a hidden warehouse of alien weapons, money, and all other desires. So, understandably, your character instantly forgets about why they are there and the original story that the website seemed to be setting up is completely scrapped in place of this new treasure-hunting one.

One thing that is fairly annoying is that in the intro it shows all four characters riding in the same bus, but once you select your persona, the others are thrown away, never to be seen in single player. The story is told through the main plot quests, although it can be hard to figure out which ones they are, and consists basically of you going into enemy bases, caves, and canyons, killing a boss, getting a part of the vault key, then turning it in. The main storyline will take you around 15 hours to complete, but there is much more to the game.

Gameplay

Tanks, Mining Machines, and Bandits? Oh my.

The gameplay in comparison to other RPG Shooters, such as Fallout 3, was best explained by Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford who had this to say: “The developers of Fallout 3 started with an RPG and added shooter elements, whereas with Borderlands we started with a Shooter and added RPG elements.” For anyone who has played Fallout 3, such as myself (Though only for 4 or 5 hours), the difference is quickly noticeable. The game runs very smoothly, most resembling Unreal Tournament (As it runs off the Unreal Engine), and the brutal man(and skag)slaughter is very satisfying.

The game also boasts to have “more guns than every other FPS combined”, and while this is true, they are simply made in a random stat generator, ending in some weird combinations such as shotguns that shoot rockets, or grenades that jump up in the air and rain lightning. Accuracy, a stat that annoyed me in Fallout makes a return, though it doesn’t affect gameplay quite as much. Having varying accuracy on a shotgun or SMG is fine, and in fact only serves to enhance the gameplay, but when I shoot 5 shots with my sniper directly into a bandit’s chest and they all fly whizzing off into the sunset it can be a tad frustrating.

The most epic boss in the game, this thing is HUUUUGE

Bosses are fun and challenging, although many can be easily beaten by dying, running back to the fight, and sniping them while standing off to the side of the arena. The game also utilizes a vehicle feature, and thank god, it would take forever to run everywhere, the developers spent a lot of time making the game world huge. Although there is only one vehicle, it is pretty fun to splatter 5 spiderants in succession, but not so much when you hit a sixth and the damage your vehicle takes from hitting enemies causes it to explode and completely kill your character. Speaking of dying, this game implements a really cool feature, the “second wind”. When your character loses all his health, you enter a state of dying, but if you kill an enemy in the allotted time you will receive a rejuvenation and can continue to fight, with the downside of reviving with fairly low health.

Multiplayer

This section of the review will be noticeably less developed than the rest as for some reason the developers decided to run the PC multiplayer through Gamespy instead of Steam, so there were major server issues and it was impossible to play with the three other people I bought the game with. I will not hold this against the score, however, as I am reviewing the game, not Gamespy, and it only was an issue for the first 5 days or so, a relatively short time in the game’s life. All in all the co-op I have played has been extremely smooth, and the loot is not hard to divide up. The enemies and loot scale well with the number of players providing a more challenging and more rewarding experience.

Graphics

This looks even better in game. Wow.

As Ryan said in his first impression review, the trailers and screenshots really don’t do the game justice. Heavily cell-shaded, Borderlands is really quite stunning, and watching a midget’s head explode and spray blood over his companions is only enhanced by it’s uncommon-for-shooters graphic style. A few shadows can become heavily pixelated, and some NPCs seem to have less time spent on them than others, but overall the graphics serve only to help Borderlands

Story – 6.5

Gameplay – 9

Multiplayer – 9.5

Graphics – 9.5

Final Score – 8.5

Killing Floor – Review

This past weekend, Steam gave users free access to the Zombie Survival Shooter known as Killing Floor. I took this as an opportunity to write a quick review without actually having to pay for a game. What a deal. The obvious game to compare Killing Floor to is Valve’s hugely successful Left 4 Dead, which is fine to an extent, but there are key differences that keep the two apart.

Clearly nothing like a boomer

First, let me explain a basic game of Killing Floor. Six survivors enter a fairly small map with the intentions of wiping out all zombies, for obvious reasons. As you battle through the 7 waves, the zombies get stranger and stranger, like the Bloat, an oversized carcass that spits, and when killed, explodes bile. No similarities to the Boomer from Left 4 Dead, clearly. During the final wave, you fight the “Patriarch”, a zombie with machine guns, rocket launchers, insane melee damage, stealth, and healing. All of this tragic tale comes with no, and I mean NO story.  One cool feature, however, is the ability to visit a vendor between waves, who sells over 20 weapons, ranging from axes to flame throwers, and of course the expected ammo and combat armor.

One thing that separates Killing Floor from other zombie shooters is it’s use of classes. You can opt to be a medic, fulfilling the job of “pussy” (Just kidding, gotta love the healers), a Firebug (Flame-Thrower specialist: why not Pyromaniac?),  or a Beserker who chops the heads off of low-level zombies with an axe, then responds to the high-level zombies by promptly dying. There are also specialists for machine guns, shotguns, pistols, and explosives, but they are pretty boring. When it comes down to it though, the classes really make little to no difference, providing, for example +5% shotgun damage. Wheeeeeee… In comparison to Team Fortress 2, or Battlefield Heroes (Which has been popping up a lot in recent columns) the class system falls flat.

While this situation may look really awesome, the player will most certainly die in 3... 2... 1...

My favorite part of the gameplay experience was the slow-motion kill camera, coming in at just the perfect time to give optimum detail to the rendering of a once-human head by a chainsaw. This can get a little annoying sometimes when a teammate elsewhere on the map gets a kill and your camera is slowed down for 5 seconds, but in the end it’s all worth it. But besides that, the game felt lackluster, it was very easy to die if you did not pick a narrow hallway to defend, and when you did, the game became just too easy.

All in all, Killing Floor is an ok game, but compared to the likes of Left 4 Dead, it has almost no appeal. Maybe you’ll pick it up for it’s low price tag of $19.99, but in the end you’ll still just be playing a hollow shell of the game it tries to imitate.

Gameplay – 6

Story – 0

Graphics – 6

Final Score – 4.5

Scribblenauts Second Opinion

Well here at 8-Bit Prodigy we’ve decided to start second opinion reviews. In these, we will respond to another author’s review and say why we thought the game deserved a higher or lower score. They will be shorter, as we will state what we think the previous review forgot to evaluate as apposed to reviewing the whole game.

When I read Hayden’s review of Scribblenauts (http://eightbitprodigy.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/scribblenauts-review/) I felt that, while it evaluated the game well from a casual gamer’s point of view, it could be elaborated on fairly easily to make it relevant to more hardcore gamers as well. My two main issues with the game are 1) The buggy controls (covered by Hayden) and 2) Lack of useful items. As Hayden said, their are over 25,000 possible objects to create, but here’s a list of the ones you’ll need: Lasso, Wings, Ooze, Moon Buggy, Rope, and Wall. The main reason for this is the lack of level variety. Although they appear very different, a great amount of the levels consist of either protecting an object (Wall), retrieving an item (Wings, Lasso), transporting an item (Moon Buggy, Rope) or killing a bad guy (Ooze). Then there’s the levels where nothing logical seems to work, for example there was one where I had to trade items with aliens for various space rocks, and I tried everything, cow, spaceship, UFO, water, basically everything I could think of an alien wanting. In the end, I just grabbed the rocks, ran, and gave it to the spaceman. How rewarding.

Second Opinion Score: 7

-David McIntyre (Site Designer)

Things That Piss Me Off

- Hackers: I mean, what is the point of hacking in a multiplayer enviroment? All you prove is that you can’t beat other players without cheating. Keep in mind this is not a “rage post”, I have experience with hackers so I know how to avoid them, but  I am sick of seeing my teammates shot down in a game of BFH by a Commando under the ground.

My theories:

1) Bad parental figures

2) Feel their class is “underpowered”

3) Pissed off by us camping their ass

-The Xbox: In this section, I am not talking about all Xbox owners, but it seems to me that the Xbox has attracted a swarm of assholes including Lil’ Wayne, Asher Roth, and following this trend, I would assume Kanye West. Here’s a challenge, go on Xbox Live and play Halo 3 for half an hour without being called a “faggot cocksucker”. Not gonna happen.

My theories:

1) Sexy Design (Both original and 360 were the best of their generation)

2) Violent Games (Not saying other systems don’t have them, but the Xbox seems to have more than it’s fair share)

3) Not the Wii or PS3 (’nuff said)

- Lack of games that offer custom soundtracks: Since Quake, in which a  player could swap out the game CD for an Audio CD once the menu screen was up, a select few games have offered personalized soundtracks. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the occasion Zelda or Mario medley, but I wouldn’t put them on my iPod, so why would I listen to only them while playing games? When I listen to an album I haven’t heard in a while, I instantly relate it to the game I was playing at the time, bringing back, for the most part, good memories.

My theories:

1) Copyright Laws or some shit

2) Whiny little game composers

3) Nobody asks for them

That’s it for this week, now go away before you piss me off too.

-David McIntyre (Site Designer)

Personalized Weekly Column Headers

These are our writer’s custom weekly column headers, if you are a writer, please save your header as a PNG (if possible) and put it at the top of your weekly columns

Weekly Column Schedule

As organized by David, Hayden, Patrick and Ryan.

Sunday – Hayden

Monday – David

Tuesday – Ryan

Wednesday – Sam

Thursday – Julio

Friday – Patrick

Saturday – Steven

This does not mean you cannot post things during the rest of the week, just try to make your weekly column your main focus.