Borderlands

Format PC

Developer Gearbox

Publisher

Genre First Person Shooter

14 Comments

Fallout was just the start of a floodtide of apocalyptic explore-'em-ups. Borderlands is the next wave, an open world RPG that plays closer to a traditional shooter than the clunky pistol flailing of Bethesda's effort. Oh, and you can explore it with up to three friends. In jeeps.

The place is Pandora, an ancient planet rumoured to hold vast wealth and riches in an mysterious vault. That rumour once sparked a goldrush, fuelled by recently discovered alien technology. Now Pandora is a wasteland of rusted settlements and abandoned spaceships, inhabited by angry wildlife.

Playing as Rolland, the game's jack-of-all-trades character, I spawned in a ramshackle settlement that looked like an Old West town built out of spaceship debris. A nearby bounty board offered me a list of RPG missions: poison skag dens, kill 10 skags, collect skag pearls... folks 'round these parts really don't much care for skags. That might have something to do with the fact that they eat people. There were also a few missions for collecting parts, but my trigger finger was too itchy for that type of work.

My first skag kill was spectacular. Just outside the town gates a skag pup lunged at me; I fired my pistol five times, and the fourth shot caught him in his gaping mouth, mid-leap, for a critical-hit kill. Despite Borderlands' RPG influences, there's no behind-the-scenes dice-rolling going on here - your bullets go where you aim them regardless of your character's level. In a pile of regurgitated bones (skags, like owls, swallow their prey whole and then cough up indigestibles like bones and guns), I found a couple of grenades and a handy new scoped pistol that inflicted fire damage. I almost felt sorry for the skag pups as I levelled up twice from massacring them. In the final game, levelling up would let me improve skills such as Rolland's deployable turret, but for now it just made me generally more powerful.

The hunt took me further away from town, and I soon encountered a band of level six bandits. At level three, my instinct (influenced, perhaps, by the intimidating skull icon above their heads warning me I was outmatched) was to run, but my Gearbox advisors kindly suggested that running away is something a wuss might do. Never one to resist peer pressure, I took a few shots at a bandit and watched a small chunk disappear from a blue bar over his head. That bar turned out to be his shield, which meant I had my work cut out for me before I even harmed a hair on his head. The bandit was joined by a couple of allies behind him with automatic weapons, pinning me behind some rocky cover.

I knocked out the first enemy's shield, but my scoped pistol ammo was running low. I made a quick dash for cover closer to the first bandit, switched to a shotgun, and unloaded on him. Down he went! But my manoeuvre had crossed that fine line between bravery and stupidity, and his friends gunned me down mercilessly before I could turn their fallen comrade's higher-level weapon against them. I did get off a few parting shots in a Left 4 Dead-style incapacitated state from which, if I'd had a co-op buddy, I could have been revived. Also, if I'd somehow managed to drop another of the bandits, I'd have gotten a second wind. But no.

I respawned back in town, and reinforcements arrived in the form of a Gearbox employee playing as Mordecai, a thin and lanky hunter. Or so I thought - but the first thing he did was pick a fight. Meleeing another player does no damage, but it's the Borderlands equivalent of slapping someone across the face with a glove. My honour demanded that I accept his challenge, so I smacked him back. A countdown began, and suddenly a force field sparked to life, surrounding us and creating an impromptu duelling arena out of a section of the town from which only one man would emerge. Since my character was two levels above his, a few shots from my shotgun ended the duel quickly.

We decided to settle our differences on neutral ground, so he led me to one of Borderlands' arenas: underground facilities stocked with weapons and a computer system that allows you to temporarily equalise combatants' levels and weapon sets for the purpose of settling grudges, Quake III Arena-style. On a small circular map with a catwalk spanning its length, I eked out a 3-2 rocket match victory. Arenas are a just-for-fun minigame within the vast shooter world, perfect for satisfying that PvP itch when you've had enough of your co-op partner's crap.

Afterward we went on a bandit-killing spree, clearing out an old mine where they'd set up camp. Highlights included catching an unfortunate melee bandit in a crossfire and ripping him apart; watching my teammate blast away using an assault rifle with explosive rounds; me trying to throw a grenade but accidentally deploying a turret that ended up being much more effective thanks to the added firepower and the cover provided by its shield generator; killing three bandits with one proximity grenade; and reviving my ally three times when he got himself in over his head.

I also got to play a short four-player co-op mission, although this was on the Xbox version of the game. We drove a pair of Runner buggies out into the desert: I manned the high-powered gun turret on the roof and picked off pursuing bandit patrols as they attacked, demolishing them in satisfying fireballs. We arrived at a rock formation impassible by buggy, so we crossed on foot. Suddenly the earth shook and a huge creature emerged from beneath the ground. This, I was told, was the rak hive - a walking colony of bat-like animals that were terrorizing the nearby settlement.

Fighting the urge to comment on what its mouth looked like, I equipped a shock-enhanced sniper rifle and backed off, targeting the hive's four white eyes and popping them one by one like enormous zits.

That was a lot like whacking a beehive with a stick, and winged creatures poured out of holes on the mammoth's back, swarming us. My allies covered me while avoiding the hive's stomping feet, swatting the fliers out of the air with shotguns, enabling me to focus on bringing the beast down. The raks' agitation intensified at the loss of their home, and they practically blackened the sky with their swarm - a sign of a good time to make a tactical withdrawal if I ever saw one.

As a fast-paced shooter, Borderlands already delivers - weapons, enemies, co-op, and PvP action are all there and up to expectations, and looking fantastic thanks to the new art style. The question of whether it will be a game we'll want to keep playing revolves largely around how well Gearbox integrate the RPG elements, which were mostly only hinted at during my play. But CEO Randy Pitchford has wanted to make this game for a long time, and has no intention of wasting the opportunity.

"Mixing the genres like this is one of those holy grail pitches that you're just like, 'someday, somebody's going to do it.' Well, we're doing it now, man!"

PC Gamer