If you were to take a pinch of everything you liked about videogames from the last five years stir it up, let it simmer to a nice heat – You’d end up with Borderlands. Gearbox had pre-release billed this game as an RPS (Role Playing Shooter) you would be lead to believe this is a new concept, and in some ways it is, but you will find the exact same elements in Bethesda’s Fallout 3 which has won numerous game of the year awards, and very rightly so.

Borderlands seems to of taken so many different aspects of already released titles and made them their own. Be it the skill tree of World of Warcraft [WoW], the challenges of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, to Barren wastelands of the Fallout Universe. If you have the time to play this game, be it alone or with some friends online or offline, you are going to have fun here. While it doesn’t adhere to the realistic consequences of gunfire, you soon learn the parameters of Borderlands FPS gameplay, which is complemented by its cartoonish art style.

Due to Borderlands structure you are eased in to this familiar, yet very unfamiliar world after an awesome introduction you choose from one of four character types: Hunter, Solider, Siren and Berserker. They do exactly what it says on the tin so to speak. With possibly the exception of the Siren but a basic rundown is as follows, the solider is your jack of all trades; master of nothing, with his ability to place automatic turret points which act as both a wall to hide behind and suppressive fire to help your master chief style armour shield regenerate once acquired. The Hunter is able to deploy a hawk to strike at your enemies from above giving you an extra boost of damage in a tight spot. The Siren is able to ‘phasewalk’ which is a flash Gordon style slow time and move fast ability which when upgraded can become an Area of Effect style bonus using fire, lightning and acid to deal out massive amount of damage.



To any current or former WoW player the aspects taken and used effectively in Borderlands is obvious while it is blatant it soon becomes obvious that using a tier scheme which over eleven million gamers are already familiar with makes a potentially troublesome upgrade system work easier and smoother, and it’s such aspects of taking what is already known and applying them into a unknown environment all the more familiar. You have a list of voluntary challenges to complete such as melee kill so many enemies, achieve a certain number of headshots etcetera for additional experience rewards allowing you to level up faster. If you can forgive unrealistic bullet damage, by this I mean requiring almost one hundred bullets to kill some enemies some levels above your own to die, then Borderlands is almost one massive cartoon game of Call of Duty. Throw in some lockers, oversized enemies, a barren wasteland of almost ninety-five percent hostiles ala Fallout 3, and you have an extremely good picture of what Borderlands is.

This is not to say Borderlands has nothing fresh to offer, on the contrary. The guns you will acquire will be so unique I challenge you to find the exact same gun twice without using a vending machine in the same playthrough. This does present a problem in the fact there are so many guns, you can only equip four main weapons, and three accessories you might care to mix and manage however to my experience have not or yet to encounter any mass storage facility, forcing me to make monetary decisions with weapons. Juggling inventory can be quite bothersome.

Animation accompanies the games cartoonish cel-shaded graphics, every NPC of note has a distinct personality which shines through, but what seems to be at a price. There is so little in the way of friendly or neutral NPC’s to begin with you will feel the lonesomeness of a barren wasteland a bit too soon, which will put more highly cynical players off playing further, unless you are playing co-op with a friend or three. While doing so takes the edge off and is the true experience of the game, don’t expect a easier ride as the difficulty is ramped up accordingly to the amount of co-op players from mobs to higher level enemies. This could get harsh with the drought of ammo dropped; while it will maintain your stocks for a while they will dwindle if you plan on wandering the big open areas you have to explore.



The world of Pandora may seem scaled in comparison to other sandbox worlds, Gearbox have been honest with you as a player and let you know where loading sections are to caves and subterranean bases with holographic placards you have to interact with, which helps your remain immersed for hours in the game while letting you know you are still playing a game after all. So you can be safe in the knowledge no random loading will pop up mid play with a very high consistent frame rate. The trick used to do such work is borrowed from Left 4 Dead in such enemies won’t spawn until your within a certain range, and cleverly spawn behind cover, making what appeared from a kilometre away to be a ghost town, to a beehive of bandit activity (or my favourite ‘the midget shotgunner’)

Borderlands is quite simply the better aspects of games people enjoy from the RPG World and FPS world combined, like the games tagline says, ‘The RPG & FPS had a baby’, and Borderlands is it, the RPS [Role Playing Shooter].

This is the FPS game to have fun on, not take seriously, and get back down to basics with while having a completely unique experience with and can be enjoyed. There is no massive narrative like Fallout 3, but the story you do get is subtle, yet rewarding. All it takes is the sometime to get started.

To those unsure about dropping the cash for this game if you liked Halo, Call of Duty, Fallout, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft you WILL find something to like in borderlands, Just prepare yourself for a slow burn, this is one new IP that deserves that interest you have in this game.