Better late than never, right?
I've had a lot of time to reflect on this. I was suitably psyched for this game and bought it on release. Admittedly it was not what I had expected at first. I don't know why, but I had this impression that even during single player you would be running around with a posse of 4 and it felt different to how it had looked in the preview stuff. This mixed with the opening few missions had me a little disappointed. I was just a bit confused, I guess.
I persevered and finished the game. From my initial disappointment a new me was born. I wanted to play the game again. Straight away. I never want to play single players again (especially not right away, sometimes I do it and get halfway before getting bored, but that's usually after a couple of years).
The missions didn't really get any better. It's all just move here, shoot everyone, collect item. The shooting dudes isn't anything special and can be very frustrating. The story is set out from the start, you want treasure. Damn right I want treasure. Not particularly ground-breaking though. Yet, I love this game.
Let us start with the visuals. It's beautiful. In a time where we have realistic shooter after realistic shooter set in dirty, modern environments it stands out and yells "I'm here, rape me with your eyes." The guns look different. Sure there are only a few models for each weapon set just with different colours and attachments, but the variation is enough and they look spacey. The barren desert wasteland is a wonderful setting for a futuristic space shooter. We've travelled so far and made all these advances and yet this world is a backwards dump. The creatures are suitably outlandish, but recognisable enough for comparison to creatures that we already know.
Shooting dudes. It's a fairly standard affair. Each enemy has a weak point/element. Find out what it is, aim for it every time you encounter. It's not brilliant and sometimes when you're after certain enemies, you can be overrun by other enemies from that area. It gets annoying when you're trying to shoot 1 or 2 things, yet hundreds of other things are attacking you (Moe and Marley mission), you die, can't get a second wind and have to run all the way back to that point to have the same thing happen again. The controls are nothing new and some of the aiming feels a little off, especially if your gun has a slow rate of fire. I found that sometimes, when using a triple burst gun, I would have to aim ahead of the enemy for all three shots to hit, even at closer ranges. It is weirdly satisfying, however, to see someone's head explode inches from your face, or watch someone completely disintegrate when you hit them with corrosive/incendiary rounds.
The story gets no more complex than the outline at the start. You want treasure, people are in the way of you getting treasure, so you kill them. There is a little twist at the end that can pass you by if you don't pay attention to some of the mission stuff. What takes the story and makes it great is the characters you meet. Most of the dialogue is presented in text mission logs, but even then each character is written in a way that sets them apart. You meet crazy scientists, lonely old men, a midget who just wants juice. And it's funny. It's not that it's trying to be funny and failing, it's actually funny. You like these characters. Mild spoiler, even though the game has been out for ages: I was genuinely upset when one of the characters I'd been doing missions for died.
The real draw to Borderlands. The thing that sucks you in and wont let you leave is the weapon system. You learn that there is a rarity system defined by colours. At the start of the game there's a real joy from finding a blue gun. Later on, you're disappointed when you find no purples. I remember finding my first gun with red text in the description. I immediately went online to find out what it meant. Trying to find a weapon that has better stats than the one you're using at the time can take ages, or you can find it in the next chest. It's a completely random system that doesn't favour anything. I spent hours at New Haven whoring all the rooftop chests in the hopes of finding something that might just outclass the rifle I was using at the time. You open a chest, shotguns, you think "meh" and scan them to see how much money you stand to make. "HOLY CRAP. IT SHOOTS ROCKETS" You just don't expect this kind of variety or madness from an FPS.
After all this, Gearbox weren't content. They released 3 DLC packs. I didn't buy Underdome Riot because I'm not a fan of horde missions, so I can't comment, but the other 2 have been, in my opinion, incredible.
Zombie Island took the game out of the desert and into a beautiful new setting, with more incredible visuals. The thing looked perfect for what it was supposed to be. There's not much more I could say except that there was a freaking wereskag wearing a hat.
General Knoxx was infuriating at first. Driving large distances, with no fast travel system, fighting enemies that were a higher level than me. I was angry. I went back into the standard game and levelled up a few levels (to about 55). It's a nice touch that it takes place after the main story and gives you a sense of how the universe reacts to the stories conclusion. General Knoxx is a fantastic character and we get to see more of Scooter, which is never a bad thing. Add to this new enemies, new locations, and NEW LOOT and you can't complain. Have a section entirely based around taking as much loot as you can and you've bought my love.
Borderlands is not technically an amazing game. It doesn't do anything special with it's gameplay. It doesn't push consoles or tell a story that will be remembered forever. It's not about that though. It's about the way the game is presented. The environments, the characters and the weapons. Oh God, the weapons.
