Murk CCS

Borderlands

BORDERLANDS

The 3^rd installment to my reviews is a Gearbox Software game presented by 2KGames. I know 2KGames but I know little about Gearbox. That being said neither 2K nor Gearbox is why I was interested in game Borderlands, which was released on the PC, 360 and PS3. The uniqueness of what I previewed is what caught me off guard and snatch my attention. Borderlands is a combination of 2 of my favorite types of games, FPS (First Person Shooters) and RPG’s (Role Playing Games). The other thing that sparked my interest is that it’s up to a 4-player co-op game. The graphics resemble Prince of Persia on the PS3, cell shaded graphics do look cartoony. So some people may not like these graphics, but I will say this “ Don’t judge a book by its cover”. I know that’s a cliché thing to say but being rated Mature , Borderlands is no cartoony game for kids. As I talk to you in this review I will give examples of Borderlands mature content. As I have done in my 2 previous game reviews, I will not be giving away major spoiler info on the story.

All I will say about the story is this,,,, Borderlands takes place on a planet called Pandora. On this planet is a hidden vault that supposedly contains riches and fame beyond your most envious dreams. It is your job to hunt down and do whatever it takes to obtain this “ From rags to riches” treasure. Will you face this harsh, unforgiving, death filled journey alone or will you team up with a friend or three to see if you and your squad can survive the gambit that is Borderlands. Playing solo can be fun at some points, you get to keep all the filthy lucca (loot) and ammo that u can get your blood stained hands on. To get the best experience out of Borderlands you should play it in co-op mode at all times. There’s three different ways to go about playing co-op, you and a friend can play split screen co-op. You also play a LAN game with up to 4 PS3’s hooked together or just play online with 3 friends off your PSN friends list or simply play with 3 random people online. Just a few things about playing co-op that’s a little different then flying solo. First of all the ammo, guns, money and experience (exp) are all shared in co-op. Second a team mate can save your skin by getting close to you and holding square while your dying. In solo you got to save your own ass when you’re dying by performing a second wind.

A second wind is when you are able to kill someone while you are dying, doing so gives you a little of your health back and your shield. Doing a second wind in solo mode is easier said then done which I will explain later to you in the bullshit section on this review. You can do second winds in co-op mode also but it’s so much easier for a partner to heal you. Co-op also makes the game more challenging, basically the more people on your team, the more bad guys you have to deal with. Therefore this means enemies get more furious and seem to become more bullet proof. So enemies can be a little harder to handle. As long as you are playing on a good team it can be very do-able but if someone on the team isn’t acting right. Well you just going to have to slap that trick in the head with a melee attack to start a duel and show’em who the big murk of the team really is. Plus when playing co-op what missions you do depends on how far the host is in the game and u can load the character your working on or just pick a new one to use.

Let’s discuss the 4 characters actually since I mentioned them. Each character has a special ability to explore and customize. Lilith the Siren Phase walker favors smg’s and weapons that use electric, acid, or fire ammo. Her Siren abilities enable her to have increased speed and become invisible for a short amount of time. When you turn on and off her phase walk, she does a phase blast that helps put a hurting on nearby enemies. She can also melee baddies to stun them which slows them down,,,,easy pickings. Another nice skill she can use is called Phoenix which gives her these bad ass flaming wings and can make shots cost less ammo on top of dealing fire damage to goons nearby. There’s a lot of great skills to experiment with that would take forever to tell about. I can honestly say she is my 2^nd favorite character for good reasons.

Next is Brick the Muscle head of the group, he is a beast of a man. Brick is a Berserker, which means he is a human wrecking ball. He can go into a rage mode and pound your foes into a pile of broken bones while being nearly indestructible. He also specializes in explosive weapons on top of being the only character that can use his hands to fight. I will tell you about a few of this muscle head’s skills. Diehard comes in handy, this skill can increase the amount of time you have to do a second wind when dying. Strike like a Bee is one of my favs of his skills. This skill allows you to pull off a forward dashing punch, reminds me of Balrog’s dashing moves in Street Fighter. You also can unlock a skill that increases the ammo clip to rocket launchers. Enough about him I don’t want to give away too much.

Moving on to the Hunter Mordecai is the sniper specialist of the squad. If enemies get to close for comfort, pull out a side arm like a magnum. Mordecai is a master at using handguns. The two coolest things about this character is his sword just because I like swords and his bird Bloodwing. Bloodwing is your personal messenger of death and carnage. You can use Bloodwing to strike down an adversary from a far. Once Bloodwing is fully upgraded he can attack multiple targets. One of Mordecais best skills in my opinion is the ability to increase the amount of experience the whole team receives. I’m not going to say much more about this guy, due to the fact that 90% of people that play this game pick him. I’m not fond of snipers simply because hiding to get kills is a chicken shit thing to do.

I saved the best character for last … soldier Roland. This is whom I picked for my first play through. The weapons he specializes in are SHOTGUNS and Battle Rifles (which I refer to as MG’s). Roland, in my opinion is a good pick for first time players. The reason I say that is because Roland can deploy a Scorpio Turret. This Scorpio Turret can be great backup when being over-powered. It also can gain the ability to recharge health, restock ammo and revive downed partners while it’s deployed. One of the most useful things about Roland is he gets the ability to heal partners by shooting them.

Now that you know a little bit about the characters, I can tell you a little about the customizing process. Each character has a skill tree. The skill trees splits into 3 branches that have a total of 21 skills (7 skills per branch). To upgrade these skills, you use skill points, which are gained by leveling up your character. You get one skill point when you advance one level. The level cap is 50 and out of those 50 you only get 46 skill points. So even though you can get to level 50 you still can’t max out the skill tree. Your character is not meant to be perfect, just focus on the skills that match you style of gaming. Thankfully, at anytime you can reset the spent skill points if you don’t like the layout of how you have chosen to do them. Only catch is that it will cost you a bit of your money and you have to wait until you find a travel post somewhere to be able to do so. Best thing I can tell you is to spend those skills points wisely.

There are few ways to gain experience points in Borderlands. One of course is to complete missions in the game; there are plenty of missions to keep you busy for hours upon hours. Killing enemies and bosses also give you a few experience points but gaining good experience points from kills can be a pain in the ass. Another good way of getting those precious points is to complete challenges. There’s A LOT of these challenges to give a try and much experience to be earned but to do all of the challenges will take a good amount of time. Here are a few examples of some of the challenges: run over and make speed bumps out of 25 bad guys, melt the skin off the faces of 25 bad guys and listen to their bubbling screams for mercy, or even just sell the guns you collected off the charred, burnt corpses of your previous foes.

There are millions upon millions of guns to be found and played with in a mischievous way. The types of guns are handguns, SMG’s, shotguns, battle rifles, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and alien tech guns. Wait that’s not all, also guns can sometimes have element effects on them. The elements are fire, electric, acid and explosives. Now when a gun has one of these effects it doesn’t mean you will always get that effect, when your bullets hit the target. This is because the element also comes with a (x) multiplier, for example, fire x1 or firex4. So make sure to keep an eye out for that multiplier it could make a life saving difference. Just make sure to experiment with all the elements to see which helps better in what situation. In some cases melting ones flesh off with acid may be more effective than electrocuting them until their head starts to smoke, then pops off. One of my personal favs is a shotgun with explosive elements anyone can become a buckshot legend with one of these. Plus watching it rain human chunks from a blast of the shotty is always good fun. You may be wondering “Murk, how do I get a hold of such a devilish toy in this game”? Well, it’s really not too hard to find these wonderful play things.

Almost everywhere you look you can find weapons. Yes, enemies drop weapons but only sometimes. You also can get weapons for completing missions but don’t rely on that to get good weapons. To have the best chance of finding really good weapons, you have to explore. By explore I mean it to the fullest, if there is a building you can climb on give it try. Chances are you’ll find a gun case at the top, and make sure to search each corner of the map. Odds are slightly good you will find some of the precious loot that makes your teeth sweat (makes you drool).

Since I mentioned exploring the maps let me tell you about the environments of the plant Pandora. First off Borderlands can be displayed in 480i up to 1080i and everything in between. Now as I said a little while ago the game has cell-shaded graphics. Well now think if Fallout 3 had cell-shaded graphics, that’s pretty much what Borderlands would closely resemble. Now that you are picturing that in your head, think of a planet thats basically a huge desert. A hot, muggy, dry, sun beaten, rocky planet. It does hold blotches of human life scattered around, some friendly some your worst nightmare, but most sound like Deep South country boys, Oh No hillbillies in outer space, lmfao. There’s also garbage all over the place, which may hide goodies, up to you to pull a hobo move and look through that trash. You also can explore basically what I call a junkyard paradise, or go try your luck in a deep, dark cave full of glowing crystals but watch your step, something may pop up out of the ground. These locations will all be explored at some point due to missions but there are over 20 places and LOTS of mission to keep you busy.

When it comes to traveling between all those places its fairly easy and I will explain why to you. First off, like most games, you have a compass, which is displayed, at the bottom of your screen. Also, there’s a little green diamond that is on the compass, that’s a waypoint, which leads to your current objective. Once you make a little progress through the game, you get to use 2 things that make traveling a cakewalk. One is a thing called an Outpost, these are used for fast travel in other words teleporting. Then there’s my favorite method of traveling, driving. It may not sound like much, but trust me, it makes a huge difference and besides, who doesn’t like hauling ass, hitting jumps that would make Evil Knievel piss his pants. Also, let me fill you in on something; driving on the game does take some getting used to (you have been warned). Even if getting the hang of controlling the car seems a little rough, don’t worry; the rest of the game has decent controls.

When it comes to engaging your foes in combat, the controls are pretty standard and easy to get the hang of: they hold up pretty good in those intense battles you will come across. There is an aim assist, but come on where’s the fun in using that (TURN THAT SHIT OFF). If you do get in a jam there is a sprint button. That sprint doesn’t run out, so let’s say if you had to run across the map, that unlimited sprint eases the burden, slightly. Jumping is great in this game; one of my friends even said that the jumping reminded him of Halo. The jumping allows you to reach places of great height, for those who like to snipe or just so you can check your surrounding environment. I will say this these controls are not perfect. The reason is because of lag, when not hosting the game. I have noticed there can be a split second lag that can cause a lot of missed shots and short jumps.

Well I think I have shared enough good things of the game with you. As I have said before though, there is no such thing as a perfect game. Every game has its bullshit and annoying factors. That doesn’t mean I will be a dumbass and give shitty ratings. Now that we have that cleared up, time for the BS part of the review. I will fill you in on some annoying and bullshit things in Borderlands that drives the little Murk in my head apeshit.

First let’s start with some of the annoying factors. You will face many relentless, savage, and tough enemies, but there is one that I refer to as “That damn stick guy”. Imagine being in a battle with like 10 –15 enemies. You and your partners are doing good at first, just straight murking shit. All of a sudden things take a turn for the worse and everybody has to find cover. Well you all find cover and regroup, but something is still wrong. Something is still hitting you or a partner, but you all don’t hear gunfire. Well chances are you’re now a victim of “That damn stick guy”, but its not a stick that’s hitting you its an axe. That’s just what I thought it was at first was a stick. That damn stick guy can sling that axe like he is Eli Manning throwing the winning pass against the Patriots that he pulled out of ass on Feb. 9^th, 2008 in Superbowl XLII. Trust me, that damn stick guy can cause major problems, so lay him down asap. I also feel like I have to inform you that enemies do respawn. When you’re just trying to get out of an area that you have been in for like 30 minutes, the last thing you need is for every single goon you wasted to somehow creep back up. Well in this game they do, enemies respawn every 10 minutes it seems.

Another annoying enemy is called a Rakk, these are some type of flying creatures that attacks like ravage vultures. These Rakk basically kamikaze dive into you by the dozens, so keep your eyes in the sky. Also an annoying thing is if enemies are like 4 levels higher than you, they cause major damage to you and your car. If you run them over the collision can leave you carless or even dead. Plus the car has a few glitches that can start to eat at your patience. Sometimes the turbo meter to the car doesn’t refill if you’re not the host of the game. The car may not move, its like it gets stuck to the ground on invisible sticky tape and not even a crowbar could pry it lose. It is easy to fix fortunately, just switch from the drivers seat to the gunners seat, then switch back it should drive now. One last thing about the car, sometimes the surface to wheel detection is off. By that I mean you may sometimes seem to be driving on air.

The most annoying thing by far is lagging issues. Lagging happens at the most inopportune time, example when trying to make a jump. The lag causes you to miss that jump sometimes and if you have to make an epic journey to try that jump again, you may feel a slight banging in your head,,, Hmmmm seem to piss off the little person in your head.

Ok now for some of the bullshit things that drove the MurkCCS squad and me crazy. As I said before selling guns is a good idea but there is a catch to it. You might stumble upon a sweet find, a $30,000 gun. So you’re like Hellz yeah if I can’t use it I can make some nice money off of it. Well your kind of right, but as soon as you pick up the gun it loses a bit of value,, yeah thanks for teasing us with big money Gearbox then taking a piece of that pie. Speaking of money, this bit of info I’m about to tell you is important. If you happen to get knocked off the M.A.P, (if you die) in the game, about a 10% fee is taken off your total amount of cash. WTF,,, yes wtf indeed what the hell was Gearbox thinking to charge the player a fee for dying. That can become a problem if you need emergency money for health or ammo. You may be short on the money for it due to what I call a “Death Fee”. You may be able to save yourself a few dollars from the death fee by performing a 2^nd wind. If you remember I told you a 2^nd wind is when you kill someone while dying. When your dying you drop down to one knee, lean to the side and fight to hold up your gun. Also you constantly have to adjust your aim to hit anything while a meter counts down and the screen starts to go black. When that meter runs out (“that’s your ass mister postman”) you die. Performing 2^nd Winds are a pain in the ass, take all of what I just told you about it. Now add the fact that bad guys run and hide when you need to do a 2^nd wind. I know smart AI is a good thing, but damn why give us this 2^nd Wind ability when we can only get it to work less than half the time. I have never seen enemies that run when they can easily finish you off.

The game can even finish you off in a totally different way that can lead to broken controllers, TV’s, or the game disc itself. I’m talking about a dark shadow of misfortune called ,,, Data Corruption. I heard about this happening to people and then one of my partners got blindsided by data corruption. We put hours upon pain-staking hours in leveling up my partners character all the way to around level 28. Now we did this in one sitting, keep that in mind. So we ended up having to start all over again. Data corruption can happen if your connection drops while the game is auto-saving. Thats how it happened to my partner in crime. My best advice is to copy your save data to a flash drive very frequently. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

One more things I must share that suffocates the games potential for greatness. The frame rate drops so bad you may think your own eyes are beginning to go bad. This is because of all the stuff going on at once on the screen like if someone is roasting on fire or getting fried from electric shock treatment.

Now we put all of this review together and what do we have? We have a decent game with a few things that need improving. The lifespan of this game is also good, so I think its safe to say it’s a good buy for collectors and hardcore gamers. As for the casual gamer I suggest renting it and give it a try to see if you can handle it. One important thing about Borderlands,,, its meant to be played as a CO-OP game. Team work skills is a must so if you are one of those people who prefer to play alone, then you’re not going to get the full enjoyment out of this game. Overall I will say this game is a solid 3-½ stars out of 5. It had the potential to be great but falls short due to much needed improvement. The one thing that shines about this game is as I said before the ability for 4-player co-op. If you like being part of a team effort you will like this game.