Cake-Pie

Borderlands. Well, there are borders, and there’s A LOT of land, presenting itself as some sort of FPS with no dice rolls; AKA none of that Fallout crap where you get a head-shot and it says you miss. No, you get a head-shot, and it’s to the head.

The game takes no time to start you going. From the moment you hit the Enter Key your character selection is the only down time. After that, you’re thrown into a gunfight and the world is yours to loot, kill, loot, find better loot, quest, loot–did I mention loot?

Oh, and did I mention the 17 million guns or whatever Randy Pitchford said? Yeah, I’m positive that wasn’t a lie: I have all four characters leveling, and the only guns I’ve seen twice have been boss loot. There are a lot of effects your guns can have: you can have shotguns that can deal electric damage, machine guns that fire acid, not to mention rocket launchers!!! But the game’s main aspect is not just the ridiculous amount of guns. They’re just there to pad the way through this 30+ hour story.

Borderlands is structured in a somewhat linear way, yet it’s a huge world, with a lot of interesting characters and moments that will have you talking about them in one of those water cooler situations. Or in my case around a bottle of vodka on a Saturday night.

Now it’s rare for me to always want to play a game no matter what I’m doing, but I found myself at work, playing World of Warcraft, or watching a film and not even thinking about that stuff. All I had on my mind was Borderlands. The last game to do this was Age of Conan. Yeah, it’s been a while.

Sadly, there’s a sort of killer in the game: the story. It isn’t that the story isn’t good, it’s that it’s not amazing like every other aspect of the game. Everything else is so polished I guess something had to suffer. It’s a lot like playing an MMO. I’ll get a quest, I don’t read anything, I just go and do it, mostly because there’s a 99% chance it wants me to kill something and get loot. The main story is scattered around here and there, but you won’t really know it or care for it. You’re on Pandora, a planet at the edge of the galaxy, you’re looking for some Vault that has weapons and riches–or so they say–what’s in there? Play the game and figure it out… go! THAT’S IT! Yeah, not the best, but whatever.

The story won’t matter, and you wont even care because the best part of this game is co-op. We know all the rage these days is to be able to play with your friends, and this game has you covered! At any time you can invite friends into your game, and the AI and monsters scale to all of you so it does get harder, but you also get more XP, more things to kill, and better LOOT! You can do the whole game with three friends, but you all need to be around same level (or two levels up or down from one another) to maximize proficiency without the low-level player in your group getting stomped.

If you go in there and coordinate your attacks you’ll have a blast. If you aren’t lucky enough to have friends, you can still play single-player all the way through. And lets face it, you’re on PC so if you’re like me your only friends are WoW players who pretend to be chicks to get free items anyway (guilty!) .

The biggest gripe people seem to have is the graphics and visual presentation. Remembering back when this game was announced I had no interest in it. It looked like a Fallout 3 clone. Yeah I said it. And people, I’m telling you I love Fallout 3 but it’s not the Best Game Ever as some claim. Borderlands is presented in an almost cell-shaded look–I don’t know how to classify it but it’s damn sexy. The way the filtering and lighting works is awesome and it really brings the world to life. Even though most of the world is destroyed and full of junk it still looks good.

Borderlands really hit the spot I’ve been waiting for: a huge world, nice visuals, awesome co-op, easy to play, and FUN! That’s the core word, Borderlands is fun! You can die over ten times on the same thing and it’s still fun.

I could go into details on some of the boring inventory management because there really is a lot of loot to deal with, but that’s one very small gripe, and by the time you hit level 30 you’ll have plenty of space money and all the guns you prefer. Rating this game is hard. Not because I’m having trouble with giving it a amazing score, but because even a game like Metal Gear Solid 4 has gripes. This one has them too, but they’re minor.

So let me just cut to the score and give it 4.7/5 Pastries. Borderlands is a prime example of how to take a simple concept like shoot-kill-loot and make it amazing! If you get a chance to pick up this game now or when it’s cheaper do yourself a favor and do it: you won’t regret it. Gearbox has done an amazing job and deserves the money.

What are your gamer numbers?

I was going to make a negative and/or sarcastic reply to Cake-Pie’s Post here, but a counter-article seems more constructive. Game companies shouldn’t waste time trying to cater to gamer types and just focus on making a good game instead. Like Cake-Pie said: “They own a lot of the same games the rest of us buy.” When a game is being made, you have three pint glasses: the first is for graphics, the second gameplay, and the third is depth. And game developers only use 22-30 ounces of beer to fill them up. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Moving on to the Bars of Destiny! To keep things simple let’s think of gamers as two slider bars, each with a scale from 1 to 10. To do this, we identify the two things that are most important to all gamers and games in general. If we do this right, we can use this scale to review games, as well as the people playing them. Ever wonder what kind of gamer those reviewers are before reading their review? It matters.

Let’s get down to business.

Slider 1: Personal immersion and investment level: This slider indicates how much of yourself you put into gaming. Are you playing the game, or is the game playing you? You’ll find things like controller throwing, swearing, adrenaline rushes, peerless concentration, and high blood pressure the higher you go in this scale.

People with Tens in this category will become the game. Quickly breaking the game down to what needs to be done, and then how best to do it. You will WANT to destroy anything in your way; and if you mess up, die, fall down that pit, or hit the wrong button, say goodbye to a tiny peace of your soul. You will have your own style to playing and assimilating with games, and your personality will be evident in your gameplay.

Games with no immersion qualities by virtue of design will only hold a Ten’s attention if there’s something to figure out or accomplish. Without that, the game must rely on difficulty to get you “immersed by retrying.” This forces you to figure out why the game is so hard, causing you to really focus on being–and beating the game–down to its coding if you have to, because you are determined to win. Ghosts and Goblins has no story keeping you going, just infinite lances and infinite continues. If you’ve played it, you understand the retry immersion from level 3.5. In order to see level 4, the game and your soul must be one, or you’ll just give up or get bored. This kind of investment means you spend lots of time really thinking about the game when you’re not playing it. Tearing your attention away from a game you’re attached to takes a lot of will. If you’re a Ten, you’re probably trying to figure something out in a game right now.

Now, let’s look at how Ones define this category. Games are flashy pictures on your TV. You can pick one up, enjoy it, and turn it off without a second thought. You might even enjoy the story more than someone who is a Ten. You’re watching the cut-scene for its cinematic value. Plus, it acts as a nice break from having to push buttons on the controller and move around in-game. Or it’s just a good time to put down the controller and pick up a beer.

Ones like a nice pace and difficulty curve that allows you to just pick up the game and play it. You’re turned off by games with somewhat complicated controls or reactionary moves that take memorizing. In your type of game, either you figure it out, or you can sit around and grind until it’s not so hard anymore. Because you’re playing the game to relax, it doesn’t bother you if you’re mindlessly killing the same monster for an hour. By the time you come back to the game, you can still have that hour’s fun again anyway. You aren’t going to be living and breathing the game, nor would you want to.

Reviewing:

If you wanted to use The Bars of Destiny as a reviewing scale, you just have to figure out how much the game can take hold of you. Does it suck you in, or does it just suck. Some characteristics to consider as you’re thinking of what’s important to this scale are:

• Sound Dynamics: Whether it’s sweet Mega Man-like techno music, or important positional audio like SOCOM, sound is a major key to immersion.

• Total Epicness: Do you like huge boss monsters, seemingly unstoppable forces, or throwing cars at things? Me too! There’s nothing like getting into a game because of its total epicness.

• Direct Involvement: Gold story, green story, who gives a shit? Is your character there just to complete the game, or do you want to use your character to complete the game? Think Devil May Cry 3 cut-scenes, nobody knows what the story is, but you just saw some dude throw a sword off a building then run down the side to catch up to it, meanwhile shooting a shit load of things, and that dude is YOU… sign me up!

Slider 2: Gaming depth, detail and demands: To be continued….