hell hath no fury like a FPRPG
I know borderlands has been out for a long time and im a little late in the review department but I started playing this game again and wanna explain why this is probably one of the best games to combine first person shooter elements with RPG elements and why it works wonderfully.
Story: First thing im gonna hit on is the story with this game... it's probably the most ill conceived story i have ever played through it feels like they took "fallout 3" story and reversed it, instead of you starting in a vault and going out into the world you start in the world and look for a vault, the story is the one aspect of this game that just says we didn't really set out to change the world with this story. Although the story is pretty unimaginative it does have this sense of urgency like you really wanna know what is in this vault that makes it so worth while... "why am i getting the crap kicked out of me... please let it be worth it... what??? an alien? really that's what i went through all this trouble for?" all together i can say that this was the one part of the game they could have spent a little more time on because it left me with an empty feeling inside.
Gameplay: how does a First-person-Role-playing-game work well to put it bluntly it works amazing, never have i played a first person shooter that made me feel like there was more to killing someone than with borderlands, the fun in this game is killing people and knowing that by killing them you will get stronger at the same time if you suck at first person shooters this game will punish you like you could not believe. half the frustration i had when i first started playing this game was i hadn't played a FPS since halo 3 came out, and here i find myself trying to re-learn the controls and getting my ass handed to me left and right... "it's like oh here you go, you had no use for it anyway im just helping you out with that one".
Characters: I have played through the game with 3 of the 4 characters, the "soldier" is great for playing the game by yourself because once you have his turret and level it up, your almost guaranteed to be almost to survive an encounter with a massive amount of enemy units and if need be level up while running away from a fight cause your turret can do a lot of nasty damage for you. The "siren" is fun to play through if you wanna be a run and gunner, she is fast and can almost always get away from a large amount of enemies, however i would not recommend playing through the game by yourself with her, she is probably the weakest character in the game at the initial level once you have leveled her up enough she is pretty good. and the last character i played through as was "the berserker" who is kinda of in between the soldier and the siren in the sense that he's slow but once you get his berserk ability started his fists do the same amount of damage if not more than a gun, he can be fun to go through the game with and once you've leveled up his berserk ability with the right combo he is almost unstoppable. The only character i haven't played through with yet is "the hunter" playing through the game with my brother who did play as "the hunter" i can say that if you level him up he is the cheapest character in the game, his bloodwing ability gives him a bird? of some kind that will kill all enemies without you having to fight at all, and it doesn't take a lot to level up this character.
weapons: the one thing they said with borderlands was that you would have a buttload of guns to choose from, what they didn't tell anyone is how hard it is to get good weapons in this game, how much damage the guns do depends on the level of the character your playing while at the same time you can find guns that allow for continuous damage once you have hit the enemy with a single shot, which is great for dealing with a lot of enemies in one area. The amount of guns in the game and wanting to get some of the better guns throughout the game make this well worth playing through a few times.
Difficulty: like i said earlier the level of difficulty is pretty high if you suck at first person shooters, they also added that if you play with more people the level of difficulty is much higher, based on what level you are to the bad guys can also make a difference in difficulty.
overall: My overall feelings on borderlands are that it is a fun game to play through with friends, due to playing with friends this game can get pretty hard, but it also helps level you up quicker resulting in the game being easier. I've played through this game about 5 times because of the different guns, the add on content that was available, wanting to level my guy up as high as i can, story wise it's not the greatest but it's got that sense of urgency the first time through you wanna know what's in the vault. this game is well worth $60 dollars and it has some pretty fun replay value with wanting to get different weapons and level up your character. Well worth playing.
