Borderlands Review - Before the series got irritating.

By Sam Coles:

I remember when the original Borderlands first came out back in 2009, it almost came out of nowhere because at the time I didn’t really follow any gaming press and Youtube was in its infancy. What we got was a unique looter shooter, with a fun story and a cell shaded art style that has aged well as it does not shoot for realism, the humour has aged well too compared to the other two in the series as it does not relay on irritating pop-culture references.

The story of Borderlands is about a ragtag team of people, called Vault Hunters they are after the titular object as they believe that it holds a great treasure, so they saddle up on a bus and get dropped off in the middle of nowhere in a bandit riddled town. You meet a robot called Claptrap and he tasks you with clearing the bandit presence out of town, with the promise of helping you. The story is really funny and this was before the series got very irritating with the sequels due to them relaying on pop-culture references, which have aged the games terribly.

The gameplay is a first person shooter mixed with open world elements, but it’s not one fluid open world, but instead the game is split up into several different open ended hubs for you to explore and kill enemies. The game identifies itself as a “looter shooter”, what this means is that you go around shooting enemies and collect loot, this can range from new shield power ups and exotic weapons, this is another selling point of the game. The game claims that it has millions of guns with different variations, this is an over exaggeration, but there is a wide selection of guns to use. The guns aren’t your standard pistols, shotguns and machine guns, as they have different effects, these can range from shooting acid to corrode through armour, or incendiary rounds to set your enemies on fire. The different effects keep firefights fresh, as you have to change up your tactics for each encounter as you find new and more challenging enemies.

Each character has a special attack which charges up over time, Roland the soldier can deploy a turret, Brick can go into a berserker mode and punch people’s heads, Litith can phase walk and Mordeca can deploy Bloodwing a bird like creature that can destroy enemies. Each character is unique and fun to use, who also specialise in specific weapons, such as Roland being an expert with assault rifles as he is a soldiers. The gameplay in general is smooth and tight, I played this on the PlayStation 3 which I usually have issues with playing first person shooters on that console, due to my distaste for the Dualshock 3 with its flimsy triggers.

The graphics are beautiful and have aged very well due to it using a cell shaded art style, with fun and creative character and enemy design with exaggerated expressions, with beautiful and wide open and landscapes. The only real issue I had with the presentation is that it had major pop in issues, I know this is prevalent on the console versions of the game, it happens when you first load the game and it has a texture streaming problem for a few seconds. Another issue is that the game has framerate issues, it stutters during some of the more busy encounters, dropping around 20 frames per second.

Borderlands is a fantastic game, this was a time when the series did not relay on irritating pop culture references which age about as well as an open jar of hummus in a fridge. It has fun gameplay and humour that made me chuckle a few times throughout my playthrough, it’s super cheap I picked up my PS3 copy for £2, so you are getting more than your money’s worth.