Obscured View

Borderlands is a great excuse to get you and 3 other friends online and shoot stuff until it stops moving.

Here’s a few realities of the game:

1. This is a co-op game first and foremost.  Play split screen at the least, but for maximum insanity, play with 3 other players on-line.
2. Ignore the story completely.  It makes no sense.  Once you reach the end and know what’s going on, it makes even less.  I was genuinely hoping for an option to turn it off on second play-through.  That’s how meaningless it is.
3. You will use a sniper rifle, no matter what class you play.  Just accept that and have one on you.
4. The game’s last few levels are tedious.  The enemies you fight in those levels are also tedious.  Have an electric and an corrosive weapon with you to make it a bit easier.
5. The game title sequence and character intros are great, and then… they don’t do anything with them.
6. If you play the Tank or the Soldier, you’ll get tired of their dialogue really fast.  They’re both kinda annoying.
7. The comparison UI is about one iteration away from being incredibly useful.  As is, it’s annoying at times, especially when dealing with shops.
8. The decision to not have characters vacuum-up money is mystifying.  It’s shared with all players automatically, yet I have to hit a button to pick it up.  Why?  I can hear the argument that it’s inconsistent to the rest of the “hit X to pick up” UI standard, but it’s also inconvenient to the player to make them tediously pick up automatically shared funds.  Let players make decisions that impact the game, not ones that don’t.
9. Holding down X is the concession to the “hit X” UI, which allows batch-grabbing stuff in view around you (view though, not radial — again, why?) but can lead to some accidental weapon and outfit mishaps when you hold X down just a bit too long for the game’s taste.  Suddenly instead of wielding your auto-recharging room-killing explosive shooting shotgun, you’re firing a level 2 pistol at a level 30 monster.  Yeah, not fun.
10. I really wish there was more than 2 vehicles in the game, or at the least they became more powerful as you progressed.  My sniper rifle does more damage than the rocket launcher turret on the car.  WTF?
11. Not being able to bring a higher character into a lower character’s game is disappointing.  Does it really matter if you want to power-level a friend?

I liked Borderlands, but it suffers from the same thing that happened in Crackdown: you’re ultimately too powerful for the enemies you’re facing.  There’s only one enemy in Borderlands that can drop a turret like the soldier class can, but none of them can phasewalk, have some crazy pet they can throw at you, or go enraged and charge around punching things.  You’re too unique in this world, and that makes the later fights in the game boring.  They just throw more numbers of things with greater health at you rather than add new dynamics of enemy behavior.

I’m sure the game did well enough in sales to spawn more (DLC yep, sequel maybe?) adventures in that universe, so maybe next time around they’ll add more mission diversity (escorts, assassination, gauntlets, etc.) and more unique dynamics to the enemies… or at least some more interesting boss battles.  Most bosses are just normal enemy types with unique guns and/or lots of health.

If there was ever a game that lives up to the idea that it’s not the goal that’s important, it’s the journey to get there, it’s this game.  Borderlands lives and thrives in the moments of fun you have with friends along the way, not about the credit roll at the end.

It’s worth the $60 if you have at least one other friend to play with.