Topic: Borderlands

[Dirk Temporo]

LOOKS AMAZING!

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/957207/borderlands/videos/borderlands_gpdemo_071608.html

Over 650,000 different weapons. Just look at him tossing all those weapons out there.

[Caliban]

Yeah that demo was incredible in regards to the number of weapons. Isn't it a 2009 title?

[Morari]

So it's a FPS clone of Diablo set in a sci-fi environment? Interesting...

[Dirk Temporo]

So it's a FPS clone of Diablo set in a sci-fi environment?

Basically. LOOK AT ALL THOSE GUNS

[Morari]

Reminds me of my fallout shelter!

[Smakian]

I'm really looking forward to the open terrain and vehicle action, personally. Could be my next big co-op game if it delivers.

[ShyGuy]

Wasteland bump!

So I spent some time with this game on the PS3 last night and I didn't think it was too bad in split screen coop. The graphics have a nice style and the shooting combat was decent. The thousands of gun types seemed pointless to me, as they all seemed similar.

The fact that I was playing coop probably made a huge difference in my enjoyment level. The story, characters and missions are all spread pretty thin and it doesn't seem like much content for the size of the game. I bet it would be a real chore to play single player.

[KDR_11k]

It is. We call it Boringlands. My experience mirrors the Zero Punctuation review very closely.

[kraken613]

I got it on sale on Steam and am really enjoying it.

[Dirk Temporo]

It is. We call it Boringlands. My experience mirrors the Zero Punctuation review very closely.

Oh, so your problem is "Bawwww I have no friends" just like Yahtzee every single time he reviews any game that was meant to be played with other people?

"But.. but... I shouldn't have to play multiplayer. Single-player should be enough."

No, no it shouldn't. Not when the game is designed for co-op. That's like playing L4D single-player only and then saying it sucks. If you're not playing Versus, you're not playing L4D.

[ShyGuy]

I wish these game makers that deliver gimped single player experiences would have the guts to cut out the single player option entirely Instead of misleading consumers. Why are you making your game suck by adding single player? Is it because you can't design a game play experience that scales well?

Resident Evil 5, Borderlands, I'm looking at you.

[KDR_11k]

Left 4 Dead made the point that it's coop by having 3 bots with you in singleplayer. Boringlands doesn't and it throws you quite a lot of text that you wouldn't get an opportunity to read in MP because people will just skip it and run to the next objective. It doesn't feel like a coop game either because the enemies aren't even enough to challenge one player, let alone four. You can specialize but in the end everybody can wield every gun if necessary and you don't need coop to get weapons for every situation, I had a set for everything all by myself. All a coop partner would do is steal my kills since my character would regenerate a ton of health when killing enemies.

I actually got Boringlands in a 4 pack with three other people but two of them quit the game before we even got a 4 player coop match together because it bored them so much. If you play with two people coop is even more boring than singleplayer because it strips the last bit of difficulty from the game. It's a fucking 40 hour game, who has the schedule coordination to play all of that with a fixed set of friends?

[ShyGuy]

See, that is the one thing I do like about Left4Dead, is that each campaign is only an hour or two. It's easy to play through in coop. If I tried to play through a full size game coop it would take about 20 weekends.

[Ymeegod]

Yeah, I was so-so lukewarm about BL too.  Played 1/2 of it with the same damn rifle I found near the begining of the game (think it was 1.4X scope, 83%ac, 80 damage per shot, 110ammo clip, and a faster rate of fire than normal).  Finished the last boss with just two clips :0. 

What I didn't like was the skill tree.  Most of the stuff just boosted one stat or two but there wasn't any epics spells or talents.  Whoopie one special for each class.  Can't even come close to being compared to Diablo's 2 tech tree.

[KDR_11k]

Even worse there was a previous game that combined Diablo and FPS, Hellgate London. It may not have been that great of a game but at least it had more weapon variety than Borderlands and the skill tree was a full blown Diablo-style tree with dozens of active and passive abilities.

[ShyGuy]

I played some more of this tonight. My cousin really likes it. I'm suffering from to many allergies right now to care.

[Enner]

I wonder what it says about me that most of my Borderlands time is spent in single-player and that I have four characters with two of them having finished the first playthrough. Probably the same thing when I admit to enjoying Dynasty Warriors and its ilk on occasion: repetition tolerance!

I will admit that there is a terrible lack of variety in loot and skills in Borderlands. In an article about Randy Pitchford's GDC presentation, Borderlands was to be a shooter first and a loot game second. Add that the game is mostly new territory for Gearbox and that is why the result has some of the worst that can happen to either genres. Despite the game's major shortcomings, the novelty still holds up for me and I find it a nice time waster to play while having a podcast playing in the background. Compared to Diablo 2, Torchlight, and what I've heard and seen of Hellgate: London, I value extremely the more direct connection to the control of your character. I gladly suffer through the lack of variety for the feeling of shooting a gun being a result of clicking the left mouse button rather than being some dice roll brought by hitting a hot key.

I eagerly wait for sequel that adds much needed variety and either streamlines/cuts the unnecessary story or make an interesting one.

[KDR_11k]

The thing is the shooter aspect of BL is lacking, the Mad Moxxi DLC has no loot/experience stuff and people hated it because it turned out that without the loot game aspect the gameplay is too boring. I don't get motivated by loot that merely boosts values (I want the gameplay to change with loot) so the loot part wasn't effective for motivating me and what others saw in Mad Moxxi I saw in the entire game.

BTW, shooting in Hellgate wasn't automated either but the variety in weapons made the game play somewhat differently depending on what gear you used. There was more variety than just "more damage, larger clip and faster shooting" since the base weapons were designed by hand instead of an algorithm and it used Diablo-style attributes that then add onto the weapon's abilities (could go from plain old damage bonuses to spell effects and life stealing). You could also upgrade the weapons in multiple ways so when you found one that behaved in a way you really liked you could keep it around much longer instead of ditching it at the first sign of higher damage output (I kept my first rocket launcher almost through the entire game because I could keep upgrading it and there just wasn't anything else that could replace it 1:1).

[Enner]

I think the Mad Moxxi pack had other problems in that it was an excruciatingly long and dull combat slog in the same environment. Which is something you can apply to the whole game, if I'm to be honest. I don't know much about Mad Moxxi though since I've only bought the Zombie Island so far which is a novelty shooting gallery.

I wish I knew more about Hellgate to draw a better comparison. Alas, I never got around to playing it. I do hope that in the next Borderlands there are more weapon abilities beyond infinite bullets and shooting weirdly and a weapon upgrade system. In fact, I would like that they do away with looting guns all together and just let you mix and match upgrades like in a mech game.