Review : Borderlands

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 03 November 2009 10:15

Entertainment

This is the game that has kept me from reviewing Uncharted 2.  How can so much tongue in cheek cartoon violence be so much fun?  Well, I guess it is just because it is tongue-in-cheek cartoon violence wrapped up in a co-op first person shooter.


Borderlands went through a number of facelifts before arriving on store shelves late last month.  The resultant presentation is a refreshing take on the First Person Shooter model that has increasingly pushed for a realistic look in most franchises.

Borderlands
	Developer	Gearbox Software
	Publisher	2K Games
	Rating	MA 15+
PC, Xbox 360, Reviewed on PS3

Developer Gearbox Software themselves has pushed the realism line with the excellent Brothers In Arms WWII games, but in Borderlands the style is a merging of realism and cell-shaded cartoon.  And it is a style that befits the setting and game-play to come.

And don’t think because the presentation is cartoony and initially very light hearted that this isn’t a game for grown-ups.  In Australia, being able to inflict post mortem damage upon a foe is a big no-no, but apparently if you do it under a more artistic guise, all is good garnering the game a MA15+ classification instead of the dreaded “unclassifiable” that leads to a ban.  For that very reason alone I applaud the style shifts this title has undergone during development, it made it past the classification board.

So what is Borderlands?  The simplest description is that it is a hybrid First Person Shooter (FPS) and Role Play Game (RPG).  Set on the outlaw world of Pandora, players take the role of one of four warrior types in search of a mythical hoard of alien technology, known as the Vault.

The gold-rush western feel to the game is backed by the aforementioned visuals, for the most part Pandora is a desert world of rocky mesa’s or underground caverns, scattered towns of corrugated iron and rusted pylons house bandits or savage creatures to deal with.

Starting out in the town of Fyrestone, the soldier, the sniper, the berserker or the siren will meet a claptrap (the R2D2 of Borderlands) and Dr Zed, the local medico.  Here the jobs begin, as does Borderlands wicked sense of humour.

“I may not have a fancy medical degree, but if you are injured you will want me around” says the blood spattered Dr Zed in a voice bordering on the maniacal. 

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