Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 03 November 2009 11:15
Entertainment
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The story is sparse in Borderlands, told with a minimum of cut-scenes and mostly driven by mission boards and recorded info picked up from time to time.
It is however a large game, the many side missions will keep you busy, blasting the local wild life, raiding bandit hideouts, gathering crystals or removing rival Pandorian’s. Experience will see players levelling up as per any good RPG, and though it is not deep, the Borderlands player development system forces players to specialise in crafting a character using limited skill points.
Furthermore, each of the player classes has their own special skill, unlocked when they reach level 5. So for example, the right bumper will trigger Bricks’ Berzerker skill turning him, for a short time into an unstoppable melee machine. Later, these skills can be enhanced by equipping upgrades.
Which leads us to talk about a screen you will spend much of your Borderlands time in, the inventory screen. Here players will equip shields, grenade types and most importantly, weapons. Initially two weapons can be equipped, with extra hot swappable slots opening up later.
Likewise the backpack can carry a limited amount of equipment, with the capacity increasing in time. Why gearbox chose to limit hot swap slots initially is a bit baffling and annoying. Play can be paused, with guns equipped and un-equipped at any time, disrupting the flow of the game that could have been kept simply by starting the game with four hot-swap slots.
Like a game such as Diablo, loot is dropped by enemies (both human and creatures). Gearbox Software utilise a randomised loot generation system that results in hundreds of thousands of weapons. Each weapon has a magazine size, damage, fire rate, accuracy, and reload rating as well as other attributes such as fire, electrostatic or corrosive damage.
The visual results of some of this firepower is both impressive and disturbing as bandits dissolve, burn or simply pop in front of your eyes.
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