Borderlands Preview

I've read on more than one forum that if Diablo, L4D, and Fallout 3 had a baby it would be Borderlands. Borderlands is a new animal from Gearbox and 2k Games which touts itself as a hybrid of FPS and RPG gameplay, called RPS (Role Playing Shooter). It's already out on the consoles and is releasing on Monday, October 26th for PC. However, since this game looks sooooo F'ing cool I though I'd give everyone the benefit of my research thus far. First, the disclaimer. I have NOT played this game, which should be obvious enough since I'm a die hard PC gamer and the game has yet to be released on my platform of choice. So don't blame me if you drop down your 50 smackers and it sucks. I'll be right there with you since I plan on picking up this title next week. Second, I likely won't get much gameplay at first because of work/school constraints, but I do plan on writing a full review after a reasonable amount of exposure. That being said, if anyone else is down with the Borderlands band wagon and wishes to share a review, by all means PLEASE DO! This forum needs a little love. The more opinions the merrier.

At it's core, Borderlands appears to be a 4 player, class based, co-op shooter with light RPG elements. The premise is that you are a "fortune hunter" on an alien world called "Pandora" looking to discover and loot some ancient and powerful alien tech for profit. If that sounds pretty standard, well, that's because it is (I did say "light" RPG elements right?).

Most of the action, however, focuses on the FPS side of things so skill actually matters in this game, unlike WoW or Fallout 3 where damage is all background dice rolls. I get the impression that the world will be somewhat sandbox in design, at least in places, to allow for vehicle combat (everything they show in the vids is ground based btw).

It has a similar sort of post-apocalyptic, sci-fi look like Fallout 3 but with a little less realism and more stylization, yet far more realistic than World of Cartooncraft. The classes look fairly unique and each has about 22 skills available for customization. You have your basic tank/melee, sinper/hunter, soldier/medic, and stealth/rogue character types available. Each class has three different skill tracks so once you max out at level 50 your build is somewhat unique.

There are quests, random drops, item rarity, crafting, vehicle and weapon customization, money, item vendors, npcs, giant freaking monsters (like a 5 story building with legs), tons of creepy crawlers, human enemies, and most importantly getting your level up! The nice thing about this game is that it appears you can enjoy it on any level, instead of spending countless hours grinding away just for the privilege of seeing the endgame. Once you start a game, players can join and leave without messing with your session, kind of like Diablo 2 when played over Battle.net.

Since co-op play is limited to 4 players we'll probably never see this game at a LAN Party. However, if you like RPG and FPS, and your free time is at a premium like yours truly, then perhaps Borderlands will offer enough of both to keep you happy. Enjoy!

http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/

I have this game for the 360 and love it so far only level 24 so far give an update once i have some more time to play it