WeView Verdict: Borderlands

I’ll be honest here, I never really followed Borderlands that much. I knew it would certainly get some interest from the community, but I didn’t realise just quite how much love it would get with this WeView. In fact I think it might be the most dominant title we’ve had so far.

Given my ignorance of the game, there was only one choice for the first comment on the game. This comes from spooferbarnabas, who started off by talking about the game’s underrated nature, something that seemed oddly relevant to my view.

In my opinion Borderlands is one of the most underrated games of this generation! It has an incredible and distinctive art style, a lengthy and humorous campaign, a great co-op system (except issues with voice chat) and has been brilliantly supported with top quality DLC.

I’ve played it to such an extent i have a character who’s fully maxed out level wise at level 69 (and almost complete gun proficiencies too) with over 2 billion xp, and i’ve completed the game with about three characters. Co-op means it rarely gets boring and is always a good laugh so i can see myself playing through it again with people in the near future as well.

So certainly sounding good so far, any time you complete a game three times you know it’s more than just a little special. Once or twice perhaps, but when you get up to a third or fourth time it’s safe to say that it’s not just another game.

Next, let’s turn the most depressing of creatures, Sad Panda. For someone so sad, Panda certainly seemed quite happy with the game, commenting  about the mix of elements in  the gameplay.

For me Borderlands got the balance just right.

It’s got enough of an RPG element to stop it from being just another shooter, whilst making sure not to bog you down in too many stats and menu’s so that it slows the pace of the game.

Personally I really dislike getting bogged down in the stats side of RPGs, particularly as I never quite know where to invest points. It’s so difficult to pick what’s the right strategy for the rest of the game, where you want to go for the rest of the game.

Let’s stay with the RPG elements for a moment, turning to what Guyers94 had to say about them. Well not just that, they also have something say about just how good the game is. Oh, and Cage the Elephant.

For me this is one of the finest games in the PS3’s catalogue, the missions are varied, the characters are entertaining (TK being a personal favourite) and the constant stream of new weapons, enemies and locations keep the game feeling fresh throughout. This was further helped by excellent DLC which makes the GOTY version a great buy for newcomers. I was initially worried by the RPG elements as I’m not a big fan but to me the characters and weapons were enough to keep me thoroughly entertained through my several playthroughs of it. Even those skags never felt like a grind!

Cage The Elephant providing a brilliant theme song also helped.

Finally, I don’t normally like to end on a down not but it’s been a bit of a love fest for Borderlands so far. It doesn’t seem all that fair to let it get away completely unscathed, so time for hazelam to get critical.

The only negative points were that some of the scenery almost seemed designed to catch you when you’re backing away from enemies, the bushes especially seem to have a really long reach. And the balance for single player could have done with a tweak, I would often get swarmed by overwhelming numbers of enemies, those damn skags run in packs of a dozen at least i’d guess.

Now, as per usual, onto the verdict. As I said this was a fairly overwhelming verdict this week. Of fourteen opinions there was one vote for Avoid It and a frankly ridiculous thirteen for Buy It. So there you have it, if you haven’t played Borderlands it might be time to pick it up. Even I might have a go.