Borderlands, a hands on review

CptStern

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from someone on the internets

Okay Borderlands:
- Only played for about 1-2 hours. SO take all my comments with a grain of salt. You can't get a real good feel for a game like Borderlands in that amount of time. That said, all I've been thinking about is getting to play Borderlands again, which must mean it's awesome. I played on a xbox360. There was only one pc setup in the testing room, and like 10 or so xbox360's, no PS3's.

- The sounds and feel of the guns are really well done. The first gun I used felt awesome.

- Graphics = really nice. Framerate is solid on the xbox360.

- The game is very much a shooter. You run around and shoot stuff, gain xp, find loot. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat.

- The story elements from what was shown, are going to be very simple quests. Kill x amount of these guys. Or kill this guy. Or take this to this guy. Or get this from here and put it there. The game is about Shooting/Looting not complex dialogs paths. In addition, I think they made the story simple so that it would work well with co-op, but that is just my guess.

- I didn't get to drive any Vehicles. I did see bad guys driving them around.

- The AI is okay. I had to use cover to stay alive. Using cover means running behind things, or crouching behind things. works pretty well. No blind fire :( It was sad to see some enemies just standing out on the open taking fire and not doing anything about it while other enemies used cover. Didn't seem like the human style bad guys used group tactics, but again I'd need more play time to be sure. Seemed like bad guys sometimes took cover, maybe it had to do with the bad guy type? Like shooter or brawler. Not sure.

- I got to play a lv25 char for co-op with 3 other people on the lan. Lots of fun. BUT some of the bad guys were just uber'd humans that seemed to take endless amounts of damage and then just fall down. Not sure if the endgame will be like this setup they had for us, or different, hopefully there's some depth there that I was missing. I liked playing the single player portion at the beginning much more. Maybe I didn't spend my character points in the best fashion. I was playing the tank guy, and tried to power up his punch and damage resistance. But I still died a lot rushing and punching people out. BUT that tactic did work well when the bad guys where all focused on shooting my teammates, I could then kinda flank/sneak up on the badguys form the side/back and punch them. So i guess there is some depth to the co-op play. Might be a lot more fun if you know the people you are playing with better.

- Did I say the sound is awesome? It is.

- Fought some of the larger creatures, they were pretty cool. You had to get someone around the back of them to do real damage. Again in a team play environment this meant some people had to distract the big guys while other players went around back to kill them. The elemental attacks of these creatures was sweetass and made you think twice about rushing them.

- The game is not one large open world from what was shown. Looks like itâ??s areas connected with â??doorsâ?. So there are load screens. Iâ??m not sure if that is what itâ??s like through the entire game. But Iâ??m pretty sure itâ??s not GTA/Crackdown open world style. The areas we played in were pretty large (think other ut3 engine based games), and Iâ??m guessing there maybe huge driving areas a some point, but again Iâ??m pretty sure youâ??ll be seeing loading screens as you change areas. Itâ??s possible that for the demo they had us in a controlled environment, so we couldnâ??t get out and see stuff we werenâ??t supposed to.


sounds like it's more fun in co-op. damn I might have to get this on xbox
 
I am going to be all over Borderlands. Carefree chatting on comms while shooting the shit out of things. We should have had Diablo with guns years ago.
 
I am going to be all over Borderlands. Carefree chatting on comms while shooting the shit out of things. We should have had Diablo with guns years ago.

We did, it's called Hellgate: London.;)
 
We did, it's called Hellgate: London.;)

Well yeah but Hellgate had too many problems and the gameplay wasn't all that fun. The halloween content patch killed it for a lot of people as I remember.
 
All the reports of Hellgate being crap put me off. I loved the preimise.
 
Am I the only one who thinks this is beginning to sound awful?
 
We did, it's called Hellgate: London.;)
Hellgate: London wasn't "Diablo with guns" so much as $50 of digital suck. Seriously the worst gaming purchase I've ever made, just barely beating out Vanguard and Perfect Dark Zero.
 
Why? Brainless coop shooter with loot, what's not to like?

I just have a feeling this will be another game with a lot of hype in the beginning, but the following month after release everyone will talk about how disappointing it was.


I'm a story kind of person, so hearing it will have almost zero story is disappointing, however I can let that slip if the gameplay is amazing, and from what I've seen and read it sounds very boring.
Aside from the art direction, it looks like this game will ultimately be very underwhelming.
 
I might get it eventually, but for whatever reason Rage sounds like it might be more up my alley and I never thought I would say that.
 
I just have a feeling this will be another game with a lot of hype in the beginning, but the following month after release everyone will talk about how disappointing it was.
Isn't that how you felt about Protobutt and you ended up liking it?
 
Original source, and this quote was left out:

- The didn't really answer the Steam availability question, seems like the PC version will be available via some electronic download, but Gearbox wasn't ready to discuss that.

Can't wait for this game personally. I had high hopes for Hellgate but the gameplay in the demo felt very lame to me. If Borderlands is a proper shooter like the guy in the OP says (and what seems logical since Gearbox knows a thing or two about shooters) with co-op gameplay and hawt lootz á la Diablo / WoW, then Borderlands could be my GOTY2009.


EDIT Another preview.
 
Isn't that how you felt about Protobutt and you ended up liking it?

Prototype is enjoyable and fun about halfway through, but it has a shit ton of problems with it. By the end of the game it's a choir.
 
Original source, and this quote was left out:

I took my quote from Shacknews chat. he works for shacknews and Steve Gibson works for Gearbox, Steve's also the founder of shacknews



Can't wait for this game personally. I had high hopes for Hellgate but the gameplay in the demo felt very lame to me. If Borderlands is a proper shooter like the guy in the OP says (and what seems logical since Gearbox knows a thing or two about shooters) with co-op gameplay and hawt lootz á la Diablo / WoW, then Borderlands could be my GOTY2009.

it seems pretty mindless and for a change I dont really care because it sounds like fun ..also co-op seals the deal
 
I want to hear more information about the actual loot itself. I know there are shitloads of guns, but what about other items? Is there armor, boots, gloves, helmets etc? Are there more rare unique loot that only the hard enemies drop?

If the loot system is like Diablo 2 then this game has WIN written all over it.
 
I took my quote from Shacknews chat. he works for shacknews and Steve Gibson works for Gearbox, Steve's also the founder of shacknews

I posted the link because the dude answers some questions further on that thread and a link to his Flickr with pics from the event.
 
ya, I mean no. I mean I posted that to clarify that I hadnt seen the other part of the quote. it wasnt included in the shacknews chat. an your link also had other comments and stuff
 
vicky_pollard_398833a.jpg
 
co-op shoot'em up. judging from the videos on youtube...meh, look so not special. we'll see
 
"Loot" ruins games for me. Pretty uninterested in the game after this thread.
 
Personally I'm more hyped for RAGE than I am for this.
 
O/T: What's with people not using capitalisation any more? Are you lazy or something?
 
Does the game have any value for those that aren't big fans of online multiplayer/co-op though?

I have a lot of people on XBL, but due to time constraints etc, I usually have a very hard time organizing a proper co-op session, even in popular games like Halo 3.
 
Does the game have any value for those that aren't big fans of online multiplayer/co-op though?

I have a lot of people on XBL, but due to time constraints etc, I usually have a very hard time organizing a proper co-op session, even in popular games like Halo 3.

All the previews I have read so far say that the game plays just as well as a singleplayer game as co-op.
 
[screenshots]

Interest gained. But I'll need a demo and some reviews first.

I'd probably only play it single player, so that's going to be important.
 
Do you have to have ai buddies in single player? I hate that.

How come no co-op, Victim? It'll be awesome taking down some big beasties with a friend or two. Plus you get to show off your fat loot :)
 
Do you have to have ai buddies in single player? I hate that.

How come no co-op, Victim? It'll be awesome taking down some big beasties with a friend or two. Plus you get to show off your fat loot :)

Pretty sure you play alone in singleplayer and the enemy ai scales accordingly.
 
there's not going to be demo

Well, actually that is not confirmed. On Twitter Gearbox didn't deny it when asked if a demo would be released. They replied something along the lines of: keep watching the news.
 
sorry I should have checked for an update:

gearbox employee said:
Everyone is really, really focusing on getting the game done for release ... that's not to say there will never be a demo, just not before launch."
 
I want to hear more information about the actual loot itself. I know there are shitloads of guns, but what about other items? Is there armor, boots, gloves, helmets etc? Are there more rare unique loot that only the hard enemies drop?

No armor. It seems this loot system is for weapons only. You can customize your character by changing the colors though.

I'm so stoked for this game!
 
Enthusiasm has decreased by 10 points.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=12348

Is there still armour in the game or is it solely upgradable shields?
The Bomfy, OXM Forums

Pitchford: We moved from armour towards shields, combat modifications, class modifications and grenade modifications. The reason we did that was because we weren't getting value out of armour as an FPS - we're not seeing much of our character. To consume performance and memory, to take it away for something that you can't even see when you're playing the game felt like a bad decision. So we added shields and character modifications and spec modifications that you can augment yourself with. This is more relevant because we can see and feel and experience all this. In fact there's more total gear than when we first announced it.

http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showpost.php?p=1443751&postcount=327
 
No armor?

That's shit IMO, though I guess they do have some valid points..
 
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