Borderlands

As I wrote in the "What are you playing now" topic, I tried Borderlands and really quickly became bored with it.

I did play it for several hours to give the game a chance but I became so incredible repetitive that I honestly did not want to find out what the SP campaign is about.
 
That is sort of only natural given it's a Diablo clone of sorts. At least it's a bit more "free-roam" than Diablo was.
 
the end sure is underwhelming...

didn't even get any good loot as a reward? :s

boohoo.
 
Brother None said:
Eh. I'm not impressed. I'll be writing a review for GB so more there, but essentially it's a spawn of a mediocre FPS with a mediocre Diablo clone. It's barely worth playing through once on SP and while the co-op is fun, there's way better co-op games out there.

The art style somewhat saves it, but overall, this is a fun game in short spurts, but with very little lasting value.

lvl 35 Brick out.
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You pretty much just described Diablo. I may have just joined, but I did some lurking, and didn't you put Diablo in your top 15? This is the same stuff, but definetely more enjoyable. I dunno, the pure joy of finding a really sweet legendary weapon is awesome to me and the co-op is a blast; doesn't tie you to some jag-off you don't know so you can go off on your own without getting horribly murdered like in Left 4 Dead.
 
OakTable said:
You pretty much just described Diablo. I may have just joined, but I did some lurking, and didn't you put Diablo in your top 15?
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Yes. And Diablo's been cloned many times, some good, some not so good. Borderlands combines mediocre Diablo with mediocre FPS action for a game that's addictive for ten hours and boring from there on out. How in the name of Frith you can say that when I describe something as "a spawn of a mediocre FPS with a mediocre Diablo clone" I'm basically describing Diablo is beyond me, though.

Simplified character system, only one activated skill, limited weapon range, very limited armour range, very limited enemy variation, only 2 playthrough, lvl 50 level cap. As a Diablo clone, it's pretty fail.
 
Brother None said:
addictive for ten hours and boring from there on out.
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Wow, that's exactly my experience with Borderlands. Played it for a week or so, thought it was fun, now its boring and haven't played it all month.

There's some DLC out for it, though, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. Ugh... hate zombies, but has anyone downloaded it yet? If so, how is it?
 
Rufus Luccarelli said:
Brother None said:
addictive for ten hours and boring from there on out.
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Wow, that's exactly my experience with Borderlands. Played it for a week or so, thought it was fun, now its boring and haven't played it all month.

There's some DLC out for it, though, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. Ugh... hate zombies, but has anyone downloaded it yet? If so, how is it?
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Pretty fucking hilarious in my opinion. It's got a few re-skins (like skele-rakks, psycho-zombies, and corpse eaters), but most of the enemies are new.

And, Brother None, that's being a bit harsh on it. I mean, sure there's only one skill, but this is a bloody FPS. You don't want have to press two or more buttons to use your skills when in an FPS. You'll get your ass kicked while you are busy playing around in the menu. And I support the simple character system. Works very well with an FPS-style of gameplay.

And yes, I understand the limited weapon range. But then again, same as Diablo. Must weapons are just recolored swords, axes, halberds, and what not. The only difference is the stats.

And the limited enemy range? Meh yes, but almost half of Diablo's enemies were just recolored sprites of a basic enemy.
 
Rufus Luccarelli said:
Brother None said:
addictive for ten hours and boring from there on out.
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Wow, that's exactly my experience with Borderlands. Played it for a week or so, thought it was fun, now its boring and haven't played it all month.

There's some DLC out for it, though, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. Ugh... hate zombies, but has anyone downloaded it yet? If so, how is it?
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Sadly I cannot download it. Because there is no PC version in sight. Apparently Gearbox's employees are laboring over the Thanksgiving Holiday on it, but meh. Too little too late for me. I was willing to grab it for the holiday. Since it missed the mark and will likely come out during finals, there really isn't a chance in hell of me buying it.

As for Borderlands itself, it comes off as a missed opportunity. The gazillion weapons they advertised are all of varying levels, and there isn't enough variation between a few different firing types. It's all mud. That and the fact that if you do get one of the better end-game guns, everything you encounter can be spammed to death. When I played I ended up with a Lv50 Mordecai with a rapid-fire Orion-ability sniper rifle. It'd spam electric explosions all around me or anything it hit. That combined with regenerating ammo and nothing was challenging anymore. I didn't even need to aim.

The content is good for one go. After that, everything's boring. All the different characters are different in name only. They're too set and generic. The final boss is.... laughable.
 
And, Brother None, that's being a bit harsh on it. I mean, sure there's only one skill, but this is a bloody FPS. You don't want have to press two or more buttons to use your skills when in an FPS. You'll get your ass kicked while you are busy playing around in the menu. And I support the simple character system. Works very well with an FPS-style of gameplay
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Just because it's an Fps doesn't excuse it for having less enemy types then halo, ditto with skills. There are many other games that are fps(like deus ex or system shock) that have far more skills/abilities going for them. It's not too difficult pressing a hotkey button, the camera angle or even genre shouldn't exclude that.The game is practically barren, and I WAS having fun with it, but quickly got bored with it after the first playthrough(and that's when the game is supposed to be NOT as repetitive) the lack of everything pretty much kept me from continuing to play it. Hell, it still smells new(good thing I only bought it for 39.99 Canadian, brand spanking new)
 
Just because it's an Fps doesn't excuse it for having less enemy types then halo
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You realize Halo is a gigantic, supergajillion production with an army of character animators and 3D artists, right? Very few studios could make as much enemy types.
 
When it's designed mainly for the consoles, you can't have too many buttons. That's why Halo Wars was so bare-bones to long-time RTSers. Having more than one action button on a console just complicates stuff too much. You can do this for stuff like Deus Ex and what not, but stuff like Halo needs to be streamlined.
 
You realize Halo is a gigantic, supergajillion production with an army of character animators and 3D artists, right? Very few studios could make as much enemy types.
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I know, but they could have at LEAST had a few more enemy types, and even a few palette swaps would have been pretty nice(or re-textures)
 
I never had a problem with a low range of enemies. I thought they actually had quite a few. You got bandits, scythids, skags, guardians, rakks, Crimson Lance, and Spiderants. They also have subtypes (like Lance Engineers, Bandit Bruisers, and Gyro Spiderants), elemental enemies, and the various guns the bandits and Lance equip. Unlike Diablo, they actually use that weapon they shit out when you kill them.
 
I recently finished and started a second play through with the same character and once beyond the tutorial it's a lot more challenging with tougher versions of the opponents. And there are far more interesting drops, it's just a pity that I can't be bothered to replay the same thing all over again.
 
requiem_for_a_starfury said:
I recently finished and started a second play through with the same character and once beyond the tutorial it's a lot more challenging with tougher versions of the opponents. And there are far more interesting drops, it's just a pity that I can't be bothered to replay the same thing all over again.
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Get friends to play it. Everything's better with your buddy.
 
I know, but they could have at LEAST had a few more enemy types, and even a few palette swaps would have been pretty nice(or re-textures)
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Thing is, it's a very long and work-consuming process to have another enemy/actor-type. You have to build a 3D model and a new skeleton for it, bind it and animate it accordingly.

For instance, why do you think Bethesda used a lot of Oblivion animations for their humanoid f3 rigs? Why do you think their power armor looks like a trashcan glued to a person? Because all human actors in F3 have one common skeleton. Notice how male and female chars move alike. Notice how naked people and people wearing half a car move in the exact same way.

It's not as if you just paste meshes together and voila, new enemy...
 
Been playing the last few weeks and pretty much conquered every corner of the game. It's still fun dropping in with some friends online and shooting shit for a couple hours or showing off whatever crazy weapons you came up with using 3rd party editors. Borderlands has plenty of problems (terrible server browser, plenty of random glitches including the newly introduced shader glitch courtesy of patch 1.01, slow to nonexistent support from Gearbox, etc) but it's so damn satisfying killing stuff. Guns that are supposed to be powerful actually FEEL powerful. Level and art design is very good and varied. Although I really don't see where they took advantage of Unreal Engine 3 besides some post processing effects. Graphics won't blow you away by any means. However, it reminds me a bit of Full Throttle rather than Fallout or Road Warrior in style.

I really hope Gearbox follows through with PC support and does several more addons in the future as well as a totally retooled server browser.
 
Thing is, it's a very long and work-consuming process to have another enemy/actor-type. You have to build a 3D model and a new skeleton for it, bind it and animate it accordingly.

For instance, why do you think Bethesda used a lot of Oblivion animations for their humanoid f3 rigs? Why do you think their power armor looks like a trashcan glued to a person? Because all human actors in F3 have one common skeleton. Notice how male and female chars move alike. Notice how naked people and people wearing half a car move in the exact same way.

It's not as if you just paste meshes together and voila, new enemy...
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I guess your right, I could see how difficult it could be creatin new meshes and whatnot. What my main concern with borderlands is though, is that there is just not enough content.

Perhaps Borderlands will be a better game in the near future.
 
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