Friday Pragmatism | Borderlands

It’s been a particularly tough two weeks, I still have some limitations as to what I can do and how much energy I have. My dexterity seems to be returning in good form and there’s no better way to exercise and stimulate it than with video-gaming.

After raising a Secondary at Rok’s place, split-screen locally on his console, my copy finally arrived last night and so began the raising of my Siren Primary.

Play-time began at 8 PM, ended at 2 AM.
It’s been over two years since I’ve invested six hours in a single gaming session and given my current necessity to sleep, I was able to stay up for the duration and still wake-up fine in the morning for work.

Borderlands is amazing.
It’s everything I expect it would be and more.
What has surprised me the most is the phenomenal amount of effort that has been put into balancing the varying elements of the game. The procedural generation of weapons and items has always made good sense to me, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how individual each weapon would feel. The advantages and drawbacks of each item are easily noticeable, and amazingly, each item feels totally unique.
Perhaps what dropped my jaw the most was the Skill balancing. The Skill trees for each of the characters have been arranged in such a way that the player can easily tailor their character for single-player use only, or can focus on different abilities that complement a team, and also provide some focus on actions. This game can be played solo, but it is definitely intended for team co-operative play.

I adore the graphical design and in some ways it reminds me of Crackdown’s cell-shaded look. Borderlands has many more obvious brush-strokes or pen-lines so to speak, and it’s part of an overall amazing world to be in.

The music was a surprise too, no overly noisy background music but instead very sparse and tasteful, quite atmospheric. It does amp up a little during the action yet still remains subtle, taking a back-seat to the actual action.

Amazingly this game has come together exceptionally well.
Every aspect of the game is very close to perfect; loot drops, cash drops and pricing, shooting, moving, skills, items; the overall gameplay experience is stunning.

My Siren Primary is now at level 17. Rok won’t be able to play this weekend so if I level her any more, I want to stop equal to his level 22 which is fine. I really did enjoy raising a Hunter as a Secondary on his Xbox before my copy arrived so I’ll be glad to raise it again from scratch on my console for online use.

As a Tertiary I will definitely be going with the Soldier – yet another big surprise in the game. Originally he looked like the kind of generic character that is in every game for the people who aren’t really into specialisation and really customising the role; the generic soldier, but he’s actually a Cleric. His spawn-turret can gain the ability to heal all nearby team-mates, eventually spawning ammo for the equipped weapon of all team-mates for duration of its life.

The Hunter is a Rogue; sniper riffles and the Bloodwing which is his Summon Familiar. Using the Bloodwing is brilliant and the default cooldown is quite short.

Rok is raising a Brick as his primary, the one at level 22. A melee brawler who uses his fists to effective and often hillarious devastation. He is massive and strong, a veritable bullet-sponge; great for people who love to be in the thick of the action.

My Siren is simply fantastic. I’m focussing all my skills on exploiting her Phasewalk ability which is now absolutely smashing. I’ll often take out middling enemies just by going into Phasewalk, run at astonishing speed into a group of enemies and exit/explode. Add to that a high (fully statted) chance to stun on entry and exit, plus (fully statted) chance to stun on melee and it all comes together amazingly. Rok loves watching me run in and stun everyone, then pursuing enemies and smacking them to slow them down. He’s noted that we are saved a lot of hits by most of the enemies being dazed or slowed.

I’ve been impressed with many games in the last two years, but this is the first with which I’ve been truly amazed. Its grip was immediate and I’m compelled to play, even now just discussing it. Rok has been playing like mad and I imagine I will too. We’re doing our best to get as many of our community into it as possible as we’d love to do a full co-op session with all four classes present… though the thought of having four different, tailored Sirens in combat is extremely appealing.