Borderlands Review (PS3)

Borderlands, the latest combination of FPS and RPG genres since Fallout 3. Personally, I haven't been able to get into Fallout 3, but Borderlands is much easier to get into. The learning curve isn't so big. When you pick up the controller, the button mapping feels a lot like the Call of Duty games, showing that it put the FPS genre before the RPG genre. I had to change my button mapping on the PS3 because I can't stand R2 to be the "shoot" button. That just doesn't compute in the Playstation mind. So I changed it to the only configuration that has R1 as the "shoot" button.



Borderlands (PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3(reviewed))
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Released: October, 20th 2009
MSRP: $59.99
BGR Price: $57.49

You start off in a bus, your character selection screen and you have a choice between Roland, The Soldier; [color=violet]Lilith, The Siren[/color]; Mordecai, The Hunter; or Brick, The Berserker.
Roland specializes in increasing bullet damage and also serves as the team's medic, if available. His special ability is to spawn a turret.
[color=violet]Lilith has the ability to be more specialized in elemental bonuses. Her special ability is to "Phase Walk," which means she basically turns invisible.[/color]
Mordecai specializes in sniping. His abilities increase his accuracy with sniping. His special ability is to summon Bloodwing, his hawk, to attack an enemy. This can become very useful when you get surrounded by lots of enemies.
Brick

I chose Mordecai, the Hunter. He's difficult to play in the early stages of the game, but once you start leveling up and upgrading weapons, he becomes a very fun character to play. Getting headshots becomes so gratifying, especially when the enemies also have no head after the headshots. "BOOM HEADSHOT!!!"



I did not complete the game, but I did become level 21. I was able to get to the next "world" which then ramped up the difficulty by quite a bit. The Arid Badlands became decently easy after I hit level 15 or so. There were a few places that had bad guys that were a couple levels higher than me, but they became easy with the better and better weapons that you came across.



The terrain, however, had it's fair share of glitches. There were numerous times where a part of the terrain glitch out and block my shot of an enemy. The "deaths" weren't really what I was looking for, but they had a great idea with that. Every death you have, you respawn at a "New-U" station, while having to pay a price (I think it's about 10% of your money). Everyone who is dead at that point, is still dead, but if you had an enemy down to 1/4 health or so, they'll be full health again. The nice thing with the deaths though, is that it doesn't pass any time. It's instantaneous.



Claptrap has got to be my favorite character though. For as much as most people hate him, I love the fact that he can get the cheap laughs from people. Here's a video of the main menu of the game, which has a bunch of Claptrap's antics.



I stopped playing the game only because I had to return it. The game was a lot of fun, really addicting, and I had an all around good time playing it.

I would recommend that anyone who is a fan of Fallout 3 to get this game. The game does a great job at sucking people in right at the beginning of the game.

Rating: Shadow