Gaming Borderlands PC Review

Viral marketing!

 

Co-op and port forwarding aside, it's not the bosses I'm talking about. The bosses, from Skagzilla to Mothrakk are all pretty easy and most of them either can't move as fast as you or don't move at all anyway. It's some specific early fights where the level system breaks a little - the 90 minute gunfight specifically happened in the Lost Cave, fighting a Bruiser when I was at Lv. 15. Before and since then I've taken down dozen of Bruisers with no trouble, so maybe it was just the weapon I was using, but still every now and then I hit a section of the game where an enemy who doesn't appear to be at all different to ones I've faced earlier can suddenly take five critical hit rockets without going down. Winds me up.

As I said in the review though, I still can't bring myself to hate Borderlands. Just like you dismissing the problems with co-op matches, I'm tempted to dismiss all other gripes and consider it a contender for GOTY.

 

So far i've been playing Borderlands each evening since release, in coop with a buddy with public game. I'm playing a soldier, he is playing a hunter. We've never actually had problems anywhere, and in first playthrough we really didn't die a lot. Even 'worse', lot of that playthrough was just extremely easy, with the second half of the game being a runover generally. We almost were a couple of levels ahead of the game, and never were in danger. Protip: don't use the mods and skills that grant extra xp, it sucks honestly.
Now we are in second playthrough, and we've been seeing some improvement difficultywise. Enemies are becoming a bit stronger again, but for the most part, we've been managing very well again.
It has to be said though, that the most enjoyment is with 4 players. It really makes a difference, and the game NEEDS the ramped up difficulty by lots. I'd even say it's quite annoying it took us one playthrough to actually get some challenge, and i don't expect more challenge until we hit the second half of the game on this playthrough.
What's even more disheartening is how i feel like a total waste atm. We're both level 46, and my hunter buddy just freaking instagibs each mob with his sniper rifle, while i just have to wittle away loads of bullets at an enemy, hoping to score crits. Even in close-quarters, it feels like he only has to glare at a mob, and it gets blown of the planet before i even landed 6 bullets. This is boring and it is increasingly sucking the fun out of the game for me.
It also has a lot to do with host advantage. When i host, i can, mostly, clearly line up the enemy and hit. While i play on my friend's hosted game, i always suffer from weird aiming issues. Even when i wield a shotgun, go close to an enemy, and have his head+torso lined up in the reticle, most often i don't get criticals, and sometimes no hits are even registered. Honestly, p2p sucks, and i'm glad i cancelled on cod:mw2.
Just mix in how my bud destroys everything with his rifle, and meh. It's no wonder that so far i've only seen 2 Bricks and 3 Sirens, but craploads of hunters and soldiers. Whenever we have 2 hunters, i can just sit back and relax.

However, Borderlands otherwise has been a blast to play, otherwise i wouldn't have sunk in so many many hours yet. It's just that it has some annoyances which become apparent the more you'll play.

 

Review sums it up well, playable and addictive, but with several flaws.

 

I'm having a lot of fun with this game. Most importantly at it's core it's a fun shooter with a solid responsive engine. I love strafing out the way of a jumping skrag and then shooting it for a critical in the flank, that's something that never gets boring (it was my favourite part of killing the jumping fiends in Quake all those years ago).

I want to see more co-op shooters!

 

Ah, I see what you mean. Well, the game told me to look for enemy level icons in my HUD and that's what I do - let's me decide whether to charge in with an AR or shotgun, or pick them off from a distance. How's that a bad thing?

The only thing that ticks me off occasionally are the odd glitches. Sometimes I fall in a crack between a hut and a wall, or get wedged under some structure and get stuck. Have to quit and begin again to fix it, no amount of crouching, jumping or rocket-recoil shoving helps. Most annoying.

 

this is why i love my PC...

 

I played a fair chunk of Borderlands until Dragon Age came out and I stopped playing everything else (as well as eating and sleeping) but it's definitely one of those games that it's easy to find a lot of faults with. The reason it's easy to find a lot of faults with it is because it's so good most of the time, and it's such fun to play, that when you do hit a fault it's like a hitting a speed bump in a Mini Cooper. It's the curse of very good games is that when things are broken or done badly it sticks out a lot. The mobflation and number crunching in Borderlands is the main culprit but the AI and repetitive missions also put me off a bit.

 

I think it's at its best in co-op, you mentioned the cars only have 2 seats but you can spawn 2 cars so 4 players can still drive around. Apart from having to forward 7 ports to host a co-op game the other problem is that you get all the quests from your host which isn't a bad thing in itself but the problem is that those quests persist once you resume in single player and confuses the quest log. Also having to do ini tweaks to make the zoom a toggle etc is a bit annoying but still a solid game overall.

Also anybody else notice the difficulty is much greater in co-op than in single player, its what makes the co-op so great.

 

We should all post our gamespy id's so we can get sopme arena & co-op gaming going on.

 

my gamespy id is lankyjames, feel free to add me

Im in playthrough 2 at lvl 49 atm

General22 i agree, in co op the hardness is ramped up, and i die multiple times with 'standard' badmutha brutes but on single its a walk in the park.

I recomend playing through the campaign with at least one friend, so much more rewarding!

 

This game is pretty good actually,I like it better than Far Cry 2.. but the weapon part is too much LoL

 

I get paid tomorrow, I may pick this up with my staff discount.