Plus XP

We have all seen our fair share of game clones over the years. Grand Theft Auto had The Get Away and True Crime, Mario Party has Raving Rabbids. Basically once one game has a great selling idea, another developer wants to get in on the idea.

May I introduce Borderlands, a new game from Gearbox Software that combines First Person Shooting and Role Playing game into a nice combination in a post apocalyptic world. Yes basically the same idea as Fallout 3 has.  But in Borderlands you have class choices as opposed to bringing up your character through choices made throughout the game, like Fallout.Bborderlands also takes a cell shaded graphically style and I think but cannot be sure (so please correct me if I am wrong) it also has a more comedic outlook on postapocalyptic RPG survival.

Ok so lets take a look at the standards Fallout 3 has layed down. I loved Fallout 3 it was so new and diverse. It was following the same style as Oblivion, but in my opinion it took it a step further it took the idea of a postapocalyptic sci-fi shooter, added all the elements that make most RPG games take over your life. I was pretty flabbergasted that an FPS and an RPG could meld together so well. It was gritty, grimy gruesome and really gave you the feeling of kill or be killed in a savage world.

Now, Borderlands sounds to me that, it can hit all these marks. Ok so if you have not gathered already, I have not played it, and to be honest I was pretty gutted I didn’t get my hands on it at Eurogamer. What I really think that it is doing that sets it apart from Fallout is its comedic/light-hearted take on it. I dunno about you guys out there, but I really cannot take cell shaded games as seriously as, what I like to call, true graphic games. But with that said The game play sounds pretty damn good in my opinion. You get to choose from four different characters  a Soldier, a Hunter,  a Siren, and a Berserker. Each class has a different skill tree in game. This means throughout the game you gain skill points which you can apply to your skill tree to get character specific skills. Say if you are the Hunter, your skills in the skill tree will be composed of Revolvers, Gunslinging and Sniping. This in turn will give the entire game a great deal of replay value.

So each of these games are defiantly both RPG’s both thankfully they are FPS RPG’s in their own right. Fallout 3 has the gritty, grimy and somewhat mundane outlook on post apocalyptic life and survival. It also has a character system that is totally customisable and you can build it strictly from the ground up.

Borderlands to me on the other hand is more of a game that will focuses on the game play more than the story and character customisation. Making gamers out there pretty much choose a person and jump straight into the action. Kind of taking a Final Fantasy outlook on RPG games.

So Will Borderlands be the next Fallout 3? To be frank why would games want to be the next anything? Borderlands has enough unique elements that I think it will do very well on its own.

Garv