I have been thinking back the February last year where I finally got a copy of Fallout 3 for my birthday. After trying out oblivion and not really getting on with it, I was a bit dubious about trying the game, but never the less I played it and got hooked to it. I thought this was the perfect combination of First Person Shooter and Role Playing Game I had been looking for. So almost a year on I sit in front of my TV with my mouth a gape, my gormless expression I have spread across my face as I look at the screen before me says it all. Boarderlands is the true FPS RPG I have been looking for. Sorry Fallout 3, I do still love you but its me, not you.
Before I dive straight into this review. I would just like to highlight that I have only played this game in single player. This game has been advertised as a co-op game as much as a single player game. But I have found that this game works damn well in single player, and here are my thoughts.
Cunningly dubbed as an RPS (Role Playing Shooter) Boarderlands, like any good game out there, throws you into the story line from the get go, there are four mercenaries, or mercs as they like to be called, on a bus they have just flown into a desolate and baron planet called Pandora to seek out something called the vault. Legend has it the Vault contains advanced alien weaponless with technology so advanced it will blow your mind, or indeed you enemies.
As the bus rolls on you get the choice to choose one of the mercs who have come along for the ride. You have the soldier named Roland, who is your classic, assault rifle and shot gun squaddy who most FPS fans are used to when playing things such as halo, duke nukem, doom, any FPS game under the sun. Then you have Lilth, the siren phase walker, If stealth and speed is your game, this is the chick you wanna be. If sniper rifles and range attacks are more your cuppa you will be be a lot happier playing as Mordecai. But if your a full on FPS guy who loves explosives and ripping people apart with your bare hands then take my advice and choose Brick.
Each of these four characters has a special skill that can be used, the soldier has a deployable turret, the siren can turn invisible and have a great increase in speed, the sniper has a friendly hawk like bird creature that will happily peck enemies eyes out and Brick, well he just goes absolutely nuts with his berserk mode and has an insane increase in melee attack and is slightly invunrable. All these skills last a limited amount of time before they conk out and have to regenerate again. This is your classic FPS gaming element, Quake had it with Quad Damage, Doom had it with Berserk packs and Nukem had it with an array of equipment top use, and for me it never gets old, there is nothing like have a short boost of power to get you out of a sticky situation.
This game does the FPS genre justice. It has the aiming system where you look down the barrel/sight, that we associate with games like Modern Warfare and FEAR. There is a huge amount of weapons to find, make and customize, kind of in the same vein as Bioshock. Hell it also has re-generating shields from the likes of Halo. Speaking of Halo, you remember how the vehicles in that game controlled? Mainly using the left stick to accelerate, reverse etc. Boarderlands uses the same set up here when it comes to it vehicles. So you can see Gear Box has taken inspiration from a lot of First Person Shooter games. I love it when a game developer does its research.
But as you are fully aware this is as much of an RPG game as it is an FPS game. As you can imagine this is a real time combat RPG. When aiming at an enemy you will get his/her/its health and shield bars and what level they are at so if you level 4 and your opponent is level 12. Run away. You are given experience for each kill, each mission you complete and for each of the huge ammo boxes that are hidden and scattered across Pandora. With each level up you gain skill points which you can assign to a skill tree. This skill tree is linked to both your characters special skill and your character his/her self. So if you play the game with the Soldier Roland, such as I did you will get a skill tree linked to you and the scorpion turret. With skill points going towards things like your health and ammo capacity, to your scorpion turrets power and regeneration time. You can also acquire skills that enable your turret to regenerate the players health and shield. So you really can have a good play with what skills you want to assign and how you want your character to grow. You can also customise your character to a curtain extent, by changing his/her colour and name. Its a nice little touch and can be done at any time but as you can probably gather, you can’t customise every aspect of their appearance like you can with say Fallout 3. But you can’t have everything.
Graphically this game takes the cell shaded approach to its visuals. In one word it looks fantastic. It is very stylised and some what refreshing to see the FPS point of view taking on that graphical style. Sure XIII did it back on the original Xbox, but to see a game of this generation do it is nice to see. There is a lot of detail in this game visuals, and really reminds me of the drawing style that graphic novels such as Spawn and The Darkness use. You get bugs and glitches every now and then in this game, but I have come to realise that huge games such as this and fallout. Your not going to get every single bug and glitch out of there because quite frankly, it is just to big.
I never though I would see the day that and FPS and an RPG would get on so well and produce a game such as this. I tried to come up with an FPS, RPG idea in my game design module back in uni and miserably faild. So thanks Gear Box and 2K, This is awesome!
Garv.
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