Borderlands Hands-On Preview
Written by Jeff Buckland, 9/2/2009
After watching a recent trailer for Gearbox Software's new game Borderlands, you might think they're not taking their game very seriously. It seems like they should be: they're making a brand new property amongst an industry that's at least 80% sequels and licensed properties, fusing RPG and first person shooter gameplay in a way that minimizes compromise better than almost anything else I've seen, and delivering an art style that skirts the edge of comic but never quite gets to the point of being cel-shaded or cartoony.
They are taking it seriously, though - beneath the veneer of excitement and light-hearted action and fun, the team at Gearbox Software are giddy, silly, almost hyperactive - and a little unsure what gamers will think of their baby. It's been in the womb for a good three years - Borderlands was first announced in 2007 - and they almost don't act like they're ready to release it to the world. But after having played it, I can tell you that as long as the rest of the game is remotely like the hours of action I was a part of, it's most certainly ready.
I know what you're thinking. Shooter combined with RPG - didn't Hellgate: London do that? Wasn't AtomicGamer singing that game's praises before its release, too? Well, yes, we were, but that was while the developers still had time to fix the many things that I found broken in that game. But with Borderlands, all that stuff is already right - the shooter elements feel like a real shooter, the RPG parts are fantastic, and it just comes together so smoothly that I think other developers would be wise to take notes. The verdict is still out on whether online play will work, but this isn't Gearbox Software's first game, nor is it their first online-capable game, so it's reasonable to assume that it'll be at least as good as with their past efforts.
've heard the comparisons to not only Hellgate, but to its inspiration as well: Diablo. Frankly, Hellgate borrowed a bit too much from Blizzard's classic clickfest: in the scope of post-apocalyptic London, having randomly generated urban and sewer levels didn't make sense. Putting a right turn instead of a left in order to get to the exit is a huge amount of work for the programmers and designers in a fully 3D game, but it doesn't always pay off so well when you sit down and play it. That system is difficult to make work in a shooter environment, much less a huge outdoor setting like Pandora involves, so I think it's perfectly fine for the level designs to be fixed while the monsters, loot, and fights all turn out differently every time.
There's a definite prevailing visual theme of a sci-fi-style Road Warrior on a dusty, mysterious planet, but you won't be seeing randomly-generated levels constructed out of the same five or six different "tilesets". No, the planet Pandora is a hand-crafted world that you'll be able to somewhat explore freely - higher level enemies will block your path to the tougher areas, mostly by way of shooting you in the face - and the randomness comes in with the enemy types, their strengths and weaknesses, and with the loot you receive.
Yep, we have to talk about loot because any game that has even the most tenuous connection to Diablo is going to have to address the player's need to get new gear constantly. In Borderlands, you'll be able to equip and upgrade shield generators that absorb damage before your health starts to drop, increase your capacity for grenades then install powerful upgrades in those, and beef up your character with other types of loot. But this is still a first person shooter, so your most important item is your gun.
Borderlands has a unique system that generates guns with a ton of different characteristics all in real-time. It can make pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper weapons, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and more. But the important thing here is that these guns look and feel great, and the vastly different effects and stats that can be put on them make this game's arsenal, well, massive. (The trailer mentions 87 bajillion guns - who am I to dispute the number?) From a sniper rifle with a revolver-style barrel to reload and incendiary ammo to a pistol that fires out mini-grenades, you'll find a ridiculous range of weaponry. The first thing you'll want to do every time you get a new gun is give it a live fire test and see what it does. And those looking for stats will find them in spades, as each of the game's guns has a half-dozen or more stats that adjust its firing rate, ammo capacity, and more.
But what makes this work right is that Gearbox comes from a shooter background, and the kinetics of using and firing a gun work in the first person perspective - unlike Hellgate's sci-fi guns that shot out little puny sounding bottles of poison (no, I'm not kidding - that was actually a weapon in Hellgate), couldn't be reloaded, and just didn't ever really wow you. That's just not going to cut it, as we need that heft of a big weapon, the sound of a powerful blast, the ability to gain accuracy by aiming down the barrel, and the satisfying bumps and clicks as new rounds are dropped into place. All of that works just like you'd expect out of a dedicated shooter, but what is amazing is the massive variety of weapons it all works with.
Now, most of this I could see when checking out Borderlands at E3 this year. They've got the guns, and they've got a game centered around them that's very exciting to play - what I didn't expect out of Gearbox was such a charming world to explore right from the start. As a newcomer to Pandora, I got to play the tutorial mission that dropped me in front of a cute little droid named Claptrap. He'd gesticulate wildly, run like a coward whenever enemies were near, and furiously pound at panels of electronics in getting me accustomed to life on Pandora. Of course, life on Pandora actually consists mostly of shooting its denizens with an arsenal of weapons, and getting rewarded by the game's colorful NPCs for doing it.
And that's exactly how it works in cooperative mode, too, but it's a hell of a lot more chaotic. After playing through the tutorial and fighting its boss - a hilarious bandit called Nine Toes - we were whisked through to a later section of the game and sent to take on a bunch of different enemies, from spiders with "ass sacs" (hitting vital parts of monsters creates critical hits rather than just relying on random dice rolls) to a huge amount of bandits. With four players working together, using all four of the game's characters each with unique talents, the game had to be made significantly harder in order to maintain some level of challenge, and that it did - the enemies took tons of hits to take down and were doing serious damage. Of course, our Pandora treasure seekers were dishing out huge firepower, healing each other, and bringing up downed buddies. Even if we couldn't get to someone to save them in time, their death didn't end the mission - it just forced them to respawn at the last checkpoint and hoof it over to the fight again.
Everything that makes Borderlands so compelling - the guns, the massive fights, the distinctly unique visuals, the use of talents and abilities while finishing quests around Pandora - all of it works just as well in cooperative mode as it does outside of it. We got to see the PC build work but mostly played on the 360, which itself supports two-player split-screen action or four players over Live, and I was equally impressed with both versions.
What Gearbox seems to be doing right with Borderlands is building an entire game around RPG-style advancement without compromising what makes a first person shooter so fun in the first place. It's hard to say whether it'll stay that addictive from beginning to end, what the vehicle combat is like (Gearbox has been keeping this stuff mostly under wraps for the last year or so), or whether people will continue to play after they've finished the story. Playing with friends sure helps a lot when it comes to longevity, though, and while Diablo II's nonstop clicking is mindless fun, getting in there with an acid-firing shotgun seems just as addictive. We'll have continued coverage of Borderlands before it's released on PC, 360, and PS3 on October 20th.
|