TGV Gets Touchy Feely with Borderlands

Written by Jon Pass Thursday, 24 September 2009 14:02

Between enthusiastic CEOs and teaser trailers, Borderlands claims to be all that and more - millions of weapons, a blend of genres, skill based criticals, class customization, and quests a plenty. Does it deliver? Certainly it delivers in being a whole lot of fun.

The co-operative side of Borderlands is definitely an enticing claim - the ability to join, drop out as you like. After acquainting myself with the games basic mechanics, controls and what-not, I was ushered over to the consoles engaging in cooperative play. I took the role of the Soldier Roland seemingly the token black guy.

During the co-op game we were boosted to level 20 giving us a chance to try out the 'ability trees', which were basically a dumbed down version of World of Warcraft talent-trees. At the top, is a compulsory ability unique to the class - for example, the Soldier's ability is to drop a temporary turret. Underneath this, it splits into three specializations - one of the Soldier's was 'Medic' focusing on the Soldier playing a support role, using his deployable turret to provide extra advantages for his buddies like health regeneration in an area around the turret.

Disappointing is the fact that every class has only one ability. The 'tech trees' serve to boost this one ability and also passively boost the character through attributes like health, accuracy, weapon skill and the like. Everything about the game that is 'classic RPG' seems to have been ultra-simplified - the said ability trees, one ability per class, lack of customization - and fans of RPGs may be disappointed by the simple approach.

The particular scenario we were dropped into was perhaps one of the least spectacular available in Borderlands - this was basically glorified mining of nondescript yet inherently powerful crystals. Of course, the cave bearing the crystals is infested with crab worms, skags and bandits. The mission was tedious at best, and perhaps the worst development was that the cave led to very little in terms of both loot and enemy encounters.

I was able to get another play-through of the cooperative mission, this time as Brick. Brick is all about big weapons - rocket launchers and shotguns primarily. His unique ability sends him into a melee frenzy, allowing him to charge into battle and pulverize his enemies with a combination of jabs and uppercuts. Brick's specializations seem to focus on using heavy ordnance, melee brawling and damage mitigation. Brawling with your fists seemed to be the most fun you could have with Brick, perhaps because the weapons we were given for the mission were less than fantastic.

Having played two of the available four classes already, I figured I'd continue and moved on to Mordecai, the Hunter. Mordecai is your classic bad-ass reclusive dude with a sniper. Oh, and a domesticated bat-bird hybrid. The pet was a okay ability, but it seemed to not last long compared to how long the ability took to temporary available again. The class was fun, but the ability doesn't add a lot of dynamic - the bird flys in and swoops things autonomously leaving you to play the game as a sniper as in any other FPS, which may actually appeal to some players, but not this one.

The final class was Lilith the Siren, who I was able to play for but a few moments. Lilith's ability was the drop out of phase, go invisible, stealth, whatever suits you best and move at fast speeds towards enemies, gaining attack bonuses on her next strike. Lilith uses SMGs and pistols mainly, but I never got a chance to see the specializations available to her.

At the end of the missions, the cooperative play generally descended into a bunch of duels. Duels are started between players by meleeing each other - one player will demand satisfaction by hitting another player, and they can accept by hitting them back. While an interesting idea, the duels were less than balanced, the general outcome being whomever had their ability available won. While playing Mordecai, I was able to merely release my freaky bat-bird and it would take down the enemy in one fell swoop.

And on that terrible pun, I conclude my preview of Borderlands. If you can play this game in co-op, it will be well worth a shot, and with DLC just around the corner from release, it will be interesting to see what new mechanics and content is introduced.

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