Borderlands - For the PC, XBOX, PS3, Yadda yadda yadda...
Point Blank: This game sucks
Defined: This game really sucks.
Okay let's be fair and give it a go then.
In order to make such an acute claim as Borderlands Sucks well you need to have a logical argument right? So here it is.
Firstly: Borderlands boasts a lot of things but perhaps the biggest of the many notches in it's belt is that it is a game for REAL gamers, more on that later. A lot of people and press people and people pressing their heads against the wall of stupid have listed BL as being the FIRST FPS RPG which is truly quite a claim considering that there have been a few games before now which quite literally are exactly that, oh say, Fallout 3, Bioshock, Deus Ex, Hellgate London, STALKER, blah blah, Heavy Metal Fakk rah blah. Anyhoo, yeah, it's not the first, so stop saying it is. Of course it is the first to display big bouncy digits falling off of your target's noggins when damage is inflicted so yeah, congrazzles on that one. Oh never mind, Dirge of Cerberus did that ages ago, sorry BL, my bad.
A game for REAL gamers, what exactly is a real gamer? I like to think I'm a real gamer, I can be seen and touched and I am a gamer, so goes the dictionary definition of the term. However BL makes real gamers out to be something else entirely, some sort of inbred hybrid of The Commodore 64 and Dracula, someone capable of feeding off of the dismay and sorrow of others, able to process basic point and click skills and able to do it for a long long time. Real gamers by Borderland's logic should look something like Steven Hawking with a higher capacity to maintain erections over digital output. My idea of a "REAL" gamer is someone who appreciates gameplay and is willing to play through to the end of a game with dedication and stride, however BL makes this task impossible to anyone beside the aforementioned cybernetic vegetables the game is apparently targeted at. Gameplay consists of start level, run forward until you get shot, turn and shoot at the one who first did the shooting, inflict measly damage and die before respawning and resuming the shooting. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Gameplay in BL is like trying to put a fire out with a broomstick, sure if you beet it enough it will die down a little, but sooner or later the broom will burn up in the process and you'll be forced to run back to retrieve more brooms only to find that the fire has spread, and your life is a shallow lie.
Enough poetic license, BL gameplay is boring, monotonous, and annoying. It's like playing tag with an octopus with no tag backs, you lose more than you win guaranteed. The instant you start the game you're faced with enemies that can easily turn you inside out and weapons that do you no justice, because all the good guns can only be used at level 13 and onward. There is the small chance that you persevere onto the later levels and maintain sobriety long enough to level up that high, but somewhere around level 8 I realized something. There's no point to any of this. You can waste hours on this game just to level up so much that you can use a better gun and for what? By the time you get that high you'll be facing cretins levels above you who will deflect your bomb shells like spit wads before hastily brushing you aside to make way for a villain deadlier than that. Bullets come and go no matter what your level and none of them are particularly effective against your foes. Enemy guns are inescapable and deliver hefty damage upon impact whereas yours just make a bunch of ones bounce off of enemy foreheads, one shot from an enemy fire arm will diminish your health 95% and weaken you to the point that the resounding clack from the bullet exiting the chamber will finish the job. The one nice thing that BL did for players was the Fight for your Life sequence, every time you bite the big one, you kneel down invincible for 20 uninterrupted seconds while your foes surround you and curb stomp you to no avail, at this time you have ample opportunity to open fire on their weak spots and make big twos bounce off of their foreheads instead. I found that the majority of my kills were gotten whilst on my knees awaiting the respawn. Sure if you play with friends they can revive you from your drunken stooper but what's the point? You can respawn at the last checkpoint with full health and easily sprint back to your former location, undoubtedly a few yards away from the front door.
I guess what the wall of text above is trying to say is that the gameplay in Boarderlands is a tug of war style shoot em up with no real goal in mind but to shoot more and cause wrist injuries.
This game also boasts 85 Bazillion guns, too bad you'll never see anywhere near that many unless you're on crack, and if you do manage to get a variety, you won't be able to tell the difference between that SMG and this SMG because the stats are too convoluted to be legible and the color swatches are the same save a red sticker on the inside of the barrel.
As for the random map and enemy generator, well I didn't make it too far into the game before my soul was crushed by the awful gameplay, but the same enemies kept on making guest appearances, and most of the time from behind the curtain of the same shack I left behind 25 minutes ago. And I played the game multiple times with friends and without and nothing changed, so maybe that could be more pronounced.
Honestly if I could label this game in the fewest words possible it would have to be, this game should be freeware. Freeware titles usually have little to no thought put into them and a combination of challenging and monotonous gameplay enough to keep you preoccupied while you play, like solitaire or bejeweled. The problem with Boarderlands is that it's making itself out to be a serious game, one apparently worth 50 to 60 dollars, but I could think of more compelling things to do with my time like get my body waxed or a root canal. Of course those would cost upwards of $200 so maybe Boarderlands is a deal.
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