Borderlands
Game Description: Borderlands is a sprawling sci-fi action/role-playing game set in the deep recesses of space, featuring randomized terrain, enemies, and weapon permutations numbering in the hundreds of thousands. There are four playable characters each with their own special abilities and attributes, and lengthy quest chains that yield experience and new loot.
Do you love loot? Does the thought of items dropping from the blood-spurting corpses of fallen enemies get your gaming juices flowing? If so, I’ve got a game to tell you about. Gearbox’s Borderlands is a four-player co-op “role-playing shooter” that generates guns randomly, much like an MMORPG or games like Diablo. Players will advance through 50 character levels, all the while grabbing new guns and gear.
The playable classes each get a signature ability and three skill trees of passive boosts to those signature abilities, weapon specialization, and buffs. Roland, the soldier, gets a turret he can place that will automatically shoot nearby enemies. Lilith, the siren, can temporarily enter a different plane, doing damage to nearby enemies and gaining a speed boost. Mordecai, the hunter, can send out his pet hawk, Bloodwing, to attack enemies. Finally, Brick, the berserker, specializes in melee combat and gain limited invulnerability while he pummels enemies. Each class also specializes in two weapon classes, but all classes can use all weapons. The only requirement placed on an item is a minimum level to use, but Mordecai, for example, will excel with sniper rifles and pistols as many of his passive skills increase their effectiveness.
The Loot! The Loot! The Loot Is On Fire!
Guns in Borderlands are generated randomly by the game with effectively endless possibilities for stats and modifier combinations. All weapons come with the following stats: base damage, accuracy, speed, and clip size. Beyond that, modifiers can add things like zoom (often manifested as a visible scope on the weapon), elemental damage, increased reload speed, or bonuses to any of the main stats listed above.
During your adventure you’ll snag assault rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, pistols, revolvers, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers. You’ll probably even snag some shotguns that shoot rockets or sub-machine guns that fire two bullets at once. Elemental damage will become increasingly important as you progress through the game and you’ll almost always want elemental weapons over vanilla guns. Different elements are useful for different situations and it’s a good idea to keep a weapon of each element handy. Shooting humans in the head and creatures in their various weakpoints gets you critical hits. Skilled shooters will find the game much easier with careful bullet placement for quick kills.
Beyond weapons, you collect shields, grenade mods, class modifiers, and artifacts that add elemental effects to the class abilities. Shields act as a player’s armor and will regenerate out of combat. Health must be refilled through abilities or items. Grenade mods add effects to the all-purpose grenades you’ll pick up in the game. These effects could be the type of elemental damage added or the actual behavior of the grenade: does it explode or contact or teleport to its destination? Class mods add skill points to abilities and increase the effectiveness certain weapons.
Unfortunately, the items stop evolving around level 25. Instead of adding new effects and combining old ones, the stats just get better. Sometimes, you won’t replace an item for upwards of 15 levels. I found an extremely powerful revolver with a good set of stats: fast rate of fire, corrosive damage, and the full six rounds in the chamber. I used that gun from level 22 to 37 and dropped the final boss with it and not much else. I eventually replaced it when I started my second playthrough, but I would have liked the cycle of new loot rolling throughout.
Do you love loot? Does the thought of items dropping from the blood-spurting corpses of fallen enemies get your gaming juices flowing? If so, I’ve got a game to tell you about. Gearbox’s Borderlands is a four-player co-op “role-playing shooter” that generates guns randomly, much like an MMORPG or games like Diablo. Players will advance through 50 character levels, all the while grabbing new guns and gear.
The playable classes each get a signature ability and three skill trees of passive boosts to those signature abilities, weapon specialization, and buffs. Roland, the soldier, gets a turret he can place that will automatically shoot nearby enemies. Lilith, the siren, can temporarily enter a different plane, doing damage to nearby enemies and gaining a speed boost. Mordecai, the hunter, can send out his pet hawk, Bloodwing, to attack enemies. Finally, Brick, the berserker, specializes in melee combat and gain limited invulnerability while he pummels enemies. Each class also specializes in two weapon classes, but all classes can use all weapons. The only requirement placed on an item is a minimum level to use, but Mordecai, for example, will excel with sniper rifles and pistols as many of his passive skills increase their effectiveness.
The Loot! The Loot! The Loot Is On Fire!
Guns in Borderlands are generated randomly by the game with effectively endless possibilities for stats and modifier combinations. All weapons come with the following stats: base damage, accuracy, speed, and clip size. Beyond that, modifiers can add things like zoom (often manifested as a visible scope on the weapon), elemental damage, increased reload speed, or bonuses to any of the main stats listed above.
During your adventure you’ll snag assault rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, pistols, revolvers, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers. You’ll probably even snag some shotguns that shoot rockets or sub-machine guns that fire two bullets at once. Elemental damage will become increasingly important as you progress through the game and you’ll almost always want elemental weapons over vanilla guns. Different elements are useful for different situations and it’s a good idea to keep a weapon of each element handy. Shooting humans in the head and creatures in their various weakpoints gets you critical hits. Skilled shooters will find the game much easier with careful bullet placement for quick kills.
Beyond weapons, you collect shields, grenade mods, class modifiers, and artifacts that add elemental effects to the class abilities. Shields act as a player’s armor and will regenerate out of combat. Health must be refilled through abilities or items. Grenade mods add effects to the all-purpose grenades you’ll pick up in the game. These effects could be the type of elemental damage added or the actual behavior of the grenade: does it explode or contact or teleport to its destination? Class mods add skill points to abilities and increase the effectiveness certain weapons.
Unfortunately, the items stop evolving around level 25. Instead of adding new effects and combining old ones, the stats just get better. Sometimes, you won’t replace an item for upwards of 15 levels. I found an extremely powerful revolver with a good set of stats: fast rate of fire, corrosive damage, and the full six rounds in the chamber. I used that gun from level 22 to 37 and dropped the final boss with it and not much else. I eventually replaced it when I started my second playthrough, but I would have liked the cycle of new loot rolling throughout.
Source:g4tv.com
