Zero Punctuation: Borderlands

[Meggiepants]

Loved this review, and I loved the game. But Yahtzee is right, creating a game solely for multiplayer fun is a little vexing for those of us who don't want to subject ourselves to being corpse humped/called a pussy by twelve year old boys. And the menu system was awful. Spot on review.

I kind of hope he doesn't do FF actually. What can be said about the series that hasn't already been said before. I like FF games, it's a nostalgic thing I think, but they kind of specialize in doing the same game with a new hairdo every few years.

 

[Shydrow]

Don't think Borderlands had enough to it to really have him review it. Im not saying its not a fun game to play with buddies but since he played it as a single player it feels like a wasted week wait

 

[Zivlok]

I think that skydiving might exacerbate the problem of bowel cancer.

 

[NickCooley]

There. I re-wrote your post so you don't come off as a pretentious fanboy that perceives his, and only his, opinions as facts. Thank me later.

I didn't though, I addressed that it's is opinion, reread my original post. I am a human being therefore I have an opinion, why is that such a bad thing these days?

How does it make me pretentious though?
No I won't thank you, you just come off as rude

Well the first four words easily led me to that conclusion. "Complete and utter bull" Whcih them led me to think that you find opinions that differ to your own as bullshit. It's not a hard train of thought to follow.

And I'm not saying having an opinion is bad. Quite the contrary, it was your post that made out that you thought differing opinions are bad. Perhaps that wasn't your intention, but thats how it turned out unfortunatly.

Instead of flaming you as the more immature members or disturbed Yahtzee fanboys would have I decided to instead re-write your post in a more appealing manner.

And yeah, I did come off rude. Kinda what I was aiming for.

 

[BloodyThoughts]

Im wondering how he is going to tear down over 80 hours (well....for me) of content into one 5 minute review. gonna be tough for him to do ME2 aint it?

But as well as a lot of other people, im in shock that you did this, I was think AOT: 40th day or Dantes inferno, or MAG. Wait no not MAG cause from what I hear it is all multiplayer, meaning probably most people in the game will have mics, meaning Yahtzee will just call it shit on the spot.

But great review. I felt the same with you on borderlands. Better with Co-op, but a game is barely a videogame if it can't hold up on it's own with Single player.

 

[k-ossuburb]

ok

Yahtzee, try not review Final Fantasy XIII until AFTER I've completed it......

he doesnt even like JRPG's i dont think a review of FFXIII is ever gonna hit here im sure the skies will fall and rivers run red with blood first lol

i reckon he will review it. it will be his first opportunity to critically mutilate a Final Fantasy game. and he has reviewed a couple JRPGs before.

I don't know about that. Yahtzee doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who will review something just for the sake of bashing it. Maybe the editors at the Escapist will force him to, but I doubt it'll be completely by choice that he'll want to review it. I don't think movie critics go out trying to find movies they won't like to review. Don't forget they still have to invest all the time watching/playing the thing first.

i suppose you're right. although i think the chance to destroy something he has long claimed to detest would provide at least SOME incentive to play it.

If he did review it it'll be incredibly boring. It'll just be the exact same thing he always says about every JRPG in the history of the world, ever. It'll just be stuff like:

"Why does everyone in this game look like a 12-year-old-girl?", "if these guy is involved in a war why can't they wear armor that'll actually protect them, are they worried that it'll ruin their hairdo?", "after the forty-billionth cutscene I had gone to make myself a sandwich when all of a sudden it decided to actually let me PLAY the game"...

And so-on and so-forth. So it does seem like a bit of a waste of time for him to review something when we already have a fair idea of what he's going to say about it.

That being said, you can never be certain with a guy like Ben.

 

[Mash101]

Another great review, but I do have to explain why games like this piss me off:

You put three things in a game and it will do well:
1)shooting enemies in any fashion possible with sometimes hilarious outcomes
2)an experience system that makes you stronger as you level and gives you new abilities
3)coop

people always say: well its funner in coop (works for all games with the feature). Well no crap, because you can talk about other things besides the game you're playing distracting you from how bad it is, screwing around inside the game (and that only comes from playing with more people), and the fact that the less work you have to do in a bad game the quicker it's over and the less work you have to do, embracing humanities most portrayed quality: laziness.

Borderlands is a mediocre game which posses as being artsy because it uses art that looks like it was ripped straight out of mad max and a cell shaded visual style. While it is fun I do find myself bored silly if I'm playing alone, while coop is a blast like I said any game with coop can pretty much end up being 100x better. Left 4 Dead 2 is another terrible game, that is unless your in coop.

Add an experience system and blowing the hell out of everything will sell a game no matter what. Worked for Modern Warfare and Borderlands for a reason. Took the qualities that made RPGs addicting (better weapons and attachments when you level, an experience system to make you feel like you've accomplished something, and the ability to make your classes/characters unique in both looks and abilities while creating your own personal playing style) and put it into a shooter, freaking brilliant.

 

[Kyouki1980]

I am a happ happy man. Atlast someone to say it like it is. Borderlands is shit. I have no interest in multiplayer... Mostly cause I have the same problem Yahtzee does *Cough* >_>
But apart from that theres also the massive lack of anything resembling an actual story.
Its like watching an Uwe Boll film. Except those actually have some story... if you can call it that.
Borderlands is aimed at the teeny twicth shooter generation crossed with the mmorpgers. Its got the shooty and the grindy. neither of which appeal to me. GIVE US BACK OUR STORY DAMN YOU 2K!!!

 

[CheckD3]

I know you really didn't like this game, but the review felt...I dunno, lacking. With Brawl, sure you complained the entire time, but it felt more solid to the core of complaints, whereas this Borderlands review felt shallower and emptier.

For the record, while I like this game, I liked the single player and really wouldn't care if there were people there, the same reason I don't like playing team deathmatch in anything else online. But like I said, it felt like there were too many little complaints, and there was nothing that you said that was big enough for me to believe you despised the game as much as you have. So I have to ask, did you just not want to review because it was THAT bad, or was it that you had other games that interested you more?

 

[Anorgil]

Did I hear Yahtzee take a breath?

I thought he edited out his inhalations.

 

[CommyGingerbreadMan]

Online play can only ADD to a game. Single Player is basically the same way through over and over again, online you face people of varying degrees.

Also probably Ninja'd, but the pop up screen he talked about weapons and stuff. . . the game has that, when you look at a weapon it tells you in a box (not inside the inventory screen) and has the box of you weapons stats sitting right next to it. How did he possibly miss that?

 

[afroforce69]

OMG 1st post here ever

only to tell the fact that at the end there seriously is a fieldhockeystick!!! OMG!!!

If i could give it kudos it would be +10000 just for that tiny remark towards the greatest sport ever, field hockey!(probably has something to do with australia, jamie dwyer and such, but still!!!)

at the review itself, didnt really like the game myself so it was expected. hoped on it to be funnier btw.
Damn pure awesomness...

 

[chopperman]

aww but I liked borderlands, too bad everyone online is only out for themselves to get the mad loots and wont stop tea bagin me while I'm dieing and all the hacked lvl 50s wanna beat up on my lvl 15 brick and all the little kids screaming how bad the game is every time they die....


on second thought this game isn't that grand ....

 

[Shadow-Fox]

HEY!!
I take pictures of my car's odometer every 10.000 km! Why exactly does that put me on the same level as all these MMORPG trolls? At least I leave the house to do that twice a year!

 

[Qwirk]

I personally enjoy playing Borderlands as well as the whiney little robot so thusly I must also enjoy the sound of fingernails being dragged over a chalkboard.

At least the game didn't have Mario in it.

 

[Darkefire]

I played through Borderlands almost exclusively on singleplayer because I have the same problem with friends that Yahtzee does. My brother and I did co-op briefly a few times (after getting through the hellhole that is the online system) but it just didn't work because we have completely different playstyles. I'm the type that enjoys hanging back, scoping out the whole battlefield and picking guys off with a sniper at a leisurely pace, while he's the kind that enjoys running in with a shotgun/SMG and blasting anything that moves. I can't imagine what the game would be like with four people, trying to coordinate anything would be akin to pulling teeth. Also, you get into fights over loot pretty regularly.

Regardless, I had fun, and got a decent way into my second playthrough before Mass Effect 2 came along and sucked all my gaming time into its sweet, sweet depths. I enjoy a touch of easy mode (nothing annoys me more than having to level up to be able to beat a mission), but it was challenging enough to keep me engaged. The art design is fantastic, there's a lot more enemy variation and strategy than Yahtzee lets on, and there's about as much mission variation as an FPS will allow (kill something, collect a number of somethings while killing something, find someone while killing somethings, and a combination of the above). Really, the only thing the game doesn't have is puzzles, which is probably what really annoyed our favorite adventure-game-lovin' critic more than any of his other complaints.

There's still a number of glitches and bugs in the game, but overall it's a solid B- as far as games go. You'll have fun for a while, maybe even enough to finish the game once or twice, but it's not the sort of thing you'll be revisiting a year from now.

 

[BloodyThoughts]

I know you really didn't like this game, but the review felt...I dunno, lacking. With Brawl, sure you complained the entire time, but it felt more solid to the core of complaints, whereas this Borderlands review felt shallower and emptier.

For the record, while I like this game, I liked the single player and really wouldn't care if there were people there, the same reason I don't like playing team deathmatch in anything else online. But like I said, it felt like there were too many little complaints, and there was nothing that you said that was big enough for me to believe you despised the game as much as you have. So I have to ask, did you just not want to review because it was THAT bad, or was it that you had other games that interested you more?

Well, that was probably how he thought the game to be, little complaint after little complaint all piling up into one huge giant complaint utterly making the game bad. Oh, and listen to him in the beginning, fanboys wouldn't stop emailing him to review Borderlands, unfortunately he thought it was a bad game.

 

[Leodiensian]

I agree with a lot of the complaints he levels at Borderlands. While it was a functional shooter (point gun at man, pull trigger, man fall down) the lack of a story was a major turn-off for me.

I think the "compare items" complaint he had was a PC only thing? I don't remember weapon comparison being a hassle on the console version I played.

While I still completed it, since I'd payed money for it, I certainly didn't feel compelled to give it the multiple playthroughs games like this usually demand from the player to get the full experience. I think the problem with Borderlands is basically that it can't decide whether it wants to be a single player or multiplayer game. If it had just gone pure multiplayer, then it wouldn't have been such a problem, but it required a single player mode for.. what, legitimacy? So that it seems like a "real" game?

I wouldn't have marked it down for focussing solely on multiplayer. But I will have it marked down for a single player mode that feels like a sick, withered limb of the game rather than it's robust, healthy heart. The end result is I feel like a played a massive beta, or maybe a really huge demo. It did not feel like a full game.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Well the first four words easily led me to that conclusion. "Complete and utter bull" Whcih them led me to think that you find opinions that differ to your own as bullshit. It's not a hard train of thought to follow.

And I'm not saying having an opinion is bad. Quite the contrary, it was your post that made out that you thought differing opinions are bad. Perhaps that wasn't your intention, but thats how it turned out unfortunatly.

Instead of flaming you as the more immature members or disturbed Yahtzee fanboys would have I decided to instead re-write your post in a more appealing manner.

And yeah, I did come off rude. Kinda what I was aiming for.

Yeah but even with your rewritten statement, it's still an opinion, no matter how much you dress it up.

Yeah I said they were bull because they were unjust opinions and not mentioning a thing about the actual gameplay which he mentioned nothing on yet called the game shit. I don't have a problem with a person hating something, but if it's not on it's primary function as a game then I think there argument is bull.

You said my different opinion is not a bad thing, yet you call me a "fanboy" which is a derogative term. Why insult me enjoying a game yet you appreciate other opinions? The two statements contradict with each other

I don't care if you answer me maturely, nicely or appealingly, you opinions contradict and your dressing up of my OP does not change my opinion.

Okay be rude to me, I don't care but the mods will. Enjoy your stay here, even if it may be short if you keep up with that attitude

 

[NamesAreHardToPick]

1. Best gun play since Far Cry... what? Yeah, the shooting was fun, but all hit calculations were still d20 based, not actual accuracy/distance/etc based. They might have had the stats but that's not how the system worked (Placebo Effects). You're comparing apples to oranges.

2. This is also an opinion, I found it to be good, not great

You might be thinking about Fallout 3 rolling dice to determine if a bullet hits or not, you can have your shot perfectly lined up and pull the trigger and the bullet decides it's going to come out sideways or something. That was one of the many many annoying things about that game for me. Borderlands isn't like that at all, if your target fills the crosshairs you're 100% certain to hit.
I'm not sure how looking through the scope changes that, bullets don't always hit exactly where the dot says they will but that's dealing with guys who are really small even with Zoom on. Switching to a gun with ridiculous accuracy (97.5?) seemed to help.