Zero Punctuation: Borderlands
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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Thank God Yahtzee abhorred this game as much as I did. Reserved this game back when it wasn't supposed to be cell shaded and patiently waited for it's release with pant-wetting anticipation. I like nearly every other player on the planet played co-op first and so completely missed the opening cutscene, which just so happened to explain the live action girl that pops up in the corner every once in a while to tell you some crap. I actually had so interest in finding this vault doo-hickey and I even completed every single mission in the game, despite the trivial repetitiveness. But damn my high expectations for I found the final fight to be a rather lack luster battle with another generic vagina monster. After winning I received a few lack luster weapons, worse than what I already had, (so much for the vault of trans-earthly delight and riches) and was told to get lost of start playthrough 2. Where was the vault again? I opened it, killed it's vagina and then it closed? WTF I say. I feel that I can relate very strongly to this post of Zero Punctuation...except with more punctuation.
Try it anyway. I normally don't like FPSes too much but I quite enjoyed Borderlands. It's not an amazing game and it has more bugs than an ant's nest (or it did, before a patch squashed a few), but it might be your kind of game. If you play it on PC, the vehicles don't handle toooooo badly either.dwoo21 said:
It has its problems, yes. But Some people found it fun. Give it a go anyway and see what you think. Rent it?
CoD is killing the same five or six people over and over too... they're just not as distinctive as Jason, Midget Jason, Steroid Jason, Jason-in-the-Iron-Mask or Flaming Jason.
I would have to agree with Yahtzee, efpeesarepeegees (FPSRPGS) should have to be decent in the single player field. Online can be good, it just takes time. I guess he just doesn't have that time. It is comparable to digging through the rough for diamonds, except it takes hours and for every diamond there are 10 shiny pieces of beer bottles (kind of fun), and 20 fake diamonds with razor sharp edges that are doused in colorless STDs.
It is exceedingly difficult to assume anything else given the wording of your post, but it's water under the bridge anyways.Sir John the Net Knight said:
In any event as regards the repetitive things in the game, I said cut it out, not replace it. I would rather 2 or 10 or whatever hours I thoroughly enjoyed than 80 hours of doing the same quest over and over and ending up throwing the keyboard across the room in frustration at a repetative and to me thus exceedingly unenjoyable game. I play games to have fun, not have a second job. Inevitably there is always going to be some work to the game, don't get me wrong, and the other extreme of cutscening me through an entire game or holding my hand through easy gameplay is not desirable either. There's an equilibrium to be had, the game should engage you in the elements enough to keep you going, but it should also keep it fun too. That's really the golden rule to me.
And really as much as I could keep proselytizing about the reasons I think the game is not fun, the bottom line for me is that is not fun.
I'm kind of surprised Yahtzee didn't rag on how the game's biggest selling point was how Borderlands supposedly had like millions of possible weapons you could choose from, yet it ended up being more like 30 or 40 weapons (at least in cosmetic appearance) all with randomly generated stats.
The only thing I kind of shook my head at in the review was how Yahtzee admitted he JOINED RANDOM ONLINE GAMES, yet he still seemed "shocked" by the fact that all the tools he ended up playing with were loot-hording twits who'd leave him behind to get slaughtered. It's been pretty much an unspoken rule that you're asking for headaches more times than not when you play with random folks on Live (or any other online venue, really). But, I digress.
Glad he hit on the main thing that got under my skin with Borderlands, though: The menu interface. The design choices they made with that thing were about as intuitive as having a second anus located right under your nose. Ugh.
The only thing I kind of shook my head at in the review was how Yahtzee admitted he JOINED RANDOM ONLINE GAMES, yet he still seemed "shocked" by the fact that all the tools he ended up playing with were loot-hording twits who'd leave him behind to get slaughtered. It's been pretty much an unspoken rule that you're asking for headaches more times than not when you play with random folks on Live (or any other online venue, really). But, I digress.
Glad he hit on the main thing that got under my skin with Borderlands, though: The menu interface. The design choices they made with that thing were about as intuitive as having a second anus located right under your nose. Ugh.
I didn't get twenty minutes into this God awful game, and I was already getting bored with the repetition. It's been a while since I couldn't get through even the first level of a game because I was so bored. Glad to see Borderlands reminded me that terrible games are still being made.
It was just a copy of every other popular game ever made. It even had the EXACT same control scheme as MWF2. The only good thing about it is the cover art, and the reenforcement of "never judge a book by its cover."
It was just a copy of every other popular game ever made. It even had the EXACT same control scheme as MWF2. The only good thing about it is the cover art, and the reenforcement of "never judge a book by its cover."
I don't understand why yahtzee didn't just request some people from the Australian Gamer community go play borderlands with him. I'm part of the community and as far as I can tell we have hundreds of members and their are always people on. If he had organized a few nights to play I'm sure people would have been happy to do so.
I don't own borderlands myself but a few of my friends do and I've heard its quite alot of fun in co-op. Seems like he forcibly missed out on the best part of the game. Still funny review though.
I don't own borderlands myself but a few of my friends do and I've heard its quite alot of fun in co-op. Seems like he forcibly missed out on the best part of the game. Still funny review though.
There was so much more he could have brought up that he didn't.
I mean aside from the platform specific problems (i.e. not being able to connect to people's games due to the host not having their ports forwarded) which can't be mentioned because it is platform specific and a technical problem rather than a problem with the game.
I felt like it was a mountain of broken promises. They mentioned customizable vehicles (there is only 1 and the only thing you can customize is the choice of weapon, machine gun or turret, and the color of which there are 8 to choose from) and listed vehicular combat as one of the main features of the game. There was some talk about the stories of the four main characters, each of who is said to be looking for someone on Pandora, and I've played each of the characters through playthrough 1 at least once and I have not found any story providing any sufficient explanation as to where this went. The ending was disappointing and I actually refused to believe that that was the true ending the first time I saw it. And the 17 million different guns! It took me a while to figure it out, but it didn't take all that much to realize that each gun was made of so many parts and there were only 5 or so iterations of each part and all they did was mix and match and that worked out fine until you realized that each gun had "quality levels" that basically made it stronger all around but with a higher level requirement and that many of the more interesting guns that you see are the ones that modders make on their own.
Broken promises are my main issue with Borderlands, but there are problems inherent in the game (which of course is fair game for being attacked by critics and reviewers).
1. For a game so heavily focused on loot, it was a surprise to learn that only the first 4 lines of a weapon's bonuses were shown. With a update that was increased to 5 lines. Even then, there are weapons that have more bonuses and you would not be able to tell what they were without testing against another gun that was almost exactly the same.
2. The beserker class. He has an entire tree dedicated to "tanking". All it does is increase his ability to take damage. He has no way of forcing the enemies to attack him. Also, his skill which is supposedly makes him very strong does not build on what the game is centered on: the loot. He holsters his weapon in beserk mode, making all that searching for a gun absolutely worthless just so he can run in and punch people, which is admittedly fun but still doesn't make sense given that you spend so much time finding better guns.
3. Dueling is completely one sided. The siren has the ability to turn invisible (also invincible in this mode) and run really fast. When i dueled with my friend (a very skilled sniper) who killed me with a single shot from his new rifle, I did not need to use any skill or complex tactics at all even on a very open field. All I did was use my phasewalk and run from cover to cover while invisible and eventually i came up behind him. Similarly against a soldier's turret, the siren can easily flank it rendering it useless, and against the beserker the siren can disappear just as he activates beserker mode and closes the distance.
4. Rare loot is what you're supposed to be going after in the game, but it was made too easy as you could just restart in a particular area over and over and keep opening chests, so rarity lost its meaning pretty early.
5. You can run over almost any enemy instantly killing it regardless of level, even if it does explode your vehicle, you'll go into second wind mode upon which a teammate can revive you.
6. One type of SMG in particular sounds like a plastic toy.
I also noticed the same problems as some people and Yahtzee have already mentioned, so I won't repeat them.
That being said, I did sink 100+ hours in this game. It did what it was supposed to: appeal to the part of me that wanted to pick up a new item every 5 seconds and check whether it was better than what I already had, the part of me that I had discovered when I had first played diablo years ago. Grinding was not a problem; throughout all my playthroughs I never really had to "grind". You can just play through without doing much of the sidequests, and doing all of them whenever you can before proceeding will make it incredibly easy, but I'm not sure if doing sidequests counts as grinding. Comparing items was a problem only after I discovered that there were bonuses on the weapons that I could not view. The system by which the weapons are created and named give a good amount of information on how "good" the weapon is. Being able to see the gun's "item card" without having to bring up some other kind of interface was a very good idea. One member of my team took a while to figure out the system, but when he did comparing weapons became easy enough that it would take a quick 2 second glance at the card before picking it up or not. The only time I ever had to "pour hundreds of rounds" into a monster before it would die was when I was badly underleveled or poorly equipped. In fact most of the enemies in the game follow patterns that can be easily countered given minimal thought. Reddles mentioned the characters shouting out the same phrases over and over again; there is an option to turn "player callouts" off. The problem with the car getting stuck can be fixed by meleeing it; and the 3 round burst rifle borrowed from Halo isn't as much of an obvious borrowing as the shields are.
All in all, it deserved the criticism it got but perhaps there wasn't enough. It did well in providing me with a new toy to play with every few minutes, and that's all I wanted it for.
I feel a little disappointed that Yahtzee didn't rip into this one harder. In this review he came across as being a little too lenient; he didn't really want/care to review this game and it shows.
I mean aside from the platform specific problems (i.e. not being able to connect to people's games due to the host not having their ports forwarded) which can't be mentioned because it is platform specific and a technical problem rather than a problem with the game.
I felt like it was a mountain of broken promises. They mentioned customizable vehicles (there is only 1 and the only thing you can customize is the choice of weapon, machine gun or turret, and the color of which there are 8 to choose from) and listed vehicular combat as one of the main features of the game. There was some talk about the stories of the four main characters, each of who is said to be looking for someone on Pandora, and I've played each of the characters through playthrough 1 at least once and I have not found any story providing any sufficient explanation as to where this went. The ending was disappointing and I actually refused to believe that that was the true ending the first time I saw it. And the 17 million different guns! It took me a while to figure it out, but it didn't take all that much to realize that each gun was made of so many parts and there were only 5 or so iterations of each part and all they did was mix and match and that worked out fine until you realized that each gun had "quality levels" that basically made it stronger all around but with a higher level requirement and that many of the more interesting guns that you see are the ones that modders make on their own.
Broken promises are my main issue with Borderlands, but there are problems inherent in the game (which of course is fair game for being attacked by critics and reviewers).
1. For a game so heavily focused on loot, it was a surprise to learn that only the first 4 lines of a weapon's bonuses were shown. With a update that was increased to 5 lines. Even then, there are weapons that have more bonuses and you would not be able to tell what they were without testing against another gun that was almost exactly the same.
2. The beserker class. He has an entire tree dedicated to "tanking". All it does is increase his ability to take damage. He has no way of forcing the enemies to attack him. Also, his skill which is supposedly makes him very strong does not build on what the game is centered on: the loot. He holsters his weapon in beserk mode, making all that searching for a gun absolutely worthless just so he can run in and punch people, which is admittedly fun but still doesn't make sense given that you spend so much time finding better guns.
3. Dueling is completely one sided. The siren has the ability to turn invisible (also invincible in this mode) and run really fast. When i dueled with my friend (a very skilled sniper) who killed me with a single shot from his new rifle, I did not need to use any skill or complex tactics at all even on a very open field. All I did was use my phasewalk and run from cover to cover while invisible and eventually i came up behind him. Similarly against a soldier's turret, the siren can easily flank it rendering it useless, and against the beserker the siren can disappear just as he activates beserker mode and closes the distance.
4. Rare loot is what you're supposed to be going after in the game, but it was made too easy as you could just restart in a particular area over and over and keep opening chests, so rarity lost its meaning pretty early.
5. You can run over almost any enemy instantly killing it regardless of level, even if it does explode your vehicle, you'll go into second wind mode upon which a teammate can revive you.
6. One type of SMG in particular sounds like a plastic toy.
I also noticed the same problems as some people and Yahtzee have already mentioned, so I won't repeat them.
That being said, I did sink 100+ hours in this game. It did what it was supposed to: appeal to the part of me that wanted to pick up a new item every 5 seconds and check whether it was better than what I already had, the part of me that I had discovered when I had first played diablo years ago. Grinding was not a problem; throughout all my playthroughs I never really had to "grind". You can just play through without doing much of the sidequests, and doing all of them whenever you can before proceeding will make it incredibly easy, but I'm not sure if doing sidequests counts as grinding. Comparing items was a problem only after I discovered that there were bonuses on the weapons that I could not view. The system by which the weapons are created and named give a good amount of information on how "good" the weapon is. Being able to see the gun's "item card" without having to bring up some other kind of interface was a very good idea. One member of my team took a while to figure out the system, but when he did comparing weapons became easy enough that it would take a quick 2 second glance at the card before picking it up or not. The only time I ever had to "pour hundreds of rounds" into a monster before it would die was when I was badly underleveled or poorly equipped. In fact most of the enemies in the game follow patterns that can be easily countered given minimal thought. Reddles mentioned the characters shouting out the same phrases over and over again; there is an option to turn "player callouts" off. The problem with the car getting stuck can be fixed by meleeing it; and the 3 round burst rifle borrowed from Halo isn't as much of an obvious borrowing as the shields are.
All in all, it deserved the criticism it got but perhaps there wasn't enough. It did well in providing me with a new toy to play with every few minutes, and that's all I wanted it for.
I feel a little disappointed that Yahtzee didn't rip into this one harder. In this review he came across as being a little too lenient; he didn't really want/care to review this game and it shows.
Well, as he said in the very beginning of the review, he basically only covered this game at all to keep the legions of whiny fanboys off his back who kept pecking at him to do it. Like I said in my last post, I was surprised he didn't mention certain shortcomings in the game like the proclaimed "bazillion possible weapons" thing the devs shoved down everyone's throats. Instead he opted to cover the more obvious problems like the tedium and the horrible menu interface.Rogue of Hearts said:
Aww well, honestly, a few friends and I only bought Borderlands as a time killer to hold us off under Modern Warfare 2 came out. We had some fun with it, but I honestly can't see myself going back to it again (already traded it in, in fact). The missions were all too similar and had little to no personality. The "story" was as bare-bones as you can get, and the big promises on customization they made pre-release just didn't come through (I thought you'd actually be able to alter/upgrade weapons before I played it, but no dice).
