Borderlands - The Games I've Played

Where do I even start with this amazing game?

Let me just tell you it this way, upon the request of two of my friends, I got this game. The first time I played it, we went straight to online multiplayer, and they blew through the introduction in a whirl of crazy, and I was hooked ever since then.

This game is part of the reason that I get in trouble with a few other games that will appear on the list. The reason being, that it's so awesome, that I started to trust people to suggest games that I should get. My logic was that if they thought this was so awesome, then they must have the right idea about other games. Not really the truth which means I got some bad choices on my list, but at least they got it right with this one.

Although this is a first person shooter, Borderlands breaks all of the standards you'd expect out of a first person shooter. The game play is not linear, you can skill points into your character in one of the four classes that you can play as, and multi-player is possible, but not essential, and it only makes the game that much better.

Now typical games have single player story line, and multi-player story line. If you have online multi-player it's typically Call of Duty style where you're trying to murder each other. Borderlands does none of that. Multi-player is when a person joins your game (either in house or online) and they instantly start where you're at in the story, doing whatever it is that you're doing. The best part about this is that the more people you have playing with you (up to 4) the stronger the monsters get, and the better the loot gets. That means that even if you bring in three of your friends to fight the big bad Rakk Hive-

It's only going to get stronger and harder to kill.

Borderlands also breaks down a few of the typical gripes I have against FPS games. Regen health? It's not always there, and if you do get it, there's a reason that you have it because your shield that you just equipped heals your health. Regen shields? The game explains how it works, and depending on your shield that you find different things can happen. Respawn points? The game explains those, and death comes with a real life cost of having to pay to be put back together again. Linear story line? Don't you wish.

That's one of the biggest draws to me, the story line to Borderlands does have a typical start and end, but the path you take to get there and what you use to get there is anything but linear. The game randomly generates ALL of it's drops, and depending on your class, your skill build, and if you're playing with friends, it changes how the game plays and how you play it. Then there are all of the side quests. There are dozens upon dozens of side quests that each have their own interesting little story lines that add depth to the world that you're playing in. You don't have to play them, but if you do, you get levels, weapons, and some interesting side knowledge to what is happening around you.

The best part about the entire thing? It doesn't take itself too seriously. It's not over the top humor, and it's not 100% serious all the time, but Borderlands is willing to make pop culture references (I'm On A Boat!) and make quick little jabs within their writing and world to make you laugh, but you're laughing at the same time you're machine gunning down a swarm of psychos who are holding grenades in their hand and running towards you.

Everything 'bad' about this game is so miniscule compared to the big picture that you hardly notice them. Car controls are down right horrid, some places aren't designed that well, and monsters get recycled just with bigger names or different colors, but that's not why you play Borderlands. You're not looking for a deep monster list with unique skills and abilities, you're looking to get a better weapon, a better grenade set, so you can go back to story line and melt some faces.

Then there are the DLC's. Where the base game is awesome, the DLC's just keep that flavor of awesome and have fun with it. All of the DLC's are worth getting, and all of them are down right hilarious and difficult all at the same time.

This game is the start of me focusing only one one game, and playing that game out until there's nothing else to do. Before this I played a bit of one game, a bit of another, and had to balance between them, but then Borderlands happened and I didn't do anything but play Borderlands. The worst part, you have at least four playthroughs that you can play (one for each class) and then you have different builds that you can play for each character, different weapons that you can level up and become more more powerful in, and then on top of that, you have DLC's and New Game+ where everything is only harder to kill but you get even more awesome guns to deal with the monsters.

I know that this game says that I have 100% it, but I easily could go back into this game right now and play it through all over again, and have a completely different experience than I did the first time (because I only played the sniper 100%, I haven't touched anyone else).

This game ruined me. It showed me that not all of the games out there were like the first two that I ever played, but then it also set the bar very high for the rest of the games I played. I could rationalize getting a game that I could spend 80+ hours in and still have things I've never done, I can not rationalize getting a game where I spend 20 hours in it and see the ending credits and only have online multiplayer to do anything 'new' with.