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Borderlands is a departure for Gearbox Software, the developer best known for its Brothers in Arms World War II series. Instead of battling Nazis across Europe, you play as one of four settlers attempting to survive on the hostile planet called Pandora. What makes this first person shooter/role playing adventure unique is the ability to join up with three friends online and work together as a team and a new procedurally generated technology that allows for well over 650,000 weapons.
That's right, Borderlands comes with more than half a million types of guns and perhaps even more when it ships this October. To do this, Gearbox created a bunch of different parts and ammo and fed it into the game that, in turn, takes that stuff and pieces it together to create something wholly original. So for example, you may pick up a handgun that fires shotgun rounds, or perhaps a rocket launcher that fires darts.
The same thing applies to loot. Kill a monster and a plethora of objects will erupt from the carcass. With hundreds of thousands of different things to snag, you'll never know what to expect. Now factor in the ability to trade things online, and Borderlands becomes one of our most anticipated games.
Thankfully, there's more to it than newfangled weaponry. In addition to all that loot, Borderlands' story mode contains hundreds of missions. The one we saw involves a hermit who lost his entire family (as well as one of his legs and an eye) to creatures called skags. Everything with this guy involves killing skags, so the team set out to snuff as many as possible to not only clear the missions, but also collect loot.
Borderlands has four main characters with different abilities. These include Brick (a brutish man who loves smashing things with his fists), Lilith (a sexy siren who uses magic to slow down enemies and heal teammates), Roland (a soldier who can boost party experience, regenerate ammo and heal) and Mordecai (a hunter with expert sniper skills). Each possesses three skill trees, so feel free to gain XP, trade them in for new abilities and transform them into powerful killing machines.
As for enemies, they range from the aforementioned skags (with numerous types- spitter skag, fire skag) to spider ants and large monstrosities. You'll also do battle with psycho midgets (you read that right) and other bizarre bad guys. If anything, you cannot accuse Gearbox for a lack of variety.
Feel free, however, to debate the art style. Instead of going with a more realistic appearance, the team switched gears and cell shaded the entire game. Personally, we think it fits with the at times humorous dialogue, but we doubt it'll appeal to everyone.
At the same time, the idea of beating the game with 200 weapons and not seeing half of the ones available is hard to resist. Combine that with an expandable level cap of 50, and Borderlands sounds like an addictive FPS that'll consume hours of our time. Perhaps we'll find a machine gun that fires land mines.
Chris Buffa is GameDaily's senior editor. He enjoys easy achievement points, first person shooters and starting trouble.
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