Borderlands

Borderlands,

A game I've sunk plenty of hours in over the years whilst both loving, yet hating the experience all in fairly equal measure.

It's an enjoyable videogame with a script that has all sorts of puns and who can forget the adorable, dancing CL4PTR4P.

I'm not normally one for self-aware videogames yet there's something about this that's endearing as the game never takes itself too seriously even going as far as to make jokes at its own expense.

The problem is that for every silver lining, there's a cloud attached to it.

The Review

First off, I do like this videogame and I don't want what I'm about to say to be misconstrued.

The loot generation system on first playthrough is absolutely terrible however.

This causes artificial difficulty spikes in such random places that have absolutely nothing to do with trying to tackle an objective too high for your character level. Those spikes I can understand when you're trying to aim too high to begin with and keep getting killed. Rightly so.

Where I'm focusing upon, is the "artificial" difficulty spikes that seem indirectly attached to what loot drops you get when defeating certain standard enemy types. In other words, if you are grinding your way through a particular mission and are finding it tough to get through these standard enemies, one good loot drop flips that around and turns it into a breeze. All of the sudden, an area that caused you no end of frustration is now such a cakewalk that it's not even entertaining anymore.

Example, in the mission Shock Crystal Harvest, you are promised that successful completion will reward you with an elemental ability to attach to your special.  If approached correctly, you're trying to do this at the same, or lower, level than you to help progress properly given that your weapons receive a de-buff if you try to tackle a mission too high for your character level.

However, upon execution of this mission, there are random characters (usually the blasted skags!) that, for no apparent reason will be heavily resistant to your weapon  damage regardless of both its level and the enemy's.

Now, I'm not talking about the "special" versions of these characters where it's plain as day which elemental effect you shouldn't use (ie. shock on a shock variant, fire on a fire variant, toxic on a toxic variant a la Pokemon).

This leads to incredible amounts of frustration because the game does nothing to communicate to you why they're resistant, until a random loading screen will imply that certain characters are best fought with standard weapons like shotguns, or with certain tactics like CQB, something that would have been helpful to know beforehand.

It's like the game expects you to either wait for these loading screen tips to clue you in, indirectly, to why you're struggling so, or wants you to use your initiative and go online to do research.

Is that why you put a game in? To have to go online and do research how to play it? Or how not to suck at it? It's understandable when you're playing a strategy game where a guide can help you get out of the mental box your tactics are stuck in if you're struggling.

This is the biggest gripe I have with this game because, yes, you can level up your weapons and yes they do increase their damage output. But some enemies will be more resistant based on some unknown variable that the game never tells you about!

Sure, it makes clear that you are not supposed to match elemental effects onto an enemy your trying to attack. That's completely understandable and I can accept that. But sometimes, you might find a weapon with blast damage that rips apart one enemy type, but not another yet there is nothing special about them (no armour, elemental type etc).

If a weapon has an elemental effect, it seems to be RNG as to when the effect will trigger, which is understandable given that there is a branch of the upgrade tree dedicated to buffing the chances of it going off.

That's fine, I have no issue there.

Where I have the issue is that this game seems to treat you like you're so heavily invested in it that you'll go online and Google a strategy guide for Borderlands to find out why you struggle so against certain standard enemy types when your weapon load out matches your character level.

It sounds like I'm expecting what the game has not been designed to deliver, but that's okay because it helps me either adjust my playstyle, or just encourages me to play it less to keep it enjoyable. Sometimes, less playtime is more value in the long-term.

Now this gameplay loop might be some people's idea of fun; to keep grinding an area until you get that good loot drop. Me? I prefer my games to be a blend of fun and challenging and when the former is bled away from the latter and it stops being fun, that's when I'm done with the game.

I didn't used to be like this, or maybe I'm just more aware now of what I want/expect from my videogames than I ever was before.

Conclusion

Having already completed this in the past some time ago, I traded it in without really understanding why any desire to play it again had evaporated. I had no idea, at the time, that it's supposed to get better with each subsequent playthrough as enemies gain extra buffs, but so do your loot drops too.

If you like your humour quite juvenile then you'll probably appreciate the script in this because, whilst it's no blockbuster, it definitely has it's moments that will make you laugh and appreciate the writers' humour.

To say, one more time, I don't think this is a bad videogame by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely one to adjust your expectations to so that you continue to get the most fun out of it. Yes, it's designed for multiple playthroughs, but maybe don't play it for marathon sessions unless you really like the gameplay loop; you'll burn yourself out otherwise.

Peace!

===TLP===