“The pure FPS genre is dead say hello to the FPS/RPG genre.” The BFG

Overview

Borderlands is a FPS/RPG Sci-fi game developed by Gearbox Software, the same studio that developed the brother in arms series. The game takes place on the planet Pandora a barren wasteland that a small population inhabits. Local legend says that an alien race left behind a vault filled with riches and alien technology but everyone that goes looking for it never comes back.

Gameplay

In previous reviews I’ve said that adding RPG elements into an FPS game was bad and the two genres shouldn’t mix. After playing Borderlands I sat in my chair trying to figure out why I enjoyed borderlands, so much so I needed to keep playing because it was so addictive. Don’t worry the BFG hasn’t turned to the dark side but I can honestly say that Gearbox software has done it right and has done it very well. Gearbox Software has taken each genre and stripped them to their most basic forms and combined the two for an entertaining experience. The game has you pick from 4 different characters each possessing different skills Brick is your basic tank that likes to melee rather than use weapons, Lilith who uses a lot of spell based attacks and can also heal other characters, Mordecai is the ranged weapons specialist who uses sniper rifles for long ranged kills, and Roland is the weapons specialist that has bonuses to shotguns and rifles. Each character has a class specific skill that can be used once you reach level 5 this also unlocks the skill tree that each character has. The one thing that really bothered me was the lack of depth in the skill tress they were very small and didn’t offer very many player skills. The other thing that really bothered the BFG was a feature they added that comes in handy but annoys me more than helping me. If you hold down E you can pick up everything that dropped but it also can equip a weapon you have your cursor over. I can’t tell how many times I accidently equipped a weapon I didn’t want it made me BFG SMASH my computer causing the internet to crash sorry my bad but it’s the little things that anger me the most.

The one thing I found most interesting was the games random content generator or as they like to call it the procedural content creation system. This system effects what weapons and upgrades drop off of npc’s. The system uses the player’s current level to add more powerful weapons over time as the player levels rather than getting items in random intervals. The system uses over 17 million different weapons with an infinite number of weapon combinations which is truly impressive to have that many different weapons in a single game. The other impressive feature in Borderlands was the way creatures attacked you. For example there are these boar like creatures that attack in packs while one would be charging you the others would try to attack from different sides changing tactics as you fought them. This feature works well with creatures but humanoid npc’s seemed stupid at times and very predictable which is a shame because it would have made the game more challenging if the AI was smart

Graphics

Borderlands use’s the Unreal Ed 3 engine and Gearbox Software uses it very well. What sets this game apart from others is the cell shaded effect they achieved by hand drawing all of the textures in the game. At first I thought the look made the game look cheap and poorly textured but as played more of the game I enjoyed the different look of the textures. While everyone is trying to be ultra realistic this game took a chance on a completely different style and was it was executed to perfection. The textures are beautiful, well rendered and really fit the theme of the game world. The character and weapon models are also very well done.

Sound

The music is really good in Borderlands each area of the map has its own music and really fits the mood of the planet which is barren, hot and dangerous. The sound effects are also good as well weapon noises are good and also you can hear explosions from very long distances like in the real world.

Final Thoughts

Gearbox Software got it right which I was surprised it was able to do because I was a firm believer that RPG elements and FPS elements couldn’t live in the same game but borderlands has changed my thoughts a little bit on the genre. I’m still a hardcore FPS gamer but if they can do what Gearbox Software did with this genre then I can learn to like it the genre over time. Any other studio that is designing a FPS with RPG elements needs to take a lot of queues from Borderlands in fact it should be mandatory that they play this game before they can make their game. The FPS genre is slowly incorporating more and more RPG elements and a lot of studios are getting wrong just because gamers want more replay ability doesn’t give you the right to shove RPG elements into the game and not test whether or not they work well with the game. I give borderlands a 4 out of 5.

The BFG has spoken and this game review is now law.

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