The writers at Bifuteki enjoy playing games together, so what better game to try out our new type of review: the Tag Team Review. The idea of the Tag Team review is to get a wider perspective of the game by letting us all write up a short piece on our thoughts for the game. The group reviewing a game can range from two of us to the whole team and we are all a different type of gamer so hopefully this will let you see a game from the type of gamer you are.
Quan:
Right now David and I will give you a double deuce review of Borderlands for the Xbox 360. For some who have not played yet and are waiting for a review to subdue that curiosity, well you came to the right place.
You are a Mercenary bent on a treasure hunt that will hopefully bring your dreams to reality with this myth of a vault that holds treasures beyond your wild imagination. Time to kiss your keester good bye because we are about to enter the world of Borderlands!
In the start of the story you meet a helper robot who gives you in the “ins” and “outs” of the borderland world. First up you have to pick your Mercenary, which comes in four different flavors: Berserker, Hunter, Soldier and of course the lovely Siren. As I explained earlier you are on a treasure hunt, but that is only the main goal in this world and as a “FPS RPG” game you will need to level up your character with side missions along the way. Do not try to take on other missions while at a certain level because you’re just going to waste your funds respawning to go back and get killed again.
David:
Quan pretty much summed up the plot for the game so I’ll just chime in with what I liked and disliked.
Borderlands is a beautiful looking game. In general I am a sucker for cel-shading but this game really steps it up. Even though you are on a wasteland of a planet it’s easy to tell things apart among the plethora of brown and grey objects littered across the brown and grey landscapes. Besides the graphics, I really enjoyed the atmosphere the game sets up. The music always felt right, whether we were fighting Skagzilla or just rummaging through little settlements for ammo and bigger guns.
Guns. I can honestly say when the trailer states ” billion guns” it’s not joking. The variety of weaponry so far in the game has yet to let me down. You’ll be finding new equipment, lots of it. Either for you, a teammate, or someone you’re going to meet up with online later so you can drop it off. It’s almost saddening that I only have 4 slots to equip weapons, but if I used everything I found I would never level up my weapon proficiencies.
As far as complaints go, I really only have two: splitscreen menus and splitscreen online. One night after some online Borderlands with the Bifuteki, Darby wanted to make a character and check out the game. Immediately it comes to my attention that the menus look different, something… odd? For whatever reason, the programmers felt it was a totally reasonable option to keep the menus the same size as if you were playing the game by yourself or online with friends instead of resizing them to the, now split-in-half, screen. This has you scrolling the menu around in every direction with the right analog stick to read stuff, check your map, sell items, and pretty much anything else that bring up the menu.
The other thing that we came a cross after having a great night playing the game together and wanting to join up with the rest of Bifuteki was the inability to play online while in a splitscreen game. Again, not sure the reasoning behind this other than the fact that, while co-op gaming is making a big comeback, they just assume you don’t have any real friends anymore and only play with people online. It’s great that I get to enjoy the game with Darby but there is just a huge hole, well – two, where those other friends could be helping us out.
Of course, these complaints are minor once we are actually playing and having a good time. It hasn’t made me like the game any less and due to the great scaling difficulty depending on the number of players in a game, hasn’t made me want to throw the controller.
Borderlands is available now for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC for $59.99. The copy used for review is the full version of the game and purchased by both Quan and myself.
