Luke’s Previews: Borderlands
Luke Earhart
October 5, 2009
Filed under A & E
About two years ago a game was announced called Borderlands. This game promised (and still promises) over 500,000 guns using a random weapon system much like the old Diablo 2 system. The game teased us with an article in Game Informer, giving us pictures of a planet called Pandora, a very Road Warrior-like universe with roving bandits on cars and a desolate wasteland to play around in with your mass amounts of awesome weapons. Much has changed since it was announced, and because it’s coming out quite soon, it desperately needs a preview to get out into the open.
When the pictures were first shown, they teased us by showing futuristic weapons and a realistic world. In fact, this was pretty much all they gave us, no gameplay videos, just pictures. So when they showed footage and Borderlands’ new look at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) this year, most people who had been following it since day one were astounded. The realistic look had turned into a cartoony, cell-shaded, almost Pixar look. This made me very indecisive. At first sight, it looked like a day-one buy for me, but with the cell-shaded look, I’m a tad skeptical.
The whole RPG aspect of the game has changed as well. It was told that there was a talent system where you could boost health or speed, or even special abilities. The new look has numbers fly off the enemy, designating how much damage you have done, as you shoot them. While this might be effective in judging who has a stronger gun, it just looks like a huge cluster of numbers, and probably a spark for an epileptic seizure. The talent system was revamped into almost a World of Warcraft-looking tree, where you have to put points in one tier to get to the next.
Although Game Informer said in its preview (oh so long ago) Borderlands was really fun and challenging with a diverse system of guns and characters, people from this year’s E3 have had mixed thoughts. Specifically referring to a group of gamers called Noobtoob, spawning from the podcast in which two of them run, it seemed they had an even number of excited and non-excited people. Some liked the RPG aspect, while others refused it saying a first person shooter should feel like the bullets made an impact rather than numbers flying off.
Still, I remain hopeful that this will turn out to be a great game. This change of pace in the game design, conversely, has made me choose to rent it in the future rather than buy it first day. The main mistake for Borderlands is releasing it close to Modern Warfare 2 release, which is obviously getting much more hype (to be honest I’m more excited about the sequel too.) Either way, I’m going to give this game a rent for sure.
