Games: Borderlands & all DLC

Am I too late to write about this? Is it? Hurmm.. Nope, I don't think so. Come on, even in gamefaqs.com there are other games that got their walkthrough written AFTER 6 months, right? So.. yeah. I don't think I'm too late for this game.

Borderlands game is released  on October 29th, 2009. Huh.. almost a year ago. But, I didn't get to play the game right after it was released, due to.. some other game that have been released at the same time.. I think it was.. Tiberium War: Twilight, or was it Dragon Age: Origins... hurm.. Dunno. Maybe even both.

The game was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games. Thank god it wasn't Ubisoft publishing this game, otherwise they will probably screw it up with their so called-digital-right-management. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, the notorious DRM. I mean, come on, what right? What management? I paid the price, and I wanna play some games. So its my right, and I should manage it me self. Is it really that hard to let go?

Well, enough about that. Lets go straight to the game. I gotta to admit, first time I heard about this game, I was like.. whaaat? Because of the game graphics looks a bit cartoonish. And also because of the name. Whenever I heard about the Borderlands, people gonna say, "Hey, its another post-apocalyptic game, just like-wait, better that Fallout 3!". So I was like, hell no. Fallout 3 is the best FPS+RPG game EVAR, and nothing could compare with its post-apocalyptic-ness... unless you can make another scene somewhere in Moscow... What? I'm just saying..

But then, somewhere around 2010, I found the game on the shelf of unnamed game store, and I feel like, what do I get to lose? Its a game, maybe its good, maybe average, and if its not I'm going to make a flying saucer out of it. Then there you go, I played it. For the first 1-2 hours, it was great. The graphics may seems a bit cartoonish in Youtube, but it just like Prince of Persia 2008 (the one with cell-shading). And the gameplay, easy enough to understand, everything else seems pretty straight-forward.

The game, although emphasizing on multiplayer, its also great on single player. Lets.. just go to single player only, because it nothing much different than multiplayer aside from extra loots, exp and friends to chat with. At the beginning of game, there would be the opening story, about some kind of a legend, the Vault, with untold treasures, could be riches, relics or anything at all. The narrator, who was telling to a bunch of kids, that many had tried, and yet failed to find this Vault. Some said that it was just a myth, some old wives tale, but the narrator mentioned, if its just a fiction, why people keep on searching it?

Then, the game started to begin. The four kids where the narrator was talking to before, is the characters that you can choose from. They are, Roland the Soldier, Mordecai the Hunter, Lilith the Siren, and Brick as himself (he's a berserker). As their title suggested, that is their specialty. Roland have balance features, prefer usage of shotgun and assault rifle. He can deploy an automated turret with wide variety of defence and offence capabilities. Mordecai is more of a sniper and prefer sniper rifles and revolvers (for self defence I guess). He have a pet, bat-bird looking called Bloodwing, to help him in long range attack skill or just for  scavenging.Then there is Lilith who have some kind of psychic power that allow her to phase-shift, that mean she can become intangible and cannot be harm in this state. She could harm the enemy though as she exit her phase-shift form there would be a damaging shockwave. She preferred elemental weapons, coz, you know, she psychic and elemental works for her. That sort of thing. And finally, Brick. He is a brick-headed character, specialize in explosives. That mean weapons with explosive properties and rocket launchers. He also prefer using his fist, in his berserk form he will rapidly generate health, increased resilience and pounding people to death.

As you can see from the screenshots, it really does look like a post-apocalyptic game. Just look at the scene! But the thing is, the plot reveal it otherwise. In fact, the game box itself describe it differently. No, this is not a post-apocalyptic game, thus cannot be compared with Fallout 3 storyline. The game take setting somewhere in the future on a planet called Pandora. Apparently something happened, and the planet was abandoned. And that something is being the planet stripped off its mineral deposits, and its coming summer time causes the planet wildlife (really really wild and dangerous) to come out of hibernation. So, the rich take off and the poor left behind. So the scenery here is pretty much about an abandoned planet, where every man for himself.

I'm not gonna rant over the game plot. Not that its not good or a piece of crap. But because I think its better to play the game and feel the game flow yourselves. Besides, the main mission is pretty straight-forward, FIND THAT VAULT! There are of course some side missions and bounties to take on. The game is completely packed of actions with no puzzle or riddle-solving of any kind. Well, the only puzzle you gonna solve is finding weapon parts in a map and get a cool assembled weapon. So to say.  

Ok, one of the features that make this game truly outstanding is its Procedural Content Creation System. This system is used to randomize the loots and rewards in game such as the weapon rate of fire, accuracy, element and even bonuses such as health or ammo regeneration. It is estimated that this system could generate over 70 million variation of weapon. So, in completing a mission, you might get a weapon of a same name but never the same attributes. The system also randomize the enemy attributes. So yes, there would a variety of enemies that you would find in game, be it a flaming crazy guy or a flaming crazy midget or a flying flaming squirrel. Anything could happen in Pandora.. I'm just saying..

So there you go. I believe this game have the attraction, the very same, offered by the game called Diablo 2. I think so. As far as I could remember, Diablo 2 also generate randomly  whereas no gameplay have the same map layout or weapons/enemies attribute. But Borderlands have the same map layout for every play. And also, there is a 2 seated armored-all-terrain-gun mounted vehicle in Borderlands to drive around. If you play in single player, the gunner port will be automatically follow the driver's view and could be fired along with the forward guns. 

For the DLC, it will add new places and extra missions across Pandora. New places, new people and new enemies. But still, the main mission is still FIND THAT VAULT. I've already played the game twice because second playthrough give a lot more loot and exp. But thats the thing, after finishing the game, player could continue with second playthrough with the first playthrough profile, that mean inventory and character level.

The DLC that already released are The Zombie Island of Dr.Ned, Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and Claptrap's New Robot Revolution.

And here is the game requirement:

> 1GB system RAM
> 2.4 GHz Pentium 4/ AMD Processor
> NVIDIA Geforce 8600 GS
> ATI Radeon HD3000 Series
> DVD-ROM drive
> 8 GB of hard disk space

Not too bad eh?