Borderlands

Pre-WUB WUB

Players love getting rewarded with new loot. Whether it is heaps of cash or experience to splurge out in shops or level-up screens, or new weapons and equipment to push your characters towards their strengths and personalities, getting more, better stuff, again and again, keeps us engaged.

So open-world first-person action-RPG shooter Borderlands gives its players lots of stuff. Like, more than a bucketload of it. Think three and a half million different weapons alone. I hope you like gathering loot. Or maybe 'swimming in loot' would be a better phrase.

Fond Memories

Borderlands set out to be a bit different. An open-world first-person shooter action-RPG isn't all too uncommon, but a silly cel-shaded one that tasked players with hunting for and stealing the contents of a rumoured treasure vault on the desert planet of Pandora was.

It was probably more interesting for its loot system though, rather than any story or characters. Weapons, notably, would be procedurally created, ensuring that while two players could easily find a shotgun, one of those players would have an accurate shotgun, another a more powerful shotgun, both in different colours.

The combinations were in the millions when you tacked situation buffs into the mix as well, and plonking a weapons crate at the end of a dungeon was exactly the kind of exciting reward many players, myself included, enjoyed.

I don't remember being first to the Borderlands party, though, and that word is the other important part of the game's appeal - 4 player co-operative loot crawling.

I never did any multiplayer gaming in Borderlands, completing the story on my lonesome before consuming whatever had my interest after that. There was a sequel that I played through alone as well, but after that, the Borderlands series was left behind. If you wanted something to sink your teeth into, there was tens, if not hundreds of hours to devour in here, but at that time I wasn't interested anymore.

Fun Times

I am, however, looking forward to diving back into the world now, especially that I'm playing the Game of the Year Enhanced Edition on PC, which looks really fancy. It helps that the art style is effectively timeless, and may look even better these days, splashed across larger displays.

In the back of the bus rolling through the Pandoran desert are four would-be vault hunters, each with their own playstyle, special abilities, weapon preferences and the like. On the PlayStation 3, I went through as Lilith, the Siren, capable of some supernatural stuff, but this time out, I'm going a little more traditional, a little more generic, perhaps, and playing as Roland the Soldier, who'll be able to put down turrets to give me a pseudo-second player to help me out.

As the bus pulls into the small town of Fyrestone, we get visions of a woman guiding us on our quest to uncover the vault. Who she is and what she's doing in our heads we don't know, but she tells us to do what the robot says.

That robot is series icon Claptrap, easily a candidate for the best thing about Borderlands. I don't know what it is about silly robots that appeals to people, but it generally works, doesn't it? With his one-wheel, spindly arms, and can-do attitude, this wise-talker gives us the device which powers our HUD, tells us how save-points work, and guides us through a tutorial section to bring us up to speed.

The controls are fairly standard for an FPS. When you aim down the sights, your view blurs to a focus, fire spitting out the barrel of your gun, bullet casings pinging out the side, and hopefully lots of numbers bouncing off enemies as their health bars deplete and they fall to the ground.

I don't remember how the original game looked in any detail, so if this is new to the Enhanced Edition, apologies, but it looks lovely.

It's not long before I remember how Borderlands plays out. Clear the area of enemies, run around gathering everything of value and worth, move into the next area. Dotted around the area, be they in safes, toolboxes, lockers, toilets, rubbish bins, are piles of cash, ammunition, and other small items, and much of your time with the game will be spent hoovering them up because there just isn't a reason not to.

Their presence in the world is made obvious, first by the glowing green light that exists on the interactable object in question, and then by the item giving off this small streak of light denoting how common it is. White items are everywhere, but the greens, yellows, and purples are more elusive, indicative of better loot. Has an enemy dropped something of value, or will this weapons crate hold what I'm looking for?

It doesn't take long before you find yourself levelling up. In an hour of playtime, I'd already reached level 6, so the early unlocks come thick and fast to build you up before you leave into the wider world, but with a clear and splashy notification like this, you can't help but let out a little 'Whey!' when you've earned enough XP for another bit of progression. It'll immediately refill your health bar, which is perhaps the best way of healing in Borderlands, but that's not a strategy to rely on...

Once in town, having cleared it of raiders for the time being, we get our first actual quest: opening a door. At least it's not rats - that's the second mission. This screen isn't much to look at, stylised though it is, but there'll be a lot coming in here to keep track of.

The doctor freed from his own locked door, and a few simple fetch-quests later, we're introduced to the world of Borderlands little by little. Here, we've fixed a vending machine, which come in a couple of flavours, weapons and health, and allows us to gather what we need or might want for the upcoming missions.

Each has an enticing, time-limited offer of a better piece of equipment that you probably can't afford, teasing you of what you could have if you were a competent vault hunter. As it is, we'll just have to dig through the dirt for stacks of cash or discarded equipment.

As the day/night cycle continues, our fetch-quests and checklists take us a little further outside of town. Not too far to get lost, though. I suppose you could abandon the mission and go where you want, up to a point, a la Fallout or something, but Borderlands does want to prompt you in a certain direction a little more, certainly at this stage.

We've got to kill 8 bandits to show Dr Zed that we're on his side, wishing to rid the area of the influence of 9 Toes, the bandit leader terrorizing the town. He's not in this particular camp, but more than 8 bandits are, so I overperform on my duties here. It's probably for the best, as enemies can chase you across the map and into what you think are safe spaces.

If I were to have a criticism here, it'd be that hiding behind a rock was quite effective as a means of defence. The enemy didn't venture out of their camp to try and flank me, their strategy largely consisting of standing in the open and shooting when they saw me. A little on the dumb side, but maybe these guys are meant to be idiots, I don't know. They'll get into fights of their own with the local wildlife, which is nice if you need a distraction.

To find 9 Toes, we need the help of this blind guy, T.K. We need to prove ourselves by bringing back some food stolen by the skags, a dog-like pest you'll see everywhere in this early stage, and then using the reward to buy a few grenades to blow open the route to Skag Gully, at the end of which is 9 Toes.

Why we couldn't just buy the grenades and do it ourselves, I don't know. It might have something to do with the fact that you don't need the grenades at all, seemingly, as there route to the gully is rigged with TNT when we get there, and just have to press 'E' to set it all off.

Frustrations

Skag Gully is, first of all, a separate section of the map, so Borderlands is a bunch of big open areas, rather than an open world. That's not too bad though, in all fairness. Skag Gully is also absolutely full of skags, some easy to deal with pups, others requiring a shotgun to the face and then even a swipe of a melee attack, exposing yourself in the process.

It may look great, but back peddling while you slowly reload your combat shotgun, hoping a skag doesn't leap for your face, can get a little old, fast.

Also a little on the annoying side is your weapon management and inventory in general. Space is limited, and you can only have two equipped weapons at a time. Borderlands will gladly throw millions of guns at you, and allow you to sell each and every one of them, but when you can only carry a handful at a time, and get presented with two or three as a reward, you've now got to juggle what you want with what you don't, and with what will sell well at the nearest vendor...

It's a first-world problem, for sure, but because there's no way of ever knowing whether a player will want to switch to a new weapon or not, it is up to you to either look at the stats of the weapon in the wild, potentially while you're being attacked (else leaving yourself open to attack), or to grab what you can and check it all later.

I'm not terribly fussed about all the stats in any great detail at this point in time, but you could be weighing up your options across damage types and amounts, accuracy, buffs, the preferences of your character, and even the ammunition, which may be shared between weapons.

Just because a savepoint will often be sat next to a vending machine or two, don't think that buying and selling weapons is safe. The world continues around you, and these bandits were all too happy to walk up and shoot my side while I was working out whether I wanted any modular bits and bobs to attach to my weapons - because of course there'd be bits and bobs to attach to procedurally generated weapons.

With mini-maps and objective markers, you can't not find 9 Toes, who stands alone in a small arena, taunting us for daring to challenge him to a fight. Let's see what he has to say after a few shotgun shells to the face. Also, I've levelled up enough to have access to my special ability of putting down a turret to help dish out the pain. This would be an ideal time to test that out.

Wait a minute, who are you guys?

9 Toes has some guard skags, and they don't go down anywhere near as quickly as those in the gully outside. If you're lucky enough to kill an enemy before you die, you can rejoin the battle with a second wind, another chance. Obviously, I didn't manage that, so back to the save point we go.

It's less of a reload, more of a respawn, and being near the shops, we've got another chance to stock up on health items and ammo before walking right back into the fight and trying again.

To prove that the world carries on, rather than resets, 9 Toes' skags were hanging around at the start of the arena, allowing me to pick them off from above. I was quite alarmed when one of them jumped up to fight me, but both dropped some rare loot, including a shield that would be incredibly sensible to equip before dropping down into another fight with 9 Toes, wouldn't it?

My pea-shooter of a defensive turret wasn't doing enough, and my shotgun wasn't looking too effective either, though I was using it at range, largely in a panic, as 9 Toes rendered my shields useless and my health teetering on the brink of another death.

The shields eventually recharge - I hope - but my health was another matter. I had some health packs that give a bunch of health over a short span of time, and some instant but lesser health boosts, but I had no button to apply them instantly. Not one that I was aware of, at least.

Instead of jabbing a panic button to scoff down the nearest health item I had, I had to go into the menus to hopefully consume one, rather than drop it or something, and with my experience of vending machines leaving you vulnerable, I was desperately hoping that 9 Toes wasn't able to attack me while I was navigating my inventory.

Huddled behind a pillar and hoping for the best, I found what courage I needed to get up in his face and finish the mission, where he exploded into a shower of ammo, money, and the odd weapon.

Took another attempt, but yes, we have indeed shown ourselves to be a vault hunter with the skills necessary to hunt down the vault. With a ghostly electronic lady in our head and elemental weapons in our pockets, we can head out into the wider world and wreak havoc on all who stand in our way, maybe even set them on fire or electrocuting them with a sniper rifle that shoots rockets, who knows, but what a journey it'll be.

If only I had the incentive to go through it all again...

Final Word

The Enhanced Edition I was playing was tearing and needed some tweaks to the FOV and resolution, maybe the controls, and it'd be nice if there were some mods that could just help me out with the nitty-gritty stuff, but those problems can be solved and overcome.

What'll be trickier to overcome is knowing that I've done this Borderlands game before, in its entirety, and I didn't come out of it thinking it was an incredible story. In fact, it's forgettable. The characters don't speak, don't have a story of their own, and are just vessels for you to walk into a new area, shoot everything that moves, hoover up everything that glows, turn in some objective markers and repeat.

At one point in time, I clearly thought that wasn't an issue. I didn't need co-op buddies to aid my endeavours and have fun. Give me something to work towards and let me loose on this planet.

Today, while I could see myself playing some more Borderlands, I don't think I can quite answer why. Because it looks good? Because it can be silly in places? Because it's different?

Over time I've found myself in possession of various versions of various Borderlands games, and some of the later ones or ones that I've not yet played might be better starting points for new players. If Borderlands was the proof of concept, Borderlands 2 was the polished version or at least had a solid framework to build upon.

You should definitely give Borderlands a go, and even though I've never done so to know for sure, I'm fairly confident in saying it'll be better if you do so with at least one friend by your side. But sticking with it for any length of time, even with a fancy Enhanced Edition, is going to be a decision you make, not one that the game makes for you.

You won't find an amazing story here. Colourful non-player characters, yes. Lots of shiny loot to make use of, definitely. A reason to be here that isn't to press 'E' an awful lot, not so much.

I enjoyed my time with Borderlands, and have been meaning to explore the series a little more, but it likely won't be with the original - but without it, there'd be a distinct lack of WUB WUB in the world...

Fun Facts

Looking too similar to Fallout 3 and Rage, a drastic change in the then realistic art style was undertaken, at first in secret. While it was ultimately successful in bringing tens of millions of players to the series, it disappointed the original art director to the point of leaving the games industry completely.

Borderlands, developed by Gearbox Software, first released in 2009.

Version played: Borderlands, PlayStation 3, 2009, via memory.

Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced Edition, PC, 2019.