Borderlands - Xbox 360

We Survived Dr. Ned's Zombie Island

2009-11-24T19:07:00Z

Barely a month after slamming onto retail shelves, Borderlands’ first DLC expansion is now available. The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned takes place in an entirely new part of Pandora, bringing more than a dozen new quests, a variety of different environments and several new additions to the planet’s already bizarre bestiary. Is it worth the $10, or is Gearbox simply charging extra for content that should have been included on disc all along? We played through it and found a satisfying and compact experience that’s bound to keep fanatics busy. Those who are casual Borderlands players might want to think twice before spending the cash, however.

Conspiracy theorists should take note that the download weighs in at a bulky 1GB—it’s definitely not another one of those suspiciously trim 108 KB unlocks. Once it’s installed, players can hop into the new adventure from any fast-travel station by selecting the Jakobs Cave zone. After a brief opening sequence, with a heavily accented narrator and plenty of thunder and lightning, players find themselves on a dock leading into the new area. A scattering of bodies provides further hints that not all is well, in case the whole “Zombie Island” thing didn’t tip you off already.

It seems that a Dr. Zed (not Dr. Ned!) has been doing some…experimenting on a lumber town, and one of the side effects of his dabblings has been an infestation of undead. The first mission I ran into was activating a series of automated sentry turrets surrounding the town. After plowing through snarling hordes of zombies and rearming the weapons, I could interact with a Claptrap and proceed through the rest of the missions.

One of the biggest departures from Borderlands proper is the expansion’s use of atmosphere. In the main game, players move from one sun-scorched area to the next. It fits the Road Warrior tone that Gearbox was going for, but it did get a little repetitive. In Zombie Island, I got to see actual trees (hence the lumberyard), as well as graveyards, a hospital and a huge pumpkin patch. There are only a handful of zones to explore, but each one has its own distinct flavor.

These unique areas also get several new enemy types to populate them, and they’re easily the high point of the game. Zombies and defilers are plodding monstrosities, capable of spewing streams of bile that slow players down and obscure their vision. They’re easy to kill and don’t hit hard, but they have a tendency to surround and overwhelm you if you aren’t paying close attention. Suicide zombies are larger, barrel hurling monsters that make beelines toward any players they see. A good strategy against them is to fire at their feet, which causes them to belly flop on the ground, exploding in the process. Loot goons are even bigger, and they soak up a respectable amount of damage before they fall. Once they do, you can grab items from chests they have strapped to their backs. There are also airborne blood vipers, skeleskags and even wereskags. A few familiar enemies are on Zombie Island, too, but they’ve been given undead makeovers.

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Stellar Co-Op And A Masterful Blending Of Genres Make The Apocalypse Fun Again

2009-10-20T00:54:00Z

A scoped revolver that sets enemies on fire. An acid-spewing shotgun. A golden sniper rifle that shoots electric bullets. Throughout your time in Pandora, you'll experience many brief love affairs with the various (and ridiculously numerous) weapons you come across, only to discard them like yesterday's newspaper once you level up and find the next best thing. That amazing incendiary SMG that saved you from hordes of Mutant Midgets or Badass Psychos usually ends up being sold back for pennies, as there's always something better around the next corner in Borderlands. It's this intense focus on weaponry that keeps Gearbox's take on the apocalypse exciting long after you'd shelve most action games.

Like open-world epics Fallout 3 and Oblivion, it's possible to wander for hours, transforming your active missions log into an ever-increasing "to-do" list. Take on one mission that involves harvesting crystals in a cave, and you may get distracted on the way by a nearby town, a legless man in need of assistance, or any one of the entries on the absurdly long list of XP challenges. Borderlands would be a fantastic title to get lost in even if it was limited to single-player. Get two or three friends to join you, and it becomes one of the best cooperative experiences in recent memory.

Multiplayer co-op has been in the limelight in recent years thanks to popular titles such as Left 4 Dead and modes such as Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombies, Halo ODST's Firefight, and Gears of War 2's Horde mode. While all of these experiences were great fun with friends, Borderlands takes every aspect of cooperative gameplay and makes it more convenient and enjoyable than ever before. If I see a lower-level friend of mine struggling while taking on Skagzilla, I can easily bring my character (complete with full stats and inventory) into his game to save the day. Let's say we take the massive beast down, causing him to drop a rare weapon that we're both pining for. A quick gentleman's agreement and a couple slaps to the face later and we have a duel for the item. After the battle and loot collecting, I can give the guns I don't use anymore to my friend in lieu of selling them for a quick buck. Every aspect of the cooperative experience is designed for maximum convenience and ease of use. Want to join the game of a friend who is significantly farther ahead in the story? No problem: You'll get a ton of XP for taking on the advanced enemies, and any missions you complete while in this alternate timeline will be reflected when you reach that point in your own game.

While Borderlands and Fallout 3 share a similar apocalyptic, Road Warrior-esque setting, the former does a much better job of making you feel like a wasteland scavenger. Very few story elements are present, so you don't have a constant "I better get back to the main quest" feeling hanging over your head. There's no disappearing family members or ominous government forces making you feel the need to progress through the story, only the desire to grow stronger and survive the myriad creatures populating Pandora. No matter which character you choose, you're not the offspring of a brilliant scientist or politician and you're not the only hope for humanity...you're just a journeyman with a gun (and ideally a few friends).

Borderlands attempts many things, which in this medium can often end with a laundry list of features but no fully-developed ones. This is one of the rare occasions where all of the new experiences a game brings to the table work out splendidly, especially when viewed as an entire package. Co-op is a blast, the variety of weaponry lends an addictive quality to the game that's rarely seen, and it maintains a distinct sense of humor and personality. It's a long-lasting experience that manages to stay fresh throughout, and the ability to easily jump into a friend's game at any time only lengthens the appeal of an already stellar title.

In Borderlands, The Struggle To Survive Is Easier With A Friend

2009-10-01T23:02:00Z

Gamers have a tendency to exaggerate; in the heat of discussing a game, it’s common to hear someone claim that this RPG features endless upgrade combinations, or that FPS has a million different guns to choose from. Such statements are not meant to be taken literally, but are rather a sign of the speaker’s excitement about an upcoming game. After playing a preview build of Borderlands, it’s safe to say we’re excited about it, and if we told you the game had a million guns you could buy, sell, and eviscerate bad guys with, it would still be inaccurate; according to Gearbox’s President Randy Pitchford, the last weapon count for the game was 17,750,000, a number far greater than any development team on the planet could create by hand. And while we don’t know yet how big Borderlands will be (the preview build was just a small chunk of the overall world) it was chock full of Mad Max-like bandits, badass alien beasties (some literally named Badass, an enemy rank in Borderlands), and demented psycho midgets. If that sounds insane, that’s Borderlands.

There are a lot of other interesting features that we could tell you about the game, information that has been slowly revealed and endlessly regurgitated during the game’s development cycle. All you really need to know about Borderlands (besides that humongous, procedurally generated arsenal) is that it’s an open-world FPS/RPG hybrid that Pitchford hopes is as addictive and engrossing as Diablo or World of Warcraft. It looks like the Gearbox team might have met their goal too – there’s so much to do that we had set two of our editors loose on the game. Here are our first impressions.

Impressions from Dan Ryckert, Associate Editor:

It's hard to sum up the Borderlands experience briefly, but the shortest way is probably "four player co-op Fallout 3 with more of a focus on gunplay." It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and it doesn't exactly do the game justice. Borderlands certainly isn't a Fallout 3 clone, but it does have some of that same post-apocalyptic Road Warrior feel that worked so well in Bethesda's RPG.

Randy Pitchford and his team at Gearbox have done a great job of making the weapons the star of the show, and there's literally millions of them. Obviously, this is done through combinations of many interchangeable elements, but you'll frequently find new weapons that give you that "I need to go try this right now," feeling. I was certainly pleased the first time I picked up an SMG and realized it inflicted fire damage on enemies. I was even more pleased when I filled a "Midget Psycho" up with bullets from said SMG that caused him to burst into flames. As you progress, you'll unlock more room in your backpack and earn more quick-select slots, allowing you to carry a versatile arsenal with you across the wasteland. At most times, I kept a shotgun, a machine gun (or SMG), and a sniper rifle in my quick-select, ensuring that I could adapt to most any combat situation.

Cooperative play is bound to be a huge hit upon the game's release, and it's handled better than virtually any other team multiplayer experience I've seen. Your character, his/her level, and your entire inventory can easily travel in and out of your friend's games, and you're free to leave at any time without disrupting their play experience. If I log onto Xbox Live and my friend says he needs help with a mission, I can instantly appear, help out by blasting everything in sight with some rockets, and then leave the play session.