Borderlands - Playstation 3

Drawing influence from games such as Fallout 3, XIII and Diablo, Borderlands is described by its developers, Gearbox Software, as a RPS (that’s a role-playing shooter by the way).

Set in the distant future on the hostile and bandit-ridden planet of Pandora, the game starts off with the four controllable characters on a coach, on their to Fyrestone. Upon selecting your character, they are presented with an apparition of the ‘guardian angel’, a mysterious woman who appears through out the game, guiding you toward the equally mysterious macguffin, the Vault.

In the cutscene proceeding this, a narrator explains that Pandora is a wasteland which attracts treasure hunters and mercenaries alike. Why? Because Pandora is host to the legend of the Vault. A huge repository which holds advanced alien technology, infinite wealth, fame, power and women.

Upon arriving at Fyrestone you are introduced to a quirky Claptrap robot that guides you round the area, and it’s at that point where the game really kicks in.

Following an attack on the town by a bunch of bandits, you are instantly thrown into the thick of action and it’s up to you to take them out. From here you have to accept various tasks in order to gain the local’s trust and unlock further missions and inventory.

Gearbox Software have cleverly designed each character you play with a set of individual skills and a unique look.

Brick is a stocky beefcake of a man who specialises in melee attacks. His special skill is the ability to go into a state called “bezerker” – a skill that reduces the damage he takes whilst making his attacks more potent.

Lilith was once a human, but became a siren – one of a group with uncontrollable powers. Her special ability is called “phase walk”, which basically enables her to become invisible and be able to sneak around enemies at great speed.

Mordecai is proficient with sniper rifles and pistols. His special skill is his pet Bloodwing – a deadly bird-type-thing that he keeps as a pet (as you do), and can be trained to kill multiple people.

Finally there is Roland – a former soldier who is in search of an old enemy – an individual who specialises in the ability to deal damage, heal team-mates and spawn ammo.
 

Upon starting you are given the option to change the look of your character, however this feature is proved to be a bit redundant in the single-player campaign, as you are unable to view your character in the 3rd person.

Throughout Pandora there is a stupid amount of weapons spread around for you to find. While not all of them are good, you can quickly find one that suits your style, with a good percentage of them quite satisfying to use.

You can also take part in a bit of looting – on Pandora the locals keep money in the most peculiar places, letter boxes for example – very odd.

Anyway, the money that you find or ear, you can be spent on more weapons, shields and medicine – a feature that ensures your character is always prepared for the worst.

And the worst does happen. Pandora is far from safe – throughout the planet there are a variety of nasty locals and animals, all wanting you dead. There’s the horrific Skags, which are dog-type-things and split their head in two to reveal a huge mouth. And then there is the bloodthirsty bandits, with the midget bandits being particularly unnerving, not to mention the nutters that set themselves on fire and run towards you.

The environment of Pandora is vast and, luckily, the developers have thrown in a few vehicles for you to get around (probably taking notes from another RPG set in a nuclear wasteland, where you have to walk around for hours and hours – (Fallout 3 *cough *cough!).

Featuring a controversial make-over, Borderlands sets itself apart from other first-person shooters with its cell shading. It is highly stylised and for the most part, the game looks amazing. However, on occasion, its ambition gets the better of it and the framerate lets the game down when things get busy.

The design of the game recalls the barren wastelands so prominent in Fallout 3. However, where Fallout 3 clearly had the influence of films such as Mad Max and I Am Legend breathing down its neck, Borderlands bares a bit of a resemblance to the old westerns of the 50s. The artistic style is a blend of sci-fi, western and a touch of anime.

The music clearly has a hint of country music running through it, giving the game the sort of atmosphere not seen since Joss Whedon’s Firefly. It’s an odd mix of sci-fi and traditional guitar music that somehow, oddly, gels together really well.

The rest of the audio is also good. The voiceover work is particularly good, with each character delivering their lines with a southern American twang – again, adding to that feeling of the old west. The weapons also sound great – a very important element that makes using your weapons all the more satisfying.

Borderlands has tons of re-playability thanks in part to its multiplayer mode. Should you wish to play with other people, you can do the whole campaign and work as a team of up to four. With each new person joining in, the enemies become harder to defeat – a neat little feature that adds the emphasis on teamwork.

The game also gives you the option of playing locally, both on a local area network and on a split screen – a much missed feature that more games need to do!

Sadly there is no option for you to share ammo or weapons, as having this would of added to the spirit of teamwork that runs through the game. Having said that, the game is all about looting, so I guess it’s every man for himself.

Overall Borderlands is an impressive title and quite clearly the birth of a new gaming franchise.

Whilst the game suffers a bit from its graphical ambitions, it excels with tons of features and an impressive multiplayer mode.

Verdict: 8 out of 10

The Good
Loads of weapons
Good multiplayer

The Bad
Dodgy frame rate
Installation takes a while

Surrounded by hundreds of costumed manga fans, my counterpart and I checked in, grabbed our shiny press passes and hit the expo floor.

First on the agenda was Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, which was being shown in action by a Ubi rep.

The action on screen seemed faster than previous titles, with an increased feel of playing ex-Third Echelon agent Sam Fisher as more the aggressor than sneaky spy. The rep quickly grabbed one enemy, before using the ‘mark and execute’ trait to shoot two others in the head, breaking his captive’s neck and shimmying up a nearby pole.

It remains to be seen whether any of the earlier title’s stealth-based sneaking has remained intact in Ubi’s interesting reboot of the series, but I’ll certainly be happy to see Sam’s return in early 2010.

Right across from the Splinter Cell zone another rep was showing off a build of Avatar: The Game.

Avatar

Donning a pair of 3D glasses I studied what appeared to be a decent recreating of the upcoming movie’s lush worlds and brutal firefights, with the rep starting out in a helicopter-hunter-killer-flying-thing before hitting the ground and burning the hell out of a massive, slavering beastie.

The 3D effects were excellent, but I was assured by Ubi rep Phil Brannelly that the effects could be turned off for those of us without a 4,000 inch TV screen. Appearing to be a decent cross of Cameron’s world with a Gears of War-style shooter, it remains to be seen whether Avatar will break the trend of rubbish film tie-in games.

Bayonetta

Across a busy street of massive sword-wielding manga fans I spied the raven locks of Bayonetta, Sega’s latest slice-em-up, which features a witch who carries a sword, user her hair and clothing as a weapon, can conjure up a giant boot to kick anything into the distance and has a gun strapped to each limb.

Playing very similarly to Devil May Cary, I was quite drawn with Bayonetta’s outlandish attacks and artistic style, but I fear the game is too similar to Devil May Cry to really stand out on its own. But, from what I played, it hasn’t ruined the simple ‘slice things, shoot things, repeat’ method of the DMC games, and so will no doubt be a riot of action in early 2010.

Hidden away in a nearby metal container was a build of Valve’s necrotic flesh-em-up Left 4 Dead 2, which will offer more missions, more guns, and more of the brilliant co-op action the series does so well.

Though I didn’t get to play it (there was a large queue of spiky-haired ninja in the way) it looked like as much fun as the last game, and a representative promised me it will lay fan’s fears to rest after the ‘boycott Left 4 Dead 2’ campaign took root in a disappointed fanbase.

The queue for Left 4 Dead 2

Leaving the zombiefied remains of new Orleans, we swung by Lego Rock Band’s stall, where a team of confused-looking people dressed as anime animals were trying to pull off the Kaiser Chief’s Ruby while little Lego versions of the Chiefs danced on the screen – this is just more of the same old Rock Band I fear, just with Lego – it will be interesting to watch the sales figures for yet another Rock Band title, and whether or no the public have cottoned on to the money making scheme yet.

2K was up next, who were showing the E3 video of Bioshock 2 – in all its art deco loveliness – on one wall, and had about 30 gamers blowing enemy after enemy away on Borderlands on the other four.

Though reviews for Borderlands have been overwhelmingly positive, I took the time to ask PR director Alex Bickham why the 2K team decided to do away with the realistic feel of the game and instead replace it with a cel-shaded, cartoon style for the wasteland shoot-and-loot experience.

“It was an insurrection.” He told me, furiously handing out posters to the game’s many fans, “the team took the build and went off and added the cel-shading behind the developer’s back, then they came back, showed it to the team and the bosses and they were like ‘wow’, so we decided to go with that.”

Not one for cel-shading myself, Colin thinks it’s sure to be a fun title to play, and was wondering if the wasteland scavenger approach (which brought back memories of the excellent Fallout 3) might have had something to do with Borderland’s makeover? Either way, the game looked like a fast-paced shoot-em-up with a decent co-op experience tagged on, and we’re sure to have a review of that for you soonest.

Wandering amongst the katanas and bunny ears, we came across the final gem MCM had to offer us – Star Trek Online, the MMORPG sensation which has got every Trekkie jumping up and down at the chance of becoming a starship captain – including Colin.

Star Trek Online

While I settled in to play a decent build of the space combat section, happily blowing away Klingon ships with my starship’s weaponry in a very pretty space theatre, Colin asked an assistant (whose name he forgot to write down…) a few Trekkie questions:

Who can you play as?
“You can play as a federation officer, a Klingon, Vulcan or a Romulan.”

What about the Borg?
“You can’t play as the Borg yet, but we are considering that for DLC.  The Borg are definitely going to feature in the game – in a mission you will have to defeat them in a space battle.  They are going to be huge and it will take about 20 players to defeat them”.

What is the plot?
“It’s set 30 years after the movie Star Trek: Nemesis, and there is a big political struggle around the Neutral Zone.  It’s an endless universe and there will be various missions for you to check out.  It will be presented in episodic form to give the player that typical weekly TV impression”

Does the JJ Abrams vision of Star Trek feature in that at all?
“There’s a funny story about that.  The development team went to see the film last summer, by which point the game had been in production for 3 or 4 years.  As we watching it we all gasped in horror when Vulcan was destroyed – but by the end of it we all like ‘oh ok, this is a new timeline, so it shouldn’t affect anything. But yeah, since the game is a MMO there is plenty of scope for sending players to different timelines – a recurring theme in the Star Trek series”.

Personally I found the space combat bit to be a little tricky to master, with a difficult and unruly camera that was, I was told, able to be clamped to the rear of the starship – I just couldn’t find the option to do it. Other than that it was great fun, shooting phasers and firing torpedoes into wave after wave of Klingon ships. The ground section, which was a ‘rough build’ (in the assistant’s words), was a bit jagged around the edges, but judging by the commitment the team have put into the game I’m expecting Star trek Online to be something special – so watch this space.

And so, our business done, Col and I made for the Jubilee line, dodging dozens of manga fans, people clutching signs offering ‘free hugs’ (what’s all that about? Answers on a postcard please), and made our escape.

Expect a report from next week’s Eurogamer event soon!

• Halo ODST (xbox 360)
• The Beatles Rock Band (Playstation 3)
• Guitar Hero 5 (Playstation 3)
• Wet (xbox 360)
• Colins Retro Rant!
  - Resident Evil: Code Veronica (Playstation 2)
• Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (xbox 360)
• GTA: IV DLC (Xbox 360)
• Borderlands (Xbox 360)
• Uncharted 2 (Playstation 3)
• MAG (Playstation 3)
• Andy’s closing joke….