Borderlands
 

Me and my roommate and a couple of long distance friends plan on picking this up. Anyone else in? :D

We're all PC types, I'm aware its out on the console but it's all about the mouse/kb for me. Steam unlocks it today for pc users. Guess they needed the extra week to clean up the UI for the PC since it was more console control oriented via tutorials and menus and such, so there was a bit of porting to be done.

anywho, not sure how the matchmaking stuff works yet but I only plan on playing with my friends.

I guess they're taking a reactive stance to piracy and cheating so they don't really have anything in place yet (wtf? i know, weird) so I'm keeping it to a "who I know" basis mostly to police my own gameplay experience, Don't really want it stomped on by some crazy cheaters who marginalize my contribution to the encounters with their overpowered hax. (not that there are any that I know of yet, but meh, give it time)

International release date is the 30th, so gimme a couple days and I'll respond ;)

looks like it uses gamespy to manage the PC friends list. Name on there is Shauk, if anyone is interested.

Me and a friend have debated getting this but since League of Legends came out today I don't think it will happen. It does look pretty damn fun though.

I heard it was really fun, and stylish, but repetitive. I'm looking forward to your impressions Shauk.

Shauk, I added you. My gamespyid is thc_toast

I like the game, but I am having performance issues. It will run well for 10 seconds, then go down to 6 fps for 5 seconds.. repeat... grrrr.

My "review" so far is just a stream of disjointed opinions right now.


Basically to address it in 2 halves.

I HAVE THE PC VERSION. Keep that in mind.

Because of the lack of dedicated servers and it's 3rd party inclusion of Gamespy instead of, you know, JUST USING STEAM it's basically a P2P mess. like p2p was before they used UPNP.... expect to take a crash course on home networking if you don't know how to set up port forwarding. otherwise, be content to play by yourself, on a LAN, or join someone else game who did all of the hoop jumping.

It "Feels" like a console port when you're in the menus.

which in of itself is kind of a cluster fuck. There are some places I can click TO but not out of, forcing me to hit escape.

there is no AA or Vsync options native to the config menu of the game, lots of complaints on the matter on official forums for the graphically anal

forcibly made to sit through each and every company logo movie

2k games
gearbox studios
Nvidia
intro movie (this you can hit escape on)
Blink video
Gamespy logo

and FINALLY you get to the screen where you can start a game.

however, if you want to make a new character/class you get to sit through the entire bus ride intro and tutorial again.basically making the 1st 5 levels suck for every character after the 1st.

take my complaints lightly though, I forsee most of this stuff being patched up and or modded by the developers or the community in some way (i know there are already ways to skip the intro and force vsync, for example)


the actual game is pretty stagnant for the 1st 10 levels or so, as you get familiarized with 2 types of creatures. "Skags" and "Bandits"

Skags are little fleshy dog things that just like to puke up loot
Bandits are humanoids of various types (including midgets with oversized heads, my snipers dream date)


you can get to level 10 in probably about 2 hours.

after that you should be familiar with the compass, switching your objective tracker, and vending machines.

I'm level 27 now on my sniper, me and my roommate have been playing a lot for the last couple of days

There are a large variety of different types for the basic races of enemies though.

I mean you start with a "Skag" but later on you may encounter "Badass Corrosive Skag" or something.

Much like WoW, "Badass" = "Elite"

Corrosive means that getting hit will apply an acidic type debuff to you, increasing each subsequent hit to you from that skag, etc...

Me? I like to tell my roommate to go piss them off while I go find a good place to hide.

Skags like to roar to try and scare you or something, but all that does is insure that I'm about to get a critical hit on a skag.


Nothing like a big bad scary monster roaring at you, punctuated by yours truely, silence, the end.

This game gets a lot of crap for it's AI, but I think they get a little more intelligent as you go. They tend to work better in packs, I couldn't imagine trying to defeat a good individual AI in a pack when they usually have enough firepower to 2 shot you anyway.

They do things like take cover, juke, throw grenades, etc.. basic stuff.

bosses are ridiculously harder anyway, when it takes 2 of us a 10 minutes to down some bosses that can 2 shot you, you don't want them to be any smarter.

I'm at the point now that it gets downright starship troopers in the game now. Things bursting from the ground and abushing us, no weakness or crit vulnerability in the front, requiring me to snipe them in the butt to get crits for example. Not something I'd imagine being too easy to do solo, since they'd have no reason to point thier butts at me ;p

Personally I like the game, I think it has great potential with just one patch to fix a lot of the weird "console" heebie jeebies.

ah I rejected it before I read this, didn't know who it was, figured it was some random party kid/stoner from the rave crowd with a name like that, lol.

just as well, I have pretty much a full list of RL friends to play with. :D

---------- Post added at 11:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:57 AM ----------

oh and yes, the AI does continue to get more advanced, level 32 now, basically ran in to something I'd compare to the enclave troopers in Fallout 3. They deploy turrets, use riot shields, grenades, sniper fire, building mounted cannon defenses. Had a nice half hour long firefight, with me on the rooftops and the rest of the squad down on the ground floor.

Still using a "meh" rifle though.

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/1286/snipe.jpg

good damage but damn it misses a lot.

This game is a total nightmare when connecting to other people online . . .

Shauk,

Spot-on review bud. I am really digging this game, however, the console-y menus are extremely painful. I haven't touched page up/down in a game in years . . . In addition, why doesn't this game just connect via Steam, or, better yet, Games for Windows Live?

All in all though, I am very happy with it. A couple of lvl 20 guys I'm rocking right now. Great game to play co-op with buds and the firefights are really intense.

played all day, its really fun.
to connect to other players you need to do some port forwarding.
gamespy id jayakilla

Just starting out with it...I dunno. Very cartoony, but gameplay isn't bad. You guys say it gets better so Ill give it some time. Playing as singleplayer sniper.

OMFG, I wish I had read this months ago. A friend got it for me so that we could play together and the two things that just sucked were, first that it just kills my PC. Graphics just turn into a complete mess like I'm in some sort of alternate alternate Borderlands Universe.

Once I got the video graphics turned down to lowest settings and very low resolution (normally play everything else at 1600 x 1050), I finally get it stable enough to get through the game to the Doc. It is crazy to think that it doesn't work at a good resolution because I just got a new 275GTC OC.

So we started trying to do the networking part to play together, and that's when the fun begins...

OMFG, about the networking part, it was like "Who did it and ran?" This is like we're going back to 1999. I'm sure that the rest of the game was ported over from console, but because PS3 and Xbox both have built in services to handle the online portion, they didn't budget for creating one for the PC. It looks like they got some student to do it for them on the cheap or even for free so he can put it on his resume. What a nightmare it is to connect to someone.

We did however get to play together for about 30 minutes. It's a fun ass stylized game. Until the video crapped out again, and the vehicle we were in basically turned into the Partridge Family bus.

Hopefully the new rig I'm trying to build will let me play with minimal issues.

If anyone wants to play on XBOX 360 my GT is Zxello5. I've been playing Borderlands lately, just picked it up.

Single player, esp as sniper, eventually becomes very hard. Simply due to the fact that bosses won't present their "vital areas" when there's just one person. You can get the 1st shot on a vital area, however. I encourage you to try it with others because it's way more challenging/fun.

Has anyone played any of the DLC? I was thinking of picking up the Zombie Island one, thoughts?

if I had to pick i'd probably go with the knoxx one, just cuz it comes with a level raise too.

Yeah, that's probably a good call. I'm waiting patiently for a new class (or two?).

I'm playing through the Zombie Island (level wasn't an issue) with a friend of mine. We're having a great time, the add-on is very cheeky, takes nothing seriously, and has a slew of zombies to fry. It's significantly more challenging than the original (I'm losing money at a rapid rate). The cut-scenes are clever -- I can't say how long it is (we're about 2-3hrs in) but I'll update when we get near the end.

It has my recommendation for anyone who enjoyed BL and wants to drop ten bucks on a weekend's worth of gaming.

I'm loving this game - I hope the new additions keep coming!

Thought about getting it - an RPG built on the Unreal engine definitely seemed intriguing, plus lots of my XBL friends seem to have it. In the end tho I don't reckon I have enough time for yet another RPG.