Borderlands - PS3 - Review - some spoilers

Actually, this will just be the first part of the review as I've only had the game a few days and have not finished even one go through. I'll make additional posts as I have more to add and character guides (maybe, see characters below). Also, I was going to do a COD:MW2 review but that will have to wait as this game has distracted me from it :D

The Game - Start with Diablo... awesome game, it rocks but... it has been done to death so lets make some changes. First up, lets change the graphics, lets go with a "comic book look". Now, lets ratchet up the graphics to a stunning looking 1080p that runs without flaw. Overhead view, out the window and lets go with first person. Sword and sorcery... always a good choice but lets try something done a few less times in this genre... post apocalyptic world. Lets think mad max, vehicles, lots of kick ass weapons and plenty of mutant people and animals to kill. Now we are talking.

The story - Your one of four heroes seeking the legendary vault for riches and technology. Loads of side quests to go along with the main story, everything told with a wicked sense of humor.

The characters - Four character type, sniper, soldier, tank and assassin. Each has a unique ability or "spell" that can be enhanced with skill points. You get one skill point per level starting at level 5 (not sure why they did that). The spells are:

Sniper - a hawk that he can send out to attack enemies.
Tank - He switches from his weapons to his fists and beats things to death.
Soldier - Drops a turret that can provide a variety of bonuses to those near by as well as help gun down enemies.
Assassin - Can turn invisible and gains speed.

There is not a whole hell of a lot to do when your character levels up, some stats are auto leveled, like health and damage. There is only one skill point to place (each character has a total of 21 different skills that max at level 5). Weapons ability level up independent of character level and is also done automatically, the more you kill with a pistol, the netter you get with pistols, you get bonuses like +to damage, reload speed, aim but it is all done for you, it just happens.

The items - Much simpler in a lot of ways then Diablo. Probably the games biggest flaw, the sniper I make will not be much different then the sniper anyone else makes in terms of skills. Any variety in characters comes from weapon choices... and there a crapload of weapons, tons and tons of mods are available on weapons. I have this cool ass shotgun that fires two bullets at a time that come out in a wicked looking blue wave thats great for group damage. A sniper rifle that has a chance to set the target on fire when it hits, heh, sometimes they run around yelling "ahhhh, I'm on fire" before collapsing, too funny. A hand gun with a massive fire rate bonus that makes it fire like a machine gun. Eventually you can have up to four weapons equipped at a time. You can also have a shield to help protect you and again tons of mods are available on shields. Other character slots you can put things into include grenade modifier, class specific item (I'm a little fuzzy on these as I've not found one yet) and artifacts (again, fuzzy till I see one).

The look - It displays in lower resolutions but if you can do 1080p... holy crap this is just stunning. The exploding heads, the way the bodies just kind of... fall apart when you run them over, just beautiful and gruesome at the same time :D

Bottom line - The game is a bit disappointing in terms of character builds, it definitely is lacking there but... Damn this is a ton of fun to play. If your a fan of either FPS games or action RPG's I think you will really like it and if your a fan of both, you will love it.

Note - Also available on PC and XBox.

Definitely going to check this one out.

And how does it stack up to say, Fallout 3 and Mass Effect?

It sounds awesome, but I've bought a couple of games lately (Mass Effect and Modern Warfare 2) and don't want to overdo it, but the game premise sounds right up my alley and I am open to one or two more additions.

A whole lot of fun!

OK, I was wrong. Previously, I did not believe there was much character variation but I was wrong. I'm not going to go through the various builds, it has been done very well here:

http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Borderlands_Wiki

But... they are there!

Some stuff I missed previously:

Class mods - These give bonuses to specific builds and also +to skills. Great for making a specific build awesome.

Artifacts - These add elemental damage to your class specific skill.

Bosses - Holy crap do they have some great bosses! The Rakk Hive, a giant... and I mean GIANT elephant type thing that spits out rakk (flying enemies) in a huge open area (don't shoot it in the ass to much, it will fart poison on you, heh). Skagzilla, a giant mutant dog thing, complete with laser breath! Mad Mel, HA! a racing death match!

I'm still playing this game a lot, more now in two player split screen with my buddy Bill. What a blast! In single play I don't use the vehicles much, they are kind of a pain that way but in two player, one drives and the other shoots, heh, carnage heaven :D There are now two expansions for it and I plan on getting them but for now... I still love this game :D

I am playing the soldier, his turret/shield is awesome.

I thought the vehicles were awkward at first, but then I figured out what I was doing wrong. Now I think the vehicles are really smooth and responsive.

My favorite shields are the ones which regenerate my health. My favorite grenades are the ones which steal life (torrent?) and the ones which explode upon contact with an opponent (contact?).

The game is a bit disappointing in terms of character builds, it definitely is lacking there

For a shooter RPG on the PS3, Boarderlands has great character builds. The only shooter on the PS3 which I think has better character builds is Fallout 3, but Boarderlands is faster paced, has many more weapons, and has slightly customizable vehicles.

Assassin - Can turn invisible and gains speed.

The developers should have called her class Assassin instead of Siren. Assassins are sneaky and kill people, Sirens cause ship wrecks with their singing.

I want to get to two DLC add ons, they look like they have some real cool stuff. Plus, they just announced a third that is going to raise the level cap above 50 (they have said to what yet). Vehicles are tons better when doing co-op, if you ever want to do some online, let me know.

Brick - oh man, this is just too much fun to play and I've not seen the build anywhere else yet :D

This character is almost pure melee yet still does some nice elemental damage.

Skills (in the order of distribution):

Endless Rage - 5 points - Gives you 50% duration to your berserk skill (Berserk has you with ok life regen and you punch your enemies to death)
Heavy Handed - 5 points - Gives you 60% melee damage for 7 seconds per kill
Short Fuse - 4 points - Reduces cool down of berserk by 24 seconds (now a 36 second cool down)

At this point you should be looking very hard for a skirmisher class mod with +4 to Short Fuse to get to a 12 second cool down. This is very important, none of the other mods matter as much as the +4.

Hardened - 5 points - This gives you +60% life.
Juggernaut - 5 points - This gives you 50% damage resistance for all damage types for 7 seconds. It is triggered by a kill.
Diehard - 1 point - When you get killed, you have some time to get a "second wind", you cannot move but you can still shoot and if you get a kill, you get revived with full shields and a little life. This skill will give you more time to get the kill and more life if you get it.
Pay Back - 4 points - This will give you another +32% damage (applies to melee and weapons) for 10 seconds if your shield gets depleted.
Unbreakable - 1 point - HA! Now we get to the beauty of this build. This skill gives you 5 seconds of 3% shield regen per second whenever your shield is depleted.

All this time you should be looking for a shield to start using at this moment. You do not much care about the amount of shield you have as much as you care about the shields mods. You want shields that give you elemental nova's when they get depleted. My favorites in order are - Fire, caustic, explosion, electric - Use them to get your challenges up to the 5k exp mark, then use your favorite. As you go into melee, your shield gets depleted and gives off a nova, it then regens slowly, allowing it to get depleted again giving off another nova and so on and so on... heh, sweet :D Plus your getting the Payback damage!

Iron Fist - 5 points - Another 30% melee damage
Blood Sport - 4 points - 8% life regen per kill while in Berserk (assuming you have your skirmisher mod, you only have a 12 second cool down so that is most of the time)
Short Fuse - 1 point - Finishes off this skill and gives you a 6 second cool down. Freakin sweet!
Last 5 points go into Payback and Diehard as you see fit.

Weapon - Fists are your main choice but you will have downtime so it is advisable to be good at one weapon. You start with a shotgun and it is good at short range so I went with it. Try not to use any other weapon so you level up your weapon proficiency the most though I have also used a sniper rifle on rare occasions. Also, don't bother upping your ammo SDK's except for your weapon of choice and grenades.

Grenade - I like the transfusion but bouncing betties also work very well.

Now... Go forth and punch the crap out of some muntants :D

Edit - A note about Berserk - While in Berserk mode, R2 is a quick right job and L2 is a slow left upper cut. The upper cut does more damage but the right is so much quicker that it ends up doing better. Stick with the right jab.

does your skill become level 5 or level 6? In other words, is level 5 the absolute maximum level for skills? When I equip a class mod I don't see the change on my skill tree.

I have discovered "team" bonuses, such as experience increase and ammo regeneration work for single player games. My Soldiers class mod only gives one bonus, +21% team experience.

Nothing applies unless you have at least one point in the skill. so... If you have a mod with +2 and you have 0 points, it is 0. If you have 5, it is 7 even though there is nowhere you can look and see the 7. See the borderlands class mods wiki page for descriptions of what they can come with:

http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Class_Mods

Each mod can have +to skills for up to 3 skills. No more then +4 to any given skill and no more then a total of +10 total. There is a possible prefix that may or may not be there and there are two suffix's of which only one may or may not appear but both cannot be there. See the chart on the link, it should make sense.

This is the third add on (I skipped the other two so far) and with them finally raising the level cap I decided to go for it. I'm downloading it now (1687mb) so look for a review soon. You can see everything they have added here:

http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/The_Secret_Armory_of_General_Knoxx

Edit - With tax it cost 10.66

Get in your car and learn to drive... over things :D

I did not use vehicles much in the standard Borderlands, I mostly play single player and found it hard to do vehicle combat so I went for the 1000 kills needed for the bonus experience points and that was it. In this expansion you will drive a lot. They have three new cars that really address issues I had previously (including one that seat four, with everyone having weapons). They also have some levels really designed just for driving which are just long strips of highway. You get to do some really great Mad Max stuff on these, it's pretty sweet stuff.

The extra 11 skill points are great too, they really allow you to expand your character to a whole new level of awesomeness.

Size wise it is pretty decent, for 9.99 it adds a lot of play, probably took me about 15 or so hours to go through it the first time on easy. I'm not sure how many new missions there are but it seemed like a crap-load of them. There is one mission you get pretty much right away where you need to collect a bunch of "Cores" that drop when you kill any of the various lance soldiers (and there are tons of those bastards), when you pick them up they give you a bonus for a few seconds. Send off shock waves, extra experience, different things. If you like the effects, just don't turn in the mission and they keep dropping even after you collect the proper amount of each, it can be handy to keep it going.

Bottom line - If you like Borderlands, you will love it. More to see and do, better cut scenes, new items, better vehicles, some kick ass new enemies and lots more. If you were not thrilled with Borderlands, probably don't bother, while there is plenty new it is still the same game at heart and I doubt you'll find anything here that would change things for you.

This is proving to be a great go-to game for quick, split-screen action with a friend. I've even managed to get my wife to play it...though I think she likes the claptraps more than the game itself. :D