Well, I guess I spoiled that teaser by already admitting to having finished Borderlands 1 and 2. Anyway, here’s the story…
The idea to actually buy Borderlands 1 came from the fact that it offers playing the campaign in co-op. I bought the game with a friend but as of time restrictions, the bad experience for creating and hosting a game with friends over the internet and my move to the Mac platform somehow prevented from actually playing as intended. It took about a year until I got back to it. Diablo 3 started to get boring and I already had bought this one, so, why not give it another shot?
Since I’ve become a fan of comic art over the last few months (that is so dorky), the graphics style is just perfect for me: a first person shooter looking like a comic. The developers also managed to create some very unique characters and a weird sense of humor, again, totally tailored towards me. For example, some boss arenas can be entered on different ways and a sign will tell you that you can step in “either”, pointing to the left “or”, pointing to the right.
There’s even a mission where, atop a brooding volcano, you decide whether you want to finish it by comitting suicide or push a button and call the suicide hotline - maybe Achmed the Dead Terrorist (timecode 7:00 - 7:45) would answer but I can’t tell since I jumped (much to the amusement of the main foe). Adding to that dark humor, once you approach the platform someone jumps into his doom right in front of your eyes, shouting he’ll be rich.
After picking your character you’re thrown into the dangerous world of Pandora in order to find a mystical vault that is said to only surface every 200 years and contain tons of treasures and alien tech. Since you are a treasure hunter you do as your name implies, i.e. hunt for the treasure - very much unlike this dog (that feeds tigers). A sort of guardian angel guides you on your quest to find this infamous vault in that it connects to you through, what it seems like, telepathy.
This guardian, a female, provides you with some background and ties all those loose ends together into a bigger picture. In Borderlands 1 this is a real necessity, otherwise you’d completely forget why you are running around and doing all those ugly jobs. Unfortunately, the way the story is told is like reading a comic without the pictures (in a game that looks like a comic). It is driven by characters you can meet but the majority of the side-quests, and you’ll probably spend a lot of time doing them, are retrieved from a bounty board and simply conveyed through text. This doesn’t allow for much sympathy for the characters and the world you’re playing in.
The first person you meet is Dr. Zed who runs a “clinic” and operates machines where you can buy medi-kits. This service is accompanied by a tiny hint that he’s obligated to tell you that he’s no real doctor and you really don’t care about that once you carry some bullets in you.
Typical introduction to the interesting characters in the game
Apart from quests and a simple skill system Borderlands 1 is all about running through the wild and shooting whatever can’t hide fast enough on your way to the vault. This is all well and good as other equally straight forward shooters have already proven, but take all the weak parts and improve on them and there’s Borderlands 2. After killing that boss in the vault you find no treasures and alien tech and also no real satisfaction off of how the game leads you into the credits. This is where the sequel comes in.
Again, there’s yet another vault, this time with a very powerful old warrior. You are lured into finding this vault by a dude that calls himself Handsome Jack, the head of the Hyperion corporation. You know this name from Game 1- if you pay any attention to detail, at least - to be an arms factory known for the most powerful and accurate but also rare to find message force multipliers. And guess what happens after you follow the call for vault hunters? Jack tries to kill you by blowing up the train you’re in. As an analogy to Borderlands 1, the first thing you see is that annoying and ever-talking robot Claptrap. He’ll mention that you’re the first to survive the ambush and that’s where your tour of revenge starts. Of course, it is his tour of revenge as well because he was molested and tortured by Jack, and since he found you, he’ll call you his minion from now on to the very end of the game. No exception!
Even though that does not sound much better than what you already know from part one, the story really unravels the longer you play. There is real interaction with and among the main characters, either by directly talking to them or using some intercom system. The story is totally driven by very frequent chats of all the characters, good and bad, with each other or just with you, discussing details about a mission or a brief look into the history of how Handsome Jack actually came to be. I’m not gonna spoil the details of the story, it is that well told! Expect some interesting twists and turns.
The language used is very colloquial and littered with insults and swearwords. In part one, towards the end of the game, the mission journal calls a female NPC a bitch for tricking you and Handsome Jack frequently calls you a jackass among other things. This makes the world feel very authentic. It is set in some kind of post-apocalyptic environment, just like in the Mad Max movies, so it has to be dirty and feel lawless. Thus the world is littered with ugly monsters, very ugly monsters, very ugly annoying monsters and the same goes for human like cannon fodder. Part 2 even introduces augmented enemies which are called “Badass” who are a tough people. Actually, a lot in this game is called Badass. There are Badass ranks you can unlock by doing some feats like killing a certain amount of a specific kind of enemy and you can use those ranks to increase your skill. Pretty badass!
As a neat bonus, all the characters of the first Borderlands play their own part in Borderlands 2. You’ll even revisit the town Fyrestone which is the starting point in Game 1. The latter was a big boost to motivation. At that point you’ve probably played around 30 hours of running around and gathering stuff for people or killing people for some obscure reason, that the game started to drag along. But seeing parts of the first game again, only changed to fit the story, sparked the flame once more. Most of the missions consist of running (or driving for that matter) to different places of the map and collect items to install them somewhere in order to trigger something even bigger. Part two is much more creative in hiding those “from A to B to C and back to A” missions behind elements like a clan war where you basically fight on both sides, without any party noticing that, fueling the hate, until the final showdown. You’ll also meet a robot that feels like he is human and therefore you set out to collect human body parts in his hope to strip himself from his destructive robotic nature. Do I need to mention that he’ll still try to kill you?
One thing the developers also have been very creative with is finding ways to set obstacles in your path. Many times you think you’ve reached the mission goal, there’s just one button to push, just one door to open or just one item to fetch but in reality this is just a hoax. In order to accomplish your goal you need to go somewhere else first and do something there to fix it. Even though it is very well embedded in the story and the playing time makes the game worth its money, at some point it feels quite annoying. It goes something like this: “Hey, I’ve found a way to get into that immensly guarded station. Just go to a pipe, push a button and climb in”. Well, once you’re at the pipe, the button, of course, does not work - soooo many times! It’ll continue like so: “Dammit! Allright, there are a few stations where you need to push some other button to increase the preasure in order to destabilize the pipe”. You go to those stations, shoot a lot of crap, push the buttons and get back to the pipe. This is actually a fun conclusion to the detour: “Now hit the pipe hard, best use your car”. Well, you do as you were told, find some space to gather momentum and then crash into the pipe at full speed. But that is basically all there is to complain about Borderlands 2.
As already mentioned, Borderlands 1 lacks much of the compelling story telling. On top of that you’ll see very frequent respawns of enemies in areas you’ve carefully cleansed before. And wiping all this junk off the earth sometimes is a chore. Time and again you’ll face a ton of ugly, annoying beasts that not only waste time and ammo but don’t contribute to the story in any way. This is hugely improved in part 2. There are respawns as well and sometimes groups of enemies, but very well balanced. Once an area is clear, the second time you visit it is much easier. Borderlands 1 doesn’t care too much about that.
Is Borderlands 1 a bad game for that? No! It is a lot of fun, especially if you’re playing in co-op (up to four people). And even though you don’t need to have played it to enjoy Borderlands 2, the sequel is much more fun and enjoyable for all the references that are in the game if you did. If you ask me, which is what you implicitly did reading all those lines, get them both, for you and your friends and reserve a week of time to plough through ’em. Have I mentioned that you’ll even find guns that’ll talk and even insult you?
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