Borderlands on PC is pretty okay

No, I don’t mean “pretty, okay?” I mean it’s pretty okay. Like, those two words together form one theoretical adjective. Oh, yeah, I’m getting all verbose up in this bitch.

Way back in the middle of October I got in a Steam four-way deal and nabbed Borderlands for about $33. I’ve been disillusioned about new games for a long time, so there was no way I was going to pay $50 for a game that was very likely to be a console port (I’m so done with that). However, since I was given the chance to jump in and get it for considerably fewer dollars, I decided to go for it.

I knew going into it that its console-centered development would probably affect its quality in multiple ways, but I was certain the co-op gameplay would be super fun. While this guy I talked to insisted that Borderlands’ development lead was PC, I knew this wouldn’t be the case because it isn’t economically feasible for most types of games anymore. Unless a developer is producing the next Diablo, Starcraft, or WoW — i.e. games that can’t be adapted to consoles very well — they’re going to bend to the will of the consoles and adapt the game to PC later. The money in consoles trumps PCs by an exponential factor.

But back to Borderlands. I wasn’t expecting much but I was greeted with something decent. The visual styling is neat and the gameplay is addictive. Unlike recent, more traditional FPS RPG games like Oblivion or Fallout 3, this one’s much more centered on the combat than talking to people — and that’s great because it means the action is pretty relentless. It makes the game good for a few quick killing sprees or a multi-hour OCD loot fest.

Of course, it’s not without its problems. Keep in mind, however, that all this is based on my single-player experiences as I haven’t yet put in any effort into getting a co-op game going (too lazy, time issues, etc.).

The user interface sucks.

The most obvious failing in the “this game was a console port” category is the interface. It was clearly designed for consoles and bogeys in many aspects:

• You can’t use the mouse wheel to scroll in menus.
• You can’t close menus without the Escape key.
• You can’t get at many of the usual PC tweaks in the options (mouse smoothing, FOV, anti-aliasing, etc.).
• You can’t see all of a weapon’s information because the font is too big (fixed in the first patch at least).

There are others but it’s pointless to continue listing them. Just get this config editor and fix the problems. And then hit up this list of tweaks to cover anything it might have missed.

The gameplay is repetitive.

On the plus side I will say that Borderlands sports better and more realistic gun play than supposed “realistic” shooters like Call of Duty. And if you’re a person who loves discovering loot in games, Borderlands has plenty.

However, if you’re expecting things to ever change over time you’re out of luck. The entire game is “start quest, go here, shoot things, optionally grab something, end quest.” I suppose most games can be watered down to their most basic elements like this but there is literally nothing else to do in this game. No puzzles, no engaging storylines, no exploration that will lead to anything other than more of the same enemies and loot, etc.

A lot of the quests leave something to be desired as well. There are far too many simple “find/fetch quests” and the boss battles are generally quite lacking. Oddly enough, the area you start in — the Arid Badlands — is the most extensive of any in the game and has the most quests. It’s like the developers really tried to cram that first area full of stuff to do and then got lazy as the story progressed. For instance, the Arid Badlands sports something like 40 total quests while the next area, The Dahl Headlands, has all of ten. That first area takes a long time to get through but after that it seems the rest of the game falls away quickly.

The loots. We need more loots.

Don’t get me wrong — there is a lot of loot in this game. The problem, however, is that it’s not well varied, and as you progress through the game, said loot matters less and less. As you locate good guns, stock up on class mods, and get buried in cash, you can practically ignore all the loot save for weapon lockers. Ammo and health regeneration void most looting adventures, and I’ve never found a weapon worth buying, so the only time I ever spent money was on the ammo capacity upgrades and to respawn. Not only is there cash everywhere but there’s so much stuff lying about that you end up selling $10 million worth of it by the time you’re halfway through your second playthrough… and then you have nothing worthwhile to spend it on.

Additionally, the random weapon generation is dubious. Perhaps it’s better in co-op mode, but I wound up using the same sniper rifle, machine gun, and shotgun for the entire second half of the game. Given that Borderlands’ developers boasted about the game’s 17.5+ million procedurally-generated guns, I was a bit disappointed to be carrying around the same three for so fucking long. They even lasted a bit into my second playthrough. Ridiculous.

It’s too easy.

Now, I can’t speak for co-op mode because I still haven’t bothered with it, but I can safely say the single-player portion of Borderlands is lacking in difficulty.

Specifically, it’s simply not balanced for lean doing every single side quest available to you. Doing side quests gives you tons of experience, so you level much quicker than if you were to simply plow through the main quests. Unlike Oblivion the enemies don’t level with you; they are more or less set to be within some level range based on when the average player would traipse through the area.

Thus, by taking on most or all of the side quests you fairly quickly out-level your enemies. Being even a couple levels higher than an enemy can make them quite easy to take out, and the end result is an easy game. Each quest is rated in difficulty based on the level of your future opponents, so after some time they all end up being labeled as “trivial.” This severely impedes the fun factor as the game ceases to be a challenge. Even on the second playthrough where the enemies become stronger, it wasn’t long before every quest was trivial for my character.

“So, don’t do all the side quests,” you offer. Sure, that does work to ramp up the game’s difficulty, but you have to be fully prepared to take on this decision. Whenever there are new side quests available, the Claptraps will constantly remind you. You will be inundated with messages such as, “Greetings, traveller! There are more missions available for you at the New Haven bounty board!” every few minutes. It gets annoying. Really annoying. Jar Jar Binks annoying. If you’re going to go the route of quest skipping, I’d recommend skipping the ones where your only reward is experience points. It’s probably worth it to go after the ones that give you weapons and whatnot.

The bottom line…

Borderlands is a game worthy of your time. It’s not perfect, and I’m hopeful that some patches and extra content will smooth out some of its problems (many of which stem from its console-centric development), but it’s good. If you like searching for loot and/or shooting the hell out of some stuff, this game will serve you well. If you like doing those things with other people, even better. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for some kind of deep, thoughtful gameplay and story, look elsewhere. Borderlands’ story is, in fact, about the most unsatisfying I’ve ever encountered. It’s all about the gameplay here.