Borderlands

[Kyo]

thats true, but around here only 1 store in my entire district is doing a midnight launch for it, so i gotta pick mine up on tuesday

Yeah we have 4 stores within 10 miles here, and only one is doing it, I'll be going on tuesday as well. I dont really go to midnights anymore, I may for assassins creed 2 and god of war 3 tho.

[izembo]

there 8 stores within like 7 miles here from my store, but only one doing a midnight is like 45mins away

[Fairy-Killer]

I have a store within walking distance doing Midnight launch. Just curious, if I ordered it online a week ago and had it sent to Gamestop, they can't sell that copy can they? I haven't paid anything on it. The guy said it would be a small midnight launch but should I get there before midnight to make sure I don't wait forever? Never been to one of these things before but this game will be well worth it I'm sure.

[izembo]

if you did an online preorder you can pick it up at the store, they wont let you leave with the game till it hits midnight, and it wont be huge so i wouldnt show up too early

[Thunder]

Ive been playing this since 2 today, game is really fun, Im playing as the hunter. Word to the wise, not really a spoiler, but try to shoot skags in the mouth.

I saw shotguns can have scopes; some of which have some crazy magnification on them. Is shotgun spread in this game static? Like, is the spread the same if you were to fire right in front of yourself and at 100ft?

Basically, can you 'snipe' with shotguns? >.>

[Kyo]

I saw shotguns can have scopes; some of which have some crazy magnification on them. Is shotgun spread in this game static? Like, is the spread the same if you were to fire right in front of yourself and at 100ft?

Basically, can you 'snipe' with shotguns? >.>

No, shotguns handle how you would expect a shotgun to handle, great up close, very inaccurate from a distance, I have yet to see a shotgun with a scope. Been playing some with a friend couch co-op today, on PS3, he got it early from walmart. Im waiting till tuesday as noted above to get mine, paid it off at gamestop.

[Thunder]

Ah, I see. Only ask because the guy who was streaming his gameplay had a shotgun with two scopes on it and it'd give me a reason to change the preset skill tree I was making all day for roland!

[Qalbert]

[BadKarma]

LOL awesome

[BadKarma]

Pickin this up for 360 soon, cant wait

[Qalbert]

add me, bitch
xbl: Qalbert

[Qalbert]

IGN: Borderlands: Know Your Weapons

October 16, 2009 - If you've been following our coverage, you've probably heard the marketing line by now. Gearbox's Borderlands has hundreds of thousands of guns in it. The game's release date is very nearly upon us at this point, October 20th for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions and October 26th for the PC, but how much about the game's guns do you really know? Here's a brief overview of what kinds of weapons can be found on Pandora, the rocky, dusty setting of this first-person shooter built for loot hunters.

Each of the game's four character classes, which you can read all about in our Meet the Killers feature, can use all the weapons in the game. So if you want to play as a Berserker, whose special action skill is to pummel enemies with fists, you can still equip a sniper rifle and be pretty decent with it. That's because the more you use a weapon, the higher your proficiency with it gets. By the time you've built up a high level character you should be seeing some nice benefits. At proficiency level 15 for submachine guns, for instance, you'll get a 15 percent damage bonus, 30 percent boost to reload speed, and a 45 percent accuracy increase.

Before digging into the many variations of guns present in the game, first let's back out and go over the general weapon types. In all, you get proficiency categories for pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, combat rifles, sniper rifles, launchers, and Eridian weapons. Now, if you've just read that list, the last one probably jumped out at you as a little odd, so we'll tackle that first. Eridian weapons are built with alien technology, and function a little different from the majority of the weapons in the game. Instead of having capped ammunition limits, these alien weapons have regenerating ammo reserves. While it means you'll need to wait around for the seemingly slow regeneration to take place, it also means you never need to worry about whether or not you've purchased enough rounds.

An early game weapon with elemental effects -- The Clipper.
The alien weapons differ in functionality as well, and have a distinct visual style compared to the more familiar weapon types. Some of these weapon types act like sniper rifles and fire out focused energy beams, some act like shotguns and blast forth clusters of lighting balls, and others discharge large, slow-moving spheres of shock energy that can have a devastating impact on enemy shields. If you get the game next week and are wondering where they are, well have some patience. These things don't start showing up until later on in the game so you'll need to put in some time to see them. It's also not like these are the ultimate weapons either, the other types are just as if not more effective for a number of reasons.

Every gun type in the game comes with base statistics, from magazine capacity to accuracy, fire rate, and damage. These all differ between models, and a few other variations can further diversify weapons function. Some have scopes, for instance, and some don't. Many have bonuses depending on their rarity, including bonus critical hit damage, reload speed, ammunition regeneration, and recoil reduction. Many also come with elemental effects, which come in varying strengths. Fire elemental weapons are more effective against flesh whereas shock elemental effects quickly take down shields. Corrosive bullets can cause more damage over time, and the explosive weapons cause enemies to, unsurprisingly, explode. As if that wasn't enough, the even rarer weapon types have unique special effects, such as split-second reloads, arcing rocket shots, and bullets that fire in seemingly magical waves and spirals.

Just to go over a few examples, say you come across a revolver with high damage numbers, a slow rate of fire, a weapon zoom, and explosive elemental effects. Since you'll eventually open up four weapon slots, should you decide to equip that pistol, or instead stay with the SMG that does x3 corrosive damage and has a lighting fast reload. Or maybe you're sick of the more long range combat and want to ditch that ultra high damage sniper rifle with x4 explosive damage and a 150 percent critical hit damage bonus for something more up close and personal. Maybe that Caustic Shotgun with the extended magazine size and corrosive elemental damage might be just what you're looking for.

You'll earn bonuses for each weapon type with continued use.
Naturally you'll need ammunition for all these guns, and Gearbox made the process of staying stocked up fairly convenient by liberally scattering vending machines all over the game world. Not only can you buy ammo at these machines, but also spend big chunks of cash on upgrading your overall ammunition capacity, which can be pretty helpful if you're deep into a dungeon. From the few types of these machines can also be purchased grenade modifications, class mods, shield mods, and more weapons, and the inventories frequently refresh as you play, so expect to spend quite a bit of time interacting with these machines.

Hopefully that gives you a general overview of what to expect from the weaponry in the game, which will be shipping soon for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC platforms. To find out if the game is actually any good and this information was worth reading, check back with IGN early Monday morning for the full review.

[Qalbert]

review from Kotaku (yeah I know lolkotaku, but its one of the first reviews I've seen)

Gearbox Software's Borderlands is part first-person shoot 'em up, part role-playing game, a dusty slog across the planet Pandora in search of the legendary treasures of the Vault.

Along the way, from the bus that drops your player off at the nearly deserted town of Fyrestone to the final showdown at the secretive Vault, a lot of looting and a lot of shooting is gettin' done. That constant collection of shields, artifacts, character class modifiers, grenade types and "bazillions" of guns is as much of Borderlands appeal as the four player, drop in, drop out cooperative multiplayer mode.

With four character classes to choose from, each with dozens of customizable skills, and over a hundred missions to play through, Borderlands can't be knocked for its lack of variety. Is everything else in place?

Loved
Co-op Is King: Borderlands is at its best during co-op, when the mix of enemies becomes more varied, when the challenges are made more difficult, and when you've got a partner to take the gunner position in one of the game's vehicles. When player skills and capabilities complement each other well, you can churn through some of Borderlands' less interesting fetch quests, hauling ass as a team to the next bounty, power leveling each other with quickness. Credit to Gearbox, who made the process of getting into a game relatively painless, minus a bit of confusion surrounding completed or half-completed quests from the game's single-player mode.

A Magical Wasteland: To get the superficial stuff out of the way, Borderlands looks damn good. The "concept art" shading adds personality to what otherwise might have been flat, barren stretches of desert land. The Xbox 360 version holds up relatively well, only slowing down when things get really hairy and when the bad guys get really big—things drag a bit more noticeably during the game's last hour, when some heavy action goes down. Player characters and enemy designs look sharp—we just wish there was a little more room for additional character customization.

One In A Bazillion: With randomly generated weapons, particularly when almost everything is a gun of some sort, there's valid concern that the variations will be difficult to notice, that every shotgun or machine pistol will feel the same. Fortunately, that's not true in Borderlands, as weapon manufacturers, elemental attributes (fire, electricity, corrosion) and a long list of attributes make many guns feel surprisingly unique. The same is true for the one-off guns, typically picked up from a major fallen foe or given as a reward. These uniques tend to be interesting variations, if not particularly useful when you get them. You'll likely settle into a quartet of reliable favorites that complement each other well, as well as come to appreciate the handy and illustrative "compare" option in the inventory screen.

Quickly Addicting: Borderlands' reward system, granting you big bonuses in cash and experience for completing quests, kept me coming back for more, even when I had planned to take a break. Just one more quest, I'd say, in search of new loot, new levels and new areas to explore. This quick addiction to the game's frequent pay-offs was made more intense during co-op, when the rewards come much more frequently thanks to cash and experience sharing.

We Got A System: The game's attribute system, focusing on elemental modifiers, reload times, clip sizes, and other weapon functions, works quite well. It's not as complex as many of the role-playing games and massively multiplayer online games that it clearly borrows its weapon/shield attribute system from, but there is depth to it. For the most part, it's easy to understand why one shotgun or shield is better than another, even if the naming system for items can be cryptic.

Second Wind: Second Wind let's the player keep firing with their dying breaths. If they take out their killer before the screen fades to black, they'll recover some health and shields. Not a groundbreaking innovation, but something that saved my ass more often than I'd care to count. And I love it for that.

Hated
Getting There Is None Of The Fun: You're going to spend a lot of time in Borderlands going from point A to point B. And for the most part, all that hoofing it around is going to suck. Here's a long list of reasons why. The game's map is sometimes confusing, meaning I too often had to check and recheck and recheck my location via the menu screen. There is no mini-map overlay, unfortunately. Maps are lacking in key information, things like the locations of main characters, where town-to-town "transitions" actually go, and the ability to place your own waypoints. One of the faster travel concessions, the teleportation between "New-U" respawn points, is made less useful, because most missions don't tell the player where to go to collect rewards, so teleporting can be kind of a crapshoot unless you're taking good mental notes. Finally, vehicles, while much faster than walking, can sometimes get stuck on world geometry, resulting in a very long jog to your destination.

More Like Bore-derlands, Am I Right? Alright, Borderlands is fun, so that may be a little harsh. But at some point, between collecting 24 bottles of booze and scouring six Dumpsters for... whatever and running on foot all over the damn place, monotony can set in. Borderlands, especially when played solo, can get a little... dull. There's plenty of grind here for those who like it, but there's also plenty of grind for those who don't.

Suspect AI, Suspect Aim: I saw the AI do some pretty dumb things during my time with Borderlands—about 22 hours, if you're curious—which usually worked to my advantage. Granted, Pandora's wildlife and lowlife probably aren't that smart or they'd have found a way off this rock, but they'll often forgo cover for standing in front of it or even on top of it. Some of the more difficult boss characters can act thickly as well, getting stuck in behavior loops that make them so much simpler to kill. Dumb though the AI may be, it has an amazing ability to keep its sights trained on you, unfairly in some situations. Like those son of a bitch turrets.

Borderlands gets a lot of things right, in particular the balance between being a first-person shooter and being a role-playing game. The shooting mechanics are sound, as are many of the role-playing aspects, save for a few design quirks. Growing and customizing my level 35 Siren was a great deal of fun, when the tedium of all that walking around didn't spoil it. But where Borderlands excels is in offering a functional four-player cooperative loot-hoarding experience, with gorgeous environments to adventure in and smartly crafted items to collect or covet.

The game has a few faults, including its traveling inefficiencies—a weak map combined with plenty of long-range fetch quests—and its mostly forgettable story line, but it's still relatively easy to recommend, provided you can tap into the best portions of Borderlands, its cooperative multiplayer modes.

Borderlands was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 20. Retails for $59.99 USD on consoles, $49.99 on PC. A copy of the game was purchased by Kotaku for reviewing purposes. Completed single-player mode, played 20 co-op missions on Xbox Live with groups of two and three players on Xbox 360. Tested splitscreen co-op mode.

[Qalbert]

lol IGN
IGN: Borderlands Review
8.8

[Dymlos]

1up gave it a B+. Borderlands Review for the Xbox 360,PS3 from 1UP.com. And Destructoid gave it an 8.5. Destructoid Review

[Deband]

Reviews seem good. Just ordered on Steam

[Ragnell]

I'm stuck :<

[Kwijiboe]

Was this being sold cheap anywhere?

[Kyo]

Was this being sold cheap anywhere?

If you live in Canada, otherwise no.

[BadKarma]

I'm stuck :<

Use lube next time