Borderlands Preview

There's no question that the game has style

The combat itself is immediately satisfying, with that classic “chunky” feel you get in all good FPSers. However, Borderlands’ RPG touches are also evident from the get-go. Every time you kill something you’re greeted with an XP notification that pops up over the bloody corpse you just blew to bits. There are also quests to do, although these are presented in a refreshingly light manner. You’ll find an NPC, and as you’ll approach they’ll normally start to gabble at you. Hit a button, and you’ll switch to a briefing screen where they’ll explain what they want you to do. If you’re in a hurry you can just skip through this and get on with things, but if you’re more patient there’s a full explanation to digest. Either way, you’ll notice that it’s a fairly lean and efficient way to dish out quests. No cutscenes or long pre-amble, just a quick rundown of what needs to be done.

This isn’t to say that there’s no story or atmosphere. There’s plenty of colour in both scenarios and the quest-givers you meet, but the point is that you’re free to just push on if you’re itching to get on with things. Pandora itself has a strange, hostile beauty to it, and you’ll immediately want to start exploring your surroundings. You’ve got to be quite careful as you do this, because at low levels there are plenty of creatures capable of chewing your leg off before you can even mess-up their hair do, let alone hurt them. I quickly made the mistake of pissing off an adult skag (a sort of alien jackal-type thing), and it didn’t take the beast long to make confetti of my lower intestine. When your health bar is depleted the screen takes on a washed-out look and an on-screen prompt tells you to “fight for your life!” At this point you’re given a brief chance to kill off your attackers using your pistol, in a manner not too dissimilar to the Last Stand perk in CoD 4.

Unfortunately, Mr Skag was having none of this, shrugging off my pistol rounds as if they were pellets from a peashooter. Luckily Borderlands uses a kind of BioShock-style respawn system, rebuilding your genetic material at a generator in the closest nearby town. There’s a financial penalty for this, so you don’t want to do it too often, but it’s certainly better than having to reload your game. There are also plenty of vending machines dotted around the world, and you can use these to buy medical supplies, shields and ammo. You can also buy and sell weapons just in case you were bored of all the ones you’ve scavenged.

I had just about settled into the rhythm of the early game when our host informed us that it was time to jump ahead to some level 20 play, so it was time to pick a new character. I briefly considered sticking with Roland, since I had grown to like his ability to throw out a deployable turret, but in the interests of journalism I decided to use a different class. I eventually opted to pick Mordecai – a lanky hunter who can send out a pet bloodwing (a sort of alien parrot-type thing) to savage his enemies from afar. I was then given 20 levels worth of XP to use on levelling my character up. While the four classes all have their distinct tones, there are also three different skill sets that can be boosted for each character. Roland, for example, has medic-based skills, support skills that increase his firepower, and leadership skills that boost the XP of other party members. Mordecai is a natural pick for players who like to play as snipers, but he can also be developed into more of a quick drawing sharp-shooter. It’s up to you whether you stick all your points into one branch of the tree, or whether you go for a mixed bag. I chose to boost his sniping talents while also juicing up the strength of his critical hits, because everyone knows that a good critical is absolutely yummy.

Players will be able to hop into vehicles together

I should also add that while we all played our first demo session by ourselves, the second outing took the form of a quest-less, four-player outing into the unknown. In an ideal world we’d have worked together, but under the circumstances I think we all got a bit carried away. What followed was an orgy of chaos, starring flaming midgets, giant insects and more guns than you could shake a Matrix at. For most of the trip I was using a high powered sniper rifle that occasionally set people on fire, but I also grew quite fond of my side arm – a ludicrously powerful pistol that did twice the damage of the rifle, but only held five rounds. It’s also worth mentioning that some of the enemies put up a seriously tough fight, so don’t expect things to get any easier once your character scales the upper branches of their skill tree.

I have no doubt that our quartet could have been more organised, but we certainly had an amazing time blasting our way around, winding up (and blowing up) the locals while arguing over health packs and loot. As I said, the time flew by far too quickly for my liking. I was looking forward to this game before I’d had a chance to try it, but now I’m dead excited to see what else Pandora has in store. Borderlands is definitely one to watch.

Borderlands is due for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on October 23.