Review: Borderlands (PS3 (Tested), Xbox 360, PC)

I haven’t tried either of the expansion packs yet. Its not that I dislike DLC, I just don’t know if I like Borderlands enough to invest more money in it. Frankly, I don’t know why I shouldn’t like Borderlands. It boasts elements from rpgs (good), fps (good) and sci-fi (ambiguous). It also gave me a reason to bring the Playstation in range of the wireless internet. Sadly there is an awful lot to dislike about Borderlands, and people need to consider carefully whether they are willing to forgive slack story and some dreary gameplay for the sake of a good multiplayer experience.

Thematically, Borderlands is a rather sterile union of the Fallout universe and Joss Whedon’s Firefly. You are one of four mercenaries who travel to desert planet Pandora in search of ‘the Vault’; a giant survival shelter built by vault-tec... wait, that’s the other one. This Vault is a fabled treasure trove of vague description. And, er, that’s it. As settings go Pandora is pretty staid, full of stereotypical backwater hicks constantly spouting humour akin to an episode of Chucklevision. The game introduces characters and bosses with tiresome bombast and puerility (three balls you say? How interesting). Honestly, it makes you wonder if the average gamer really is a late twenty-something. Or perhaps I’m just an elitist old fart.

Even if the story were gold-plated Frank Herbert though, it is still too disjointed to make sense. Some exposition is presented via audio clips mid-mission, but far too much of it is presented in lengthy textual descriptions at the start and end of quests. As a result, you can easily miss important bits, especially online when quests are often handed in by your team mates .

Of course, the story is only there to string the various quests between the beginning and end of the game, and to its credit, the gameplay is mostly delivers. It reminds me of Blizzard’s original Diablo. You spend most of your time running around the landscape murdering  the local wildlife (along with various bandits), gaining XP and picking up randomly generated loot . This is an FPS of course, so rather than clicking away repeatedly you’ll be holding down L2 to line up the sights, and R2 to empty your gun into any given monstrosity. In line with every FPS in the last decade, you also have regenerating shields and grenades to play with. Each class also has a unique action skill which is activated by pressing L1. These range incredibly useful (deploying an auto-turret for extra firepower), Not very useful (Becoming invisible and running around for some reason, then doing some AOE damage) to the odd (Getting angry and punching everyone like its 11:30 on a Saturday night).

Character progression is what you’d expect. A skill point is earned each time you level up, which you spend on one of your character’s 21 skills. These include standard fare such as improving health, and increasing damage dealt with certain weapons, to more indie renditions like the the ability to regenerate ammunition, or heal team mates by shooting them.

The other side of progression is loot. The game boasts “bazillions of guns”, although these really boil down to eight different types, pimped out with numerous combinations of stats, scopes, elemental effects and so on. Aside from guns, you also customise your character with different shields, grenade augmentations and more. When it gets down to it, there is a good deal of character customization to be had, and very little of it feels cosmetic. None of it is permanent either. You can purchase a skill reset at any of the new-U stations, which double as the game’s checkpoints, so  you never get stuck with a poor combination of skills or equipment.

Multiplayer is the mainstay of Borderlands, and to their credit 2K have created one of the most engaging co-op multiplayer games on console to date. So long as you’re hooked up to the internet you can jump straight into any of the public games. If you prefer to be in the driving seat, you can start your own game with other players reliably joining in. You also have the option of setting up an invitation game, restricted to your PSN friend list, or else opt for two player split-screen . The ability to communicate and plan tactics adds a nice layer of complexity to the game, although from my own experience, online parties aren’t paticularly hampered by the lack of communication due to the simplicity of the quests. Yes, pretty much every mission is a variation of “go here and fetch/kill everything”, and are, for the most part, helpfully waypointed on the map. At time of writing I’m still not sure if this is to the game’s credit or not. 

If there’s one constant issue with anonymous parties its loot assignment. Apart from the quest rewards, loot isn’t instanced or reserved for specific players. So, In spite of the loading screen pleas to share and share alike, loot grabbing is an absolute free-for-all. Players will frequently pick up everything they can before anyone else gets a look in. This is pain in the backside, especially when upgrading your equipment is so fundamental to character progression.

If you’d rather go it alone, you can play the game game in single player, in much the same way you can eat stale bread for lunch instead of a cheese and pickle sandwich. On your todd, the game is a lobotomised version of itself. Quests which could be comfortably played through on multiplayer suddenly become painful and annoying. The lack of a second or third gun to manage the mobs makes you keenly aware of your magazine capacity and action skill cooldown bar, even with the scaling difficulty. When you get killed, the “fight for your life” section, which allowed players to revive you before you died, becomes little more than a taunt. The constant respawning, and sitting behind cover while your action skill cools down makes the action slow, flow-breaking and not as much fun as online.

Even online however, the game isn’t going to appeal to everyone. Borderlands is an MMO-style grind-box. Go raiding, get the loot, get the XP, level up and do it all over again on the next raid! Even the story admits as much. Yes children, forget your wishy-washy cures for cancer or quest to save the universe. We’re out searching for t3h Phat l00t.

Frustratingly for a multiplayer game, many of Borderlands most glaring flaws are due to its multiplayer component. Some are probably unavoidable; you can log into a game advertising a climactic boss mission only to find it completed and wiped out of your character’s log! Another game resulted in my log being flooded with quests from areas I hadn’t unlocked, full exposition I didn’t want to know about. Perplexingly for a party-based game, There is no way to filter characters based on class or level! As a result, you can find parties unbalanced by characters several levels higher than everyone else, or on the other side, games getting flooded by low level characters incapable of contributing to the fray.

Visually, the game is a rather gritty art-style a few shades away from being cel-shaded. It lends itself to the pseudo cartoonish feel of the action. The PS3 version had noticeable texture pop-in, with textures failing to load at the beginning of a new area. The sound and voice work isn’t anything to write home about, but it does the job for the most part.

The problem with Borderlands is that it’s inconsistent. As a multiplayer experience it is reliant on the unknown quantity of the internet. On a good day with a competent party, with decent loot drops, you’ll be playing for hours at a time. On a bad day, with a party full of imbeciles getting killed every few minutes, your patience wears thin in no time at all. I definitely prefer playing in an intimate circle of friends, preferably using VOIP, or via split screen. But you can essentially forget the single player.

Verdict:If you can’t or won’t do multiplayer, there’s nothing in Borderlands for you. Otherwise, a solid enough game if you’re willing to forgive some inconsistency. Worth a go!

Review: Assassin's Creed II (PS3, Xbox 360)

(PS3 version tested)

Assassin’s Creed had a lot in common with Eidos Interactive’s Hitman: Codename 47. Both games followed the adventures of hired killers, and both were built around solid concepts let down by terrible implementation. Assassin’s Creed II continues the likeness of the two franchises, proving a sequel in the mould of Hitman II: Silent Assassin; refining the original concept, while improving on gameplay in just about every way.

The sequel picks up where AC left off, following bartender and all round damp squib Desmond Miles’s historical odyssey through the genetic memories of his murderous ancestors. If AC II is worse than the original in any respect, this is it. Desmond was quite a tragic character in AC; an unwilling protagonist essentially forced to play the game in the vain hope he wouldn’t be murdered at the end of it. Now, he is somehow irritatingly whiney and depressingly surly in equal measure. Just as well that your time controlling Desmond is confined to three brief interludes, and just as well that these sections starkly contrast the rest of the game experience.

The majority of the time has you in the shoes of lothario-turned-Assassin Ezio Auditore as he engages on a murderous quest for revenge through renaissance Italy. It’s clear that Ezio is far more relatable a character than Altair, and not just because of his authentic accent (you can opt to hear all the dialogue in Italian, turning the game into an action-adventure-come-linguaphone course). Through the course of the game Ezio’s character grows convincingly, from his beginnings as a womanising teenage thug, to his maturity as a fully fledged assassin. This journey feels less contrived than Altair’s rather hair-shirted quest for redemption, and gives AC II’s story a greater sense of immersion as a result.

The core of AC was sandbox assassination and free running fun through historical cityscapes. That action is faithfully transplanted to Florence and Venice, as well as a couple of smaller towns. Like the cities of the Holy Land, the gorgeous environment engine does the cities justice. Iconic buildings like the Campanile and the Palazzo de Medici are present, with accompanying database entries providing a welcome historical depth to the world.

Getting around the cities is the same as before. Actions are mapped to the face buttons, with the stealthy low profile and dramatic high profile actions differentiated by holding down R1. Movement through the cities is much faster paced than it used to be. You can run full pelt without fear of alerting the guards, and running over the rooftops is rarely hampered thanks to tactical placement of scaffolds and cranes (although the canal network in Venice can present flow-breaking roadblocks at times).

While the core gameplay is the same, virtually everything else has changed. AC was hammered for it’s repetitive missions, dreary investigation sections and poor pacing. AC II’s pace is demonstrated right from the get-go, opening the game with a full-on street brawl. Progression is essentially linear, but the missions are now shorter and more numerous, while being more localized (no more pondering horse journeys from Masayaf) with greater variation in objectives.

The much-maligned investigation sections are gone, replaced with a slew of optional side missions, including checkpoint races, courier missions and paid assassination. In addition there are a huge number of optional fetch quests, which grant money, special equipment and background history amongst other things. You can spend time upgrading your home villa to increase annual income, search for hidden treasure, chase down pickpockets, seek out the lost assassin’s tombs, and more. There really is a huge amount of optional content in the game; optional being the key word. During my first playthrough I ignored all the side quests and never felt like I’d missed anything crucial.

The stealth aspect of the game has received a welcome revision too. Staying in low profile keeps you a blade in the crowd, while high profile actions attract unwanted attention from the guards, as before. Hiding away in haystacks, roof gardens and benches allows you to lose the law, also as before. You can now also hide within crowds of citizens, presenting an alternative to the groups of remote-control scholars of the first game. In addition, you can hire groups of thieves and courtesans to distract guards for a small fee. Another new feature is the notoriety bar. A bit like a fifteenth century ASBO, it fills up as the result of public displays of violence or murder. Gain too much and you become notorious, and with guards attack you on sight. Reducing notoriety is done by ripping down wanted posters (some of which are mysteriously placed on ledges, rooftops, and other unlikely places), bribing heralds, or assassinating witnesses. The system works quite well, providing a reason to be inconspicuous, but not being so punitive that it ruins the fun if you botch an assassination or go on a therapeutic killing spree.

Dealing death is more varied this time around. Through the course of the game new equipment is unlocked, including the double hidden blade, smoke bombs, poison, and other weapons to assist with your numerous murders. Assassination can be done quietly from hiding spots and from under ledges, and can be done with your standard weapons, rather than just the hidden blade.

Combat is much faster paced and more varied thanks to new tools and techniques. Weaponry can be purchased from blacksmiths, and there is a decent choice of swords, hammers and maces, even if it is basically a cosmetic one. There are also numerous ways of quickly dispatching enemies, although the tougher ones will block most of them. In spite of that, success in combat boils down to nailing the timing for the counter-kill and disarm moves with the occasional smoke bomb thrown into the mix. This combination will kill more or less any enemy in one shot. Also, the addition of health kits presents an unneccessary dilution of the combat. By the middle of the game you can carry fifteen of them, and they are instantly effective in combat. The combat is still dramatic and flashy, but as a result of the above, is actually less challenging than it was in the original, which will be an issue for some.

Another irritation is the lack of a level select. In spite of all the missions being self-contained blocks, and in spite of the game including a chronological list of all your completed missions in the pause menu, there is no way to replay them without starting all over again! While I see no reason people wouldn’t want to play it through a second time, the omission is just perplexing.

Putting those complaints into perspective, we are talking about minor hickups in an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable game experience. All too often the sequels of popular franchises turn out to be massive let downs, or else uninspired clones with only new levels and cosmetic additions tacked on to differentiate them from their progenitor. Assassin’s Creed II is a shining example of how a sequel should be made; strip out the bad bits, polish the good, and include enough new content for it to stand up on its own merits. Whether or not you enjoyed the first game, Assassin’s Creed II is a worthy investment at full price. When the price inevitably gets reduced it’ll be an absolute steal.

Verdict:

This game is a priority purchase. Unless you’re opposed to action adventure games in general, Assassin’s Creed II is something you’ll not regret spending your time or money on.