Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced
I shall begin by saying that I'm not a fan of open world FPS where there is more emphasis on grind than on the background story. Borderlands offers more fun than Red Faction Guerrilha and the only exception may be the destruction physics of the latter. In some aspects I'd say that Borderlands is better than Rage 2. The plot isn't detailed and intricate as in Bioshock, but we are talking about a game that does not focus on a complex world to begin with. Speaking of Bioshock, after I beat Borderlands I noticed that the plot also has a mysterious character that guides you throughout the game until you finally uncover the truth. Much like Bioshock's Atlas. Some people found Claptrap to be annoying. For me that character was enterteining.
Rage 2 had a seamless world without loading screens. Borderlands is more similar to Rage than to Rage 2 and one of the reasons is the fact that both games have loading in between areas. I find the environment art, the characters and enemies in Borderlands to be superior when compared to Rage 2. Each location in Borderlands has its own theme and atmosphere, unlike Rage 2 where all locations pretty much reuse the same assets everywhere. Some aspects of Borderlands bear some similarities to Bioshock (both were published by 2k games). The vending machines have their own flavor and style, much like Bioshock's vending machines. The soundtrack of Borderlands is similar to the soundtrack of the first Rage. Certain things in Borderlands bear resemblance to Halo (I guess that the devs must love Halo), namely the guardians and the large scale ancient structures. The guardians also resemble the Prometheans from Halo 4 and the angels from Xenogears.
Now talking about ARPG. If I compare Borderlands to Shadow Warrior 2, Borderlands offers a more streamlined experience. Shadow Warrior 2 overcomplicated the customization and the skills. Borderlands is much more straight forward in this regard. I also found the UI to be more user-friendly than the UI of Rage 2. Nested sub-menus make it a pain to navigate the interface. I also think that regular XP to level up is more friendly than having levels split across three different NPCs, each one with its own rank and missions, as in Rage 2.
The game is very slow up to level 10. The reload of all weapons was a pain, until I've found weapons with fast reload and the upgrades. The reload in the beginning of the game is so damn slow that I died multiple times. Thankfully, there is that mechanic of a last minute chance to save yourself by killing an enemy. While the millions of weapons are fun, I felt that unlike Diablo 2 which had monsters with resistances and different strategies, Borderlands didn't offer a greater depth. It's more quantity over quality and this includes the side quests.
The world in Borderlands is a wasteland, much like Rage. However, their unique cel shaded graphics and humorous style is quite fun and make them stand apart from other open world FPS. I liked it more than the punks in Rage 2 with their colored hairs and tatoos. Other differences between Borderlands and Rage 2 includes: you can't call the vehicle, but the smaller world and the fact that there are stations where you can rent the car for free offset that. They didn't add crafting, but with so many crates and so much loot in this game I didn't miss crafting. I can't help it, but the physics and collision of the vehicles in Borderlands were terrible.
Quick design note: the NG+ created a funny quest bug. One of the first missions is to buy grenades. When you begin the game with all the stuff from your previous run, how are you going to complete that mission if you already own grenades?
Quick design note 2: there is a mission to put out some fire and smoke. The map has markers that indicate a zone, not the exact location. I was lost there. This is deceptive. The game should have at least mentioned that the marker was not an exact location.
Bugs: It seems that in some systems the game runs terrible and to remedy this you have to force it to use GPU with max performance mode. For some reason the game sets up the GPU to power saving mode. The last part with the snow weather ran like a slideshow. Other bugs include clipping the windows that display the weapon's info. And the last cutscene was skipped and the game rolled the credits.
