Anticipation: Borderlands

Due in no small part to the obsession of Ravious, our resident representative of Spugnation, I’ve started getting excited for the upcoming release of Borderlands on the PC next week.   The group of friends with whom I play online games typically enjoy both RPG and FPS style games, so this seems like it should be right up our alley.

Borderlands has been described as a FPS version of Diablo II, which is a fairly accurate description.   You are given a choice of one of four classes, each of which has three skill trees which you can choose from to customize your character to your liking.   Loot seems to be a big part of the game, and the constant variety keeps you engaged by ensuring there’s always the possibility of something better than what you have dropping from the next enemy.

Especially now that the XBox version of the game has been released, there are plenty of videos on youtube, as well as Borderlands’ own web site showing game play off, but the one that was the most helpful to me was a co-op playthrough I found on giantbomb.com.   This half-hour video features four-player co-op play and some accompanying discussion by one of the players an observer.   The discussion answers some related questions and discusses aspects of play that weren’t directly shown and is very informative.   There are also screenshots and videos on the Borderlands site, as well as the skill tree for each of the four classes for anyone who wants more information.

After doing some reading, I think I’m going to try out the Siren as my first character.   Apparently I was the last person to decide what as I was going to play.   To paraphrase a discussion I had over IM with a friend I’ll be playing Borderlands with:

Me:   BTW… I’m thinking siren in borderlands
MD:   LOL no kidding.   I already knew that Fishboy would be Mordecai, You’d be Lilith, Rav would be Roland and I’d be Brick.   ‘Cuz those are our universal archetypes.
Me:   Heh.   Wait… I’m a chick?
MD:   me = do that one thing, Rav = do it all, Fishboy = be a ninja, you = be a fucking bastard shitcock sneaky twink   😀

I guess that makes sense… I am a Legion player after all.