Today 2lions and I went through several presentations and we've just sat down to summerize our impressions on the games we've seen.
First up is Borderlands from recognized development studio Gearbox Software - the game was shown behind closed doors at 2K Games' booth.
Before things started, we were greeted by two members of the development team (the main presenter was Gearbox's Randy Pitchford), who announced that what we were about to witness was only shown to a limited number of people. What we've seen was debut footage of actual gameplay from the recently announced title Borderlands, which is currently in development for the 360, PS3 and PC. So, it's a completely new IP from Gearbox and is in no way related to any of their earlier games.
Gearbox, by the way, is known for their work on numerous FPS titles including, Half-Life: Blue Shift, the Brothers in Arms series, the PC version of Halo and so on. All of these proved to be excellent shooters and that's precisely why we were eager to find out more about their next endeavour.
Borderlands was secretly in development for a while (approximately 20 months) and as we were told, the game has about 15 or so months to go before it hits retail.
As the lights went dark and the game started, we were given a briefing on the setting, the types of areas you'll mostly be traversing, weapons and vehicles. The new world we were introduced to looked harsh and was described as a place you'd normally never want to go… not unless you're a complete badass, looking for trouble. The world is violent, lawless and extremely dangerous. It's called Pandora and from what we've seen, it represents an interesting sci-fi setting that would be perfect for a first-person shooter with vehicular combat mixed in for good measure. Anyway, the planet or rather the setting you'll be exploring is huge and, like I've said, it's hardly a friendly environment. Mind you, it does have similarities to Earth. For instance, the air is breathable, so you can move around without worrying about oxygen supplies, space-suits and whatnot. Also, it takes ages for the planet to orbit around the center star, hence the seasons take decades to change (for example, it takes 10 years for Spring to pass, etc).
Our hero started his journey in a so-called settlement. Settlements are essentially safe havens, where players can recuperate, buy/sell weapons and other useful items, such as armor and so on. One of the most important things to know about Borderlands is that it was designed to be a co-op game. Yep, that means two players can join their efforts to discover whatever lies outside settlements. You'll also be able to advance your character's skills, so eventually you'll see him jumping higher or similar stuff. Moreover, your character is tough and prepared for almost anything. He was described as a sort of mix between Indiana Jones and Mad Max, so you can imagine what kind of guy we are talking about here.
Settlements are also ideal places where you can grab yourself a vehicle, to move through hazardous areas a lot faster. The good thing is that vehicles can be mounted by both players simultaneously. One player can drive, while the other mounts the gun at the back of the vehicle. Matthew Armstrong, Borderlands Director, was one of the Gearbox folk showcasing the game. Amongst other features, he demonstrated one cool addition. It's possible to switch seats at any time while within the vehicle, which was shown right in the middle of an intense battle with bandit vehicles.
Outside the settlement you'll run into monsters and bandits, most of which are, yes you guessed it, quite unfriendly. Scags were given as paradigm for that. They are creatures you meet frequently in the game. Basically, they are dumb and it takes little effort to gun them down individually, but when they attack you in larger groups, then you have a serious problem on your hands.
To deal with such problems players are welcomed to use a massive choice of firearms. Okay, I know many of you will find this hard to believe, but Borderlands is going to feature 500,000 unique weapons, all of which have a different look and different feel. Every single weapon has specific features such as range, damage and so on. To show us how this works, the development team threw in a couple of hundred weapons into the level that was shown and we were able to discern the difference between each of them. Shotguns, pistols, rifles, grenades and the usual arsenal you find in shooters. Of course, each type of weapon has a variety of sub-classes, so, for instance, you can equip a shotgun for close encounters, but if it doesn't suit you, you may pick up another type of shotgun from fallen enemies.
As a co-op game, Borderlands appears to work very well. Both players can use whatever weapon or vehicle they want to take out foes with and there's a lot of stuff you can do in a really large world - well, judging from what we've seen and what was promised by Gearbox.
During the demo shown to us, it became obvious that Gearbox was inspired by many familiar FPS formulas, such as Halo, Half-Life and other classics. The game does have a unique feel though and that's largely thanks to the whole sci-fi backstory and the Mad Max ambience (you know, weird-looking vehicles, bandits roaming the wild etc.).
Overall, we were impressed with what we've seen. Even so, both 2lions and I couldn't help but notice the somewhat outdated engine used in the game. Although the game ran smoothly and the character models looked decent enough, overall, the game seemed a bit behind other future triple-A shooters like Crysis (or even the recently released BioShock).
Granted, there's still plenty of room for improvement. Also, I noticed that stuff like AI behavior patterns and enemy reaction time could use more polish, since they appeared to be easy targets during a large portion of the game. (That was likely only to make the demonstration easier. - 2Lions)
The final climatic scene in the demo included a huge monster which housed smaller insect-like creatures on its back. Moving on four legs like a 12-store version of an elephant but hairy and with a face that undeniably reminded us of a vagina (clit and all), Borderlands will obviously have some huge and, um, interesting monsters in store for the gamers.
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