Quote: Original post by Kwizatz
I read somewhere that if you wanted to get good loot you should start a multiplayer game and then play by your self, if someone joins you, great, if not, you get the good loot, thing is, on multiplayer you do whatever mission the host is on, so don't expect strangers to just join you in the middle of a game.

I've had people join me in the middle. Once you're done with the story, there is a second play-through that ups the difficulty, let's you start with your up-leveled character, and adds a smattering of new side-missions (I've noticed one or two "kill this sentry tower" type missions that I didn't play through the first time, and the first time through I earned the achievement for 100% mission completion). But other than that, there isn't much point to playing through the story. It is a lot of fun to play with others and hunt for loot though.

The difficulty, and thus the loot, scales with the number of players. I think 4 is the max. Starting a multiplayer game without having anyone else with you shouldn't cause the difficulty to upscale at all. Even in single player, by the time I was finished with story, I had all gold weapons.

One thing that I think is great about the game is that I can have friends over who aren't very good at games, they can host a split-screen session so it starts from the beginning, and I can jump in with my up-leveled character to help them out whenever they need it. If the game gets slow, I can mow down a bunch of baddies way outside their level range really quickly and bump them up a level, as all experience and money is shared. I'll collect weapons that I won't use or sell just to give to a friend. It's definitely a neat little outcome to the whole social aspect for the game.

It's not as open as Fallout 3. The mission progression is fairly linear, but sometimes you will 'backtrack' to earlier areas to take out special bosses and whatnot if you want.

I liked Borderlands but I felt a bit underwhelmed. There was only one 'tileset' really, even less variation than Fallout 3 if you can believe that. But as a multiplayer drop-in-drop-out game it's pretty good.

Perhaps it's just the fact that I'm a pesky Australian playing on a PC version of the game. But I gotta admit it didn't enjoy it much.

For one. Being in an isolated zone like australia means that connections to most USA / EURO located servers just lead to bad lag or inability to connect at all. While this is a problem that faces all games, a lack of a ping rate on the server list means I can't sort through servers based on connectivity and therefore trying to play the game online is an exercise in frustration.

The game itself I gotta admit I was disappointed. The thing that made me go "hmmm..." the most was just the general lack of feeling the weapons had. The sound, recoil, scopes, visual appearance and other aspects of these randomly generated weapons made them feel like toys. I know it probably doesn't annoy many people but it kinda got to be.

I'm sure however if you live in the USA or Europe where the concept of lag is only an annoyance this game could give you hours of fun.

It's great.

What put me off from buying the game is the art design. Somehow, it didn't appeal to me at all.......maybe it's just me.

I rented it for a weekend, on X360. Had fun at first, but it bored me quite fast. I recommend a rent.

I picked it up on steam a few weeks ago when it was on for $35. I played through single player first, just because I generally like to get to know a game before going online. I really enjoyed it, despite everyone who says "single player sucks but online is fun". I guess that means online will be REALLY fun when I get around to it eh?
Ive played through single player with all characters except for the chick, and Im about half way through with the chick. Its really fun, definely worth my money.
When you chose a character, it says what their favorite weapons are. I dont know exactly what that means (ie, do they get bonuses if they use those weapons? if so, it doesnt specify that anywhere), but Ive been sticking to the favorite weapons for each character. I find that it adds replay value because each time you play through, you're looking for different weapons. For example you might come across a kick-ass shotgun, but if thats not one of youre players favorite weapons, you sell it instead of using it. Maybe you'll find it again next time you play through with Brick. Not to mention doing this gets you level 20-ish profficiency in your favorite weapon by the end of the game.

Singleplayer was fun but I got impatient through the last third of the game and turned on the demigod cheat to finish it. Now my friends and I play it via LAN through Hamachi (essentially an easy-to-use LAN emulator). Multiplayer is much more entertaining, partly because we have to put up with each others' quirks.

its a good game. Especially if you have some friends to play through with. I feel like Playthrough 2 is much more balanced and challenging than Playthrough 1 (which seemed like a walk in the park, unless you speed ran through the main quest).

I think where this game really fails is its presentation of information to the player about the state of the character. For example, the glaring oversight of not displaying class mod bonuses on the Skill Tree page. It took me a while and a lot of experimenting to understand that class-mod bonuses only apply if you have atleast 1 point applied to the skill already. Not automatically applying Backback SDUs or Elemental Artifacts. Not explaining what the hell ammo SDUs do (not to mention nobody ever drops SDUs). It also took me forever to realize that one could spawn two cars, even in single player mode).

It just seems odd, because some information at the beginning of the game they go out of your way their way to hit you over the head with a brick. But other stuff they don't introduce at all.

The final boss fight is way too anticlimactic. But other that, its a fun enough game.

FYI - Steam's doing a big sale right now. Borderlands (and a lot of others) is on sale for 33.49.