Cracking 4 player co-op
But what really lifted Borderlands above your average shooter is not only the vast playing area but the superb four player co-op feature. Here, players can drop in from the ‘net into your game and help you out. The very cool thing is that they bring with them everything their character has collected from the game they were playing before they joined you... and anything they collect in the co-op game they take back with them into the single player game when they leave.
Borderlands has a wide array of customisable vehicles and even just having two-players in co-op mode looks like a barrel of fun as one can drive and the other can man any turrets you might have mounted on your car. If you’ve played Crash Tag-team racing, you’ll know exactly what to expect and to be honest, I’ve not seen two grown men have so much fun as the Gearbox guys got into a frantic and spectacular car chase, blasting off rockets at chasing bandits with some crashes and explosions that would put the PS3’s Motorstorm to shame.
Click for larger imageBut once we’d had a great racing blast-fest with loads of physics in evidence, such as near-misses rocking bandit vehicle enough to send them smashing into cliff walls, (all unscripted, of course) or crazy jumps that ended in spectacular ‘A-Team’ fashion after a well aimed rocket threw off the landing, we were then into the first person shooter section as we raided the bandit base. This section felt like a cross between Gears of War and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with enemies popping up from various covered positions and dropping a variety of pick-ups and goodies.
Gearbox were keen to point out that Borderlands has over 500,000 different guns in the game, which has been achieved using a script which look as variables such as calibre, barrel length and clip size before rendering a gun fitting those parameters. The idea is that you’ll find the weapon for you as you work though the game.
Click for larger imageThis customisation extends to pretty much everything, so your vehicle can be modded to just how you like it with extra armour, a bigger engine, improved shocks and a more powerful turret weapon... before you go off and sort out your own kit... So there’s plenty of scope for doing just whatever the hell you want, I guess.
The finale of our walkthrough was the discovery of where these huge bat-like creatures that have been terrorising the locals... and once we’d raided a bandit base to grab some cesium charges we headed off to get the bat0things... to find that they didn’t have a nest but were actually living inside the back of a bloody huge, and I mean enormous rhino-like thing that looked less than friendly.
Borderlands is set for an October 2008 release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC
