hanging back and sniping at every
chance I got. Only thing is, my low-
level status meant the long-range
rifles I was using had woeful accuracy,
and even lining the crosshairs up
perfectly often resulted in a wild miss.
Skip forward the many countless hours
I’ve now poured into the game, and my
play style has changed wildly.
Perks, upgrades and skill points
now mean the accuracy, power and
recoil of my now-favoured combat
rifles have all improved, and I’m taking
a more positive, aggressive approach,
diving into enemy encounters with
reckless abandon and enjoying the
kind of chaos Borderlands wants its
players to experience.
The whole adventure is shaped
around what armaments you take with
you into the field, and the moments
where a favourite weapon is discarded
without hesitation for a shiny new gun
with improved stats and the whole feel
of the game changes around it, those
are some of Borderlands’ best. It adds
clout to the game’s self-description as
an ‘RPS’ (that’s role-playing shooter to
you and me), and Borderland’s frantic
first-person action combined with
its accessible character progression
drives you forward.
That’s handy, because while
the game’s loose narrative sounds
fantastical, the way it’s delivered
certainly isn’t. You play as one of four
trigger-happy mercenaries, ‘Vault
Hunters’, on the planet Pandora,
searching for a mythical vault that
they believe houses advanced, alien
weaponry ripe for reverse-engineering.
After years of mega-corporations’
BLOOM EFFECT
FAR CRY: NEW DAWN
It’s essentially more of
the same from Ubisoft’s
shooter, but New Dawn’s
colourful post-nuke world
is a fun one to visit.RUSSIAN AROUND
METRO EXODUS
Darker and more narrative-
driven than Borderlands,
this is how the apocalypse
will likely turn out – cold,
dark and depressing.Post-apocalyptic role-
playing shooters are a
dime a dozen these days.
There are too many to play,
so we’ve listed some of
the best, just for you.FROM THE
ASHES
ANGER MANAGEMENT
RAGE
id’s game about an
asteroid-impacted Earth
feels very Borderlands,
but Rage feels slightly
more polished.failed colonisations, convict labour
exploitation and poor resource
management, the planet has turned
into a hostile wasteland, and you’ll
have to battle the locals, as well as
the native flora and fauna to get
to your goal. That sounds like the
foundations of an action-packed,
epic, but the whole thing’s delivered
through quest descriptions and the
occasional (badly) voice-acted line.
Borderlands is the very definition
of a loot-shooter, a game that, if
released today, would likely go the
way of titles like Anthem, derided
for shallow gameplay and a grindystructure were it not for its neat
weapon randomisation.Claptrap design
Story missions do offer some variety,
with some brilliantly designed, linear
level-like structures among the open
world for you to infiltrate, complete
your objective and then get the
hell out of again. One of the more
memorable ones had me infiltrating a
mine, hot on the heels of a foe with a
powerful artifact in his possession.
The way up to his central
stronghold was long and winding, an
interconnected diorama of dilapidated
machinery and conveyor belts I had
to pick my way through to reach a
sheet-metal central tower. Yes, the
‘climactic’ battle once I had arrived
was short thanks to my overpowered
shooter, but the journey there saw
Borderland’s tight gameplay really
come into focus.
But the side-quests often amount
to no more than making your way to a
location, offing a load of enemies, and
pressing X to complete your objective.
While optional, you need to settle a
lot of these side-missions if you’re
looking to level up. You’ll soon figure
out that picking up tins of rancid meat
for Crazy Earl is the same quest as
picking up bottles of ‘Dixie Wrecked’
(there’s that edgy humour again) beer
for... Crazy Earl.
What Borderlands lacks in story
and activities, though, it more than
makes up for in atmosphere. The
game’s striking visual presentation will“Dramatic sunsets highlight orbiting moons
and belts of space debris left behind by
ecologically corrupt corporations”
ABOVE The
controls during
the vehicular
combat of
Borderlands
are decidedly
rough, but it’s
still good,
overpowered fun.extra
104 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE