July 29th, 2009

Borderlands

In October 20, Gearbox will release “Borderlands” in North America, a both RPG and a shooter game, that appears to be counted among the games that were head titles on the 2009 list of new releases. “Borderlands” is planned to be an RPG and a shooter, but actually it is perceived more as a shooter. In this game the player has to make use of his quick reflexes skills in order to tag the foes in their weakest points; the foes present themselves in a shape of humanoids and monstrous creatures; for these last ones, the player has to pin in their mouth or in different vulnerable spots behind their armor. Being not skillful with targeting the player’s life will not last too long.

So you play as a shooter, but all this time you are in the hands of statistics that will affect your weapon’s accuracy, or it can bring a lot of damage to your playing. Choosing a specific type of weapon, you are able to become more familiar with its use, in this way boosting the rating of your class’ shotgun that leads to improved accuracy of your shots. Your skills are also classified, the game scoring you one point for every skill that belongs to five character levels. The class nominated for soldiers was tested and the result lead to a division of the soldier’s skills in medic, infantry and support branches.

In your unfolding of skills your character is allotted aids, such as scorpio turret, in order to fire at the foes next to you in the battle. It depends on you how you decide to allocate the points, and according to this you will get weaponry upgrades such as guided missile upgrade or, for the one who reaches the of the medic tree will have health improvements upgrades. Your weapons (pistols, combat rifles, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, energy weapons as well) are endowed with special effects such as fire rounds or acid blasts or electrical discharges. To guard yourself against death you have a spring of health from where you can take ‘supply’ and a shield that can be upgraded and will be recharged after damage is done. In case you find yourself in a close-to-death state, you are given the option to crawl and aim to kill some enemies nearby, thus you would be able to get back on your feet.

The game offers also a tutorial not before entering the option of picking up a class and a name for after that to be guided by a talkative tiny robot that will teach you the basics of motions and shooting. At the beginning to make the things easier for you, you are simply facing the killings and collecting variety with few possibilities of gaining access to machines’ vendors, allowing you the option to purchase grenades, weapons and even health packages. After this guide tour, you are cast into the game with different levels of combats and different types of enemies, but no further details are to be displayed; this part is left to the players to discover in the October release of “Borderlands”.