Borderlands Game of the Year Edition Reviews

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Written by Brother None on October 16th, 2010

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The enemies aren't particularly diverse, but they do a good job of avoiding your gunfire with the relatively smart AI. Enemies will often react to your presence based off their size. Smaller enemies might stand from a distance to pop you with the assault rifle while the meaty lugheads will pound your face. As you take out the enemies, you will notice loot drops all over the place, typically in the form of weapons / ammo / modifiers. This means that you can easily spend hours in the game comparing weapon quality and forming new weapons to take on Pandora's baddies.

Through all of this, Borderlands also manages to maintain a strong degree of personality thanks to its sharp, stylized visuals. On consoles the framerate can be a bit jittery in large-scale fights, but otherwise the game's a pleasure to behold, with enemies that actually respond to being pegged with bullets, snapping back their heads, sending them reeling, and occasionally triggering special elemental deaths. It's got nicely detailed open environments, a huge range of weapon models, and though a little more enemy variety would have been appreciated, there's still plenty to take in and admire.

While visuals are one thing, what may surprise some is the game's sense of humor. The few recurring characters are quite funny, mostly due to some solid voiceovers delivering witty, snappy dialogue. The Wall-E-like Claptrap robots, with their penchant for dancing and personalities that draw from seemingly bottomless wells of enthusiasm, consistently serve as a source of comic relief, and you're guaranteed to laugh at the self-deprecating style of Tanis' audio logs. Over the years we've seen so very many action-RPGs lose their sense of mood and character under an avalanche of statistics and magic effects, but that can't be said about Borderlands. It stands out because of its visuals, entertains thanks to its well-designed gameplay, and frequently tickles your sense of humor as foes squeal in pain as lighting shoots from their disintegrating foreheads while your character class jeers and taunts and moves on to the next target. A thumping soundtrack kicks into gear during battles, the game's overworld music tracks lock in well with the tone of the world, and everything in Gearbox's virtual space feels like it fits.

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