Anyone who has been reading my twitter updates probably has a good idea how this review is going to go. Three years ago Gearbox Software gave us a teaser of a new game they were working on.
The video depicted a woman talking to you (the player). At certain points as the camera panned around, you had flashes of some human enemies dubbed ’the locals’, then of some of the animal enemies referred to as ’the wildlife’. One of the flashes tells you you’re going to need guns, lots of guns, showing you a room full of weapons. Finally the camera panned further so that you can see her face; this woman was heavily scarred down one half of her face. She then tells you she knows why you’re there and that you’re looking for the vault (cue a reverse plot of Fallout 3), she finally adds that you won’t find it because it doesn’t exist.
The game has seen a massive transformation in style since that teaser was released, now re-branded as an ‘RPS’ (Role playing shooter), the consistent selling point for me at the time was the huge number of guns the game was boasting, which more often than not something that is restricted in games. Borderlands is finally here with claims that it features ‘87 bazillion guns’. Maybe that’s a slight over-exaggeration but one would find it hard not to be intrigued with a game that has more than 17.6 million of the things.
Through The Mind of Simon Weatherall 