Review by James Burnett;

Quote: The last time I went and fired up a first-person shooter with role-playing elements, it was to check for monsters under my bed. I had given Fallout 3 all the chances it deserved to woo me, but it just never really clicked. My final foray into its dusty world was to once and for all convince myself that there was nothing there and it would all go away once I closed my eyes. Truly, I was a man disappointed. Thank Gearbox then, that Borderlands is no Fallout 3. It’s much more satisfying.

Read more here.

Better than Fallout 3?
Big call.

To be honest I never found either of them any good.

stop spaming reviews

Quote: After wave upon wave of bad console to PC ports recently, it's nice to see Gearbox have taken their time with Borderlands. It's a highly capable title that lends itself well to mouse & keyboard control, and has enough depth to keep players keen for months.

The above statement is terribly inaccurate. It should of read:

"After wave upon wave of bad console to PC ports recently, it seems Gearbox have at least got it half right. With a number of ini tweaks provided by the Borderlands player community the game lends itself to the keyboard and mouse rather well (if you can learn the strange menu system). Out of the box though, you're better off with a gamepad in hand"

Overall though, it is an awesome game. And I agree, better than FO3 which I couldn't get into either.

Squire wrote: stop spaming reviews

Rofl. Not sure if you're trying to bait JvJ or not

Mogno wrote: Rofl. Not sure if you're trying to bait JvJ or not

Especially from someone who was spamming new threads earlier...

s0cks wrote: Out of the box though, you're better off with a gamepad in hand"[/i]

er, is it somehow not an FPS out of the box?

They're only complaining about the menu navigation.

Learn to use your < and > buttons on the keyboard for menu navigation tbh.

s0cks wrote: The above statement is terribly inaccurate. It should of read: "After wave upon wave of bad console to PC ports recently, it seems Gearbox have at least got it half right. With a number of ini tweaks provided by the Borderlands player community the game lends itself to the keyboard and mouse rather well (if you can learn the strange menu system). Out of the box though, you're better off with a gamepad in hand" Overall though, it is an awesome game. And I agree, better than FO3 which I couldn't get into either.

Lol? I found it worked perfectly fine out of the box with mouse and keyboard. I still haven't bothered to tweak it, although I probably should at some point. The only problem I have with the menu system is that when you mouseover things, the keyboard arrow keys get kind of funky :/ (closing a menu - like "buy" - will take you back to the item you've moused over, not the one you've arrowed to).

As to the FO3 thing, that's a big call to make in the review. I certainly found Borderlands more fun, but whether that objectively makes it better or not is hard to say. FO3 was an RPG played from a first-person perspective (with chance hits and the like), whereas Borderlands is an FPS with RPG-light semantics and loot-whoring. They're really different things, and people with different interests will enjoy them differently; my sister loved FO3 but isn't a fan of Borderlands.

One thing I hope they introduce with DLC for Borderlands is more varied environments, and more varied quests. FO3's locales - Megaton, Tenpenny Tower, Rivet City, hell, even the Vaults - were wildly different and exciting in their architecture and design, and you got to do distinctly different things in them. The vault that has you entering the simulation to free your father, for instance, was great; as was the one with the crazy gas. Borderlands was just one big trashy dump, and while that might have been what they were after, you never really got a feel for individual places (and all you seemed to do was kill/pick shit up); nor did it seem like what you were doing really altered the game world at all. Despite the fact I liked Borderlands' graphical style more (despite the distinctly different locales, FO3's style was bland), they could have done a lot more with that style.

Anyway yeah, JC!

Squire wrote: stop spaming reviews

That worked out well for you, didn't it?

FRiO wrote: Lol? I found it worked perfectly fine out of the box with mouse and keyboard. I still haven't bothered to tweak it, although I probably should at some point. The only problem I have with the menu system is that when you mouseover things, the keyboard arrow keys get kind of funky :/ (closing a menu - like "buy" - will take you back to the item you've moused over, not the one you've arrowed to).

The terrible mouse smoothing, no mouse scrolling through quest information, toggle crouch, claustrophobic FOV, etc.... I plugged in my 360 controller and the whole game felt 10x more fluid.

Turn off the mouse smoothing, get rid of the crouch toggle, setup a decent FOV, and turn on mouse scrolling for the quest text in the menu's and suddenly the game is 80% better. You should try it. Makes the game far more refreshing & enjoyable to play.

FOV is fine and so is toggle crouch. The annoying scrolling of quests and the strange inventory management are the downsides, but meh, there are games designed specifically for the PC with worse menu systems.

Fallout 3 is still better, though the genres are totally different.

I didn't mind the lack of mouse scrolling through quest information; my hands were on the keyboard for that stuff anyway. Nor did I mind the toggle crouch or FOV (although I'll probably bump the FOV up sometime soon!). I also can't say I had an issue with mouse smoothing, but that's generally a UE3 thang that crops up when you've got various Vsync/triple buffering settings going (which I've got hard-set in my gfx settings anyway ).

Quote: There is really something to be said about leaping from your rocket equipped dune-buggy onto the dusty desert floor at dusk and taking to a pack of savage midgets with a sub-machine gun

Ha, good times.

Looking forward to my PS3 copy JvJ.

FRiO wrote: I didn't mind the lack of mouse scrolling through quest information; my hands were on the keyboard for that stuff anyway. Nor did I mind the toggle crouch or FOV (although I'll probably bump the FOV up sometime soon!). I also can't say I had an issue with mouse smoothing, but that's generally a UE3 thang that crops up when you've got various Vsync/triple buffering settings going (which I've got hard-set in my gfx settings anyway ).

I wouldn't say its horrible to play without the tweaks. Hell, I played for a good while. I'm just suggesting those tweaks because it made the game feel far more like a PC shooter. Its hard to explain, but just the overall feel was very console like beforehand (which is why I plugged in a controller to confirm my fears). I guess you'd have to have played a fair few FPS games on the console to understand. Who knows, maybe some people prefer that consolesque feel.

Borderlands would be better if you were rating the game on 2-5 hours of playing it. But it gets extremely stale midway into the game. Fallout was fun all the way through =]

Heh refused, I found the first 2-5 hours extremely boring because you were so limited, but the later parts way more fun - more guns, more loot, more dudes to kill! Although certainly I wouldn't have had anywhere near as much fun if I wasn't playing it coop (because you're right, it is a grind for a lot of the middle game).

Fair enough s0cks. I definitely dislike crappy console ports, but I didn't have any major issues with the PC release of Borderlands - I'm sure it's better with tweaks, but personally I didn't feel I'd have been "better off with a gamepad in hand" on the base release .

FRiO wrote: various Vsync/triple buffering settings going (which I've got hard-set in my gfx settings anyway ).

You do realise that forcing triple buffering in the GPU control panel only works with OpenGL games? Unless the game natively supports the option, you have to use D3DOverrider (bundled with Rivatuner) with D3D games.

MS politics, drivers wouldn't pass WHQL certification if they let you force triple buffering in DX games. Lord only knows why.

I'm aware; I've got D3DOverrider installed (although for the most part I turn triple buffering off - despite how much I'd like it, the strategy used to triple buffer is oftentimes silly and introduces a noticeable input lag - like in Wolfenstein).

JvJ wrote: That worked out well for you, didn't it?

DJ Mystic wrote: Looking forward to my PS3 copy JvJ.

Yep just waiting for 2K to send them out, probably around the 20th :/

Wait wait, hang on, Borderlands is R18 when Dragon Age is R16? WTF! No comment.

I haven't touched Borderlands SP. CO-OP online ftw.

Queue wrote: Wait wait, hang on, Borderlands is R18 when Dragon Age is R16? WTF! No comment. I haven't touched Borderlands SP. CO-OP online ftw.

without checking the specifics of the classification, i think that is more to do with the depiction of the violence.. borderlands you actively pop heads for humans, and play from a first person perspective.. ie, it is you doing the killing

dragon age, you are killing "fantasy" creatures, and you have no direct control over the kill.. add in the fact that you can't delimb people, other than the rare beheading..