Borderlands Review

Here it is, my Borderlands Review. So, I'm thinking of doing some sort of timeline thing. So, first, let's start off with the shit-tastic release. Originally, the game was announced to be on sale in October. This was later changed to 10/20/09. The game is on PS3/360/PC, and the PC version was pushed back to 10/26/09 sometime in September. The reason was that they could optimize the game for PC use. Except, it wasn't. But basically - all of the advertisements said 10/20/09. In between the 20th and 26th, commercials ran with the PC box saying in stores now. If I was a GameStop employee who had never heard of the thing, I would've thrown it on the shelf as well. But basically, tons of people got the game before the 26th, and hilarity insued.

2K Games stated they would not be changing the release date for PC although others got the game early. However, this brings another issue to the plate - the PC version was delayed for optimization, yet all three games went gold at the same time, and all three games arrived a day or two before the 20th. Epic fail. But it was okay, at 12:01 AM on 10/26/09 I got to play Borderlands. Wrong. The game didn't unlock until 3:00 PM - and even when it did, my game files - that had been preloaded via Steam three days earlier - were apparently fucked up, and thus I had to reinstall. I finally sat down and played one or two days after, and got a taste of the game.

So, I opened the game up, and immediately looked in Multiplayer. Tons of games titled "new character" or "newbiez runn" or something. So, I joined one.
Connecting to host... Session timed out.
Connecting to host... Session timed out.
Connecting to host... Session timed out.
Connecting to host... Session timed out.
Long story short, GameSpy sucks, and nobody can play multiplayer unless they open all their various ports and throw their router at the wall and hack the game and stab an innocent baby - the only way to play is using GameRanger, a third-party multiplayer system which has its own lobby, which then sets up an offline LAN game for you and three friends to play in. I started playing with some WCRadio friends, and eventually got in some multiplayer.

I was playing the siren - Lilith, a beautiful but deadly soldier. We had one player for each class, and it was tons of fun. The game's UI is sleek and beautiful, and the controls are simple enough - left click to shoot, right click to aim (scope), but the game is beyond shitloads of fun. When it works in multiplayer. Which isn't often.

In singleplayer, I was playing as Mordecai - a hunter, a deadly sniper. The game's questing is great - but you use Page Up/Page Down to scroll through quest text. Yeah, optimized for PC my asscrack. But the game has a nice feel using the mouse and keyboard, but even better was using my Logitech Gamepad - a mock console controller with a USB port on the end of the wire. It's just a shame the game couldn't fulfill my cranky needs. But whatever, it's good fun.

The game is tons of fun in multiplayer, it's just a shame all of this shit happened - Gearbox produced a great game, and it's a shame 2K screwed up the release, GameSpy screwed up multiplayer, and their game couldn't be translated to the PC as fluently as I would have liked. It's good fun and a great game with friends, But I give it a 8/10.