Another Borderlands Post

So my commissary to all fellow IPX’ers is here. I’m sorry that I have to say this and I deeply regret that it has come to this but…

Last night I got to play Borderlands at Atomic HQ – so suck that!

As per the line above the rest of this post will also contain releases of gloating (which I have pre-apologised for) and useless observations. I ended up there because I ‘won’ a spot in that competition I posted up. It meant we got an invite to the Atomic HQ to play borderlands and get some Beer (TED, Hahn Super Dry and James Boag’s Premium Light mmm) and Pizza in us.

The format of the night was good. We were split in to teams of four, (you do know that borderlands can be played co-operatively right?) and then set about in a time trial type of challenge. I.e. some one had a stop watch and timed us from point A to point B where we then had to kill a level boss and all the available enemies. The first team set a time of 9 mins, my team went second and set a time around 7 mins and then the other teams went. The winning time was about 6:15 or something. Funny enough, the guys from Atomic played through (and they have obviously been playing the game so they could do the review) and set a time of 4:50. So I guess the other times aren’t to bad, considering most people didn’t know you could melee, or the characters have special powers once they start levelling up, or how to throw grenades or that your inventory often contains things like med packs to use or that you can build weapons and customise them or that you can swap weapons from you back pack. etc. etc.

Any way, it’s fun to pick up a game you haven’t played before with some other people you haven’t met and inject a heap of competitiveness (we were playing for copies of the game and a mouse) and then see the result. We didn’t walk away empty handed either, we each got a copy of the current issue of Atomic, a Borderlands Hat, a Borderlands T-Shirt and a Borderlands Mug – which has a bayonet clip on it so you can put it on your belt. Not sure how I would feel walking around with hot coffee near my crutch but now it’s an option.

My verdict – a freaking awesome game. I doubt I will play it single player because the co-operative mode is so much fun, I don’t think I would want to play through the maps by myself to start with. I understand it’s the same maps you would play through with a reduced enemy count (which doesn’t sound as much fun). The description one of the guys from 2K gave was, it’s like an FPS with an RPG element and that is certainly a good description. Based on what most of us play here, I think this game is quickly going to become a favourite.

If any one is interested in just playing co-op – put me down for the next month of Friday nights, when the game comes out, to start playing through it. Looks gold, I’ll be buying my copy as soon as I can.