Borderlands – Fresh Look
by The Rook
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What is a treasure hunter to do? You’ve gone to Pandora, you’ve searched for the vault, and you’ve completed the story and mopped up all the remaining missions. What’s next?
Well there are a few options available to you. You can start a new game, and, as you do this you can select to start with a new character or continue with your character that you completed the first play through with. This means you can start with your leveled up character and carry over all your stats, your weapons, your money and all the advancement you have made regarding the xp challenges. The other side of the coin to doing this is that all the enemies in the game are leveled up too, so you can still end up with a challenge, and quite a few more deaths.
Who ate all the pies? If I was Dr Ned, I'd probably have used Mariusz Pudzianowski's body for my main man rather than some bloater. Just saying is all.
Another option is the multiplayer aspect. You can invite a friend to join your game and play through the missions, either from the start or jump in and out whenever you are both online. Similarly, you may be invited by a friend who is struggling with a mission which, if you are joining in with your leveled up character while your friend is on their first play through, allows you to kill the enemies with ease as their level of difficulty will be based on your friend’s character’s level.
If replaying the game again is not that appealing to you, or you just want more fresh missions to do, then there are currently three pieces of downloadable content available to you: The Zombie Island Of Dr. Ned, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot and The Secret Armory Of General Knoxx.
The locations for the DLC are new parts of the game that can only be accessed by fast travelling to them. You cannot drive around the map to get there. This means that, although you could travel to different regions within the main game by fast travel, when you are in the new locations you have to travel everywhere within that area by walking/running or driving, whichever option is available, except for The Underdome.
The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned sees you travelling to Jakob’s Cove. The story begins with Marcus, the arms merchant, telling the tale of the brave treasure hunter’s next adventure. Dr. Ned has been experimenting with some side effects to the workers of Jakob’s Cove, Jakob being one of the arms manufacturers within the game.
No sooner have you arrived when you’ll meet a claptrap who will give you your first mission. The DLC offers 20+ new missions for you to complete although some of these are collection missions that are easy to miss if you don‘t meet a certain character. Throughout the game if you managed to shoot an enemy in the head it leads to a critical hit, but when you shoot a zombie in the head, it leaves behind a zombie brain. You can collect these throughout the story but, unless you have activated the collection mission, there is no point as the brains are not part of your inventory to be used at a later time.
You can't help but love those awesome Borderlands girls. Give me sexy minx over Japanese schoolgirl any day!
Max Moxxi’s Underdome contains only one mission as it’s not a story based piece of DLC. It is, however, arena combat for up to four people, just like the main story. Within the Underdome, you will find a bounty board which will require you to complete the short challenges in each of the three arenas: Hell Burbua, Angelic Ruins and The Gully.
The short challenges are to make it through five rounds of five waves consisting of various enemies encountered within the game, with the fifth wave being one of the main game’s bosses. There’ll be a short pause between waves for you to recover health and ammo. If you die in a wave, you’ll be put back to the start of the round; however, if playing with friends, then only one person needs to survive the wave to allow everyone to compete in the next wave. Once you complete all three arenas, a curtain in the Underdome reveals the next challenges. The same three arenas again but this time the longer challenges consisting of the same five waves but this time over twenty rounds. Be prepared to put in a long gaming session if you want to complete these as there is no save option so, if you leave the challenge mid-way through for any reason, when you return you will have to start again and the longer challenges can take over three hours to complete.
The enemies will be based upon your character’s level however, if playing the arenas with co-op partners, the enemies’ level will be adjusted to compensate if all players are at different levels themselves.
Apparently, if you don't manage to kill him in twenty minutes, he starts flailing his arms and legs around, finally turning into a red stretch hummer with a jacuzzi in the back!
The Secret Armory Of General Knoxx sees you take on the Crimson Lance with the help of Athena, a skilled ninja formerly a member of the Crimson Lance but now out on her own and sworn to take down the mercenary force she once worked for. Max Moxxi makes a return but this time offering you a few missions, and there are 30+ new missions to complete, some of those only occurring after you have completed the story of the Secret Armory.
You’ll get access to some new vehicles, encounter some new enemies and the level cap has been raised from level 50 to level 61 and if that sounds like an odd number to raise the level cap by, it’s because Gearbox say they are cranking it up to 11. To take on the mission of bringing down the Crimson Lance you will be travelling to the town of T-Bone Junction. There are two roads out of T-Bone Junction and you will get accustomed to travelling these roads a lot as the missions will require you to do a lot of backtracking. That’s not to say the missions aren’t fun, the prison Lockdown Palace is particularly amusing as is General Knoxx’ woes of working for a new leader.
You’ll see wanted posters for the four main characters of the game and, once you arrive, you’ll have a number of ninja squads out to take you down. You’ll encounter these at specific parts of the game, as you progress, as defeating them is one of the story based missions.
If you count all the missions in the main game and within the DLC, you are looking at almost 200 missions to complete. Some games have that “just one more go” effect and Borderlands has a similar effect too. Only here it’s “just one more mission”, or there’s a group of missions in one area, so you’ll just complete those, or stop as soon as you reach that next rank.
There’s certainly plenty to do and the entire game can be played either single player or multiplayer. If you’re a fan of RPG and FPS genres, then you’ll get the best of both worlds with Borderlands.
If you can't find a giant can of "Bug-A-Way" lying around, a rocket launcher and Gattling gun will do nicely
- An rpg without stat tracking.
Plenty of weapons to choose from.
Able to invite friends to join you anywhere anytime.
- Can't put your own waypoints on the map.
Weapons on the vehicles don't have much movement for aiming at airbourne targets.
No place to store weapons/equipment unless you buy the 2nd dlc.
Borderlands is a enjoyable game whether you are playing single player or with friends. Combining two popular styles of games into one, means this may appeal to those who normally wouldn’t play one of those genres while also appealing to fans of both.
Last five articles by The Rook
Borderlands and I have a very strong love/hate relationship going on at the moment. I love the game, I truly do… on SO many levels… the graphics are fantastic, the inventory and menu systems are really simple and also look gorgeous for a change… and even the HUD is non-intrusive. Even down to the map… it works, unlike many other games. Such a bonus.
Where it falls down, however, are those little things that make all the difference… nowhere to dump stuff off, very limited backpack space, the fact that you can only carry so much of a particular ammo and invariably end up running out thanks to the Skag piles and kill drops not giving anything other than ammo that you’re A) not using anyway and B) have in abundance. This is what has made the journey so difficult for me. As a sniper, I’m carrying the best sniper rifle I can for my level 20 character as well as Bone Shredder and Sledge’s Shotgun as my three main weapons. The other two are great for up close attacks but hopeless for distance and so I’m relying almost solely on my sniper rifle. In the Safe House I kept running out of ammo, and had nothing to pick up that would replenish my stock and so I quickly ran back to the entrance to buy more ammo… only to find that ALL the enemies had respawned within only 2-3 minutes so I couldn’t even get back to the vending machines.
Quick respawning, lack of appropriate ammo drops, limited ammo supplies per weapon, and restrictive backpack space all make Borderlands a game that I despise almost as much as I love it. When I found out that there are certain bosses which really can’t be tackled unless you’re in a multiplayer environment, it infuriated me… I don’t WANT to play co-op in a game that I started as a single player. The game has issues. It’s great… but also grating.
Have you been increasing your backpack space by resucing the downed claptraps. Gives you 3 extra slots for each one and there are 10 to find. You can also buy ammo clip upgrades from the vending machines to increase the amount of ammo you can store. And the one thing that I never did without after getting one was a class mod which regenerates your ammo. They say team ammo, but I only played it single player until it was beat. Check the weapons you have against replacements as some will have extra clip size in the stats.
The only boss I haven’t been able to beat came at the end of the Secret Armory DLC. It can be done single player, just not by me yet.
The ability to not store stuff was annoying and even now I only store weapons of high value or I might have replaced but can’t bring myself to part with a weapon that helped me through so many battles. I’ve maxed out the backpack slots to 42 so it’s not as bad any more. Alternatively, you can swap out your out of ammo guns for other weapons the fallen enemies were using.
Which bosses have you heard that need to be done multiplayer?
The only other rescued Claptrap was in Safe House, but I was being killed at the time and couldn’t get the repair kit for it…. basically my choice was to survive by running back out of the place, or rescue the Claptrap… so I opted for survival. Only other one I’ve come across so far is the hidden one in Fyrestone but, after ages trying to get to him, checked on the net and found out that it’s just an easter egg anyway (hardly!) and doesn’t have any function so I gave up trying to reach it. I’ve got the ammo clip upgrades yeah, got the sniper up to 72 and the SMG to 720 I think but it’s still not enough for me as my sniper rifle takes 14 rounds per clip. I haven’t come across any class mod with ammo regeneration yet, just other aspects… mainly for Bloodwing. I had to sell a level 25 sniper rifle with 320 damage points, 9 x rounds, 2.8 rounds per second and 3 x incendiary damage… because I had nowhere to store it and really needed the space for picking other items up when I was out and about, and it wasn’t going to be used for another 5 level ups.
I’ve heard that Crawmerax is a pain to get through unless you’ve got backup, and the arena stuff is supposed to be difficult unless you have others there too. Actually… there’s an Arena right outside the gates to Fyrestone that I’ve never ventured into, I’ll need to see what that’s like.
I think the safe house clap trap might have been the first one I founda as well. Knowing where the repair kit and claptrap are, it’s not too hard to fix, if in an indirect way. You’ve only recemtly got your class mod so there will be time to find a re-gen one. I found the safe house hard to. The first part was so tough, I may have did some other missions first and gone back to it.
Crawmerax is tough, but he’s the boss at the end of the third DLC, not part of the main storyline. Comes along as an after effect, so you dont have to worry about coming across him in the main game. Everyone else can be done by you, even if they are tough. Remember some of the missions become trivial difficulty once you go 3 levels passed them. Do you have others you can do before the safe house.
The arenas are for multiplayer, there’s no single player element to it, just an added extra bit for people like multiplayer, but then it’s max 2 on 2. There are missions for survival of the fittest which are single or multi player. Mad Moxxi also runs a combat arena that you can do single or multiplayer, but I wouldn’t recommend it to you. You enjoy the main game but The Underdome would not be your thing, it’s long, repetitive and no reward; apart from achievements which you don’t care about.
This is still on my to-do list… hopefully, someone else will still be playing it when I finally get around to it, because Mark always seems on the brink of apoplexy about how bastard hard this game is, and I’m not much of a console shooter man myself… thinking I’ll need to run at it in co-op, which is rare for me.
It’s on my to do list too and the more you all talk about it, the more I’m really thinking I’ll enjoy it
Borderlands is an awesome game and you can certainly try and make it easier by co-oping it. The game will compensate by adding a few more enemies or making them a little tougher, but when you get downed, instead of having to kill someone to get second wind and get back on your feet (although, you can stlll do that), your co-op partner can revive you before you bleed out.
Glory joy joy. Went back to Safe House, was a LOT easier this time around with A) no shake with the 2 x zoom thanks to my skills and B) having a sniper rifle with 14 rounds. I didn’t even have to use the Transfusion grenades at all this time whereas I was using them all the time before. Got the repair kit, then didn’t even bother going all the way around to the Claptrap… just went over to the chicken wire fence between myself and the Claptrap and the “X – Talk” icon came up… so I fixed him from beyond the fence. Now have 15 item slots. Awesome.
To Pete and Preacher… regardless of anything else I’ve said, Borderlands IS worth playing. Seriously.
That;s exactly how I repaired that claptrap too. However, if think that particular claptrap is grateful and opens a locked foor for you so you might get better weapons. You can go back in and go speak to the claptrap properly if he didn’t already unlock it anyhow.
Don’t worry dood
Your rants about it are outweighed by the fact that you actively annouce you like the game too 
Borderlands is a bit of a rarity in RPG terms in so far as it’s not a f’ing immense grind and doesn’t outstay its welcome.
The DLC however has absolutely sullied the game for me. A bit like when Anna Friel got knobbed by Darren Day.
I’m playing Borderlands as Soldier and solo. I have gotten to the underdome – gully beat (haven’t attempted this one yet) and am also at level 61. Anyone know of a good place here to defend from attack , especially the hoard is tough when they all come at you at once. the other two add-ons, except crawmax and the lance challenge (or something like that). I have tried them, but need some better weapons. I am basically a solo player. I’m zulupits@sbcglobal.net if anyone can help me out with a good defense spot.