This. Multiplayer was good fun. Racing to pickup the weapons, punching each other in the face, hiding behind your friend's scorpio turret, etc. I liked it. Everything was too brown though. except the weapons i guess. I would have liked more rpg elements but it's still a good balance.

It wasn't the cellshading that killed the deal for me, it was the insane amount of droning repetition in that game. The AI was terrible and the combat was exceptionally boring, especially in co-op with a friend. The "a million items" was basically a randomization system that offered utterly nothing in terms of gameplay. The cellshading I could live with if it was actually entertaining to play. Buuut... it wasn't. HKS had more complaints than that about it, though. Something about the drops being based on how many people are in the game, even in single player.

The vehicle physics were the best part about that game. Nothing like running into a pole and catapulting yourself into orbit. I loved that.


I think the problem is more that developers stopped trying to think of new things a long time ago. Almost all of the games released by indie devs and big names alike are just copying off of each other and trying to ride off of each other's success, or abuse the christ out of grind mechanics to milk as much money as possible. I hope the industry has a collapse so that some real developers can get a chance at fame.

A few points why I disagree with your criticism:

• Fun to find weapon with the right combo of stats
  
• Elemental weapons are pretty unique
  
• Sights, recoil, fire rate and precision govern how you have to play to put the weapon to effective use
  
• Since it's no tactics game no need for smart enemies, just enemies that give hell.
  
• Repetitive and boring combat? Uhm now that I think about it it probably is repetitive, but for some reason it's still fun for me after 3 playthroughs with 3 DLCs...
  
• Encourages multi player by giving better weapons (on average) when not playing alone. (Yes this is a good thing. )
  

But yeah well, probably no use arguing that. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

HKS = Sergeant HK from Sons of War?

---

Alright, back on topic:
Comments I can stand behind from UU's video:
Last one is so true...

I would say if you love Diablo, D2, you'd love Borderlands. It has that same sort of goal of finding the best weapon out there. And FPS just makes it so much more fun! I introduced it to a couple of my mates at a LAN and it was a splerg-fest, twelve hours of non-stop LAN later and we had finished the game and both playthroughs.

Anyone know where I can get the DLC for free, with a cracked version?

Sure, but be prepared to be met with much rage.

Sorry, I played all that out back in Diablo 1. Most of the stats are just the same with bigger numbers, anyways.
Err... no, not really. You outplay those like an hour in. What is unique about them? The glowy? :\
Sometimes, but most of the times it's a misnomer and you find yourself just not caring so long as the damage is high enough to actually hurt something and not take 50 years to kill a miniboss.
Personally I think this is the worst possible way you could ever design a shooter. I'm tired of games that have you sit there and crunch numbers or perform a series of actions in a certain order to win. There's no fun in that. Borderlands was the least entertaining shooter I have played in a long time, less entertaining than DNF by a long shot, and there was next to no actual RPG elements, just cookie cutter talent and item distribution sawn off of every other game trying to be gimmicky.
You are a weird person, sir.
Drops being circumsized in SP is a GOOD THING? I'm going to strangle you. I swear to God I will hunt you down and strangle you with my BEAR HANDS.

No. That guy became too badass to talk with little old me.

Bear hands > Bare hands.


3drealms should have let me finish DNF instead of Gearbox.

BEAR HANDS

wait what there's a band named bear hands...

Because you totally need a gun that's geared towards fighting 4-player difficulty enemies against 1-player difficulty enemies.

After playing the game until I got my Siren to level 50, where the only DLC I got was Zombies, I put the game down. I had the same SMG from when I was level 41 or so, that demolishes everything. Extremely high firing rate, damn near sniper accuracy, x4 damage and non-elemental. It tore through an entire additional play-through without a problem, combined with my ability to phase out, regenerate all my health and shields, then resume fighting? The game was a cake walk, but still... It sure was a lot of fun. Oh not to mention regenerating ammo on a secondary SMG and my Class Mod. Switch over, regenerate it all in about 10 seconds.

... You really think that drop rates should suck in SP just because it's SP? Really?

Wow. Just wow.

You must not have played Borderlands much. And they don't suck, they just aren't really good all of the time. Besides, 99.9% of the time, the good guns are in the vendors.

I played it co-op.

When I say drop rates I mean how often stuff drops, btw.

Only damage will get bigger but secondary stats are randomized. Diablo 1 was one hell of a game, so using the same idea to generate weapons was a good move. And since it's a shooter the mechanics are different enough to not feel old imo.

Errr yes really because different elementals have different uses:
a) electro kills shields, fire kills flesh, corrosive kills armor, so you need the right elemental vs the right enemies
b) they add a dot. Can't remember a shooter with dots.
c) elemental explosions can splash and infect nearby enemies, even if you didn't hit anyone
d) the glowy. It's way more satisfying electrocuting an enemy to death while he's screaming until his head explodes than just shooting him.

This is kinda true. Damage is the main attribute. But how's that bad game design?! That's how games work. Lets take sc, a game you probably acknowledge as good. Imagine zerglings had 2 base damage. Would anyone use them? No. But of course you'll say hey, that's not the only reason the zergling is awesome. He's also cheap and fast, so a 10 damage zergling would be useless when he's slow and expensive. Then I'll tell you that my awesome SMG in bl could have spawned with poor accuracy which makes it useless for my sniper. Or my sniper gun could have spawned with a terrible sight or my combat rifle with a too small magazine... it goes on...

Bl isn't trying to mass RPG elements into a shooter. It is trying to integrate the variation and replayability of an RPG into an action game. And that it did achieve by using what you call cookie cutter and I call the essence. The skill trees are varied enough that you can get about 6 basic builds for each of the 4 classes and the weapons have a decent amount of basic stats, plus a good range of rare special versions for each weapon type. A game doesn't have to reinvent the gaming scene to be fun.

But I'll admit there's room for improvement in that department.
The story is a little cheesy, which is probably the main flaw.
The NPCs have no depth and most of what they have to say is "just" funny or sometimes flat out boring, but rarely/never adds to immersion. Meh, I'm not sure if I even wanted to listen to atmospheric story telling in that game.
The music is often generic and rarely as good as the intro or credits songs. This is almost a plus as the linked songs are .
Hmm what else is typical for RPGs? Attributes on your character? I don't think that would add to game play. Items like spell scrolls, oh wait, grenades... or potions? Yeah that'd work. Nothing like a Wolfenstein like candy bar.
Uh... except too many fancy features don't necessarily make a game better, do they? Anyways, what would YOU add to make it more fun (bearable) in your opinion?

Actually not (well in fact I am, but that's beside the point ). Read about all the variation I elaborated on. And enemies have that same variation. Sometimes they'll spawn as higher quality (badass) or with elemental weapons which each time changes the way you have to approach them. This is what keeps me playing. Plus it's also a funny game because any character you encounter is a weirdo in its own way, but always keeping to its style. About the style: Have you ever played a boss wave in the Mad Moxxi addon? The music is just perfect in that situation as it makes you want to shoot anything in sight. Bl just is a round package where nothing feels really odd which I experienced in a lot of popular games. SC2 being a prime (bad) example and sc1 being like bl in that regard.

Sorry for making that a little ambiguous. It's not giving worse weapons in SP, just the chance to get the really good guns is smaller. It's more like this (random example):
When you play solo Brick you might find an awesome sniper, but since he hasn't leveled snipers it's useless for you. But when you played MP you'd give it to your sniper friend and maybe you'd also find a decent SMG for yourself.

Wow. Cage the Elephant - sound exactly like The Pixies met The Arctic Monkeys... Bizarre.

I have played the game bro. I know how everything works. And it's all boring. It's just number crunching. Number crunching is the last thing you want to be worrying about in a shooter design, and is one of the reasons RPG's have become so stale. The AI is bad enough in this game that most of the shooter-related elements just vanish in fighting. Am I really the only person on SEN that can't stand 15 year old recycled item systems anymore? :\

Ahem..

I don't need elaborate calculations to judge which weapon to use. Don't exaggerate.

Whatever you mean... I'm still shooting, hiding, reloading, aiming and all that good stuff.

It's still better than a 30 year old system (only 1 weapon) or a 20 year old system (a few hardcoded weapons).

Perhaps instead of number crunching I should say number grinding. The time inflation of number scaling.

What I'm saying is this game doesn't take any skill to play, it's just picking up items and equipping them and shooting the same shit over and over. It's the same recycled concept that MMOs use to arbitrary inflate playtime.

Make a level-less MMO that uses money and recipe-ingredient-based-loot for it's drops, then recipes and shops for non-scaling weapons/armor that just have pros/cons instead of higher and higher stats? As for abilities, make weapon combos, utility abilities like rolling/dashing and abilities that increase/decrease pros/cons per level.

That would make you happy, no?

Actually, as much as I hate crafting systems, I think a crafting system would have suited Borderlands a lot better than just picking up stuff every few levels. It would have assisted the gameplay and the setting a lot more strongly. It could have added some degree of customization and the various weapon parts could have actually meant something very significant.

And through the crafting system you could dodge much of the "necessity" of number scaling that devalues everything so easily.

Ahhhh now we're getting somewhere. I totally agree, grinding is boring.
Therefore personally I don't grind, I just play the story.

About the skill, well you're right there. Your effectiveness relies a lot on your weapons and skills you pick. Then it's point and click paired with some map awareness.