Published: Tuesday, 17th November, 2009 12:10pm

Borderlands

X-Box 360, PS3, PC

Gearbox Software's latest is a classy, good looking title that attempts to fuse elements of the Role Playing Game and the First Person Shooter. Is this the ultimate in hybrid gaming, or more a case of a Jack of two trades and master of neither?

The very first thing that strikes you about Borderlands is how pretty it is. The graphics have an excellent, cartoon like quality that only comes from painstakingly hand drawing the textures. Locations are detailed and the people caricatured, yet convincing, lending a unique sense of style to the game's presentation.

The game shows its RPG elements from the beginning when you are asked to select your character. Each has distinct abilities and proficiencies with particular weapons, as well as several upgrade paths. Missions generally follow the thread of an unravelling plot, regarding a quest to find the 'vault', a mythical dwelling rumoured to contain an incredible prize. There are side missions to be undertaken too and certainly, the first few tasks are designed to teach you the mechanics of the game.

The action is mostly first person (switching to third when using vehicles) and it's here that the game takes many cues from recent shooters, controls will be familiar to most. Regarding weapons, the game notoriously has hundreds of thousands at your disposal. These can be bought from vending machines, scavenged from storage crates, or even (bizarrely), collected from dead animals and found by smashing up piles of bones. The game is certainly not shackled to reality or even plausibility.

However, it is this fantasy environment which causes most of the game's problems. The whole world feels spongy, nothing seems to have any weight. The visuals, whilst nice, sacrifice any sort of interaction: glass bottles won't shatter, even under a hail of bullets and rusted drum cans will not budge, even if driven into full speed by an armoured vehicle- you'll bounce off them every time. So forget about destructible environments.

Enemies are thankfully more animated, running around and taking cover etc. But problems exist here too, they spawn randomly but always from the same locations, their attacks easily anticipated, a fact not helped by the rather poor AI. Even the violence is undermined by the cartoon like manner in which it is portrayed. Further, exploration is a muted affair. The game gives the feeling that you are always playing within compartments, large rooms with no ceilings, rather than an expansive, open world environment. More annoyingly, switching between locations requires a significant load time.

Borderlands has made an easy target of itself, by combining two huge and already well catered for genres. It should be applauded in its attempts and for some genuine innovation but the truth is that it provides a mediocre experience as an FPS and as an RPG. Shooter fans will be frustrated by the bewildering amount of weaponry, with not enough twitch trigger game play. Role Playing aficionados will find the missions too linear and uninspiring, with not enough customisation options. Whilst the game could serve to introduce fans of one genre into the other, nobody will appreciate the technical problems apparent here, such as frame rate issues and choppy audio, when things get busy.

Despite these caveats, Borderlands is an OK title that has its moments. There is fun to be had here, the campaign is mainly enjoyable and the multiplayer is well implemented. Not one for the hardcore set though.

Three Stars.