Back in 2008 I was playing a heck of a load of Team Fortress 2 and was very much looking forward to Valve Software's upcoming 4 player co-op game: Left4Dead. And I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine about Left4Dead saying that it was a great idea. After all, co-op against zombies by the people who had made my current favourite game ever?
I also remember saying how I wished there was more of a story planned and that I was disappointed with the number of weapons I'd seen in the video footage. To which he replied "But isn't that... like... Borderlands?"
Ever since I've been hankering after the release of this, reading their forums, watching the vids and hoping that it was as good as I was imagining it would be. So now I've had it for a few weeks and I've played it a fair bit so I feel I can now supply that answer: It's marvellous!
Starting at the beginning, lets explain exactly what we have here. Borderlands is a first person shooter at heart: you run, you shoot, you kill the bad guys. However it also has roots in RPG titles in regards to it's "looting" of items, which is basically picking up everything and anything you can find that might be useful. The reason the looting is important is to do with the number of weapons available in the game. Literally thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of unique weapons are possibly attainable and you'll easily come across more than you can remember during a playthrough.
"How is that possible?" you may ask! Well it's all done by having several different weapon types (ie, pistol, shotgun, etc...) that can have several different stats (damage, accuracy, etc...) and also different add-ons (scope, melee weapon, etc...) so with all of the different possibilities it makes sense that there are that many combinations.
So this can drastically alter a playthrough, for instance you might have a really good pistol to start with during one playthrough, but on another you quickly get a great sniper rifle. It changes how you play and thus the gaming experience involved.
Enemies are a problem however, there are approximately 10 standard bad guys in Borderlands (personal non scientific count there!) which can get quite repetitive. I've heard each enemy is also randomly generated in terms of their stats but it wasn't too noticeable. You do, however, get the occasional Baddass bad guy who is far tougher than their standard counterpart. These enemies and any "boss" characters you come across yield far better loot than others, so check their drops carefully! (ooer)
The gameplay itself was one of the high points for me, aside from changing mouse sensitivity to reduce the mouse-smoothing that you can't turn off, movement was nice and looking down the sights of a weapon to shoot felt perfectly natural. In some ways it very much reminded me of the gameplay from Farcry 2, all the way down to the respawning bad guys, although this wasn't quite as bad!
I also remember saying how I wished there was more of a story planned and that I was disappointed with the number of weapons I'd seen in the video footage. To which he replied "But isn't that... like... Borderlands?"
Ever since I've been hankering after the release of this, reading their forums, watching the vids and hoping that it was as good as I was imagining it would be. So now I've had it for a few weeks and I've played it a fair bit so I feel I can now supply that answer: It's marvellous!
Starting at the beginning, lets explain exactly what we have here. Borderlands is a first person shooter at heart: you run, you shoot, you kill the bad guys. However it also has roots in RPG titles in regards to it's "looting" of items, which is basically picking up everything and anything you can find that might be useful. The reason the looting is important is to do with the number of weapons available in the game. Literally thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of unique weapons are possibly attainable and you'll easily come across more than you can remember during a playthrough.
"How is that possible?" you may ask! Well it's all done by having several different weapon types (ie, pistol, shotgun, etc...) that can have several different stats (damage, accuracy, etc...) and also different add-ons (scope, melee weapon, etc...) so with all of the different possibilities it makes sense that there are that many combinations.So this can drastically alter a playthrough, for instance you might have a really good pistol to start with during one playthrough, but on another you quickly get a great sniper rifle. It changes how you play and thus the gaming experience involved.
Enemies are a problem however, there are approximately 10 standard bad guys in Borderlands (personal non scientific count there!) which can get quite repetitive. I've heard each enemy is also randomly generated in terms of their stats but it wasn't too noticeable. You do, however, get the occasional Baddass bad guy who is far tougher than their standard counterpart. These enemies and any "boss" characters you come across yield far better loot than others, so check their drops carefully! (ooer)
The gameplay itself was one of the high points for me, aside from changing mouse sensitivity to reduce the mouse-smoothing that you can't turn off, movement was nice and looking down the sights of a weapon to shoot felt perfectly natural. In some ways it very much reminded me of the gameplay from Farcry 2, all the way down to the respawning bad guys, although this wasn't quite as bad!
That doesn't mean Elven Legacy wasn't enjoyable for me, far from it and contrary to most strategy games I've played, I felt really drawn into the story! The missions all had similar goals, which is almost unavoidable I suppose, the designs were all unique and related perfectly to the situation. But each one really felt like a small part of the journey described in the talky bits between missions. This was mostly due to the detail of the landscape consistently looking like an advanced tabletop war game. It looked especially good during levels where you approach obstacles such as walls and fortresses to conquer.