Borderlands

So, just started playing this about a few weeks ago and having great fun with it so far. I've been playing the single player game as a "Soldier" class, but was wondering if anyone has tried the online gameplay and what you/they think of it?

Hi, Trail! Is this the original Borderlands? I've always wanted to play that one.

Hey Drac,

Yep, it's basically a first person shooter with some RPG elements. Apparently, it's the most fun with a group of four players. It has the basic D&D party characters that just have different names and are assigned to premade characters. A Hunter (Mordecai) is basically a Rogue, a Soldier (Roland) is kind of a Warrior-Cleric and a Siren (Lilith) is like a Wizard and then there's a Heavy Warrior who goes by the name "Brick." I think that the online multiplayer portion of it was hobbled by the recent demise of GameSpy who provided the middleware for multiplayer. From the messages I've been seeing on the start up screens though, I guess Steam is working to bring that aspect back to it. Right now I believe the only way to go multiplayer is with a local LAN set up (i.e. LAN party.)

The controls are very intuitive and the missions, at least so far are well organized. I'm only at level 15, but it has been a fun shoot'em up. It's kind of a cross between Mad Max and your old school Westerns. There's even an expansion called. "Mad Moxxie's Thunderdome"

As long as I don't have to play with other players on-line, this one sound like something I would really like! Unfortunately, I have no time right now to get immersed into another game - way too many tomatoes running my life!

Sounds like fun, except for the shooter part

It's just become a lot more challenging as soon as I started the level 15 missions. The bad guys are a lot tougher and the two bosses I've so far come up against were crazy. The first one took me 3 times to take him down and I think it was an accident. The second boss was really difficult - I think I ended up re-spawning about 6 or 7 (or more, kind of lost count) times before taking him down. The hard part about the bigger missions is that even after taking down the boss all the previous enemies re-spawn. You end up having to fight your way back out to the entry point. It's a good thing that they provide lots of ammo here and there.

It's a check point save system, but the nice thing is if you have made specific progress on your missions, even if you don't make it to a check point, that progress is saved even if you die. You just end up spawning back at the check point save location. You also don't lose the loot you may have picked up after the check point save. It's a bit more forgiving of a system then I've seen with other auto-save games. The penalty you face is having to fight back to where you were when you got killed. Usually, they have a spot to re-arm right at the check point areas, so that's a plus. Just need to make sure you save those pennies to buy lots of rocket propelled grenades

I'm glad you don't lose your mission progress. Pesky enemies should not be able to come back.

I have played through both Borderlands & Borderlands 2 as well as almost all the DLC in multiplayer.

For me the games are more geared towards a co-op multiplayer experience than a solo game. Not that you couldn't have fun playing alone.

The game does scale difficulty based on the number of players, but what it also does with more players is give you better loot. So the more players the better the drops you will see. The game is also quite a bit easier with more people. One example would be when you go down, in addition to having an opportunity to get a second wind another player can help you up.


I know that they are still working on getting the multiplayer back for the original Borderlands and were supposed to have it ready this Summer. The second game is already multiplayer through Steam and the first game will be as well.

If you do stick to solo though and are having difficulty ever you can grind out some XP on any enemies you can handle at the time and the side quests and main story line quests stay at the same level, they don't scale. So you can get to a point where any quest is doable.

I can see how this would be a blast in co-op. I'm finding single player fun and quite challenging, though. Just tried Thunderdome and only made it through 3 rounds in "The Gulley" even though the Journal lists the missions as "Trivial" for my character's level. I assume that's because it's geared to multiplayer. Guess I need to look for some better weapons and shields. Seems like the only really nice weapons I come across are 2-10 levels beyond what my character can handle. The number of different weapons available can be a bit confusing at times, but I'm getting used to it. I can see why they default to the "Soldier" for single player. Having the deployable turret sure comes in handy.