written by owen on 2025-Feb-04.

After finishing Rage I felt like continuing my dystopian-mad-max lifestyle so I decided to play Borderlands 1. After hearing about this game for years I was surprised at how "janky" it felt. The game feels "old" right off the bat. You have jank enemies and rabid dogs which are both bullet sponges. Enemies dont react when shot in the face or legs. Considering that the game was released in 2009 versus Rage which is 2011 alot could have improved so I may have played the games in the wrong order.

I started out aiming to play the most recent version of every game series but this game was packaged in a multi-pack with BioShock + Xcom: EU so it was hard to resist combo deal. I probably should have started with BL2(2012) instead but it is too late now. Unless I sell the multi-pack?

The game play

The game is full of stats and random bloat everywhere and NPCs talking over each other if you move around while they are talking. I imagine that this was how it was in the old days before modern games started to lock you into one place whenever you interact with a NPC. The UI for the game is like an old DOS GUI from 1990 - too many lists and sub categories for things that could be icons. There is no obvious way to put the game on easy so I guess I will have to play through this as it is. It starts out with the basic fetch quests in an uninteresting cell shaded wasteland with lots of little collectible chests with $10 or 5$ inside. Total busy work even worse than the bottles in Rage. At least in the case of Rage they were sprinkled lightly around the level instead of in every corner or pile of shit.

I realized early on that there were limits on everything; limits on grenades, weapons you could carry, bullets. Everything is tied to your level progression. I was getting mobile game vibes. Combined with the lack of stopping power from the guns, random drops of slightly better guns, enemies that get harder as you level up. I was getting bad vibes from this game. Returning to the same person after every quest just to get another pointless collect-a-thon in the same place is likely to get boring really fast plus I had to deal with the annoying dogs. Then the dogs started jumping, spitting goo, and creating radial explosions.

I also notice that there is something off about the in game map or how it corresponds to the level layout - its weird and doesn't flow well.

So I played for a couple hours and have come to conclusion that this game is looter shooter-grind fest. The quests are boring and everything is tied to the leveling system. The enemies are always a level or 2 higher than you are and I end up looking for tactics to cheese them instead of approaching them head on. I used the soldier class and even then I found that I had to be very careful when approaching encampments, sniping the first couple enemies then throwing grenades (which are also limited to your level), then camping as the dogs bomb rush me. There is no way to surprise enemies, they magically detect you as soon as you are close.

No way to avoid enemies as the map layout forces you down a narrow path. Frequent stops are further hampered by the clunky interface for collecting loot - because its clunky its very hard to collect the fetch quest items while enemies are in the area. You can accept multiple quests but the questing system is set up in such as way that some items do not appear if you are not on that assigned quest - so you end up visiting an area multiple times, switching from quest screen to map screen, back and forth. I may have mentioned that the map screen is kinda weird. The map is like a representation of the game world but not exactly so causing confusion.

The real kicker for me was when I got a gun that I could not use because its level was higher than my current level. At that point I was done. Not only were you limited in how much you can carry but also which perks you could use and at which point in time. The game is a carefully crafted "waste of time" progression system where you collect random trinkets for NPCs that never move from their assigned location. It is a ancient game loop, this game might have been the original sin. who knows.

Conclusion

I am going to put this game on the back burner. 5/10. Ain't got not time to waste grinding levels for minute rewards and boring enemy Ai. Skip this game, try Borderlands 2 instead.

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