Best Game of 2009: Borderlands

Borderlands swooped in, diddled my post-apocalyptic skittle, and I never looked back. The action-packed yin to (my personal 2008 Game of the Year) Fallout 3’s deliberately-paced yang, it was a great way to close out this otherwise droll year.

Truth be told, the individual components that constitute Borderlands don’t really make for a compelling game. The gunplay—while competent—lacks that extra "oomph" of more established FPS entries, and the RPG bits are bereft of the item slots, consistent narrative, intuitive interface, and deep character customization of conventional Diablo clones. I've heard people complain that it's nothing more than a tech demo for a bigger and better game, and y'know what... I really can't argue with that.

It's the videogame equivalent of a 3AM gasoline station taco: you know it really isn't that good, but for what it is, it's good enough, and fills a need. I'm not exactly sure what that need is personally, but I think it has to do with shooting things with your friends and collecting more things that the aforementioned things drop. Gearbox deserves major props for probably being the first team to successfully meld the two most played-out genres in gaming (click-click-click loot games and first-person shooters).

Tags: Best of 2009

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McKinley Noble

January 20, 2010

Borderlands is my Taco Bell, that's for certain. Heh, perhaps the only difference is that I'll never go back to the main storyline again, now that I know how lightweight the ending is. DLC, maybe?

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Bryan Glynn

I can confidently say that Borderlands at least cracks my "top 3" best games list that released '09. The game might just be the best hybrid of genres I've ever played, and the addition of co-op adds immensely to the enjoyment. To think that I'd heard almost nothing about the game before it released (and had no intentions of buying it until word-of-mouth began to run rampant throughout forums and podcasts)...

Demian Linn

This game very easily could've been my personal GOTY, but the bugs and just shit PC support says no.

Jason Wilson

@Demian I've played about 13 hours of Borderlands on my PC and haven't experienced bugs of any sort. What kind of issues did you encounter?

They mostly had to do with matchmaking, although some talents are bugged/poorly balanced, and some items, too. I played with a friend of mine up to about level 30...the first week it was basically an hour of trying to figure out how to connect each night. Even now, after multiple patches, we crash out or just plain can't join a game, for no apparent reason. My friend has more or less given up.

@Ah. I avoided that thanks to my general dislike of multiplayer gaming.

@Jason: I'm glad to see you're still enjoying the game in single-player, but don't you think having a co-operative friend along side of you would enhance the experience? I doubt I would be expressing such a high amount of praise for Borderlands, had I not been playing it almost entirely in co-op thus far. The game is a true gem when shared with a friend.

Ryan A. Rubis

The PC version is kind of jank thanks to that unnecessary Gamespy layer. It's just flat-out broken, and requires you to do a whole bunch of port-forwarding and other router voodoo. I'm almost tempted to say multiplayer's a [i]requirement [/i]for this game. It does break the game at times -- especially when you're out with friends that are ten or fifteen levels higher than you -- but it's insanely fun and having company around really livens up the game.