Enough is enough! For too long, too many shooters have relied on the same old template, the same old action, the same old weapons. What we need is a game that'll rock the genre to its core, bring about change, attempt something new and do it with panache. STALKER gave it a worthy crack, but I'd say it was a few steps off fully realising its groundbreaking potential.
Hang on a minute! What's this? An invitation from Gearbox Software - creators of Half-Life: Opposing Force and the Brothers In Arms franchise - to fly to Texas to see their new FPS, Borderlands? An FPS with RPG elements and an open-ended yet still plot-driven campaign?
A game that'll enable you to easily hook up with three mates and zip around a world that mixes the best of Hollywood science fiction with the ethos of life on a dangerous new frontier? Sounds like this could be just the thing we've been looking for. Now isn't that a stroke of luck?
21 HOURS LATER So here I am in Gearbox's Texan offices. I won't bore you with the minutiae of my near day-long ordeal to get here, save to say that having my balls cupped by a sweaty security guard searching for Semtex sacks was the low point.
Sitting with me in the demo room are musician, magician, architect and - not forgetting - Gearbox president Randy Pitchford, director Matthew Armstrong, senior vice-president of business development Marc Tardif and producer Simon Hurley. With a line-up this impressive, I'm expecting something pretty special...
"There are so many things that we think first-person shooters can do to evolve the genre," begins Randy in a positively upbeat tone. "Which is why we decided to make Borderlands. It's a science fiction first-person shooter that you'll be able to play in four-player co-op mode either locally or over the internet. And of course, you'll also be able to play it by yourself."
Set on the Unreal Engine 3-powered planet of Pandora, Borderlands centres on the search for a fabled alien artefact. Huge forces settled on Pandora when rumours spread that alien technology lay undiscovered somewhere on the planet's inhospitable surface. "It became like an Old West frontier town," explains Matt, outlining a sci-fi universe not a million miles away from that seen in Joss Whedon's short-lived Firefly TV series.
"There's lawlessness and recklessness; it's like the American gold-rush era. It wasn't long before the colonists' frontiers pushed into the borderlands. However, after exploring the planet, the settlers found that it was hostile and it didn't have the riches they'd expected. Those with money left behind the ones who didn't, leaving several settlements trying to survive."
Thinking about it, it's also a bit like the largely forgotten '80s cartoon Bravestarr - albeit without the sub-He-Man posturing.
Things go from bad to worse on Pandora. As the season slowly changes from winter to spring, hostile, previously unseen indigenous life awakens from hibernation, and the settlers suddenly find themselves beset by rapacious predators as they continue their search for the alien technology. It's right around this point that you show up.
ENTER YOU Playing as a mercenary treasure-hunter and accompanied by a ragtag crew (for more on your sidekicks, see the 'Meet your mates' panel), your first goal will be to gain the trust of the local yokels by helping them with their problems. For example, you'll be required to deal with stray packs of Scythid Sprinters - giraffe-sized, lightning-quick killers that can cut a man into 16 fillets in under ten seconds - or find them various bits of loot in the barren, sprawling world.
It's here that we come to the game's first truly innovative feature. Just like a full-blown RPG, Borderlands will give you the choice of linearly following its main plot-driven campaign or taking a detour to complete side quests. "You can do these side quests at any time," beams Randy. "If you want to go off the main story and complete sub-quests or find better stuff, then you'll be able to do that whenever you want."
Complete these tasks and you'll be rewarded with money, love, trust, respect and, most importantly, experience points, which you can then use to level up your character. Skills will include the abilities to jump higher and further, run faster, absorb more damage and use better weapons and equipment.
"When you play in co-op mode, all experience will be shared equally, because different people will have different roles," explains Matt, eager to flag up the game's innovative approach to multiplayer.
RPG elements such as Borderlands' levelling-up facility are enabling Gearbox to take the FPS genre in some exciting new directions, one striking innovation being the eradication of difficulty levels, thanks to the game's scalable challenge system. Gearbox are attempting to eliminate reload-key-slapping when you're faced with a particularly testing battle, by allowing you to backtrack, complete a few side quests, bolster your abilities and equipment, and then return for another crack.
GUN-HO While we're hovering in the vicinity of weapons, you'd best prepare for a shock. A pleasant one, but a shock nonetheless. You know how most shooters feature 10, 12, 15, perhaps even 20 weapons? Well, Borderlands is set to have a few more.
Do you want to have a guess how many? "30?" Nope. "40?" Sorry, guess again. "Surely not... 50?" Not even close. "100?" Nyet, non and nein. OK, you've suffered long enough. Borderlands will feature... 600,000 unique weapons. Count the zeros, my friends, then breathe in... breathe out... and relax, while Randy fills you in on the details.
"If you take every gun ever made in every game and add them all together, Borderlands would have more by over two orders of magnitude," he says, as he begins to spawn countless handguns, machine guns and sniper rifles onto the screen. Each one flies out and skids along the floor, stopping to reveal itself as unique to everything that's come before.
"We want you to always be able to find better stuff, to always be searching for a better weapon." Randy also reveals that the ballistic arsenal littering the floor is merely the tip of Borderlands' weapons iceberg, with plasma guns, rocket launchers and alien technology to be revealed at a later date.
"Every single weapon is procedurally generated," says Simon, picking up the reins from his colleague. "Weapons are cobbled together from different pieces of technology, so you can have a melee weapon that's a cross between a meat cleaver and a chainsaw. We use lots of different components for weapons that can be amalgamated in different ways, and each component brings with it its own set of pros and cons. No two weapons are ever the same."
YEAH, BUT NO, BUT "Yeah, but," I interject, like a petulant teenager caught smoking his father's cigarettes in the back garden, "how can we tell which weapon does what without the need for countless stats?" Of course, Gearbox have already thought of that. "The colour of the gun will give you an indication of its abilities," replies Simon without hesitation. He picks up a black gun and demonstrates its high rate of fire on a nearby target dummy.
It's quick, but leaves much to be desired in terms of accuracy. Then he picks up a silver machine gun and pummels the dummy again - at a slower rate, but dishing out far more damage. "The silver weapons will have a greater chance of achieving an Extreme Critical Hit, while black weapons will fire quickly, but lack accuracy," he explains, with a look of satisfaction.
"Thanks to this colouring system, it'll take you very little time to work out what each gun is going to be like, despite there being around 600,000 of them," chimes in Matt. "If you want the shotgun from Doom, you can find it. If you want the shotgun from Half-Life, you can find it. Whatever gun you want, you'll be able to find it. Each style of gun will use its own ammunition. The game will be more like Serious Sam than Doom 3 when it comes to ammo. You don't want to have a great gun and no ammo for it, so you'll always be able to purchase more bullets."
BADLANDS Of course, there's no point in filling your game full of innovative features and hundreds of thousands of weapons if the shoot-outs are going to be limper than a spineless corpse. Eager to see the game in full flow, I ask Randy to show me what Borderlands has to offer in the action department.
Firing up a mountainous level, he sets about tracking down a group of bandits rumoured to have vital information about the alien artefact's whereabouts. He's standing in a settlement called Newhaven, one of seven human towns on Pandora that you'll get to visit. Panning around the level, he reveals metal buildings cobbled together from pieces of scrap. On the far side, a giant piece of mining equipment juts out like a giant's chainsaw. The place looks and feels like something out of a post-apocalyptic world, as though it's been sucked out of a Mad Max movie and injected into the game.
Before he embarks on his mission, Randy quickly informs me that much of the game's technology is being designed by Hollywood legend Ron Cobb, who has designed alien and futuristic technology for the likes of Total Recall and Back To The Future. I'm impressed.
BING, BANG, BOOM I watch as Randy stalks through the desolate wasteland, capping stray patrols from a distance with a sleek, streamlined sniper rifle. Soon, though, he's forced to switch to a machine gun, as a pair of Skags - vicious four-legged creatures with razor teeth - bound towards him, their eyes gleaming with murderous intent. He waits till they're close, their mouths gaping, before sending a hail of lead down each one's oesophagus.
"Skags have really strong armour, so the best way to kill them quickly is to shoot them in the mouth," proclaims the victorious Gearbox boss. "You'll come across loads of alien species on the planet and find that the wildlife has a natural pecking order."
It's not long before he's reached the camp, a maze of streets and buildings carved into rocks. After a brief, bravado-laden exchange between his character and the bandit leader, the killing ensues. Randy hurls a Rain Grenade into a pack of enemies, who scatter like birds fleeing a predator. But to no avail. The grenade spits out a series of explosions and incinerates all nearby foes, who dance death jigs as they burn.
Thanks to a combination of Brothers In Arms's team AI system and an all-new individual enemy AI that sees your foes displaying spatial awareness and using tactics (to varying degrees, depending on their proficiency), the battles are already looking highly promising, though any firm predictions about their final quality are impossible at such an early stage of development. One small disappointment is the omission of destructible terrain, but given the slickness of the combat, it seems like a fairly small price to pay.
WAIT FOR IT Randy has saved the best till last. Loading a new level, he sets about completing an objective for Helena Pierce, Newhaven's untrustworthy mayor. She's sent him out to deal with a flock of Rakk - similar to vultures, only bigger, scarier and even more ruthless - that have been terrorising the settlement.
Randy easily deals with the first few, but rounding a corner, he comes face to toe with one of the most awesome creatures I've ever seen in a video game - a Rakk Hive. Twenty metres tall, this monstrous beast looks like a giant rhino on steroids, its back pockmarked with holes, from which an army of Rakk emerge into the open and swoop down at Randy in a blanket of certain death. With that, the demo concludes...
Judging by these early impressions, Borderlands looks like it's going to have one hell of a crack at taking the FPS genre to the next level of its evolution. Gearbox certainly has the experience and pedigree to pull it off, and from what I've seen and heard so far, I'm certainly hopeful that it can and will succeed. With its bold and innovative multiplayer co-op mode, unrivalled arsenal, vehicular combat and open-ended format, this game is clearly showing a heck of a lot of promise.
Rest assured that we'll be monitoring this one closely, because if it fulfils its ample potential, the long wait for a truly groundbreaking shooter could be about to come to an end.
Hope this title ends up good, sounds great from the preview. I loved stalker even though its potential was never fully realised, maybe the next one will do that.
STALKER gave it a worthy crack, but I'd say it was a few steps off fully realising its groundbreaking potential.
Oh yea, here we go, slagging off a brilliant game so we can upgrade for a game that will be about the same. And hey, how do you know that this game won't be released with huge bugs PC Zone?
So slagging off a game that is already on the market for a game that isn't out yet for a long while is just rotten to the core in my view.
STALKER is my Game of the Year, and I am sure many others; it won't win a single award though because the knives have been in for it from the start.
So let's see what this game is like AFTER release, shall we, before we start making it sound better than something that is already out and being enjoyed by millions! Grrr!
Oh yea, and the 'waiting for a truly groundbreaking FPS...' quote also p**sed me off; because STALKER is already it - in spades! As mentioned on many many sites, reviews and forums around the globe!
Oh shut up. I seem to remember you proclaiming how Bioshock would be a disappointment before you had even played it. You are a foolish hypocrite.
STALKER was an ambitious game, but I didn't enjoy it. It had bland, out-dated presentation for a 2007 game and the combat was lacklustre. It simply wasn't that good.
Anyway! Back to the topic at hand. This game sounds very promising indeed. I'm not too happy about the RPG stuff though. They're making an effort to update FPS gameplay, but the RPG elements they talk about are as antiquated as gaming itself. NO to experience points, NO to levelling up (in a jarring & unimaginative 'assign points to abilities' fashion), NO to things like 'Extreme Critical Hit' (ffs ).
STALKER gave it a worthy crack, but I'd say it was a few steps off fully realising its groundbreaking potential.
Oh yea, here we go, slagging off a brilliant game so we can upgrade for a game that will be about the same. And hey, how do you know that this game won't be released with huge bugs PC Zone?
So slagging off a game that is already on the market for a game that isn't out yet for a long while is just rotten to the core in my view.
STALKER is my Game of the Year, and I am sure many others; it won't win a single award though because the knives have been in for it from the start.
So let's see what this game is like AFTER release, shall we, before we start making it sound better than something that is already out and being enjoyed by millions! Grrr!
Oh yea, and the 'waiting for a truly groundbreaking FPS...' quote also p**sed me off; because STALKER is already it - in spades! As mentioned on many many sites, reviews and forums around the globe!
I agree humorguy... Oh, no I don't. You're a bleating bottom.
OMG I have been waiting for this game for 14 years. Doom started it all and now this one looks like it'll be the Doom of this generation. And not one "our game will revolutionize blahblahblah" comment on the horizon ... respek. Let the game speak for itself.
To coin a much used phrase ... dear God please don't let this suck, blow or chew.
oh and humorguy ... I don't go for flaming or posting negative s**t about people (unless I'm bitchslapping someone that gets in my face) and I usually have a lot of time for your comments even though they are unpopular but dude ... really, you are way out of line here. Firstly, they didn't slag off STALKER, they praised it but pointed out its few shortfalls which from what I've read (though to be fair I haven't played it ... yet ... getting it soon) this comment seems fair enough to me. This type of game may actually be the salvation of PC FPS and I really can't understand where you have a problem with it. I'm not attacking you or nothing though it does seem to be a favorite pastime of some people who post here but to be fair dude you are just asking to be flamed with remarks like those above.
Damn but I'm an opinionated @rse .. sorry and that
I don't give a s**t - the fact is no game that is OUT should be compared with a game that is NOT OUT!
I say again - HOW DO WE KNOW THIS GAME WITH NOT SUCK TOTALLY, WITH TERRIBLE BUGS ON RELEASE FOR EXAMPLE?!!!
OK, I'm gonna give this one shot to try and convert you
The point about bugs is the easiest to respond to so lets do that first. Every game that ever was, or will be announced could be riddled with bugs by the time it lands on your hard-drive. This really goes without saying. Believe me, if this DOES prove to be an infested pile, I'm gonna be way more pi$$ed than you hehe.
Now to your first point. The article contained only one sentence that mentions STALKER. Here it is in full context ...
Enough is enough! For too long, too many shooters have relied on the same old template, the same old action, the same old weapons. What we need is a game that'll rock the genre to its core, bring about change, attempt something new and do it with panache. STALKER gave it a worthy crack, but I'd say it was a few steps off fully realising its groundbreaking potential.
When I read this, I saw "Most FPS are the same old s**t. STALKER however is most definitely NOT, but could be better". "Worthy crack" sounds like praise to me and certainly isn't slagging it off. Also, I couldn't find anywhere in the article where they even DID compare the two games.
I'm not pointing this out just to be a pedantic tw@t btw, I just want you to look at Borderlands and think to yourself "FFS, thank god for that!". *IF* they manage to pull this off it may well prove not only be the next evolutionary step of the FPS, but may also be instrumental in bringing about an Interactive Fiction revolution. OK now I sound like a sales man ... *spits*
All I'm saying is that I think you over-reacted on the whole STALKER thing. This game has enormous potential, give it a chance eh?
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This game sounds very promising indeed. I'm not too happy about the RPG stuff though. They're making an effort to update FPS gameplay, but the RPG elements they talk about are as antiquated as gaming itself. NO to experience points, NO to levelling up (in a jarring & unimaginative 'assign points to abilities' fashion), NO to things like 'Extreme Critical Hit' (ffs 
