Tag: Borderlands

Right Game, Wrong Platform: Borderlands

Posted on by Nimgimli

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how I was done with Borderlands: Game of the Year edition (for now). I’d been in the mood for an over-the-top shooter and had Borderlands in my Steam library. As old as it is, and as new as my PC is, I figured it would run like a dream and I’d have some fun with it.

And I did have fun, but it never felt 100% comfortable. Even though I could run it at a high framerate, turning always felt a little jittery and long sessions would make me feel kind of queasy after a while. Additionally the UI felt overly fiddly and in some places, outright broken. I go over all this on the old post so I won’t drag it out too much today.

In response to that post my old buddy Dusty Monk told me that the games were designed from the ground up to be played via controller and suggested I try Borderlands 3 on the PS5. I thanked him and filed that away.

Fast forward to me watching Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and it putting me back in the mood for some wasteland-y shooting and looting. I could have gone to find the actual Mad Max game, which is excellent but which I’d played through already. Then I turned on the Xbox and they had a sale going. $30 for 6 Borderlands games: Borderlands Game of the Year, Borderlands 2, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, Borderlands 3, and a couple of the Telltale “Tales of the Borderlands” games, plus a bunch of DLC. I figured at that price it was a steal so I snagged it.

Just for grins I installed Borderlands: Game of the Year edition first, assuming the experience would be similar to, or worse than, it had been on my $2000 PC. But boy was I ever wrong. The game plays beautifully on the Xbox Series X using a controller. It runs at 4K and is supposed to be 60 FPS though I can’t personally confirm that. It does feel super smooth though.

Granted this doesn’t solve other issues with the game, like the fact that all the zones kind of feel the same, but with it all running better that stuff seems to matter less. Or maybe I’m still in the honeymoon period. I got to level 24 on PC and am just at 10 on console.

Anyway. I just thought this was interesting and it just goes to show you, you never know for sure until you (or someone) tries these things. I guess it comes down to engine optimization or something. On PC I was playing at 1440P but Ultra-Widescreen and maybe that caused issues? I dunno. I mean clearly my PC is way more powerful than the Series X but in this particular case, PC was the wrong place for me to be playing. Which sounds crazy, right? Playing a shooter with controller on console is better than playing it on PC with mouse & keyboard.

Just proves anomalies do exist. And to be clear this IS an anomaly; before someone takes me to task I’m not trying to start a platform war or anything. Just in this one specific case the less capable machine actually runs the game better, and I thought that was worth sharing.

Screenshot taken through the scope of a sniper rifle showing the blood spatter after a head shot
Thanks to the Xbox controller’s share button I can turn a head shot into abstract art. Yes this is the blood spatter that resulted.

Done With Borderlands (For Now)

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m not sure if I’ve even talked about it on the blog but I’ve been having a go with Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, which is I guess some kind of re-master. I’ve never really gotten into Borderlands games, partly because they seem mostly intended for co-op play and partly because the Gearbox sense of humor isn’t really my thing. But after spending a few weeks primarily playing MMOs I was just in the mood for something kind of mindless that involved shooting stuff and I had BL:GotY in my Steam library so I picked that. I know someone who works at Gearbox so I always feel a slight tingle of guilt over not playing their games!

I made it about 14 hours in, and got level 24 or so, and into the 4th area, but I think I may be done. I mean, it did exactly what I was looking for: gave me lots of baddies to shoot without having to go research anything about builds or look anything up. OK I lie, I was struggling to find one hidden item and I looked THAT up, but basically it was just ‘boot up and play’ for a dozen hours.

To be clear this is a lot longer than I’ve played any of the Borderlands games and I’ve at least tried almost all of them (maybe not the Pre-Sequel one) so that’s a win, and I’m not quitting out of any real disappointment with the game. I’m just a little bored. And again, I think that wouldn’t be an issue if I was playing with others.

One of my issues is that the 4th area looks pretty much like the first and second and third areas, and the mobs seem about the same too, just higher level. I guess Pandora is mostly one big biome. I would’ve appreciated a little more variety, but then you have to remember that the game originally came out in 2009. Simpler times back then, eh?

But my bigger issue is the game doesn’t run very well. This version wasn’t developed by Gearbox so I’m not blaming them, but my layman’s sense is that today’s machines are just too fast for the game’s engine. It isn’t that the framerate drops; it’s more like the interface can’t keep up. For instance scrolling through inventory (done via the scroll wheel) is a real struggle. I have to be careful not to turn the wheel too quickly or everything freaks out. Speaking of turning, if I turn my character too quickly the world kind of jitters a bit (though again framerate doesn’t fluctuate) which can make me a tad woozy. There’s also some little UI annoyances like bits that seem like they can be clicked on, but in fact you need to use the keyboard to interact with them:

Dialogue box that seems to be mouse enabled but isn't
It looks like I can click OK here, right? But no. I have to hit the Enter key. Not a big deal but just an example of the un-even UI

None of this is a deal breaker and if I didn’t have a zillion other games I’m itching to play I might stick with it for a little longer, but at this point I feel like I’ve seen what the game has to offer me, and I’ve had some fun playing, but now it is time to move on without discovering if Mordecai and Deathwing find that pesky vault. I might come back to it at some point, or more likely give Borderlands 2 another shot just to see what it offers. I have Borderlands 3 on the PS5 but have barely played it. Think I bought it on some super sale. And of course now we know Borderlands 4 is coming. Damn, that’s a lot of Borderlands-ing…

Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: First Impressions

Posted on by Nimgimli

A new month means new freebies from Sony for Playstation Plus members. One of the titles this month is Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, a spin-off of the Borderlands series.

Now I haven’t really played much Borderlands and don’t really follow it, so hopefully I’ll get this right. Assault on Dragon Keep first released as DLC for Borderlands 2, and Google says it came out in June of 2013. I guess it must have been popular because next month a full stand alone game, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, launches. The game I’m playing now is the Borderlands 2 DLC re-packaged as a stand-alone game, I presume for the purposes of getting folks hyped for Wonderlands.

I know that’s why I played it. As someone who has always bounced off Borderlands but was intrigued by the trailers for Wonderlands, I wanted to play Assault just to see how different the game felt. I’m not sure I know yet, but there’s plenty of time.

The basic premise of the game is that Tiny Tina (who presents as a young girl but I am otherwise not familiar with the character) is running an RPG for some of her vault hunter friends. There’s Lilith, who I’m somewhat familiar with, and a bunch of others who I dunno who they are. Gameplay takes place in the RPG and the mechanics are (at least to a casual observer) very similar to Borderlands, aka it’s a first person shooter. While you play you hear voice-overs from the vault hunters who are playing the game within the game. (Still following me?). The conversations tend to be pretty amusing, at least to me.

Lilith wants to play the game kind of seriously while some of the others just want maximum mayhem. Tina tries to keep everyone happy, sometimes re-writing the world on the fly. For example her environment will be full of flowers and someone will comment about how that isn’t scary. Tina will say “You’re right!” and suddenly the flowers go poof and the world is dark and foreboding.


So let’s talk about why I bounce off Borderlands. I have two main issues. First is the humor. It is very “Jackass” in tone, and that’s just not my bag. I remember a lot of jokes about murder and torture, or bodily functions. (Yes, there are some of us out here who don’t giggle at poop and fart jokes.) There are suicidal midgets and things like that. There’s Claptrap who, OMG that character is so annoying I’m getting mad just thinking about it. Overall the ‘tone’ of Borderlands just rubbed me the wrong way (at least what I’ve seen of it, which isn’t very much.)

Second is the loot. There is so much loot. A constant shower of loot. I find it super-fatiguing. I get that the idea is you just kind of skim the loot and ignore it if it isn’t rare or better, but I am just too methodical for that. I have to open every chest, break every container, and check the contents of each one. And when my inventory gets full I have to go back to town to sell. The idea of just LEAVING LOOT ON THE GROUND is abhorrent to me. This results in a LOT of running back and forth and examining trash loot and my pace being super slow.

My first reaction to Assault on Dragon Keep was, “Yup, this is Borderlands.” Heck I filmed it:

Kill 1 skeleton, spend a few minutes opening chests. It was a drag.

I pushed on, though, and at one point I revisited an area I’d already been to and… the chests had all respawned. That was the straw that broke the back of my old habits, and after that I started ignoring about 75% of the chests I saw. Once I did that I started having a lot more fun.

The world of Dragon Keep is filled with Borderlands characters who don’t seem as distasteful as I remember them being. In fact I found them pretty fun. There’s a dude who is a real jock and no one wants to let him play because he’s not a ‘real nerd’ and they make him answer geeky questions to prove he should be allowed to play. Out of this comes a cautionary tale about gatekeeping where Lilith, who has been most opposed to letting him play, admits that she feels kind of like a dick for treating him so badly.

I still think there is too much loot, and I find the inventory UI kind of confusing, but I am digging the vibe. I’ve laughed a few times, and so has @partpurple. (I think it’s a good sign when a person not playing the game gets drawn in enough to laugh at jokes or have any other reaction to what’s going on in the game world.) I’m hoping the full game will be modernized a bit, but if they bring the same tone along, I’ll be interested in playing. It’s also worth mentioning that I am REALLY enjoying the music (which sounds fitting for a high-fantasy game, but really seems delightfully odd when you’re mowing enemies down with a shotgun).

Of course now Dying Light 2 is out so I’ll be transitioning to that, but I’m glad I tried out Assault on Dragon Keep and I’ll be keeping it on the hard drive. Heck it has me thinking that maybe I need to give the main Borderlands games another go.