Borderlands: Tru-shooter with elements of Diablo
Name: Borderlands
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Genre: First-person action shooter with RPG elements
The new cooperative shooter Borderlands deserves attention as a rare representative of the mixing of the genres of first-person shooter and RPG and as the owner of a unique visual style. Even if the ambitious developers from Gearbox Software and the venerable publisher of 2K Games were behind the nameplate, even then the game, a path not as expected as, for example, Bioshock 2, would invariably be under the watchful eye of the public. In our case, we are dealing with the largest project of the studio to date, which previously had a hand in the popular Brothers in Arms series, the notorious Halo and the iconic Half-Life.
Taking all the best from the design of the fallout 3 wastelands sullen in the yellow, the creators of Borderlands borrowed from Bioshock elements of stylish presentation of information about the plot, adding a chain of unhindered quests. Then, making a bet on the popular co-op, which came out on the first roles after Left4Dead, in Gearbox they planted players for Diablo-like character development drug. Do not forget about the endless process of finding new items of equipment, according to the custom, colored from the usual-white to rare-orange. Finally, through the efforts of designers who have combined the proven Unreal Engine with Cell-Shading animation technology, Borderlands has received an uncommonly modern and beautiful, but unusual appearance, emphasizing the unique atmosphere of what is happening. With all this, Gearbox Software managed to virtually avoid technical flaws. Despite the lack of native support for anti-aliasing and unpresentable shadows, the UE3 with Cell-Shading (and thanks to Cell-Shading) looks decent and works smoothly, while not slowly falling to the desktop under any circumstances.
')
Not an epic story
In contrast to the exclusive driving entertainment like Call of Duty, where the nonstop action is put at the forefront, Borderlands leaves players time to comprehend what is happening, to decide on the goals and figure out what's what. Before us is not a corridor shooter, but a game with a pseudo-open world, allowing free movement in the allotted framework of game maps. But this approach does not tolerate a meaningful void. The developers, of course, clearly did not set as a priority the receipt of the award “for the best scenario.” The main thing is that the background plays the role assigned to it. And he plays, with slices - quests, audio recordings found here and there and rare conversations with NPCs - cutting into the story of four adventurers, professional mercenaries and daredevils trying to find a mystical repository (eng. Vault), which is rumored to be on the planet under uniquely hinting title Pandora.
On Pandora, the heroes are met by a Claptrap robot. A charismatic and a bit of a bad piece of iron that loves to dance.
From the town of Fyrestone, half-forgotten by God, a pair of shacks and a fence begins the journey of the above-mentioned four, remotely and occasionally guided in a fatherly caring local trader Maruks (“When you get to the treasure, you need a partner to sell them, right?”) And Angel Keeper Vault. No break, an epic confrontation between good and evil, the salvation of the world in the name or for the benefit, everything revolves around the banal thirst for profit and adventure. However, you should not really put an end to the writers. Science fiction, a little mysticism and a pinch of contact with the legacy of extraterrestrial civilizations are more than a good reason not to stupidly knock on the keys and run only in the direction of the marker on the map, but also pay attention to the very “slices” of the plot. As a result, at almost every moment in time, players know why their trunks are directed exactly to this, and not to the opposite side.
Conventions
Despite the acquisition of RPG features, Borderlands is essentially a great shooter, with all the modern features of the genre. The assets include a dynamic gameplay, aggravated in the case of cooperative passing by the need for rudimentary planning and use of tactics, an excellent balance of opponents on the meat-boss scale and a damage model (dismemberment!) Responsible for smart critical hits to the head and scattering limbs.
Heads just explode like blood fountains. The rating of the game is justified.
Only artificial intelligence and some conventions spoil the bright impressions. Bosses and rare high-level representatives of Pandora’s fauna (alpha-skag is a serious opponent, fast, armored and deadly) can cause trouble, but it’s difficult to deal with them not because of their meaningful actions, but with a large number of hits, extreme damage or just a large number of broods / gangs. The AI ​​rests: the monsters' attack standards (a flock of pterodactyly rakkov will enter the target, ignoring the losses), the gangsters can move along the specified route from the box to the box or hide behind it, squatting and getting up just after the measured time. An occasional grenade or flank bypass looks against the general background as something supernatural, but it happens too rarely.
The situation is saved by a diverse arsenal of weapons (an enemy with a good barrel is a direct threat) and a strange system of dependence of damage on the level. Do not even try to get the fifth or sixth level, in a hurry to run into the guys around the corner, marked by levels from 9th to 11th. The newly found SMG with a loss of 25 units is unlikely to be able to “knock out” at least two or three life points per hit in the development of the enemy. Neither tactics, nor grenades, nor the use of unique skills of characters will help. It is worth getting a couple of levels and, oh, a miracle, all the same weapons, with the same level of damage, now, albeit with difficulty (the number of hit points from opponents affects) is quite capable of coping with the task. And laughter, and sin. However, the effectiveness of the method, which does not allow to be poked where it should not be before the kick of a guideline storyline is obvious.
Pandora's Wastes
The first acquaintance with Pandora immediately makes it clear that this planet is a desert world, where a town of a dozen shacks assembled from scrap is a civilization, and a bloodthirsty skug awaits you at the threshold of your home.
Signs "back off" or "for trouble - there" are often found.
This is a harsh world of wasteland, populated by small citizens trying to survive and work and trying to feed and survive the zoo from a little less than a dozen species of local fauna. Locals, literally in a single copy presented in a pair of the first settlements, supply the characters with additional quests either directly or through an improvised bulletin board - a mandatory attribute of a more or less meaningful town. It's simple: to get information, “to find out about the right people from people who know people,” or simply to earn extra money, you will have to help the local people. And no matter what they care about at the moment: the death of gangsters who picked up too close to the city or the search for a missing friend.
Despite the simplicity of side quests, non-core business for the treasure seekers of Vault is up to my throat.
A variety of side quests do not differ, and nine-tenths of them in the style of “find and bring 4 pieces of food”, “find and bring 8 shoots of a plant”, “find and bring four parts of an assault rifle” are not worth attention. As a result, the pleasure of exploring the vast world is gradually replaced by the longing of the quest “Kacha” - repeated visits to the same type of zones and streaming, quickly smashing, killing low-level opponents.
The main plot of the story, which is also not sparkling with novelty (searching for several keys from a closed door, as originally), constantly stumbles upon complexity in the form of the complete obstruction of the next high-level opponents post mentioned above, which is doubly important for the cooperative, since the more players in the team, the stronger enemy. So additional quests can still be seen as an inevitable evil, which allows you to raise the level of characters, get a more powerful barrel and, perhaps, look into the still unexplored corners of the map, where every hour and every heap of garbage are comfortably placed every hour mutants. Respawns animals on the game map will be envied by the “Clear Sky” with its constantly fighting landfill, especially since clashes between monsters and gangsters in the Borderlands are not rare.
Local transportation. Four wheels, a powerful engine with the possibility of afterburner, a pair of machine guns and a grenade launcher to boot.
Fortunately, the developers did not abuse the confidence of those who like to look at the landscapes and provided the characters with the opportunity to rest their legs and transfer to a double buggy, which is called from transport terminals scattered here and there. Four wheels and a pair of machine guns or a rocket launcher to choose from is a good way to get rid of the bustle and (bypassing or crushing the wheels with everything that comes across them) routine useless skirmishes. In addition, from about half of the storyline, upon reaching the town of New Heaven, through the efforts of the heroes, the Pandora network of New-U terminals (a type of local resurrectionists) restores the full functionality, which turns it into convenient teleports that significantly reduce movement time.
Fusion of genres
Gearbox Software did not hide the fact that they were doing "Diablo first-person." Full copying of the plot, entourage and gameplay was avoided, but the main points, such as character development and weapon system were borrowed. Players have four fighters, each of which is to some extent unique. The point is not only in the appearance and voice of rare phrases and comments, but in the specialization and skills available.
The game for each of the characters is not very different, but the nuances are present.
As a basis - personal class skill (action skill). So, Berserker, specializing in the skill of hand-to-hand combat, falls into a fighting madness, handing out powerful blows, getting almost immune to damage and regenerating. In turn, the Soldier (master of possession of assault rifles and shotguns) quickly puts the Scorpio Turret - a turret with a minigun that helps to survive in difficult situations. And Siren (this only lady in the team is prone to using weapons with elemental damage, although she prefers machine guns) is capable of moving to another dimension for a short time (Phasewalking) and delivering critical blows to her exit. The fourth character, Hunter - a specialist in sniper rifles and revolvers - “in his pocket” lurched a hand-made pet — the hawk Bloodwing, which can scratch the enemy well.
22 skills (5 levels in each): a good help for customization of the character.
Earning experience, rising in a level, a character gains skill points, which are invested in pumping (five points maximum) of various skills, of which 22 for each character. There are enough variants of pumping: from each adventurer, even at mid-level, you can make a fighter unique in the style of the game. So, for example, Hunter, due to the insertion of skill points in different branches of skills, you can “pull” on revolvers, terrible for the destructive power in melee combat, or train in the delicate use of a sniper rifle. But do not forget about the skills responsible for improving the basic class skills. The increased force of the berserker strike, the regeneration during phasewalking (or exponentially the increasing additive to the critical strike) at Siren is a smart help in difficult situations.
Despite the fact that the options for the development of characters abound, too careful approach to this issue is not worth it. A couple of thousand green dollars (the currency of the future is not much different from the most common current one) and the multi-purpose terminal New-U will allow you to reset all points invested in skills with their subsequent redistribution. So if a soldier picked up on assault rifles picked up a gorgeous rare shotgun that asks for candidates for his favorite weapon, then all you need is to get to New-U and rummage through pumping.
... the main one with a gun
Changing weapons, however, is not the best option. The fact is that one more element of character development and Borderlands is weapon specialization. In Borderlands, there are seven types of barrels — pistols (these include automatic pistols and revolvers), submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and “alien” weapons - the alien race of Eridian. Different characters prefer these or other types of weapons, which is expressed in the presence of skills that increase accuracy, reload speed and damage. However, weapon pumping also works: the more one of the seven types is used, the more successfully the character is managed with it. It's simple: they ran for two hours with a submachine gun, raised possession of this type of weapon by, say, level 4, receiving 9% damage, 15% accuracy and reduced reload time for the magazine.
Gun shop. Why do you need a seller, if the guns are issued nano-mutated telephone booth.
In this case, as, by the way, and everything else, Gearbox diligently copied the best of the Blizzard developments. Having such indicators as damage, accuracy, reload rate and several types of “elemental” damage (fire, lightning, explosion, acid), it was a sin not to use all this. Different manufacturers (Jakobs - increasing stopping power, Dahl - a balance of accuracy and slaughter, but nothing compares with Atlas's rare weapon), several variables that can be changed as you please, with a couple dozen unique properties (hallelujah in the description means the ability to “regenerate cartridges ") And as a result, the weapons in the game are more than 600 thousand. This, however, is not about specific trunks, though unique things are found everywhere, but about modifications that are unique in terms of appearance (yes, the “assembly” of trunks on the fly each time gives a new result) and characteristics. With the obligatory color differentiation from simple white to mega-rare violet.
So it is not surprising that the looting in Borderland is not limited to the selection of first-aid kits and cartridges. Every opponent, especially a boss, is ready to leave behind a pistol, machine gun or a module that increases the skills of the characters. And not only the enemy: the wastelands, the mines and the caves of Pandora are crammed with safes, tin boxes, piles of garbage, even old washing machines with “consumables” (ammunition, money) and gun containers in which you can find from two to four trunks per set. All chests and boxes are neatly updated - all according to the canon - with each new sequel to the previously saved game. Found trash can be sold in logically placed here and there machines like those that we saw in Bioshock. One gives out trunks for money, the second supplies first-aid kits, protective fields and pretty skill enhancers, the third stamps cheap ammunition and expands the character's pockets in a mysterious way, increasing the maximum amount of transferred cartridges for a particular gun.
Cell-Shading file completion
Borderlands can be blamed for several console flaws - the game was developed for both PCs and PS3 and Xbox 360, and even then, here and there, protruding ears stick out of it. But on closer examination, the negative is replaced by benevolence. Not surprisingly: auto-aiming can be turned off in the menu, the graphics settings are fine-tuned, the Unreal Engine 3 does not work on the top-end hardware just fine, coping with graphics and with quite sane physics. It was not possible to “overcome” only the absence of smoothing. The game does not have its native support, and forcing the AA by forces on non-high-end systems leads to a very strong FPS strike.
Most of Pandora is an endless dump, not a wasteland.
Fortunately, the use of Cell-Shading technology in the creation / coloring of textures and objects, not only allowed Gearbox to give its project an unusual appearance, but also somewhat smoothed out visual flaws. Nevertheless, DOF is an inevitable evil here (distant textures leave to do better, so blurring is the way out), and some objects look just awful (what the sunflowers cost, seemingly literally superfluous against the background of the dump). But these are such trifles that it would not be true to put them at the center, taking into account the rest of the positive.
Long-term cooperative
Gearbox Software has turned out to be a great shooter, designed for a fashionable cooperative today. You can play alone, but the possibility of joint passage (local network, Internet - to choose from) is most welcome. A good concept, the share of style and a thoughtful combination of the standard gameplay with elements borrowed from their role-playing games is a good starting point for sales to fans of several add-ons, one of which is Zombie Island of Dr. Ned - already announced and will be released this year.
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Genre: First-person action shooter with RPG elements
The new cooperative shooter Borderlands deserves attention as a rare representative of the mixing of the genres of first-person shooter and RPG and as the owner of a unique visual style. Even if the ambitious developers from Gearbox Software and the venerable publisher of 2K Games were behind the nameplate, even then the game, a path not as expected as, for example, Bioshock 2, would invariably be under the watchful eye of the public. In our case, we are dealing with the largest project of the studio to date, which previously had a hand in the popular Brothers in Arms series, the notorious Halo and the iconic Half-Life.
Taking all the best from the design of the fallout 3 wastelands sullen in the yellow, the creators of Borderlands borrowed from Bioshock elements of stylish presentation of information about the plot, adding a chain of unhindered quests. Then, making a bet on the popular co-op, which came out on the first roles after Left4Dead, in Gearbox they planted players for Diablo-like character development drug. Do not forget about the endless process of finding new items of equipment, according to the custom, colored from the usual-white to rare-orange. Finally, through the efforts of designers who have combined the proven Unreal Engine with Cell-Shading animation technology, Borderlands has received an uncommonly modern and beautiful, but unusual appearance, emphasizing the unique atmosphere of what is happening. With all this, Gearbox Software managed to virtually avoid technical flaws. Despite the lack of native support for anti-aliasing and unpresentable shadows, the UE3 with Cell-Shading (and thanks to Cell-Shading) looks decent and works smoothly, while not slowly falling to the desktop under any circumstances.
')
Not an epic story
In contrast to the exclusive driving entertainment like Call of Duty, where the nonstop action is put at the forefront, Borderlands leaves players time to comprehend what is happening, to decide on the goals and figure out what's what. Before us is not a corridor shooter, but a game with a pseudo-open world, allowing free movement in the allotted framework of game maps. But this approach does not tolerate a meaningful void. The developers, of course, clearly did not set as a priority the receipt of the award “for the best scenario.” The main thing is that the background plays the role assigned to it. And he plays, with slices - quests, audio recordings found here and there and rare conversations with NPCs - cutting into the story of four adventurers, professional mercenaries and daredevils trying to find a mystical repository (eng. Vault), which is rumored to be on the planet under uniquely hinting title Pandora.
On Pandora, the heroes are met by a Claptrap robot. A charismatic and a bit of a bad piece of iron that loves to dance.
From the town of Fyrestone, half-forgotten by God, a pair of shacks and a fence begins the journey of the above-mentioned four, remotely and occasionally guided in a fatherly caring local trader Maruks (“When you get to the treasure, you need a partner to sell them, right?”) And Angel Keeper Vault. No break, an epic confrontation between good and evil, the salvation of the world in the name or for the benefit, everything revolves around the banal thirst for profit and adventure. However, you should not really put an end to the writers. Science fiction, a little mysticism and a pinch of contact with the legacy of extraterrestrial civilizations are more than a good reason not to stupidly knock on the keys and run only in the direction of the marker on the map, but also pay attention to the very “slices” of the plot. As a result, at almost every moment in time, players know why their trunks are directed exactly to this, and not to the opposite side.
Conventions
Despite the acquisition of RPG features, Borderlands is essentially a great shooter, with all the modern features of the genre. The assets include a dynamic gameplay, aggravated in the case of cooperative passing by the need for rudimentary planning and use of tactics, an excellent balance of opponents on the meat-boss scale and a damage model (dismemberment!) Responsible for smart critical hits to the head and scattering limbs.
Heads just explode like blood fountains. The rating of the game is justified.
Only artificial intelligence and some conventions spoil the bright impressions. Bosses and rare high-level representatives of Pandora’s fauna (alpha-skag is a serious opponent, fast, armored and deadly) can cause trouble, but it’s difficult to deal with them not because of their meaningful actions, but with a large number of hits, extreme damage or just a large number of broods / gangs. The AI ​​rests: the monsters' attack standards (a flock of pterodactyly rakkov will enter the target, ignoring the losses), the gangsters can move along the specified route from the box to the box or hide behind it, squatting and getting up just after the measured time. An occasional grenade or flank bypass looks against the general background as something supernatural, but it happens too rarely.
The situation is saved by a diverse arsenal of weapons (an enemy with a good barrel is a direct threat) and a strange system of dependence of damage on the level. Do not even try to get the fifth or sixth level, in a hurry to run into the guys around the corner, marked by levels from 9th to 11th. The newly found SMG with a loss of 25 units is unlikely to be able to “knock out” at least two or three life points per hit in the development of the enemy. Neither tactics, nor grenades, nor the use of unique skills of characters will help. It is worth getting a couple of levels and, oh, a miracle, all the same weapons, with the same level of damage, now, albeit with difficulty (the number of hit points from opponents affects) is quite capable of coping with the task. And laughter, and sin. However, the effectiveness of the method, which does not allow to be poked where it should not be before the kick of a guideline storyline is obvious.
Pandora's Wastes
The first acquaintance with Pandora immediately makes it clear that this planet is a desert world, where a town of a dozen shacks assembled from scrap is a civilization, and a bloodthirsty skug awaits you at the threshold of your home.
Signs "back off" or "for trouble - there" are often found.
This is a harsh world of wasteland, populated by small citizens trying to survive and work and trying to feed and survive the zoo from a little less than a dozen species of local fauna. Locals, literally in a single copy presented in a pair of the first settlements, supply the characters with additional quests either directly or through an improvised bulletin board - a mandatory attribute of a more or less meaningful town. It's simple: to get information, “to find out about the right people from people who know people,” or simply to earn extra money, you will have to help the local people. And no matter what they care about at the moment: the death of gangsters who picked up too close to the city or the search for a missing friend.
Despite the simplicity of side quests, non-core business for the treasure seekers of Vault is up to my throat.
A variety of side quests do not differ, and nine-tenths of them in the style of “find and bring 4 pieces of food”, “find and bring 8 shoots of a plant”, “find and bring four parts of an assault rifle” are not worth attention. As a result, the pleasure of exploring the vast world is gradually replaced by the longing of the quest “Kacha” - repeated visits to the same type of zones and streaming, quickly smashing, killing low-level opponents.
The main plot of the story, which is also not sparkling with novelty (searching for several keys from a closed door, as originally), constantly stumbles upon complexity in the form of the complete obstruction of the next high-level opponents post mentioned above, which is doubly important for the cooperative, since the more players in the team, the stronger enemy. So additional quests can still be seen as an inevitable evil, which allows you to raise the level of characters, get a more powerful barrel and, perhaps, look into the still unexplored corners of the map, where every hour and every heap of garbage are comfortably placed every hour mutants. Respawns animals on the game map will be envied by the “Clear Sky” with its constantly fighting landfill, especially since clashes between monsters and gangsters in the Borderlands are not rare.
Local transportation. Four wheels, a powerful engine with the possibility of afterburner, a pair of machine guns and a grenade launcher to boot.
Fortunately, the developers did not abuse the confidence of those who like to look at the landscapes and provided the characters with the opportunity to rest their legs and transfer to a double buggy, which is called from transport terminals scattered here and there. Four wheels and a pair of machine guns or a rocket launcher to choose from is a good way to get rid of the bustle and (bypassing or crushing the wheels with everything that comes across them) routine useless skirmishes. In addition, from about half of the storyline, upon reaching the town of New Heaven, through the efforts of the heroes, the Pandora network of New-U terminals (a type of local resurrectionists) restores the full functionality, which turns it into convenient teleports that significantly reduce movement time.
Fusion of genres
Gearbox Software did not hide the fact that they were doing "Diablo first-person." Full copying of the plot, entourage and gameplay was avoided, but the main points, such as character development and weapon system were borrowed. Players have four fighters, each of which is to some extent unique. The point is not only in the appearance and voice of rare phrases and comments, but in the specialization and skills available.
The game for each of the characters is not very different, but the nuances are present.
As a basis - personal class skill (action skill). So, Berserker, specializing in the skill of hand-to-hand combat, falls into a fighting madness, handing out powerful blows, getting almost immune to damage and regenerating. In turn, the Soldier (master of possession of assault rifles and shotguns) quickly puts the Scorpio Turret - a turret with a minigun that helps to survive in difficult situations. And Siren (this only lady in the team is prone to using weapons with elemental damage, although she prefers machine guns) is capable of moving to another dimension for a short time (Phasewalking) and delivering critical blows to her exit. The fourth character, Hunter - a specialist in sniper rifles and revolvers - “in his pocket” lurched a hand-made pet — the hawk Bloodwing, which can scratch the enemy well.
22 skills (5 levels in each): a good help for customization of the character.
Earning experience, rising in a level, a character gains skill points, which are invested in pumping (five points maximum) of various skills, of which 22 for each character. There are enough variants of pumping: from each adventurer, even at mid-level, you can make a fighter unique in the style of the game. So, for example, Hunter, due to the insertion of skill points in different branches of skills, you can “pull” on revolvers, terrible for the destructive power in melee combat, or train in the delicate use of a sniper rifle. But do not forget about the skills responsible for improving the basic class skills. The increased force of the berserker strike, the regeneration during phasewalking (or exponentially the increasing additive to the critical strike) at Siren is a smart help in difficult situations.
Despite the fact that the options for the development of characters abound, too careful approach to this issue is not worth it. A couple of thousand green dollars (the currency of the future is not much different from the most common current one) and the multi-purpose terminal New-U will allow you to reset all points invested in skills with their subsequent redistribution. So if a soldier picked up on assault rifles picked up a gorgeous rare shotgun that asks for candidates for his favorite weapon, then all you need is to get to New-U and rummage through pumping.
... the main one with a gun
Changing weapons, however, is not the best option. The fact is that one more element of character development and Borderlands is weapon specialization. In Borderlands, there are seven types of barrels — pistols (these include automatic pistols and revolvers), submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and “alien” weapons - the alien race of Eridian. Different characters prefer these or other types of weapons, which is expressed in the presence of skills that increase accuracy, reload speed and damage. However, weapon pumping also works: the more one of the seven types is used, the more successfully the character is managed with it. It's simple: they ran for two hours with a submachine gun, raised possession of this type of weapon by, say, level 4, receiving 9% damage, 15% accuracy and reduced reload time for the magazine.
Gun shop. Why do you need a seller, if the guns are issued nano-mutated telephone booth.
In this case, as, by the way, and everything else, Gearbox diligently copied the best of the Blizzard developments. Having such indicators as damage, accuracy, reload rate and several types of “elemental” damage (fire, lightning, explosion, acid), it was a sin not to use all this. Different manufacturers (Jakobs - increasing stopping power, Dahl - a balance of accuracy and slaughter, but nothing compares with Atlas's rare weapon), several variables that can be changed as you please, with a couple dozen unique properties (hallelujah in the description means the ability to “regenerate cartridges ") And as a result, the weapons in the game are more than 600 thousand. This, however, is not about specific trunks, though unique things are found everywhere, but about modifications that are unique in terms of appearance (yes, the “assembly” of trunks on the fly each time gives a new result) and characteristics. With the obligatory color differentiation from simple white to mega-rare violet.
So it is not surprising that the looting in Borderland is not limited to the selection of first-aid kits and cartridges. Every opponent, especially a boss, is ready to leave behind a pistol, machine gun or a module that increases the skills of the characters. And not only the enemy: the wastelands, the mines and the caves of Pandora are crammed with safes, tin boxes, piles of garbage, even old washing machines with “consumables” (ammunition, money) and gun containers in which you can find from two to four trunks per set. All chests and boxes are neatly updated - all according to the canon - with each new sequel to the previously saved game. Found trash can be sold in logically placed here and there machines like those that we saw in Bioshock. One gives out trunks for money, the second supplies first-aid kits, protective fields and pretty skill enhancers, the third stamps cheap ammunition and expands the character's pockets in a mysterious way, increasing the maximum amount of transferred cartridges for a particular gun.
Cell-Shading file completion
Borderlands can be blamed for several console flaws - the game was developed for both PCs and PS3 and Xbox 360, and even then, here and there, protruding ears stick out of it. But on closer examination, the negative is replaced by benevolence. Not surprisingly: auto-aiming can be turned off in the menu, the graphics settings are fine-tuned, the Unreal Engine 3 does not work on the top-end hardware just fine, coping with graphics and with quite sane physics. It was not possible to “overcome” only the absence of smoothing. The game does not have its native support, and forcing the AA by forces on non-high-end systems leads to a very strong FPS strike.
Most of Pandora is an endless dump, not a wasteland.
Fortunately, the use of Cell-Shading technology in the creation / coloring of textures and objects, not only allowed Gearbox to give its project an unusual appearance, but also somewhat smoothed out visual flaws. Nevertheless, DOF is an inevitable evil here (distant textures leave to do better, so blurring is the way out), and some objects look just awful (what the sunflowers cost, seemingly literally superfluous against the background of the dump). But these are such trifles that it would not be true to put them at the center, taking into account the rest of the positive.
Long-term cooperative
Gearbox Software has turned out to be a great shooter, designed for a fashionable cooperative today. You can play alone, but the possibility of joint passage (local network, Internet - to choose from) is most welcome. A good concept, the share of style and a thoughtful combination of the standard gameplay with elements borrowed from their role-playing games is a good starting point for sales to fans of several add-ons, one of which is Zombie Island of Dr. Ned - already announced and will be released this year.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/75882/
All Articles