Borderlands

[Rinoa]

I like the look of this game, but probably won't get it until it's going cheap.

[Rayne]

I rented this game for the week and whoa! What a game! :O

If I'd paid £40 for it new, I'd still be well chuffed.

The gameplay is great fun, the shooting mechanics are solid, searching for loot is addictive and the graphics are beautiful one of the nicest surprises of 09.

I'm currently a level 21....girl I can't remember the class name, it'll be about 4am by the time I put the controller down

[Crunchy]

By the way there are a gazillion guns in this game, some of them are brilliant, they're not all clones, shitloads of genuinely different guns. The way you level up and collect items from the wasteland really reminds me of PSO, it's shares the exact kind of addictiveness as that game.

Yes, that PSO loot collecting vibe ... always a winner with me.

Borderlands is easily up there as a contender for my Game Of The Year. The game looks and plays great both online and offline. The netcode is absolutely solid. Excellent stuff IMO. I'd like to see more vehicles in the game but that's just a miserly moan tbh. Great game,

[C=Style]

We found Sledge to be relatively easy - in fact, getting the Mine Key itself was harder. Just wait until you get to Skagzilla! Finishing that was a proper sense of achievement

Trust me, it was really hard when I went up against him, I beat him with about 7 health points left. It was very satisfying.

So when you co-op, it's much easier? Does the game not double the boss health points? (or x4 if 4 players). Yet to really play properly online, in fact all the people laying on my friends lists are going solo and I persoanlly think it's a brilliant game without the online, but I can;t wait for my bother to get it so I can team up with him!

[Rayne]

In my experience the game is much harder in co-op but a lot more satisfying.

I'm having a lot of fun doing it solo, I play most of the game that way. But the frantic communitcation with a team, combining weapons and abilities and being totally surrounded by gun totting maniacs has its charms

[Mayhem]

Just watch out for the apparent bug in online co-op that can wipe your character's stats... reason why I'm not going online yet just in case until patch. I know someone who has the viral co-op achievement though so that's one reason why I will at some point in the future...

Started a split screen game with my brother last night too just so we can see the differences and earn some of the co-op achievements.

Trust me, it was really hard when I went up against him, I beat him with about 7 health points left. It was very satisfying.

Should be interesting then, I'll be heading into the mine as my next action. Currently level 19, having just won the first Arena battle side mission (some of those skags take a hell of a beating and rarely open their mouths!). Got a good shield but still running with level 12-15 guns, where's my good level 18-20 stuff?!

[C=Style]

Yeah that should be a good fight against Sledge then.

I'm now fighting the other boss, Mad Mel I think his name is at the arena, now he's really tough and I can't see me beating him just yet unless I go co-op actually.

[Crunchy]

So when you co-op, it's much easier?

Co-op is harder. The game increases the enemy levels etc depending on how many players are in the game. Every time a player joins your game you get the message "The monsters of Pandora grow stronger!". The enemies weaken again if somebody leaves. You get better loot drops and more experience in a co-op game.

The game also steps up the difficulty in single player and co-op if you decide to play through again after completion. The monsters and enemies are higher in level and have different names (Badmutha Brute instead of Bruiser, for example), they use a lot more elemental tech weapons. The awesome weapons you attain first time round are soon rendered obsolete. I'm on my second playthrough and it's hard. Getting past sledge was very tough indeed.

Easily one of the best games this year IMO.

[C=Style]

So when you co-op, it's much easier?

Co-op is harder.

So it does ramp up the difficulty then, thats good. But I don't see how it would be harder. For instance you will have multiple firing angles with 4 players which makes it a lot easier to take down a single enemy like Sledge if you surround him.

Anyway, I do agree, one of the best games this year no doubt!

[Crunchy]

So when you co-op, it's much easier?

Co-op is harder.

So it does ramp up the difficulty then, thats good. But I don't see how it would be harder. For instance you will have multiple firing angles with 4 players which makes it a lot easier to take down a single enemy like Sledge if you surround him.

Anyway, I do agree, one of the best games this year no doubt!

The game doesn't just increase Sledge's HP.

Sledge is ranked up. He does more damage. He takes more damage. The minions he has in there with him are more numerous and also of higher rank. They use elemental weapon of higher class, dodge incoming fire and throw grenades. The game is way more difficult if all the players are roughly the same level, trust me. Sledge would only go down easy if it was a game started by a low level player and at least one of the other players was of a much higher rank. I found single player a complete breeze compared to the ramped up co-op. And that's even after re-speccing my skills for team bonuses and using mods that offer the same when I'm playing online. On my second playthrough save the single player is hard, the co-op is very hard indeed. You will know what I'm talking about when you first face multiple Feral Skags backed up by a couple of Hardened Alpha Skags. And that's just the skags ffs lol.

You can easily see the difference between single player and co-op if you go to Skag Gully. In co-op there's no whelps, they're replaced by stuff like Elder Skags and Badass Skags that do corrosive, fire or shock damage.

[Vir_Lucis]

Sorry, editing my post seemed to cause some issues

[Vir_Lucis]

Sledge would only go down easy if it was a game started by a low level player and at least one of the other players was of a much higher rank.

Agree with everything else you just said, except this part. Played two-player co-op, both level 20 (played through the whole game from the beginning together) - one solider, one hunter - and we found him to be pretty easy. Maybe we just had the right weapons equipped...but we didn't have to respawn even once.

Having said that, the difficulty does ramp up in points quite considerably - but thankfully the respawn system is lenient enough to allow you to get through even the hard parts with enough persistence! Two-player co-op, to me, is at the perfect level of fun and challenge. Absolutely spot on.

I think the biggest advantage you get from co-op is that you can swap aggro between one another, and also you can stack the class modifiers nicely (we had health regen and ammo regen when fighting against Skagzilla - and needed both!!).

[Vir_Lucis]

Sorry, multi-post.

[Crunchy]

Sledge would only go down easy if it was a game started by a low level player and at least one of the other players was of a much higher rank.

Agree with everything else you just said, except this part. Played two-player co-op, both level 20 (played through the whole game from the beginning together) - one solider, one hunter - and we found him to be pretty easy. Maybe we just had the right weapons equipped...but we didn't have to respawn even once.

Having said that, the difficulty does ramp up in points quite considerably - but thankfully the respawn system is lenient enough to allow you to get through even the hard parts with enough persistence! Two-player co-op, to me, is at the perfect level of fun and challenge. Absolutely spot on.

I think the biggest advantage you get from co-op is that you can swap aggro between one another, and also you can stack the class modifiers nicely (we had health regen and ammo regen when fighting against Skagzilla - and needed both!!).

Sledge will obviously go down fairly easily if you were both level 20. You've capped him out. Sledge is only an early boss. Unless you're talking about a second playthrough or something.

[Vir_Lucis]

I thought the mission was level 19? I might have been wrong about what level we were actually...in fact, definitely. Since we are now at about 22/23 and just gotten to New Haven.

I remember being one level higher than the mission stated...whatever that was. We definitely hadn't capped him as, as I said, getting the Mine Key was really difficult.