In Third Person

With not much going on in my life right now, I spent most of today in my basement completing The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. I know, this is the third Knoxx post in as many days, but now that I've beaten the main quest and most of the side missions, I'm ready to write down some final impressions of the DLC.

As mentioned in my first two posts, this DLC starts out ludicrously hard. If you just completed playthrough 1, or have a maxed out level 50 character on playthrough 2, you will die in the beginning. A lot. I got destroyed by the very first bad guy I saw, and continued to be dominated throughout most of the experience by flying drones. I can see a lot of people giving up on this DLC at the start, but if you can tough it out, you'll be rewarded with a really good add-on.

If you're starting this DLC in between level 35 and 50, then your experience will vary wildly. My brother is level 43, and this was how I found out that General Knoxx does not scale to your character. If you play with a level 43 character in playthrough 1, you will demolish everything in your path. If you play with a level 43 character in playthrough 2, you literally wouldn't stand a chance against anything.

For me, the moment I hit the jail level was where the experience finally came into its own. The jail level was easily my favourite part of the DLC because I felt that level captures Borderlands at its best. Yes, that's half-way through the DLC, but at this point regular encounters were tough, but fair. From that point on, it played just like you would hope it would. You get to shoot lots of guys, level up your character, and there are no shortage of big-time guns (elemental ones in particular).


The ending to General Knoxx was much more satisfying than the main game. Without spoiling it, the boss fight is much better (and still tough) and the payoff is much improved (and exciting).

The only major aspect of this DLC I haven't tried yet is the ultimate boss. There is a level 64 boss that is practically impossible to beat by yourself, but with a party, you may stand a chance. If you beat the boss, you will have a chance to get some of the best guns in the game. The boss will never go away, so you can take a crack at it as many times as you want.

For 800 MS points, you get a lot of content from The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. Lots of new gear, quests, missions and a raised level cap are more than enough motivation for someone who just beat the game to go back to Borderlands. Playing through the main quest and the side missions will take you approximately 8-12 hours, which is very good considering the price. Just be warned that if your character is in the low 40's, you won't find a playthrough that fits for you and if you're coming into it maxed out, you're in for a rough start.

As I write this, I'm trying to shake the glaze off of my eyes. In the last two days, I've put in a good 15 hours into Borderlands. I played for about 7 hours today; only stopping because my brother and I felt physically sick from the non-stop Borderlands marathon.

This game has been a huge surprise to me. Nothing about the game's pre-launch hype grabbed me at all. I didn't care that there were 17 million guns in it. I didn't care that it was sort of a mix of Fallout 3 and Diablo. I didn't care much for the cell-shaded art style either. It's pretty, but it doesn't make my jaw drop or anything like that.

But then the reviews came in and were pretty impressive. Then the game at launch sold out everywhere. I found myself talking a lot about a game I had no interest in trying just because the game was so hot at the time. What ultimately pushed me over the edge were my old co-worker and brother committing to playing this game co-op with me should I choose to join.

I received the game as a Christmas present. At first, I wasn't so high on it due to the game starting out kind of slow. It was also a bit jarring making the transition to this after beating Modern Warfare 2, as Borderlands is a completely different experience. However, the moment I hit Sledge's hideout, the game grabbed me tight and has ceased to let me go.


What was it about Sledge's hideout that made the difference? Not much, really. It was though at this point where the game all came together for me. My initial indifference towards the vast arsenal of guns in the game quelled when I found myself in Sledge's hideout, finding awesome gun after awesome gun. I wanted to take them all with me while keeping my current stash, but my backpack size wouldn't allow for it. From then on, the game becomes a constant hunt for bigger and better weaponry. You'll pour over stats and constantly think about which guns to keep, which to sell, and which to ditch in order to make room for the next thing.

It was also here where I told my brother about how the game came together for me at this moment. He too was cool on the game until we went back and played through Sledge's hideout. From then on, I've played most of the game along with my brother. Having split-screen co-op has made the experience so much better for us. With many games foregoing split-screen completely, it is awesome that my brother and I can play through this game together. For those who don't have the luxury of couch co-op, there is four-player online co-op you can take part in as well.

Since then, my brother and I have become completely absorbed in the world of Pandora. We're having a lot of fun playing through all of the main quests and side quests. There are so many many different quests and quest types that I don't see this experience ending anytime soon. Having spent about 20 hours on this game thus far, I'm only about half way through the main quest. On top of that and all the side stuff, the game includes a "playthrough 2", which lets you play through the game again which things changed up. To get through all of that could take you easily 100 hours of play time. Should you want to get really deep into the game and beat it with all four character classes, you could easily drop a few hundred more hours into the game.


There are a lot of different elements to Borderlands that make the game so fun and engaging. I almost feel like if they had nailed this execution perfectly, this game has the potential to be one of the best games of all-time. I'm not even into this style of game, but I can see a ton of potential in this game. Before I drown myself in hyperbole though, I can't talk about Borderlands without bringing up some of its glaring and fundamental faults.

A few days ago, I posted an entry about some of the glitchy elements of Borderlands. After spending a lot more time with it, I still feel like the whole game is kind of janky. The shooting mechanics don't feel quite right. You never really get a sense of impact when you shoot at anything. There have been a number of spots where my character gets weirdly stuck. Twice in the same day I was completely immobile and had to quit the game in order to get out of it. Since then, there have been a few more instances where my character will be stuck for a few moments and I don't understand why.

Speaking of glitchy, there was one point in the first Circle of Death mission where the final skag ended up clipping through a wall into an area he couldn't attack me from. I could shoot it with bullets through the wall, but explosives did nothing to it.

The AI of the enemies also leaves a lot to be desired. Most enemies will simply run at you or attack you with very basic patterns. Sometimes, enemies won't move at all, which allows you to just stand still and shoot them until they die. The level scaling of the enemies does cover up some of the AI's faults, but in a lot of games this level of AI is inexcusable.

While I am thankful for the inclusion of split-screen co-op, the way the menus work out in co-op are awful. Instead of scaling the menus down to fit the split-screens, they keep all the menus at original size and force both players to manually adjust their view to see whatever part of the menu they need. It's an embarrassing oversight in my opinion, especially for a game where navigating menus is such an important part of the experience.

The frame-rate during intense moments does dip below 30 frames per second, which leads to brief moments of choppiness. It never really gets in the way when you play by yourself. In split-screen, intense moments of action make the game chug more. At one point specifically, we thought the game crashed because everything just froze. In fact, it was just the frame-rate dropping to single digits.

Way-points are another sore-spot for Borderlands. For most of the game, following the way-points will lead you exactly where you need to go. However, a number of quests don't work this way. Instead, the way-point will just lead you to a general area where you'll then have to figure the rest out for yourself. Not knowing this can leave a player annoyed to no end. I've had items I need to find end up upwards of 100 yards away from the way-point. Next time around, way-points should always lead you exactly to where you need to go or give you a general idea of where to go. Never both.


Traversing across different zones is also problematic. While the game does give you the option to spawn vehicles and warp from certain points, the game does a poor job of telling you how each of the worlds are connected. When you pull up your map, it only indicates "transitions" from one zone to another without telling you which transition leads to which zone. If you don't memorize what each transition is for every zone and don't know exactly where you need to teleport to get to your destination, you could find yourself needlessly walking or driving through three or four different zones while wasting 15 to 20 minutes of your time in the process.

Reading this, you're probably wondering how I could one minute call this a game with the potential to be the best game of all-time and then immediately follow-up with a number of faults with it. Does my initial sentiment still stand? Yes. In spite of its flaws, Borderlands succeeds where it matters most: fun-factor. The feeling I get from playing this game is a feeling that only comes out when I play something really special. You can easily drop dozens or hundreds of hours into this game and have a blast the entire time. With over 2 million copies of the game sold, it's almost inevitable that a sequel to Borderlands will emerge at some point. If Gearbox can match the game's fun-factor with equally awesome production values, the sequel has the potential to be phenomenal.

Until then, my brother and I are going to be spending a lot more time in the world of Pandora.

Before I vent my frustrations towards Borderlands, let me say that overall, I'm pretty impressed with the game. It's a style of game that I'm really unfamiliar with, yet it has grabbed me enough to want to keep leveling up my guy and find the next awesome gun.

I've been playing it for a few hours today, when I came across a side quest where I had to find pieces of a sniper rifle. I went through a few intense battles fighting high-level skags and a whole whack of bandits before I was able to scavenge for the parts. However, the final piece eluded me. I followed the way-point to the exact location and searched high and low around it with no luck. I searched so hard, that I actually jumped into a place I wasn't supposed to be in apparently. I got pinned between a building and a fence, causing my character to be completely stuck. The only way out was to save and quit the game.

Unfortunately, it also saved my lack of ammo. This, combined with all of the bad guys I beat re-spawning into the world made the game 10 times more frustrating than it should have.


I hate when video games break. While I don't work in video game development, I do work in development and understand that its impossible to test and fix everything before launch. But as a gamer, bugs that get in the way of gameplay totally take you out of the experience and sometimes can ruin the game completely. The act of me being stuck where I was could have been dumb luck. However, inaccurate way-points are inexcusable. I did a search on Google for "borderlands sniper rifle quest" and immediately found others who experienced the same problem. Researching this one problem also shows that the inaccurate way-point thing happens more than once, which kind of makes me not want to continue with side quests at all.

When a game breaks really bad, I have no qualms about getting rid of it. I don't see myself doing that with Borderlands (yet) and I hope I don't have to. At the very least, I won't be playing that game until I can come back with a cooler head.