Tagged Sandbox

Finding Nuggets Within Subpar Desserts

For full context, I recommend reading my reviews of the base game and its DLCs:

• Main game
• Zombie Island Of Dr. Ned
• Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot
• Secret Armory Of General Knoxx
• Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution

The FPS half was fitting for Gearbox, thanks to prior experience with Half-Life’s expansions and ports, Halo’s PC port, as well as having made the short-lived Brothers In Arms titles, so keeping it the primary focus for the genre hybrid is a sensible notion — when you actively play the entire package, however, it unveils how sporadic and borderline unfinished these shooting mechanics become. Although there’s some influence from how proficient you are with a type of gun, it doesn’t change that there’s “baked in” inaccuracy - physical or arbitrary - that detracts from the ‘feel’ of fires. The diceroll as to whether your sight lineup up to an enemy’s head connects as a headshot at the beginning is stringently the same as when you’re heading up to Pandora’s Vault, and it’s just as dubious upon flanking onto unsuspecting Bandits and Wildlifes that are only briskly walking in place. Not helping is the lack of feedback regarding the actual act of firing a gun; speccing into the Revolver subtype of Pistols meant that, no matter if I equipped the Masher variant or the Stock model, both share an eerily similar to exact same SFX that maims procedural generation systems Gearbox have tried to tout as one of the most tantalizing aspects of the game.

On that note, even if you haven’t played it, it’s easy to see where the inspirations lie: Randy Pitchford has verbally noted Diablo, alongside some NetHack and Ultima to boot, for crafting the idea of where to take Borderlands’ central loop. I won’t purport to have advanced knowledge of these games¹, but my understanding likely matches Pitchford’s at the time: shallow and meek. Each new area encounter plays out nearly the same: enter a large, circular field or narrow, linear corridor, enemy hostility will activate and begin to rush straight towards you, pop several leads onto their body til they’re gone, loot the remains or open the chests, rinse and repeat. It’s unfair to overtly simplify the central loop if there wasn’t a core appeal to it, but I simply couldn’t “get” it personally. Every time I opened a prestige box or found a loose weapon from the corpses, the craftsmanship of the weapons I’m speccing unto turned up as sidegrades containing one or two vestigial new components, or were outright worse than what I had received hours prior. It also doesn’t help that said encounter design rarely, if ever, changes in function — the opening hours of Arid Badlands are what you will do unwaveringly up to and including the Eiridian Promontory, and perhaps even further on if you decide to venture onto the DLCs, Mad Moxxi’s especially for literally centralizing these as wave-based arena gauntlets.

It’s hard to feel the joy of looting and shooting when the loot provides little pleasure from doing and the shooting is so haphazardly handled. It also stings harder when you come to realize there’s very rare shot-type distinctions available for every gun available. Sure, Maliwan provides different Elements, and there’s Grenade Mods to help swap around depending on circumstances, but the actual shot spread for each gun is set in stone². Moments where you get the TK’s Wave and its bouncy shotgun pellets and the Eridian cannons’ slow yet powerful projectile are few and far between.

Perhaps the most damning aspect - and the one that really clued in that something went wrong during development - is the actual state of the world and presentation. The soft, cel-shaded look the series has become known for was an “11th hour change”, and you can feel it due to the dull usage of brown/beige color toning in the desert area that rings less like an intentional choice of its Mad Max hallmarks, and more that there wasn’t enough time to accommodate this new shift in direction after its initial gameplay showings of a visage inspired by Rage or Gears Of War³. Add to that with the abundance of sidequests opening with "I need something killed/collected", and homogeny for all the different areas quickly sets in. The few times the game has captivating flair, it half feels like an accident, and half like it was a strong point that the original artstyle had its moments to begin with.

As for Pandora itself, it feels bare… but not in the way I feel was intended by Gearbox themselves, or the remnants of fans who praise this starting point. It tries to establish a loner, solemn walk, and excusing the cheap shot that is mentioning the 4-player multiplayer option, it doesn’t fully come together since you 1: convene to then cooperate with numerous NPCs so often that it deflates that tension and 2: there’s simply not enough backing substance to back that feeling. Walking through the fields of, say, New Vegas’ Mojave Desert or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s ZONE relays that solitude through varying means aside from enemy/location placements that Borderlands 1 never fully emphasizes. It likely doesn’t help the sandbox element aren’t particularly interesting to begin with: each major area has, at most, three “important” locations you always vacate towards, as well as a few dungeons off to each sides of their paths, and with the aforementioned toning issue, it only heightens that feeling of uncertainty and aimlessness that likely plagued development. Once again, the DLCs seem to be a response of some kind, since all four, to varying degrees, attempt something to spice up the environment design: CNRR contains a cave utilizing a lamp-path system to its different routes within; ZIoDN’s plays up the Halloween theming ala varying and well-known genre trappings; General Knoxx actually contains different vehicle types instead of just swapping out which turret you want on, all of which affect road combat and traversal.

The one glimmer of hope within Borderlands’ systems is, surprisingly enough, the RPG half. For as much as these underbaked mechanics hold back the holistic quality, a few manage to keep the numbers game afloat, and as a result, it becomes particularly engrossing figuring out which skills to pick for your character’s build, and how they interact with the enemy’s arsenal. As someone that’s played as all four Classes throughout each playthrough, it was surprising to see them so radically different from one another in more than just a moniker. Mordecai, the character I played as this time, is a snowball effect of a decently strong range attacker to downright villainous assassin thanks to higher rate of fires and the ability to bypass enemy shields, thereby making headshot crits more potent than ever and making Crimson Lances, an enemy faction that’re all armored up, easier to handle which, combined with the Corrosion element and a few different grenade mods, was likely the intention. If there was any throughline between Brothers In Arms’ lite-strategy elements, it’d likely pertain to how these classes interact with each other, emerging for different gameplay plans and flanking opportunities. Although a shame the base game’s enemy roster largely fails to play to this system’s strengths, even to the point the DLCs are just barely enough to break away from its monotony, it’s at least carried from the conversations that can arise for how each player has handled the journey in differing manners, which circles back to the intended effect of the game’s idea. With varying fan tools and guides to help inform everyone as to what should be done - one of these being the more recent LootLemon database - it’s no wonder the game managed to become a success, and where Gearbox finally had an idea as to where the take the series in the future.

Humble (And Rough) Gangbanging Beginnings

Between Descent’s crowd-shooting, weapon-adjusting flair, Red Faction’s Geo-Mod experimentation, the 2005 licensed Punisher game having intense action setpieces within its interrogation and special kill interactions - albeit a bit too queasy for some people when uncut - and Grand Theft Auto’s lucrative hold on the gaming sphere in the 2000s, it’s no surprise Volition Inc. took a stab at the open world/sandbox pie with some daredevil attitude. Hell, they were already brainstorming and implementing ideas until San Andreas came out and beat them to some punches¹. What surprised me though, is that the oft-forgotten, console-exclusive first entry nonetheless managed to hone together a compelling package teeming with potential, most notably the ‘characterization’ of the sandbox in question.

Instead of copying Rockstar’s technique of incremental map unlocks through progressive play, Stilwater is completely opened up to the player’s whims, yet missions are blocked off through Respect, a quasi-currency system accumulated through various activities sprinkled around the blocks or marginally through acquiring new clothing paraphernalias. Garner enough, and you’ll be able to tackle one of the three gangs: suburbanites Westside Rollerz, megalomaniacal tycoons Vice Kings, and the Hispanic-Columbian drug traders Los Carnales. Afterwards, a section of their controlled area is now under your jurisdiction - the 3rd Street Saints - which means little to no hostile gang violence can occur, which means more free reign to try out activities, which loops everlong up til you hit the credits. It’s a commendable effort on transferring player engagement onto mental map-making and familiarization for the main missions, especially with each of their endpoints majorly plops next to a few or even several different ones, even a few through player-involved actions such as stealing a car with a passenger inside or holding a gun up to a store clerk².

This, in part, stems from design protocol: Chris Stockman mentioned that crafting and testing the city itself came first, in order to help lay the land and better connect these numerous districts with their appointed gang affiliation, as well as nurturing player freedom/expression of what they want to do. I usually opted for Insurance Fraud (ragdoll simulator), Hijacking, Mayhem, Drug Trafficking (exactly as they sound), and Escort (maneuvering around traffic and paparazzi as a prostitute and her client fuck), since all are rooted around proactive movements within and/or outside the target area, which was more my speed. If I had to hard-declare what the duds were, they’d be Hitman and Chop Shop, due to their extreme specificity of city stalking, especially the former with the copy-pasted NPCs that the game doesn’t specifically detail their entire area of residences. Either way, the foundation worked, and though the city isn’t perfect, it does create a decent bed of miscellaneous schemes and entrenched road knowledge to give way for the “I want to cause untold chaos” side of a sandbox angle.

As for the story missions themselves, they’re a lot more mixed. Asking the player to repeatedly grind these activities out for proper progression is already a big ask³, onboarding them towards the “main” game that’s practically the same but worse isn’t delivering major favors. It was already hard to both control the vehicles - which, granted are a step above the PS2 GTA trilogy in momentum, handling, and parsable feel of differing form factors - as well as aiming your gunshots/explosives, but contextualizing them within a limited window or, god forbid, one of your “homies” driving you around with their proverbial need to slam against walls and oncoming traffic makes it more aggravating, compounded by having to redo the entire mission should you fail or wipe out on time. The shootouts in particular are bizarrely ho-hum, being linear room clears reminiscent of Punisher but without any of the routing or pizzazz that made those work before, due to enemy AI not requiring any further thought beyond standing still and spamming your shots as they beeline straight towards or further away from you. It’s fine that walking around, shooting and the mechanical contortions overall don’t quite get in the way of the core functions, but it could stand to at least spruce up these repetitive ideas into some level of remix. You can even see glimmers of that too, with a car explosion riffing on a similar one found in GTA3 to more destructive aplomb, a garage shootout within a stronghold takeover, a rugpull twist of an expected scenario, and even chauffeuring a leader around town to better a retaliation front are enough to keep the interest going. The variety is there, it’s just lopsided to be more rudimentary than exhilarating, to the point I didn’t necessarily bother to attain 100% completion - doesn’t help I was also replaying Bully on the side, which is vastly leaner and meaner about this.

One of the graces that makes the tedium somewhat palpable is the general writing and story direction; if Rockstar uses familiar genre cliches and tropes to craft an tongue-in-cheek yet ultimately serious pastiche for various tone/thematic motif, Volition instead took the contemporary elements before and around its release to heighten its spoofing nature into raucous affairs. It isn’t uncommon for each cutscene to include one aggressive snark or reaction to deliver a comedic reaction, and the frequency and timing are on point to not become overbearing and irritating. It’s no wonder Johnny Gat ended up as the ‘face’ of the series alongside the Playa/Boss, though even then my favorite jokes ended up coming from the latter’s rare outbursts. It’s already hard to balance rambunctiousness with the few glimmers of serious swerves, and while not perfect, the attempts here such as Lin’s demise or Ben King’s ruminations are satisfying enough that it doesn’t quite feel like a crisis of two ideals.

If anything, it proved that Volition have the chops to successfully chase the rockstars, and perhaps with refinement, be better at their own game - something that ended up coming to fruition with the sequential entries increasing in popularity and praise, with a couple saying it’s on par or even preferred over GTA4 and 5. It’s a shame the initial outing, and the studio as a whole, have become unfortunate tosses of a prior era, but with Xenia’s advancements coupled with some tweaking allowing the game to be played in a better state than ever (you can patch it to play up to 60fps!), as well as a recent effort to preserve the studio’s history, it’s at least nice these stepping stones won’t quite be so easily forgotten nowadays.