One thing the current generation of games has missed is the arcade. Though there are still a few left, the overall feel of meeting friends at the arcade to play your favorite games just is not something of which younger gamers are familiar. Fortunately for the current generation of players, internet play has allowed them to still connect with friends and share the experience of the game.

Though many gamers may not realize this, multiplayer gaming, especially Coop gaming, was born in the arcades. Those of us who grew up in the days when you were never far away from a local arcade remember playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Golden Axe, Final Fight and many other games which allowed you to join forces with your friends to fight your mutual foes. Coop gaming has seen a revival as of late in this internet generation, and few games have done a better job of really building upon that “my friends and I taking on the world” feeling than 2009′s Borderlands.

FPS Diablo

Many gamers really did not know what to expect from Borderlands when it came out. The idea of combining an FPS with a Dungeon Crawler had been tried before, but none had really pulled the formula off well. Those of us who had been playing for a while remember Hellgate: London all too well, so our expectations were not very high.

Remember this part in the story? Yeah, me too…sort of.

The good news is Borderlands delivered. Great character classes, interesting upgrades and plenty of loot made this a game worth playing. Many gamers were more than pleasently surprised as they got into the game. I for one was definitely much more impressed than I thought I would be.

One of the game’s weaker points, however, is its story. The basic premise, that you are a mercenary seeking the fabled vault which is supposed to contain numerous weapons and endless money, is not a bad place to start. Unfortunately, you find yourself being forced to complete several other tasks which have no relation to the main story, and the payoff is no where near as good as you were lead to believe. Many gamers were rather disappointed by the ending, and yet the made it on many websites’ game of the year lists, including ours. So why was the game rated so highly?

The answer is simple: some of the best coop gamers have seen in a long time.

The Creatures of Pandora Have Gotten Stronger

The first thing you notice about Borderlands Coop is you can actually play through the entire campaign this way. The second thing: you don’t have to. An RPG style game that lets you bring in your own characters in drop in, drop out fashion whether or not you are at the point the person you are joining has reached is impressive within itself. Sure, if you are too far behind someone in the main story, you will not get the experience from the storyline missions, but the side missions will still matter to you.

The coop has kept people playing this game over a year and a half after its release.

The next thing you notice is the game actually adjusts to the fact you have other people playing with you. The minute someone joins your game, you are advised “The creatures of Pandora have gotten stronger,” and they are not kidding. The more people who join in, the more difficult the enemies become. This keeps you and your friends from feeling like you overpower your competition and is something other games should try to emulate. By the way, the treasure drops and weapons in chests react to the fact you have more people in the game as well. Play with friends, and you will be rewarded with better items.

While these are great reasons to play with friends, the best is the way the various characters are balanced. Each character class has abilities which work great in concert with the others. If you have all four classes running in a game, you can use their specialties in tandem to gain the advantage: the Hunter can start taking enemies out from distance, the Soldier can drop down his turret for extra offense and distraction, the Berserker can start firing from his missile launcher or run in for melee with berserk mode active and the Siren can phase walk to the other side of the battle, flanking the opponent. These kind of tactics can really come in handy against the various bosses, and there is nothing quite as satisfying as learning to play well with others.

Class mods can make the advantage of having more people even more obvious. For example, I have played quite a bit of the game with two other friends of mine. I have been controlling a Siren, while my friends have used a Soldier and a Hunter. My class mod gives a shield bonus to the entire team, the Hunter has a mod which helps increase our critical chance and the Soldier has a class mod that regenerates ammo for all weapons and increases our clip sizes. These mods make us a lethal combination.

So what happens if you have multiple people playing the same character type? Do not worry; with the different upgrades and class mods available, even characters of the same class can play completely differently. You also have the option of paying some money to respec your character’s skill points if you decide your play style is too similar to someone who is using the same class.

From Good to Great

At its heart, Borderlands is a solid FPS equivalent of a dungeon crawler, right down to the loot gathering. That alone, however, would never have made it 2009′s Game of the Year for many sites, Everyday Gamers included. What truly sets the game apart is probably the most impressive integration of coop gamplay many of us have ever seen. Gearbox has raised the bar for coop experience in gaming, and it may very well not be topped till the release of Borderlands 2. Borderlands’ impressive coop gameplay is another example of why we game.

Borderlands is a first person shooter with heavy RPG elements (or an RPG seen from a first person perspective?), with a strong Diablo-esque emphasis on grinding and loot collection. Stack on top of all this that all enemies, equipment and weapons are randomly generated and you have a game that will keep you addicted, while still managing to pack in a few surprises even after having played it for over 100 hours.

Story

Borderlands takes place in the colony planet of Pandora. A planet colonized and quickly abandoned by the government, and corporations once they saw how little there was in it to profit from, and how difficult it would be to survive in it for prolonged stretches of time. The only people left behind were the treasure hunters, some early settlers, unlucky employees and hordes of criminals who now prey on the civilians left behind. Most of the people who stayed behind did so because of their belief in a legendary vault of untold, and immeasurable treasures. The story in this game is easily the weakest part of the game, and at times it seems like a throw-away part of a whole which seems so well thought out, which is sad, because the characters can be so darn funny and interesting at times. At one point in the story you find out someone has died, and this is never followed through any further, almost as if they wanted to move you, but didn’t care enough to give this branch in the plot any closure.

Gameplay

Borderlands starts off as most FPSs do. You are give a gun, you are given a guide, and you are given some some easy mooks to kill. Where things start diverging from other FPSs is when you kill someone, or complete a mission and are given a set amount of experience, which in turn increases your level, making you stronger, tougher, and giving you more health. You also start getting skill points which you can use to develop your chosen character into the perfect killing machine, healing or looting machine.

There are four character classes to choose from:

*A soldier who can either heal his teammates or summon a turret to assist with the butt-kickery.

*A siren whose power allows her to explode in an elemental flash, become invisible for a few seconds, while she runs to or from danger, and then explodes again to knock out whoever is standing around her.

*The berserker who is an explosives specialist, or an unstoppable punching juggernaut.

*And the hunter, who can either be a deadeye sniper or a gunslinger with buffs whenever he uses handguns and revolvers, with a pet hawk who attacks and slows down enemies. He also drops extra loot for the whole party.

As awesome as single player for this game is, things just get better every time another player joins the game: enemies become tougher, which makes the little puppies you were fighting against in single player become fire, acid, or thunder-breathing monsters which will take a whole team, and a lot of bullets to take down. Treasure also goes up a few levels in awesome with more people in your party, taking your machinegun and replacing it’s bullets with rockets. You are doing yourself a disservice if you never play this game with other people.

The game also features player duels and arenas in which to fight your friends. Ignore these, as they are highly irrelevant. A properly built hunter can kill anyone within half a second of the start of the fight by summoning his hawk. A siren can kill everyone else. None of this is pertinent to your level, or to how awesome your weapons are. The game is made for killing monsters, and PVP battles are really unbalanced.

Weapons

As stated before, weapons in this game are randomly generated, which means that if you are really, very lucky you can find a super rare weapon, which will make your character into a spider killing god. There are different weapon-types in the game, including pistols, sniper rifles, shotguns, machineguns, and even some alien weapons. Every time you open a chest, or kill a baddie you have a chance of finding, say a sniper, or a sniper that does double damage, or a sniper that shoots fire bullets, or acid bullets… Or a sniper which shoots clusters of bullets, like a shotgun, or if you’re really lucky, all of the above. Also it can refill ammo automatically so you never run out. The possibilities here are endless, and all the examples described above are weapons I actually have. And they are all on my crappy character… (my good character has a revolver whose bullets rotate between all the elements in the game, and shoots as fast as an assault riffle).

Weapons are the reason most people who play this game will continue to play it well after their characters have all reached their level cap.

Graphics

Borderlands is powered by the unreal engine 3, so it obviously looks amazing. It has a beautiful cell-shaded style which gives it a bit of a comic-book feel, and gives the characters a lot of personality, and helps a lot with the humor behind them all. The game manages impressive draw distances, which is very helpful for us snipers out there. In fact, the only time I noticed any slowdown and frame skipping was when playing with a full party of level 50 characters we all spread out throughout a huge map and each fought innumerable hordes of spiders, and used ridiculous fast, powerful, acid shooting, explosion spamming weapons, but it soon passed, as those spider did not live for long.

Borderlands is easily one of my favorite games this year, and one of the games I’ve dumped the most hours into (considering it takes about 40-50 hours {more or less depending on skill} to complete all missions in the games, and even at that point your character will only be around level 36). Each character gives the player a different play style, and a different perspective on the game, and how to tackle each mission all over again. But you will continue playing this game with friends looking for the next, strongest weapon you could ever imagine. There is so much more that could be said about the unlimited possibilities for the weapons available to you in this game, but I really must stop; I just finished downloading the newest downloadable content for this game, and it’s zombies…ZOMBIES!!!