Completions of 2016: Borderlands (JP)

When I saw that Backwards Compatibility allowed you to play other region games, I jumped at the ability to play the original Borderlands again in Japanese. Unfortunately upon downloading the game to play with the disc, it was all on English. I guess it was probably a blessing in disguise as it would have taken me a bit longer to actually finish the game. Technically I haven't finished the game as I haven't finished Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot DLC**.

I don't think I can praise this series enough, ever, and to think that I almost believed that review on Good Game. After playing and loving this game, my opinion of Good Game's reviews went out the window. Since it's the only mainstream video game show broadcast here in Australia, you have to wonder how "impartial" they really are.

Bajo: Yeah they're called skags and they are EVERYWHERE there's at least 9 hours of Skag grinding before you reach any new enemies like the rolypoly spiders, and it gets pretty old. There's even Skagzilla, a very tough customer who likes to smash things. Other than humanoids and birds, the variety early on is pretty small, Yet Hex, I'm of two minds here, I still enjoyed this game...

I actually question if the presenters really play the games for any significant length of time. It just seems that they are reading off a script half the time with a lot of what they are saying either really ill-informed, or reflective of only a brief amount of gameplay time. For example, Bajo complains about killing skags for the first 9 hours. It's definitely not 9 hours, but the game is more about the story than the mobs you are killing. If anything you could also use the same complaint with most MMO's that use the same mob models, just recoloured for different areas. But that's enough of me ranting about Good Game, back to Borderlands.

I was disappointed that Claptrap's DLC wasn't included in the Japanese version, apparently it was just never released, but I feel that there was probably some sort of cultural insensitivity issues or something like that. Either way I was glad that I didn't have to farm those damn items (oil, panties, pizza etc). That took forever to get the last few items and without a counter to figure out what you were missing, you could be farming for hours not knowing that you were only one off when you eventually gave up for the night.

Apparently it took me 45 days to finish it over a Christmas period, so I'm not sure how often I actually played the game over that time. I'm pretty sure that a majority of the game and the two other DLC's were done in only a few days worth of solid gameplay, the rest would have just been cleaning up a few achievements here and there. Would I play it again? If they released a HD version to go with the Handsome Jack Collection, then yes, yes I would. If they don't then I think the Moxxi DLC will be the last time that I play this game. I love it, but not enough to replay it without some form of goal (Extra-Life etc).

** Mad Moxxi's Underdome DLC really needs a solid day or so to finish all the achievements. I forget exactly how long Big Tournament takes to grind, but by the end of it I was sick of shooting stuff. Pro-tip: Queue up a few seasons of something to watch so that you keep some form of sanity. These are the achievements still outstanding.