Borderlands

Borderlands
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software

Borderlands is a science fiction role-playing shooter (a first-person shooter with RPG elements) that was developed by Gearbox Software for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was first revealed in the September 2007 issue of Game Informer magazine. The console versions of the game were released in North America on October 20, 2009, and were released in PAL countries on October 23. The console version release for the Japanese market will be available on February 10, 2010. The Windows version was released on October 26 for North America and then on October 29 internationally.

Borderlands is a first-person shooter that includes character-building elements found in role playing games, leading to Gearbox calling the game a "role-playing shooter". At the start of the game, players select one of four characters, each with a unique special skill and with proficiencies with certain weapons. The four characters are: Roland, Mordecai, Lilith, and Brick. From then on, players take on quests assigned through non-player characters or from bounty boards, each typically rewarding the player with experience points and a reward item. Players also earn experience by killing foes and completing in-game challenges (such as getting a certain number of kills using a specific type of weapon). As they gain levels from experience growth, players can then allocate skill points into a skill tree that features three distinct specializations of the base character; for example, Mordecai can become specialized in sniping, gunslinging with revolvers, or going rogue and using his pet bird Bloodwing to assist in kills and gathering. Players can distribute points among any of the specializations, and can also spend a small amount of in-game money to redistribute their skill points.

Players start the game with the ability to use two weapons, but later gain up to four weapon slots, as well as slots for an energy shield, a grenade modification, and a class modification. Items collected but not used can be sold back at vendors for money that then can be used to buy better items. One of the key features of Borderlands is the randomly-generated weapons and items created either as dropped by foes, found in storage chests about the game, sold at vendors in the game, or as quest reward items. The game uses a "Procedural Content Creation System" to create these weapons and items, which can alter their firepower, rate of fire, and accuracy, add in elemental effects such as a chance to set foes on fire, and at rare times other special bonuses such as regenerating the player's ammo. A color-coded scale is used to indicate the rarity of the weapon or item. It is estimated that the random system can generate over 17 million variations of weapons. The Procedural system is also used to create the characteristic of random enemies that the player may face. This allows for enemies of the same species to have widely-varying attacks: for example, variations of "spiderants" in the game could leap around and would jump onto players' faces, while another variant can roll up into a ball and attack people, depending on the content generator.

Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2.4 Ghz or equivalent
Memory: 1GB system RAM (2GB recommended with Vista)
Hard Drive: 8 GB free
Video Memory: NVIDIA Geforce 8600 GS
ATI Radeon HD3000 Series
256mb video ram or better (GeForce 9 series or higher/Radeon R8xx series)
Sound Card: Windows compatible sound card
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD Rom Drive