Borderlands Game of the Year
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
Constant first-person gunfire against human bandits and wildlife, with blood spray, gibbing, exploding limbs, and elemental effects that set enemies on fire or melt them in acid.
Frequent strong profanity in dialogue from bandits and quest-givers.
A bleak, lawless wasteland populated by murderous 'psycho' bandits, executions, and gallows dark humor about death and cruelty.
Alcohol is referenced through characters and settings such as bars and the wasteland's drinking culture.
The included zombie-themed content adds spooky undead enemies and a graveyard/haunted atmosphere.
The world is overrun by bandit gangs who rob and kill; the player fights them as a bounty-driven mercenary rather than committing crimes.
Players hunt and kill the planet's alien wildlife (skags, spiderants, rakk) as ordinary combat.
Crude sexual innuendo and adult jokes in dialogue and NPC banter (e.g. the bawdy humor around Mad Moxxi's arena), kept at the level of suggestive talk.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Borderlands is a cel-shaded first-person shooter with role-playing progression, set on the lawless desert planet Pandora. Playing as one of four treasure-hunting mercenaries, you fight through waves of bandits, psychos, and alien wildlife while collecting a huge variety of randomly generated guns and leveling up your character, solo or in online co-op. Combat is constant and bloody: enemies spray blood and can burst apart into chunks under heavy fire. The tone is dark comedy, with frequent strong language, crude sexual jokes, references to alcohol, and a zombie-themed horror expansion (Dr. Ned's island) included in this edition. There are no microtransactions, and this older release has no in-game voice or text chat.
How it's framed
The game frames its mayhem as over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek dark comedy rather than grim realism. Killing bandits and monsters is rewarded with experience, money, and loot, and the wasteland's violence and vice are played for irreverent laughs; the story positions the player as self-interested vault hunters caught between rival scavengers and a greedy corporation, with little earnest moral weight.
Details
- Developer
- Gearbox Software
- Publisher
- 2K
- Released
- Aug 31, 2023
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