14 DAY TRIAL // The Borderlands crusade was abruptly ended at mid-day on Saturday, when a disappointed and confused me finished the first playthrough of the game. With now a conclusion in sight, the title resembles, as the story development goes, Crysis a lot. You spend three quarters of the game mowing down your fellow men, only to end up fighting a greater evil, blue aliens. Once inside the vault, you get to meet its guardians, and, like any good homo sapiens would do, you proceed to exterminating their race.
The vault battles are pretty frantic and very interesting, as you have a very mixed front of enemies. A few missions before you enter the vault, you manage to rub the wrong way a bigger force than the simple bandits of Pandora. The Crimson Lance is the private army of the Atlas Corporation, the biggest, baddest and most powerful corporation in the game's universe. Something like a mix between our Nintendo and Microsoft, where Nintendo supplies the cash and Microsoft everything else. The Crimson Lance is, without a doubt, a leap forward in skill and difficulty over the wasteland raiders.
Better armed, armored and with the Lance Defender carrying a tower shield and the Lance Engineer summoning a Scorpio Turret just like the Soldier class, you'll have to keep on your toes if you want to make it through alive. The Vault guardians are a major problem as well. They have a hefty amount of flying units that is quite bothersome, and, along with the large guardians that have a ballistic-artillery attack that renders a standard cover useless, things turn out into a real respawn-fest.
Not anywhere close as disappointing as the Risen boss-fight, the one in Borderlands was a little bit too easy. Over before it really started, my Soldier turned the big baddy into minced meat before I could even spam the health potions. Of course, this time around, I can't really blame the game design, maybe it was my fault and my flawless ability to perform brilliantly under pressure. Also, I ended the title a few levels beyond the estimated value. Just as I predicted, the game still keeps me interested and I've already started the second playthrough. I'm even contemplating going online and dueling around a little in some multiplayer matches.