Customer Reviews

Borderlands Game of the Year

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Great FPS with lots of events, games, shooting, and places to be rewarded. This one is easily a play and play again

2K GAMES is a known offender. Ever since the infamous BioShock, where the draconian and potentially illegal DRM scheme made more noise than the game itself, this game publisher never wavered from its anti-customer attitude and there-is-a-sucker-born-ever-minute scheming mentality. I should had known better.

The only reason I bought this game was because I found it at a basement-bargain price. So, yes, 2K GAMES did manage to get some of my money for a while but I vow it will be the very last time. Please read on.

My copy was of the 2-DVD version so I did not have to download ...9GB for the 1.4 Patch and the DLCs. However, my horror story was only beginning. After about 25min of installing, the game failed to authenticate so the installation rolled back. Apparently this was not a unique problem with my copy but a common problem well known to 2K GAMES. Hence, the redirection to their website where one has to download a Manual-Authentication Tool, unzip it and create an Authentication-Request file which is then used online to create a Manual-Authentication file - and all this **before** reinstalling the game.

Since this is as far from common installation process as it gets, at some point I clicked the wrong option, terminating the manual Authentication before it was completed. As a result, the game then refused to either complete its installation or run the Manual-Authentication Tool! It was only after it dawned to me to use REVO UNINSTALLER to completely remove the AMD(!) drivers (and what were AMD drivers doing in my INTEL system, I wonder), and then hunt down and delete the correct (and hidden) SecuROM folder that the Manual Authentication Tool...graced me to resume.
Now I would have to store the Manual Authentication Tool and keep it in perpetuity for whenever I would want to reinstall the game in the future (and why did 2K GAMES not include it on the game disk since this was a well known problem?). Not that it will do me any good when 2K GAMES goes bankrupt in some years and there is no way to authenticate the game...

All in all, it took me over two hours to install a game - totally unacceptable for a GOTY edition, where every bug and kink is supposed to be ironed out. Apparently this game publisher has a warehouse of bugs and kinks **especially** made for its GOTY editions!
And I am not even going to go into why the fourth DLC does not appear to be installed...

If you think it was downhill from there, well, think again. Not only does the game require the disk to remain in the drive whenever one wants to play but it has to...re-authenticate it. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. And, yes, that means ONLINE re-Authentication! My DSL service was down for about 12hours and clicking on the game shortcut, you guessed it, all it got me was a SecuROM window informing me to "replace my backup copy with the original game disk" (which, of course, already was in the drive).

The overzealous SecuROM version is so jumpy that it will refuse to authenticate even if I have already given it unrestricted access through my firewall. Clicking on the desktop icon of the game does not work. The only way to run the game is to pop-out the disk from drive and then pop it back in, wait for all the splash screens to cycle and then choose play. This usually works one time out of 5 or 6 tries. That's quality, right?

The game itself is not bad - certainly not as awful as the DRM scheme it comes bundled with! It may not be that original, it is far more of an FPS than an RPG to be called an...RPS and the tedium of pointless go-and-fetch "quests" is hardly alleviated by the bazzilion of guns available but it has it moments. Unfortunately, these moments are lost in the aggravation caused by the hoops one has to jump through in order to be...permitted to use the game we have already paid for.

The good people at Amazon accepted my return of this defective product, so this is the lesson I learned for free:

NEVER AGAIN WILL I **EVER** TRUST 2K Games TO BUY ANY OF THEIR RELEASES AGAIN!

I am 71 years young and love this game. I have been playing it nightly for over a year now. I have gone through Medal of Honor Limited Edition and COD Black OPs but none is as much fun as this game. I play it a lot with my 7 year old grandson and since the game is cartoonish in nature, the blood and a body parts seem less real, hence, no nightmares. If you want years of fun, I recommend you buy this game while you can. I like that you can go up levels, pick up hundreds of new weapons, drive around, transport through space and time, and try to find new and better shields. The on-line play usually ends up trying to kill Crawermax. There are many mods available and many videos concerning play on YouTube. Get it and have a blast.

Its a great deal and worth it for anyone who wants to get borderlands as the dlc packs really add alot to the gameplay and overall feel of the game its self. With the included dlc i would bump my rating of borderlands overall from a 8 to a 9.5 out of 10. Absolutely amazing game and worth getting if u enjoy co-op games first person shooters or even rpg. The versatile design of the game makes it unlike any other out there and the vast variety of different weapons and abilities provide a game that will give you countless hours of fun. Enjoy!!!