TheXboxLife

For starters, Borderlands has a pretty cool plot, as you travel through the alien world of Pandora taking the roll as a freelance bounty hunter searching for treasure. You can choose from four different classes: siren, hunter, soldier or berserker. Each class has it’s advantages and disadvantages a while taking on bandits and random wild life, your character will gain levels allowing access to more powerful weapons. The game is also equipped with 30 primary quests and 120 sub-quests, so there is definitely much to do.

Soldiers are the standard character from any other first person shooter with them being masters of firearms and turrets. Sirens have “phasewalk” power, which allows them to cloak for a few moments, adding a speed boost and extra power to melee attacks. Each class has it’s own “skills tree”, where abilities cannot be maxed out. These means spend your points wisely and add them to your classes strengths.



If you’re having trouble in the solo-mode, then just call some friends and have them join you in the multiplayer mode. Up to four of you can group together in tactical strategies to take down your enemies. This isn’t as challenging as playing by yourself, but it’s definitely more fun and doesn’t slow the game down at all.

The characters have a sense of humor and the animation and graphics are extremely unique and satisfying. You have the town doctor and even a guide who will lead you the vault in your search of treasure. Overall, it seems to be a promising game with plenty of action-packed explosions and shoot outs, while still allowing the RPG base of the game take form.



From the beginning of your first missions you’ll be threatened by a few doglike creatures, walking looking zombies, and then later some much larger zoo animals — just deformed. You’ll be equipped with an energy shield, which absorbs damage. This is extremely important to use because taking cover will become a necessity.



Borderlands is definitely a challenging game that allows you to go for the critical headshot, or simply mo down your opponent. Reloading is a little slow, and there are no crazy roll manuevers, so learning to strafe and protect yourself is a must. Like any other RPG, your experience bar will be shown so the player can track their level progress on the screen.

The past releases of EA Sport’s NBA Live series havn’t exactly thrilled anyone, but the newest sim to the series in NBA Live 10 brings a lot of improvements to such a shaky franchise.



For starters, the overall animation of the game has been greatly improved. It definitely has a bit more of a realistic feel. Not only is the camera-style and presentation still done in TV-mode, the character designs themselves look much more lifelike and, may I say, sweatier. The players pretty much glisten, which is funny considering their heads look pretty shiny on the TV screen.



Undeniably the new game offers much more flow to the gameplay. Players movements are more realistic, though it is still cluttered with impossible looking moves. One distraction you may notice is the Dunk and Shoot button have been combined, which will create situations where you’ll want your player to shoot and then attempts some outlandish dunk or lay up. The only advice I have to that is to know your basketball and the individual players strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, the better the player, the more rediculousness you get. All and all though it’s pretty fun.

Defense isn’t to difficult. There are plenty of steals on defense in the middle of the paint. Seemingly, everyone can play D in the NBA, especially in the paint. The only other complaint is, like past versions, the shooting doesn’t look as realistic as it could be. It reminds me of NBA Live 96 on Playstation, I beleive Mitch Richmond was on the cover. This becomes extremely obvious when the graphics becomes a bit choppy, and the ball starts getting passed through defenders hands.

A great addition, as well as subtraction to the game, is the Adidas mode which pretty much replaced the Be a Pro mode. In the Adidas 5 on 5 mode you and up to five friends can create your own team and play online. You can’t create your own players, but the idea of playing a pick up game with no fouls has it’s advantages, especially when you start running sick pick and roll plays.

Overall, it’s not that it’s a bad game, but the 2K series is just amazing. Sure there is the auto-updater so that players and teams stay up to date with the progress of the season, but it’d be a lot better if the Season Mode was more dynamic so you’d be able to compete online. Oh well, it’s definitely an improvement, but nothing to crazy over.

7/10