If you’ve been wondering just when the FPS MMO Borderlands would be launched, wonder no longer. Gearbox has now officially dated, as of Comic-Con, the game’s release date. Borderlands release date will be on October 20th for North America and October 23rd for Europe.
Originally, the game was aiming for a more realistic look but the fine people at Gearbox have since switched the art style to something more… well, cartoony. You don’t have to take my word for it; you can view the newest trailer here.
(Ed. Note: The FPS MMO genre isn’t all that clearly defined to this journalist and I’d argue that this counts. Feel free to argue otherwise in the comments, as I’m open to new ideas. – James 7/27/09)
Excellent news, I’ve been looking forward to this one!
I do wonder how you managed to turn “four-player co-op” into “FPS MMO” however…
Yeah, Borderlands isn’t remotely an MMO and I am curious how this article could have mistaken the game as one. I mean, the only Google source for “Borderlands MMO” is an article where Gearbox directly says the game isn’t an MMO, never was, and they have no plans for one.
Eh. I’d say the distinction between FPS MMO and an online FPS game is sort of shady. I’m not sure the lines are all clearly defined as of yet.
Does Huxley count? Is the term FPS MMO an contradiction of terms completely? Both are good questions, and I’m not sure I know the answer.
This is not even close to that line. Is L4D an MMO? What about TF2 or CoD? Borderlands is an FPS with an RPG-like advancement system and co-op play. Maybe with persistent hubs it might get a tad closer, but with the knowledge we have it is stretching it.
My personal definition of MMOFPS is a literal translation of the acronym. Massively Multiplayer (meaning on the same server, not total number of players on all servers which would open a whole can of worms wherein essentially every multiplayer game in history suddenly becomes an MMO) and FPS. By FPS I mean a *real* FPS where it’s player skill and reflexes, not some RPG combat system under the hood, which immediately disqualifies Neocron. First person camera does not equal first person shooter (using that kind of logic I could scroll to first person view in WoW and “shoot” arrows with my hunter and start saying WoW is an MMOFPS, which is ludicrous). Even if the game uses guns. Pure RPG die rolls disqualifies it from being a true shooter in my eyes.
In other words, Planetside is pretty much the only example of a true MMOFPS I can think of.
Yeah, i think it’s pretty obvious that FPS RPG covers the bases for this game appropriately. MMO Would, in fact, only specify a game that truly is “massivle multiplayer online,” while this is a character based RPG with a constant FPS perspective. I agree with Scott on Planetside being the only valid memorable example of the latter (mmofps).
Just reiterating, “MMO” stands literally for “Massively Multiplayer Online”. How anyone can confuse a 4 player game for “massively multiplayer” seems strange to me.
I do like the designation “RPS”, as this seems to be a genre that hasn’t been monikered until now. With that in mind, I’d say Borderlands isn’t the first RPS, as Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and others have logged in before. All of the RPS examples may not have been the best implementations, but having FPS aspects hybrid with RPG aspects, however greatly or terribly done, should qualify in the RPS genre.
The support and word is getting out about this game, and this is one of those titles we all hope does really well. Not only for selfish reasons of playing an awesome game, but because chances like this need to be made. We need to show as educated gamers that we’ll respond well to these efforts if done well.
Cheers, good day, and much love to our beloved community! :D
Yep, I saw the FPS and RPG had a baby line during one of the previews and immediately thought of Fallout 3. I would term this a multi player co-op game and not an MMO by any means. If you want to get technical about it, games like World of Warcraft could be considered a FPS, but only in respect to player view mode. Either something like WoW or something like COD4 could both be FPS and both require player skill and reaction time but I would divide them up as MMORPG and twitch shooter. You could also technically put COD4 into the RPG group as you aquire points from completing “challenges” aka quest objectives as well as from kills aka experience you unlock new armor/weapons/abilities/spells aka weapons/weapon mods/perks. Even what was hailed as an rpg based system determining whether you hit or not, you could point towards rate of fire, accuracy/shot deviation, recoil, bullet penetration checks, etc. . Most games these days tend to cross genre’s to a certain extent.
In any case, this game seems like a pretty good cross between twitchy shooter and rpg. The skill tree very strongly resembles Diablo’s style to me.
By your classification James, any game that can be played by 4 people at once over a network connection is an MMO, huh? Borderlands is not an MMO. Its an RPG with FPS style aiming and multiplayer support. This game is a lot of fun, however. I bought it last saturday and I’m surprised my 360 hasn’t burnt up yet due to being on so long.
At times I wish I bought the PC version of the game for better graphics and better control (I’m a die hard keyboard mouse gamer, not controller). When I ordered for some reason the couch and the big screen 42″ LCD TV called to me.
IM sure the only reason why they call it that is because of the leveling up…..thats it…..just got it sunday….love it…its an awesome game for….well partys….and if your my age sleep overs…..over all i would recommend it….thumbs up GEAR BOX