LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

It’s no secret that you can’t play a first-person shooter without something that, well, shoots. Sure, you can run up to an enemy and punch them in the face or swing at them with some sort of melee weapon, but that’s not always effective. In the case of Borderlands, it’s suicide unless you’re playing Brick the Berserker. For now, here are the main types of weapons:

• Repeater Pistols
• Revolvers
• Shotguns
• Sub-machine Guns
• Combat Rifles
• Rocket Launchers
• Sniper Rifles
• Grenades
• Alien Weapons
• Melee

I won’t go into the sub-types because they’re a bit too numerous, since there’s at least 2-3 for each core type of weapon. Now, Borderlands has a nicely laid out system for it’s weapons. As I mentioned before the stat sheets for each weapon are laid out in an easy to read manner. In addition, the system for weapon generation mimics that of Diablo II, so it’s rare you’ll find two, let’s say, sniper rifles that are exactly the same. The stats are numerous, as there are bonus stats that don’t always come with the gun. The main stats are as follow:

• Damage
• Accuracy
• Fire Rate

In addition, there are secondary stats that get buffed as bonuses for them come with most guns later on in the game. They are:

• Reload Speed
• Recoil Reduction
• Zoom (Scopes are your best friend)
• Reduced Spread (for Shotguns)
• Ammo Regeneration (Very nice to have, although ammo is in abundance on Pandora and goes for cheap at the store)
• Elemental Effects (Incendiary, Explosive, Shock, and Acid)
• Blades attached to the weapons for bonus melee damage
• And more….

I also mentioned in a previous article that there are different manufacturers of weapons, all excelling in a certain stat(s).

• Atlas – average bonus to all attributes, nice balanced weapons
• Dahl – reduced recoil
• Eridian – alien weapons, energy based
• Hyperion – increased accuracy
• Jakobs – bonus damage, diminished fire rate
• Maliwan – elemental effect weapons
• S&S Munitions – increased magazine capacity
• Tediore – increased reload speed
• Torgue – balanced, not as good of bonuses as Atlas weapons
• Vladof – increased fire rate
• Gearbox – special manufacturer, amazing weapons…..if you can find one

Choosing which guns you want to use primarily is a tough process. The decision process is affected by a few factors. First, there’s the character you play. Character choice matters because not only do the skill trees enhance certain weapon types’ stats, but each character gets increased proficiency with certain weapons. Proficiency levels are gained when killing enemies with the gun type and affect a total of three stats, which vary by gun type. There’s also personal preference which you can break down into sub-categories like play style and visual preference, because we’re all guilty of throwing away weapons that have stat upgrades but look hideous compared to our current weapon. I’ll try and ease the weapon selection process by giving my personal opinions of the weapon types. Ready for it? Here we go!

Sniper Rifles

I wanted to start with sniper rifles because they’re a bit of a disappointment in Borderlands. I love sniping, I try to do it in any FPS I play. However, sniping is not as effective as it should be in Borderlands. The main reason for this is because you’re never going to fight just one enemy at a time. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find less than three enemies in a group. This wouldn’t be a problem except once you shoot and hit one enemy, the rest know exactly where you are and start to attack. So, pretty much, you can take down one guy before the sniper rifle becomes completely impractical. You would think this would be ok, but I’ll explain why it really isn’t in part II. In addition to the sub-par effectiveness of sniper rifles, the proficiency levels increase excessively slow, much slower than most other weapon types. Unless you find an extremely powerful sniper rifle or your love for sniping exceeds your love for living, I wouldn’t recommend them. Trying to snipe with enemies attacking you is a recipe for some serious pain.

Repeater Pistols

I like pistols. I’m a pistol kind of guy to be honest. I don’t use the repeater pistols all that much (in terms of pistols I stick with revolvers) but they’re pretty effective. If you can find a pistol with a scope and a quick fire rate, you can mow down enemies pretty easily. Generally I use repeaters for mid to close range combat, but like I said if you can get a scope, there’s no reason you can’t pop a few criticals and take down an enemy before them or their friends even know what’s going on.

Rocket Launchers

While rockets launchers are fun to use, they’re pretty lackluster. As you can tell Borderlands is a very critical reliant game. So many enemies have armored areas that cover most of their bodies, so criticals are the way to take one down quickly. With rocket launchers you’ll never really ever get a critical on an enemy. However, if you can get an incendiary rocket launcher and fire it into a group of enemies without shields, you can burn them down in a few seconds. Beyond that, just throw a grenade.

Grenades

I’ll have to admit, before Borderlands I never took advantage of throwing grenades. I don’t know, it just never occurs to me in the heat of battle to throw one. But, grenades are highly useful, primarily if you can get a Transfusion upgrade for your grenades. Transfusion will not only enhance the damage of your grenades, but it will convert all the damage done to enemies into health for you. There are many other upgrades, but transfusion gets my vote for the best hands down.

Ok, well that’s it for part I. I’m splitting these up because I don’t want to drag this on too long, and, to be honest, my hands hurt. I’ll wrap this up in part II where I’ll talk about my two favorite weapon types: Revolvers and Sub-machine guns and touch on the other remaining weapon types.