I'm not digging the comparison, nor the reason for liking it. "more replay value" Gstroy? Borderlands has a campaign soooo much longer than Black ops', and you'll never reach the level cap unless you replay the campaign, filled with vivid characters, a beautiful graphics aesthetic, and literally, BAJILLIONS of guns.
Black Ops is a half-decent shooter. It has the same type of fast-paced corridor shooting with "Wow-in-you-face" set pieces that the Post-MW1 Call of Duties are known for, and its getting bland this fourth time around. The multiplayer is alright, but it doesn't hold up to the immersion, customization, and overall quality of other high-quality multiplayer games like Red Dead: Redemption, Crysis 2, Halo: Reach, Bad Co. 2, and Borderlands.
Borderlands is an odd game. Released in 2009, it called itself an "RPS", a Role-Playing Shooter. It plays out much like WoW (I've also heard the Diablo comparison but I've never played either, heard they were sick though)
you have to level up, get new skills, upgrade your shields, class, and grenades, and get better/bigger/louder/shinier guns to kill the ever increasing smarter/faster/louder/bigger/shinier enemies and bosses that litter the world of Borderlands. Borderlands uses cel-shading for its graphics, meaning that it looks very comic book-ey. Comparing this flamboyant step outside the box to Black Ops' samey gritty modern graphics that are now the norm of FPS' nowadays already puts Borderlands in the lead. But then again, one cannot judge a game by graphics and aesthetics alone.
Call of Duty has been praised for "having more guns" than its opposition. Here it meets its match. Gearbox developed its engine to be able to churn out literally an infinite amount of weapons for the player to choose from to compliment his/her playstyle. For example, if a player is a siren, they won't want to waste one of their four slots on an RPG, they'll want to fill their spots with pistols, SMG's, maybe a sniper rifle and maybe a long-range AR, while someone who's a beserker will want that RPG in addition to AR's, Shotguns, and weapons with bayonets to capitalize on his/her already impressive melee stat.
Borderlands offers numerous side quests and features a long campaign. It's not as long as Fallout 3, the game it's mostly compared to, but it is longer than most other shooters, while Black Ops is a traditional 7-hour campaign. I shouldn't address multiplayer due to the mass amount of factors that can adjust a multiplayer experience for a varying amount of people, but half of the Borderlands experience lays on the shoulders of multiplayer. CoD, you're mad with your teammates. You're on different places on the map, most movements are uncoordinated, and most matches end with a bad taste and bad words in your mouth. Borderlands thrives on coordination and sharing. If one kink in the 4 man chain is broken, you won't beat the Rakk hive, you won't beat Zombie Ned, and you DEFINITELY won't beat the final boss who shoots Awesome Death out of each orifice.
DLC. Black ops doesn't really do much with DLC. a few map packs and they're done. No new campaign, no new characters, its done. Borderlands has given us four excellent expansion packs (well.. excluding The Underdome) these packs have done the impossible... Fallout only went up 10, and while Wow is up 25 since 2004, they did it in 3 short bursts. No. In one expansion pack, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx to be exact, Borderlands raised the level cap by ELEVEN. Name anyother game where in one expansion pack the level cap was raised by anything higher than ten other than BORDERLANDS' EPIC ELEVEN LEVEL CAP EXPANSION. They then increased it another 8 levels in the Clap-Trap DLC. You started with a Cap on 50, then it got raised by ELEVEN to 61, and then another eight were added to make it 69! No other game would do that. Even if treyarch made an RPG, they wouldn't have the courage to make the level cap the funniest number of all time, SIXTY NIIIINE!!!! 69696969696969!!!!
eh... where was I?
There's also an ever-sense of badassness in Borderlands. In BO, you level up and get the ability to Buy things. Oh goody, each time I level my credit card company throws me new deals. Yay. YAWN.
In Borderlands, each time you level not only allows you to use new guns only accessible at higher levels, increases your health and damage, but allows you to allocate a point to an extensive "Talant Tree" that gives you new abilities and traits to used in combat to heavily influence the outcome. On top of that, It's a wonderful feeling to lose to Bone head at level 7, do some quests and get some awesome guns, go back to his lair, and totaly annihilate him as he cries for his mother with his last few breaths. Wow that was dark.
Borderlands is also a very funny game. Not 10 minutes goes without the game cracking a joke, and these aren't crap jokes made to just be there for joke's sake, a lot of work went into the humor of this game. Compare this to the seriousness and lack of knowledge of what is going on in BO. You're left in mystery for the entire game and don't understand at all what happens during the entire narrative or how anything is related until the final level. Some call it a twist, I call it bad storytelling, not being able to understand yourself along the way, so after it's all said and done you finally have a rant on what we were supposed to be watching and give us a final level because you feel bad.
So overall, Black Ops' only standout feature amongst the other shooters is its sales numbers. Borderlands stands as an innovative, beautiful, funny, well-crafted game of 2009, definitely the best shooter of the year, and definitely competes with DA: Origins as best RPG of that year as well.
BO rating: 8.25
Borderlands rating: 9.25
-Chillz
