For the first time, Borderlands is coming to a Nintendo platform and it is not just one, but three of the games, so rather than do a list for all the games on there own, I thought it would be nice to provide five tips, that will make your first time in the Borderlands universe fun.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but I will anyway, the game is far more fun with other people, but of course, playing solo is fine as well. There is something however, about playing with someone else, or multiple someone’s and that is the way you should play it if you can. Running across the wilds of Pandora, Elpis or any other location you can, with mates is a blast, especially when you start doing wicked things.

Taking down a boss on your own, that is an achievement, but doing it with mates is far more rewarding, there was a period of time with Borderlands 2, that myself and some friends all linked our consoles together, in the one room and just played the game. With Switch, this is made so easy, with local play, and if you do the impact to your experience will be far more rewarding, though if your mates are elsewhere, online is still an option.

This is perhaps the one thing that needs to be said the most, experiment with everything and frequently, because the more you do, the more you learn and the more fun you will have. During your play of any of the games, you will obtain guns faster than you can shoot most of them and if you stick to one or two guns, you will lose out on much.

There are guns that shoot rockets, some shoot bullets that explode when they hit the target, others are covered in fire and set the enemy they hit on fire. But with all the different modifiers, there is no limit to what you guns can do and while the gun you have had for a dozen levels might seem fun, a recently obtained one, might do something cooler and more damage. Sticking with one weapon, might serve you well for a few levels, but as enemies require more damage to defeat, you will need to change and if you have not experimented before, things might come to a halt, whilst you figure things out.

This is likely going to be the most divisive point here, because some players will tell you that farming ruins the game, whilst other will tell you it makes it more fun, I straddle the line and say to do it, but only for a little. The reasons why are two-fold, the first is that if you do it early on, you can get a leg up on the grind that the games tend to push towards you, letting you move through the early game with little fuss.

The other side is that, if you grind to often, then enemies will start to become to weak for you, removing the challenge and dampening the fun that the games can provide. There are extra modes in Borderlands 2, that will provide you with more of a challenge, but even they can be impacted, if you grind to often, so do it, just in moderation. Grinding can help you out, especially if you find yourself dying against a hard boss, but only do it, when you really need to.

Side missions are your friend here, there are countless characters to meet and take quests from and that is where the fun can be. Sticking to the main path, whilst fun, will only give you part of the story that the games are telling and that is not a good thing. Sure, there are dozens of quests that require you to kill enemy after enemy, but there are also ones to collect items and more, giving you a lot of freedom.

But more than that, the games have no quests, but have secrets hidden around the place, letting you find out more about the world, audio logs are a prime example. Some of these are on tables in towns, but others are on ridges that overlook barren wastelands that you can’t get to, so locating them can be a challenge all of their own. Taking the time to wander around the maps is something I highly recommend you do, as you never know what you might find.

Ah Borderlands, the series redefined what a shooter could be, but at the same time added in a collective obsession that only Diablo had enjoyed until then, but once you started to mix in the characters, enemies, locations and critters, things went bombastic. So something I suggest is to just go crazy a few times, does not matter what you do, just let loose.

The reason is a simple one, the main gameplay hook of the series is to push through the story, obtaining a lot of guns and just to shoot everything that moves. But much like in the GTA games, doing the opposite can be its own little fun, so run into a creatures den, or a bandit camp, that you are not likely to survive is fun. Apart from a little cash penalty, there is no downside, as you don’t lose any of your hard won swag. If shooting things is not your speed, then get in one of the available vehicles and just tear up wherever you can, this is especially great with folks in multiplayer, a few races around a self made course is all you need.

These are just a few of things you can do in Borderlands and as promised, they work for each game, but there are many more things to do. The point is that Borderlands is a playground and while they have a few toys you can play with, the fun really comes when you discover your own ways to play.