Borderlands is (officially) on the Mac

A few days ago Borderlands was officially launched on Apple's new App Store. This was a pretty big deal to me, although I had already beaten the original campaign on "Playthrough I" on a Mac about 8 months ago. Confused? Let me explain. Borderlands is a game I had been anticipating for two years before its release. I love both the RPG (role-playing-game) and FPS (first-person-shooter) genres, and Borderlands is the first game to blend the two. Well, this was before I had made a plan to travel around the world, and I had a big Mac Pro tower with twin 2.8 Ghz Pentiums and 6 gigs of RAM in it, but Borderlands was only released for the PC. I was undeterred. I used Bootcamp, put all the drivers in, and bought Borderlands on Steam. Even with all that processing power, the game ran like shit, even with all the settings on low. When I say that, I mean major screen tearing issues. Now I am playing on my 11" MacBook Air and it runs better than it ever did on my last computer. So thank you Feral Interactive for publishing such a great edition of Borderlands. I had bought the game before on Steam when it was for PC, but with this edition you also get all of the DLC (Down-Loadable-Content) at once, so it is a good value.

Tips and Tricks for anybody new to the world of Borderlands:

Skags: The pitbulls of Pandora are not just for target practice, they charge at you fast! Use any opportunity that they open their wide mouths to shoot them right in the face for a critical hit. Also, when you see them charging you can also jump over them, which is a good strategy because they have a hard time turning around, also this gives you a shot at their unarmored sides. For Skag Spitters you should close distance on them and try and use a melee attack on them, it's highly effective. Skags have loot too, find ammo that they've swallowed, and if you're lucky enough to see it drop, take a screenshot of Skag Pearls, it will give you money, but post that screenshot on the Gearbox forums for net cred.

Explosive containers: These aren't just limited to the explosive barrels that you see (colored red for gas, blue for electric, and green for acid, yellow is explosive burst damage like gunpowder (?), but there are also gas containers, always brown and marked with a white "Jakobs" logo.

more tips to come!