An RPG-Shooter that's sure to keep you hooked for a good 50 hours.
The first appeal I had to Borderlands was the art style. I've always been kind of a sucker for cell shaded, so the twist gearbox throws on the characters and environments in Borderlands is, to me, beautiful. Not to discredit this game as being "pretty," as it also has an "M" rating.
To give a little background shown in the first five minutes of Borderlands, you are a newcomer on the planet Pandora. You're goal? Find a rumored vault filled with riches that are insurmountable. How? Eh, you'll find out on your own.
The game starts with a choice among which class you want to play. The Hunter, a specialist in snipers and throwing his pet bird at enemies, the Siren, a lady with the power to walk through other dimensions and surprise her enemy, the Soldier, a more built figure with a "pop-out" turret at his command, and Brick, who...hits stuff.
When your character his level 5, they gain access to their class-specific action skill: (respectively) the bird, phase walk, turret, and a berserk mode. After that, every level up to 50 gets you a skill point towards your classes skill tree (which is very similar to WoW's talent tree specs). Points are used to up
weapon damage, shield/health regeneration, healing abilities (in co-op), and so on.
When you're finally in the world on your own, there are a lot of story missions to complete as well as even more side quests to journey on. When playing for the first time, I took every side quest I could, and in doing so, had a bit of a level advantage over most enemies. The story is loosely tied together by a
mysterious "guardian angel" who contacts you through your communicator device and...well...tells you to "go" places. I honestly think the characters you meet along the way are enough to keep me interested in the story, but this mysterious girl thing kind of felt weird. She acts like you're best friends and that she's helping out and all. But really, she does nothing.
/end pointless rant
Speaking of characters, there are a lot of really cool and interesting people who live on Pandora. One of the first, Dr. Zed, a crazy doctor who also totally isn't in the first DLC of Borderlands, gives you an introduction to the place. TK Baha, a crazy hick who sits on his porch all day, is also a fun character who doesn't need a lot of story for him to be likeable. One of the better characters is Patrica Tanning, a scientist who was sent to investigate Pandora some couple of years ago. A reoccurring quest line is that of finding her hidden audio logs scattered around the world. Her mindless rants to herself are very interesting as they show her inevitable incline to insanity as she slowly uncovers secrets to the vault.
As for the antagonists, they aren't as powerful as you might think them to be. Villains are usually about stringing you along the whole way and then confronting you in the end, but Borderlands is more of you doing your own thing and not worrying about killing the same boss multiple times. Boss fights are usually named mobs that aren't connected to the story at all. The whole bad guy scene comes together closer to the end, so I won't go on about it so much.
Wow. I've come so far and haven't talked about the game's earliest appeal and completely new system: the guns. Of course it's an FPS, so there's a pistol, smg, sniper, rocket, and rifle, right? Well, close. Borderlands actually has a system that randomly combines parts to guns that you purchase or pick up from chests and enemies. What's cool is that these combinations statistically create billions of guns (I think). What's not so cool is that you will only use close to none of them. On my first playthrough, I'll guess that I picked up and then sold about 98% of the guns I found. It was the fact that I found a really good gun and then based what I wanted to use next on being better than my previous. Sure there are a ton of different guns, but most of them don't compare to that 2% of keepers that you can't top. However, playing around with the different types of elemental damage, particle effects, and pure looks of the guns made it worth while to keep a back catalogue of unique gun sespecially alien weaponry).
The types of enemies are very basic: small, dog-like "skags", human bandits and raiders, flying, bat-like "raks", spiderants (which is self-explanatory), various bugs, and the glowy, hovering "guardians." The enemy AI is pretty straightforward: run at dude and/or shoot dude. Because of this, the combat can sometimes feel played out and dry. Most enemies crawl out of a hole or walk out of a hut, so it was no surprise when you were in a combat zone or where to point your gun at and constantly shoot until enemies stopped appearing. Enemies will use cover, but most times they just sit in the open and unload on you. As for bosses, they will usually stand in one place and eat your bullets willing before they die from a headache. The boss fights left me wanting more. I felt like I was cheating sometimes when I would kill one with ease be rewarded. The last boss is like that (not to give spoilers).
To wrap up the story side of the game, it wasn't all that great to me. It seemed like the end just hit a brick wall and I was disappointed. I almost wanted to put the game away for a while, but then I discovered the second playthrough. After completing the story on your first playthrough, the game lets you do the whole thing over except at a level more appropriate to when you first finished (around 34). Everything you have carries over and you can even go back to the first playthrough to complete any side quests you might have missed. When you hit level 50, you might still have a couple hours left before wrapping up the story. However, the game still keeps track of your experience gains, which might be a hint to there being a level cap raise (hopefully...).
So that's everything I have to say about Borderlands. I probably didn't make this clear earlier, but Borderlands is just flat out fun to play. The RPG aspects are great, the combat aspects are great, and that dude on the cover is wicked. 9/10 get!