A good game which could have been really badass if not for laziness on part of the developers.
The aiming is like COD. Infact they ripped off the mission locating system straight from Call Of Duty Modern Warfare.
I will first list the good points followed by the bad points.
The game Borderlands gives you 4 characters to start with who are completely different from each other.
The main bosses are fun. Also the leveling system is old school with huge amounts of experience points required for leveling up.
The weapons are all good. Different types of weapons. Elemental weapons are also cool and rocket launchers and grenades (Transfusion grenade my favorite) are all some of the coolest weapons you will see in this game. The shield is a good feature which recharges itself. Class mods are also good and give different boosts.
The gameplay in general is good. The aiming quality is somewhere between Far Cry 2(bad aiming) and Call Of Duty Modern Warfare(good aiming).
The graphics is good. The maps and the landscapes are well constructed.
Oh! The best part is the vehicle. It handles better in this game even than Halo and Half Life.
The Story is ok. You are in a place called Pandora and you have to find the vault. The music and sound are also good.
The ending parts are some of the most intense periods and require some good skills on your part.
Action skills are great. Loved the Beserker of Brick especially. Mordecai's Bloodwing, Lilith's Phasewalk are all good. Roland's turret is also good but i have not yet played with him.
Game is overall challenging and does put your skills to test unlike COD games which are too easy. I can give that point
Now for the Bad Points:
Look. Borderlands could have outright been a 9.5 game and Triple A. But it has some issues that prevent it from becoming and otherwise great game.
First off blame the developers. They are damn lazy.
The enemies are all the same. You only have skags, bandits especially. Even the name will be same. For eg: Bruiser. All that will change is the levels.
There is a feature called Playthrough 2 but it only changes the name from Bruiser to Brute.
Also there are these mini-bosses called Badass which only increase in levels. Also in playthrough 2 only the name is changed to Badmutha. Yes! Borderlands including the game name itself has some of the most preposterous characters and names.
The maps except for Arid Badlands, Dahl Badlands are all pretty average and clear copy of each other. It seems like the devs worked hard when they created Arid Badlands (Fyrestone) and lost their gas onwards.
This game is 20 Hours. The first 18 hours is spent in Senseless side missions that make you scream in pain out of boredom and also the Bosses aren't so great during that time. For eg: Nine-Toes hypes to be some awesome boss only to be mowed down by you once you encounter him.
The last 2 hours have seriously saved some grace for this game and prevented me from giving it a 4 or 5 out of 10. The second last boss reminds you of Shadow of the colossus a bit and the last one reminds you of the final boss from Half Life - Opposing Force.
Also one other bad aspect is the Respawning enemies. You have a tough mission to do and you have to go all the way through the beaten path and you still have the same enemies recurring even the mini-bosses. The mothrakk was especially annoying recurring boss (Level 25 good for razing xp).
Overall Borderlands is a game which requires Immense patience from your side. The game required Dedication, Determination and the Will Power. Its not that the game is difficult, but its difficult to Complete.
If you have great patience and love RPGs like hell go for Borderlands. Also the 8.5 from Gamespot is for the Multiplayer added. I played some multiplayer and it can be fun. Especially when you are faced by your friends who are of higher levels it can get pretty challenging.
For the single player its a 7/10 from me. The DLCs are pretty good too. I have not played them, only heard.
So ------ Your call. Don't tell me that i didn't warn you. Play this game at your own risk.