Borderlands is a wonderful game with cool, artistic graphics. It is hectic at times, but slow at others, and always fun.
The game opens up with an interesting song ("There ain't no Rest for the Wicked", by Cage the Elephant), that represents the feel of Borderlands, minus the hillbillyishness: everyones gotta make a living, and sometimes we gotta do bad things. And as Borderlands makes it apparent: you gotta have fun doing those bad things.
Next, you choose your character out of four on a bus. There is a "Siren", who can slow time down and run like hell, a "Soldier" who can create a shield and blast the crap out of anything, a sniper who is well, a sniper and can summon a attacking bird thing, and "Brick" the berzercker, who just like to go apesh*t on stuff. I prefer the Siren, and found her quite useful on bosses.
There are two things Borderlands has that other games do not have: amazing graphics that look like a comic, and guns. Many, many guns. And they differ from pistols, rifles, SMGs, snipers, rockets, shotguns, magnums, and elemental guns. Some of the guns you may find are shotguns that shoot rockets, sniper rifles that light enemies on fire from afar, or magnums that can melt peoples' faces off. All of the guns feel great, and never make you feel super powerful. There are not many one-hit kill weapons, and if you get one, the enemies will soon toughen up and make it less effective. This makes sure you're never trying to Rambo it, or at least not that often.
The graphics remind me of Fallout 3 meeting Crackdown. They really feel like you're in an epic DC or Marvel adventure, and are what makes the game so special. The acid looks more like the Joker's hair, the fire like a burning building in Spiderman, and the guns like something from a Sci-fi graphic novel. The stylized mountains have jagged edges, the characters seem less serious and more interesting, and the enemies are more entertaining to kill. You won't feel bad after blasting the arm off of a "Mutant Psycho Midget" once he's threatened you with shrill cries and a truly insane mask.
Perhaps my favourite Midget-blasters were the elemental weapons. These were guns that would shoot either acid, fire, lightning, or go boom! Sniper rifles that could light someones head on fire from a safe distance are winners to me.
Borderlands has both single player, local co-op, and online co-op. For my first run I chose to try Singleplayer, and while I was not disappointed, it got a tiny bit slow driving everywhere without someone to talk to, and some of the missions were a bit difficult without a buddy. Co-op is amazing, and I had 10x more fun with friends. If you have Xbox LIVE, I urge you to play this with others before going solo.
I have only three complaints: the story is not that great, the missions were not varied, and driving everywhere sucked. Luckily, I did not buy this for story, I have Bioshock and God Of War for that. The missions were all fun, and some humorous, but they consisted of kill this, kill this and get that, or kill this, then kill specific person. As far as driving goes, it is fun, but less than midway through the game you unlock a teleporting system, whih is extra useful.
To sum it all up, Borderlands is an amazing game with only a few flaws, but none of them bar it from being a unique and wonderfully gorey experience.