Fun for solo playing, epic for multiplayer, this bloody and frenetic shooter somehow avoids feeling derivative.
I passed on the game when it first came out, mostly because I thought it would be too derived from other games. It had a Fallout type atmosphere and the game play design looked uncomfortably like Farcry 2. But I saw it at a friends house and decided to take it home and give it a shot. I'm really glad I did, my first thought was how brilliant the graphics looked, and then immediately afterwards I realized how fun the combat was. I actually preferred the combat in Borderlands over Mass Effect, which is no small order. Good job Gearbox!
The humor is everywhere, the game obviously doesn't try to take itself too seriously, and it comes off as more entertaining for the player. The NPCs in the game are all cleverly thought out and in just the right number.
For a few reasons I couldn't give the game a perfect 10. One, has to do with the physics and technical design. You can be flying along in your vehicle and hit a tiny rock which brings you to a quick halt. I hope it the sequel the environment can be manipulated, or at least destroyed.
You can also get literally stuck in the game, for doing nothing more than opening a locker door while you're standing between it and a corner of the room, or falling off the wrong side of a hut into a crevasse. Boom you're stuck and have to quit and it will bring you in at the last outpost you passed after automatically saving your loot and XP, which happens often. So it's merely an annoyance, and doesn't ruin your day.
The day/night cycles can be atmospheric at times but the graphics are so much better during the day, you wish the night would just go away. During the night the graphics appear drab. Maybe the player could choose the season they're playing. I would have chosen summer so the days are long and nights short.
The last drawback I'd like to point out is that even though I like games with looting, like Mass Effect and Diablo, there was possibly far too much of it in Borderlands. The player could easily spend 20 mins every few hours trying to figure out which of their weapons are the best to continue with and what they should sell. It's just ended being exciting when loot dropped. The player should have been able to exclaim "sweet, what an awesome weapon". Towards the leadup to the climax, I found myself not caring to look at what was falling at all, my machine gun with its 111 damage and 15 firing rate (which I think allowed me to hurt the enemies for 1,665 hit points a second) couldn't possibly have been upgradable.
All-in-all, it took me 39 hours to beat it solo, and now I'm going to get a copy so I can play through it again with a friend.