Borderlands is a game best played in moderation... I don't own it, my nephew brings it around and then we play with characters that we haven't played with anywhere else so that we stay at the same level. I can understand why letting somebody who is a higher level play with lower levels could ruin the game and we kind of saw it coming... because it's true.
What I love about the game is it hasn't got an identity crisis like a lot of big scope games do; instead it is a game which was obviously designed to be good fun, and more so when played with others - preferably friends - in a world that makes garbage look somewhat interesting to look at. The towns look improvised and are filled with a mishmash of futuristic looking buildings and broken up rusty metals and debris used for makeshift walls. There were several times when I was in New Haven and thought, "there is something about that open diners lighting or scooters garage which looks really moody in the sundown dusty night atmosphere, and that was thanks mostly due to the off white lighting artstyle changes.
Again though, Borderlands doesn't suffer with that identity crisis that a lot of games do. This game isn't about it's riveting tales, it's about the loot system, the co-op action and the sheer fun of blasting your way through loads of enemies in interesting places.
The games bad points are that it does have a fairly crappy ending but in a game where the story takes a backseat I can actually get over that pretty easily. However, it dawns on me that you virtually never spend any time taking in the view of your environment, and although there is a decent amount of variation between the different districts and wastelands, the art style can't really redeem the fact that you spend the majority of the game grinding and fast traveling through corridor/compound style areas without much cinimatography.
Borderlands weather system appears to be an afterthought and the only thing that is in there is a half arsed day/night cycle (the main difference, being that night is slightly more dreary than day unless there are lights in the area).
The loot system itself seems to be a bit screwy to me, I don't know why, but my soldier character seemed to get some downright awful loot most of the time, and for some reason the shotguns that fire rockets do virtually no damage at high levels to even basic enemies making that misc attribute pretty terrible unless it's ellemental, and even then it's pretty useless.
The variation in the guns, as somebody else pointed out is somewhat disappointing until later in the game when higher quality guns start to show up. I can't believe the number of repeaters I have found that looked extremely close to the last one I found, with a slightly different slider or a slightly longer barrel, or a basic ironsite. Apart from colours, it seems to me that the different brands of guns can only be told apart by colours, because the manufacturers all seem to use the same parts. So rather than the guns looking interesting and getting even more interesting towards the later parts of the game, they start out looking **** at get slightly less **** until the level 25 - 30 mark.
Also, submachineguns have a tendency to be better than rocketlaunchers... in fact they have a tendency to be better than everything else, especially when submachineguns that fire 4 rounds per cycle, and over 10 cycles per second are commonplace later on your first playthrough, when I couldn't find an assault rifle that was even one third as good as that.
The final points I will make is that the car physics are crummy and the AI is extremely predictable except for some of the creatures and the crimson lance. Despite some hitches the game is still a good RPG/Shooter hybrid and is a whole lot of fun and I will continue to play it... ...in moderation.
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