Bordlerlands, while being quietly developed for years, made its sudden leap to the foreground of gaming media late this summer. The hype behind this game started building like a steaming locomotive as it plowed its way through shooter and RPG fans alike. Was the hype behind Gearboxes new IP overplayed? You might be pleasantly surprised with this title.

First of all, Borderlands is considered a role playing shooter. But to be frank, there is about as much RPG in borderlands as there is in any common MMORPG. While games like Mass Effect are role playing games with shooter elements, I would call borderlands a shooter with role playing elements.

Meet Claptrap, sometimes cute, mostly annoying..

Borderlands has a level and skill system, much like an RPG. You get to choose from one of four playable classes, each will very distinct skill trees. Each player only gets 1 usable skill, but your tree’s will modify that skill and other passive abilities. Also, like its MMORPG brothers, Borderlands has a MASSIVE random loot system. There are millions and millions of possible gun drops, all different in rarity with unique and sometimes wacky effects. Towards the end of the game my favorite weapon quickly became a burst pistol with unlimited ammo and high chance to cause corrosive damage (melting peoples faces off).

The fighting in Borderlands is pretty gratifying, with your massive selection of weapons, you can snipe your enemies with flaming ammo and light them on fire from a distance. You ran run up to them and shoot them in the face with an acid spaying shotgun, electrocute them an nullify their shields with an electric smg, or blow them up with a rocket laucher (I even found a shotgun that shot rockets..). there are endless ways to torture your enemies, all of which will put a big grin on your sadistic faces.

Lighting things on fire, one of the little things you'll deeply appreciate about Borderlands.

The world is HUGE, there is lots to do, with about 30 hours of gameplay. Most of what you will be doing is completing of chain of endless quests until the end, another thing that makes this game all to familiar for MMORPG players. Questing also gives various random rewards, such as shields, weapons, or class modifications to further customize your characters skills. by endgame you’ll end up around level 35, what to do with the next 15 levels? borderlands has a new game + mode that allows you to replay at your current level against tougher enemies with the hopes of more awesome loot.

The graphics are some of the better cell shaded graphics I’ve seen on this system, they gave this post apocalyptic world a very fresh appearance. Voice acting is good and never really detracts from the game, the music is very fitting and sits in the background well. All in all the physical presentation of borderlands is impressive.

This was a pretty epic battle.

The major drawback to borderlands is its story, or lack thereof. The quests are completed in such a manner that you can speed through without even reading anything, The main story arc is quite bland and plain, there is really no draw to the story or characters here, this game is mainly about killing stuff, customizing skills, and collecting gear.

I highly recommend that anybody who plays this game, do so with a friend, as it makes the experience a lot less lonely and desolate. Borderlands was made for team play, either split screen or over live. This game was a lot of fun to play with the wife and provided many hours of entertainment for both of us. Gearbox did screw up in one aspect here though. You cannot play split screen on a single system over live or LAN. Each player must be playing from a single console to play the 4 player mode. This pretty much ruined the possibility of us playing over live with friends and killed some social aspects of the game. It is not known yet if bioware is planning on changing this decision down the road.

If you are looking for a fun shooter and don’t mind the complete absence of story, you’re going to have a lot fun with borderlands, especially if you have friends to play with. Gearbox just released their first DLC “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned” this week. While I havn’t had the chance to play it yet, it certainly looks to be a lot of fun, and at a whopping 1gig of data, it looks like there might be quite of bit of content there. Borderlands is a highly entertaining game that will keep you busy for hours.