I’m sure that by now many of you will have heard tell of this little gem from Gearbox. I’ve been playing quite a bit of Borderlands in the past little while. Quite a fun game in it’s own right; however, it does have it’s flaws. I’ll get to those in a moment.
Graphics
Borderlands has a lot of visual charm; It’s cell-shaded style is quite different from the usual “grey and brown” motif that most FPS developers seem to swear by. The environments are bright and colorful, and the characters look great. The enemies you’ll be fighting look great as well, with a lot of variety in their appearances; from the ferocious skaggs to the big and beefy bandit Bruisers, each enemy has its own style.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Borderlands, while not doing a whole lot that hasn’t been done before, is surprisingly addicting. When you start a new game, you pick from one of four characters: The Soldier, the Hunter, the Siren, and the Berserker. Each of these classes has their own skill trees, along with a special ability. The Soldier can deploy a turret that can help immensely in a fight. The Hunter has a pet falcon, which he sends out to attack a single enemy. The Siren can turn invisible, either to get up 
close to the enemy, or to escape. And finally, the Berserker can beat things to death with his fists. Each one feels different to the others, and each one’s skills can be customized in different ways; For example, the Soldier’s turret can heal nearby allies.
Onto the much flaunted loot system: Loot provides most of the motivation in the game, so it’s fortunate that the loot system is so addicting. Loot is procedurally generated, so you have plenty of options when choosing your arsenal. There’s lots and lots of weapons. Some shoot explosions. Or lightning. Some have knives on them.
It’s not without it’s flaws, however, and some of them are pretty big.
The game’s voice-chat is poorly implemented; it automatically broadcasts, but it only picks up your voice when it detects it (which it doesn’t do nearly regularly enough for it to function as a fucking chat system.) You’re much better off using a third-party program, like Ventrilo. Of course, should you decide to do this, you’d be advised to turn off the in-game voice, a feat only achievable through the editing of fucking .ini files.
The game usually controls fairly well, but some things (such as mouse-smoothing, which is turned on by default and you can only turn it off through, you guessed it, the fucking .ini files) could be better. Sometimes the controls feel clunky, such as when you’re driving a vehicle.
Now, the main problem I have with this game; Gearbox doesn’t know how to program multiplayer games. One would assume that they would release the game with fully-functioning online support, as the game is designed for cooperative play. You would, however, be dead wrong. Online play seems to work only when it feels like it. It functions randomly, sometimes; You could join a friend’s game one minute, but god help you if you quit. You might never get back in. On top of that, some people just can’t host a server no matter how many ports they forward. It’s quite nearly a deal-breaker, although playing it cooperatively is quite fun enough to redeem it, if only slightly. There are supposedly patches inbound, but it’s still rather distressing to have a key factor of the game so broken on
release.
Story
There’s very little story. You’re one of four guys on this planet, and you’re searching for treasure. You’ll meet some interesting characters along the way, and the game’s brand of humor does make up for the lack of any real narrative. Still, it would’ve been nice to have more of a storyline; Who are these characters? Why are they searching for the Vault? I suppose you’ll just have to use your imagination.
My recommendation
If you have a console, you might want to give it a rent first. In my mind, however, it’s well worth the price; For all it’s flaws, it’s a fun game. I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon than killing and looting on a desert planet. Maybe hold off for a while, though, at least until Gearbox releases a patch.
