To put it in the words that they used to advertise the game with, Borderlands is what happens when FPS has a child with RPG. A role playing shooter if you will.
But the thing that shines the most in Borderlands in my opinion is the cooperative multiplayer. Good co-op games are far and few which is something I never really understood because they are so much more fun than your usual singleplayer and/or deathmatch type of games.
Set in distant future on a barren planet called Pandora the story begins with you sharing a bus ride with three other adventurers. You get to pick from one of the four classes. Brick (Berserker), Lilith (Siren), Mordecai (Hunter) and Roland (Soldier). All of them come with their own skills which you get to improve as you advance in the game.
There’s quite a fair amount of humour in the game as well in addition to all the adult content (mostly blood and gore). I’ll admit at this point though that if I have to watch another Claptrap(small robots) dance once more I’ll just start blowing them up randomly with one of the 87 bazillion weapons.
So far I’ve only had the chance to play with only one of the classes (hunter) as I want to finish the game first before trying out the other classes, but I must say that it has been a lot of fun so far. Especially the multiplayer co-op parts. We had some initial problems getting the multiplayer running, but once those were sorted out it was a lot of fun.
All in all it’s a very enjoyable game, but as with most things it does have some flaws. Mostly what seems to bug me is the AI. It’s very predictable, and quite dumb to say the least. Running around in circles and firing at the AI seems to do the trick 98% of the time, and they really don’t get smarter.
As usually there’s some console “leftovers” as well in the interface, but that doesn’t bother me as much anymore.
If you like RPGs, or FPS games then you should give Borderlands a try. If you like cooperative style games then even more so. It has been a lot of fun playing the co-op mode so far and I look forward to many more hours of questing, looting and raiding with my gaming buddies in Borderlands!