Borderlands

Before I begin this review, I need to point out two things.  One, I am not an avid fan of FPS games.  I've played some Halo (which I hated), some Killzone 2 on my PS3 (which I tolerated), and some Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (which I really liked), but I don't go near a new FPS unless it's introduced to me by one of my more well-trusted amigos.  I don't think FPS games are bad, they're just not my thing (although I've been on the Borderlands hype train for a few months now, admittedly). 
 
I also did not buy the game.  I spent the last week-and-a-half playing split screen co-op at my friend's place.  Therefore, I cannot soundly review this game from an online multiplayer perspective. 
 
However, with both of these issues in mind, I still had a ton of fun playing Borderlands.  It's a well crafted FPS with tons of style and personality, even if it's lacking a bit in some places. 
 
The story is pretty simple.  You've no doubt heard it before: there's this vault that may or may not exist (the game actually makes tons of references to it's ambiguous existence during the first half), you are a mercenary, and you are searching for this vault.  Simple, yes, but that leaves a ton of room for exploring different themes, like greed, personal conquest, whatever, right?  With all of this possibility to tell an interesting story, the developers opted to keep the narrative relatively second-fiddle to the gameplay.  It's there, if you're willing to read a lot of text and listen to some pseudo-mysterious lady chat with you over some weird, out of place static screen, but I'm not one for boring text, and the static-lady annoyed me by obscuring my vision whenever she (unexpectedly) popped up.  Like I said, the story's there, but it's presented in a fairly uninteresting way. 
 
There's another problem with the story, too: for how much personality the game itself has, the characters that inhabit it (including the four characters you play as) are rather bland and have little-to-no backstory.  The thing is, there's so many characters I wanted to know more about, like a redneck guy who's apparently blind and missing a leg, but, aside from two or three missions I went on, there's no history given that explains any of it (besides some skag eating his leg, but that felt more of a cop-out that an in-depth look at the character).  And it continues on like that for pretty much every character you meet! 
 
Being more of an RPG man, myself, I found this a tad disheartening at first.  I love a good story and well-developed, interesting characters as much as I love fun gameplay, but this game made little attempt to appease that side of me. 
 
Good thing it made due with pretty much everything else. 
 
The shooter aspects are fairly easy to grab a hold of.  The right trigger shoots, the left looks down your sight (or scope), the bumpers control your action skill and grenades, you look with the right thumbstick, and you move with the left.  Anyone who's ever picked up Halo or Call of Duty will be right at home with this game (especially if you've played the latter).  When I started the game, it was a bit sensitive for me, but it had a menu to control that, so that was no big deal.  Within about half an hour I was scoring headshots (which, for most humanoid enemies, count as "critical hits") and strafing circles around opponents with the best of them. 
 
While the game plays well enough, the menu system is a bit wonky in split-screen.  When you open up a menu you can't see the whole thing at a time; there's simply too much information on a single screen.  You have to move the right thumbstick around to focus on certain details of the screen you're on.  This was extremely frustrating at first, but I eventually got used to it. 
 
Shying away from the FPS aspect of Borderlands for a moment, I realized how well-made of an RPG it is.  The four character classes play similar enough that switching to another class won't drastically change the way you play the game, but each class has it's own metagame quirks associated with it.  The Soldier is the medic/support guy, the Scout is the ranged combats expert, the Siren is the mage (and, as an added bonus, can also be played as the stealth girl), and Brick is, well, he's a tank.  Every character can use every gun in the game, but certain characters are proficient with a certain type of gun.  For example, Brick has skills dealing with rocket launchers, causing them to do more damage. 
 
Every character has an action skill that has it's own skill tree (and many associated skills) corresponding to it.  This makes the team-dynamics even more important.  Playing as the soldier, I'd often let my friend (playing as the scout) send his pet bloodwing the lure enemies to us while I deployed my turret.  Using a sniper, my friend would pick off enemies, and weaken the ones he couldn't kill, so that when the tougher ones he didn't take out came close to us, my turret and rifle would take care of them.  By utilizing our individual skills cooperatively, we were able to tackle the campaign, and had a smoother ride through our teamwork and strategies. 
 
While it's astonishing how developer Gearbox were able to make every class unique and important, it was even more miraculous how fun each one is.  The incentive to try out every character class gives the game tons of replay value. 
 
Speaking of replay value, yes, this game is chocked full of guns.  While the classes are fun to play with, toying with the guns became the reason to come back to play the game an average of six to eight hours a day.  Most guns are differentiated based solely on stats, but there are some that do weaker damage, but have elemental properties.  Some regenerate ammo.  At the end of my play-through, I found a gun that stole health from my enemies to give to me, a property I, to the day, believe is some magnificent, game-breaking glitch in the programming. 
 
The amount of guns are almost endless, but, as many have pointed out, you'll be finding so many guns during your campaign that you'll probably end up using one gun for hours on end before finding a suitable substitute.  Still, the mere thought of finding the next "big thing" is enough to keep the game addictive and fun throughout. 
 
It doesn't even stop at guns.  There's enough shields, class mods and grenade mods to rival the amount of firepower in the game. 
 
Now that we're away from the obvious draw of the game (once again, there's a ton of guns), how does it look?  In a word, nice.  The decision  to do away with photorealism and adopt a more cartoony, cel-shaded art style was a good one.  Characters come out looking clean and well animated, you can easily tell friend from foe from long distances thanks to the silhouette each figure casts on the landscape, and everything has a certain style that shows just how much creativity the art team at Gearbox has.  It's a really beautiful game. 
 
Don't get me wrong, though; cartoony doesn't mean childish.  As I said before, this game has tons of personality, represented with how decidedly mature it presents itself.  Heads explode when you kill an human enemy with a critical hit, you'll see chunks of the aforementioned skags' brains falling to the ground after sending a grenade into the middle of a group; this is not a game for children. 
 
Adding to that distinctive personality is a remarkably well-driven voice cast.  Nothing is more satisfying than hearing your character taunt an enemy after a successful kill.  I chuckled every time the scout asked a freshly discarded foe "you like that!? Huh!?" 
 
The soundtrack, however, is mostly forgettable.  The opening theme, "Ain't No Rest of the Wicked" by alt-rock band Cage is about as memorable a tune as you're going to find in the game.  Thankfully, though, the ambient noise makes up for the lack of a really nice soundtrack, with skags growling from a distance and birds screeching up high.  Not that you'll notice - with all of the near-constant shooting and chattering, there's not much time to appreciate the solid musical score the game deserves. 
 
Overall, I enjoyed Borderlands.  It has some problems with split-screen co-op, but I recommend it to anybody with a brother, friend, or girlfriend nearby that needs something to play on the couch.  It'll hook you, and keep you traversing the environment for hours to come. 
 
Welcome to the Wastelands.