Mildly Amusing, Ultimately Lackluster
Borderlands is a game that tries hard but ultimately falls by the wayside.
The problem, ultimately, is that the game is essentially a B title. It's right in the middle of the B range, which typically refers to titles that are OK but not excellent. It makes a number of valiant attempts to elevate itself above the B status but ultimately fails.
Borderlands has a number of original aspects. It has a rather gorgeous graphics style, with art reminiscent of comic book and artists like Moebius. It has a randomized weapons system that works rather well. It even offers randomized enemies.
But other than that, prepare yourself for numerous fetch quests and kill quests that get extremely monotonous. Prepare yourself for going through the same areas again and again and fighting the same monster groups again and again. Why did they bother randomizing the monsters at all? Monster types respawn with minor variations. As a selling point this isn't a very solid one. How difficult would it have been to have roving packs?
The weapons are likewise minor variations on a number of themes, and get repetitive very fast. At first, a gun that shoots flaming bullets looks like it's going to be very interesting. But soon you realize that you'll be receiving MIRV rockets, and you realize further that you're going to be bored with MIRV rockets. This realization occurs long before the event actually happens.
You get vehicles in Borderlands. But soon after you get them, you realize how small the maps are. They're large enough to be difficult to traverse on foot, but too small for interesting travel by car. Not only that but they tend to be cramped and dense with objects to get hung up on. Burnout Paradise this game isn't.
The fact that the world is broken up into zones is also extremely damaging to the immersion and gameplay. Before games like Oblivion, that might have been acceptable but now, when we've become used to games without intrusive world boundaries, the fact that we can't take a car from one end of the game to the other feels needlessly constraining.
Combat is likewise unappealing. It's mildly amusing in the early stages of the game but rapidly becomes repetitive. You either overpower your enemies or you're overpowered by them: there seems to be little skill involved in the equation. Firefights tend to be slugfests. Use of cover helps. There is a component of judicious use of grenades and special abilities. There's a component of ammunition management. But ultimately you're sitting there unloading on enemies, which somehow becomes very humdrum very fast.
I didn't finish Borderlands. I got to roughly the halfway mark, and became so bored with the game that I shelved it, probably permanently. I don't think it was worth the money I paid for it.
In the end, there's something very unsatisfying about Borderlands. It tries very, very hard to be Fallout 3, and fails on almost every count. That game is a true roleplaying shooter. Borderlands is a dumbed down, repetitive shooting gallery for console kids. Canned, repetitive encounters. Canned, instanced maps. A brittle combat system with very little room for strategy or tactical play.
It's not terrible and succeeds in many ways but it's ultimately bland and empty. It's an open world that isn't open, with randomized encounters that aren't random. It's an RPG without a storyline or memorable characters. It's a shooter with awkward, unresponsive controls. In short, it's not what it claims to be in any respect.
I'd say give this one a miss. If you're interested in the premise, get Fallout 3 instead-- Borderlands is an attempt at a ripoff of the style of Fallout and fails miserably. 2/5
