I would of wrote this a month ago but I had to sign some papers saying I wouldn't talk till today. So ya, Im writing this at midnight so I could write this asap. Also im putting this in General discussion because it covers more than just the game. 

Last month I was one of the lucky two to win the contest held here on the big Bomb. It was really the first only contest I had won. Good thing I live 30 minutes away from Gearbox's studio.  

I arrived about 25 minutes early at the studio located at the Bank of America building in Plano, Texas. Walking in I noticed another man standing with a cameria and was messing with his phone. I asked him if he was there for the play session and he was. We started talking about the game and what other games we had been playing recently. Turns out he was from Shacknews.con and was one of 8 people, including myself, that had one contests from different sites. One being Giantbomb, Destructiod, Shacknews, and the Gearbox forums.

 
At around 4 Steve from Gearbox came down and showed us to the room were we would be playing. It full of three things I love most: Pizza, Soda, and video games. So just walking in I was happy. The other

 contest winners had already arrived and were getting ready to play. All of them seemed really excited about the game and were asking

 questions even before we started playing. The guy next to me though, a contest winner from Destructiod, was sooo annoying. He kept saying stupid commentative things about the game every 5 sec. Man that guy was annoying.

Anyways, on to the game. To start out bluntly, Borderlands is an AWESOME game. From the graphics to the gameplay it feels solid. The way the combat works is engaging and fun, and the quest system, while not anything new, moved quickly and at a fun pace. 
 
You start out with a standard machine gun and handgun. Im not sure if your able to pick from the beginning but we all started out as the character Roland. The soldier of the game with talent tree branching from Medic, Support, and a DPS spec. He has the ability to send out a turret that do many things from heal to supply ammo.  
 
Other playable classes/characters include.

•    Mordecai- The hunter of the group. He's better off with a Sniper rifle. He is, from what I saw, primarily a DPS class.
  
• Lilith- The mage of the group. She has a "Phase Walk" that lets her become invisible to enemy and can attack them while in this phase.
  
• Brick- The tank of the group. His main role is the take the damage for the group. His ability is to take a TON of damage and deal massive amounts of damage also.
  

One thing you can do at the beginning is to change the color of your class. While not the biggest feature it was nice to see some customization to a named character.  A little Robot teaches you the basics but Ill let you guys figure out the rest. I dont want to completely ruin it. 

Playing alone I got up to level 6 in about 30 minutes. Not bad for leveling compared to other rpgs. The quest system will net you the most xp but killing things will also get you a fair amount of xp. While Im on the topic of killing things. This game is a strong M rating. The first time I did a melee attack the guy's head EXPLODED! It was awesome and this also happens when you get headshot and what not. Now back to the quest system. As I said before it has a nice flow to it. Now there is some running between wave points but thats expected. It has a very WoW feeling to it, but that makes it a good thing cause WoW's quest system is very strong and fun. The loot also is very Diablo-E. It can drop off anyone and anything and I is all seperated by color. How the loot works in multiplayer is Snake loot which means first come first serve. So be quick on getting loot! They did say they would change it if too many people said something about it. 
 

At about the hour mark of playing we were asked if we would like a tour from Randy Pitchford himself and other members of the staff. The offices themselves were very casual. Full of action figures and video game merch. Randy's office was the best by far. With old video games everywhere it seemed more like a museum. The other offices were full of people ether working on Borderland or other projects that we were not allowed to see. They were constantly erasing things off of dry boards that they said we were not allowed to

 see. As we walked to the front desk they had a big stack of posters that they had just got in that day. We all got one and they were signed by Randy and other members of the staff. Along with a t-shirt and sticker. (Ill post a large picture of the poster at the end of this blog.) I could of done without the sticker but what-evs it was free. As we were getting our poster signed I noticed that Pitchford had a cloths pin on his back. Like someone was playing a joke on him. I didn't say anything to him because I thought it was funny but someone else said something to him and the cloths pin said Shacknew.com on it. Damn why didnt I thing of that...Anyways we saw their central server and that was only inte    resting because of the gnome that lives in there. Over all it was a nice office.
 
When we returned we went on to 4 player co-op. I kept on playing Roland because in past games like this one I usually pick the medic. Gameplay moves fast and furious. People are shooting left and right while ammo and loot is falling all over from dudes you kill. The key to the gamplay was to stay together because later in the game the bad guys get really hard to take down. It also doesn't help that there is a bunch of them on screen at a time most of the time. Playing the medic was fun but there was one flaw: the other people wouldn't stay still. How the medic heals is ether A) Throws out his turret and the turret heals people B) When the medic kills someone the gets a ring around him that heals party members C) You shoot your teammates with your gun. That last option is really the only big one because the turret is on a cooldown and you don't kill that many people because of your low damage output. There is a problem with shooting your teammates to heal them is that they dont stay still for very long. That makes shotguns and rocket launchers the better tools for healing. You also cant heal yourself which is a bummer. I told them that though so they might change it. 
 
I could go on forever talking about what I saw and played but ill leave that to questions if anyone has any. So please ask a-way. 
 
Another note: If I have said too much please tell me and Ill delete this. If that doesnt happen then good. This took forever to type. 
 

Here is the poster I got.