Borderlands

Its impressive when games manages to embrace alot of elements from different genres while still providing a unique experience and Borderlands is indeed the case with this. It offers satisfying and comfortable first person combat with slick controls that games like Call of Duty have beaten into our muscle memory, dig a little deeper and you will also come across the character progression and loot hunting reminiscent of games like Diablo and World Of Warcraft. Toss in absurd humor and co-op dropping in on top and you have Borderlands, and it delivers a nice flavor of both genres and does so with a lot of style.

Set on the desolate yet hostile planet of Pandora you fresh of the bus as one four treasure hunters looking for a strange entity known as "The Vault". Rumored to be containing great fortune and power, this immediately sets the stage for alot of loot grabbing and wildlife confrontations as you attempt to seek out its rich belongings. However finding the Vault isnt a simple task so in order to even odds of finding it, you are gonna need some help. Anywhere that is not being over watched by the local dangers is usually populated by some friendly faces. If walk up to them and tap a button you will most likely receive one of the hundreds of different missions found in the game, and this is how you progress. Borderlands starts of fairly easy with you being, guided by a smart mouthed Claptrap that teaches you the ropes of shooting and looting. And the first few levels will have you circling around the town of Fyrestone accomplishing light hearted tasks and battling simple enemies. Once you do break free from the redundant starting areas, things become much more interesting.

Borderlands is at its core a first person shooter. You are very capable in combat as you can use your melee attack or weapon bayonet, lunge grenades, look down your scope and pull off flashy combat abilites that are otherwise known as "Action skills". On the roleplaying front there are four character classes to choose from. You can assume the role of the Soldier, Hunter, Siren or Berserker each wielding different weapon proficiencies and abilities.The Soldier deploys a turret mounted on a shield that is very versatile, the Hunter summons his pet to do most of the bidding in terms of damage, the Siren enters an invisible walk and flanks enemies and the Berserker can go rage and use his fists to dish out alot pain and like in so many games of its kind, damage numbers pop up as you decrease the lifespan of an enemy and killing them will result in experience points and loot.

Leveling up will grant you a skillpoint to spend on one of the 22 different skills your character has available, all of which are broken down into separate trees of skills that defines your characters role. But since the game caps at level 50, unlocking and maxing out every single skill is impossible, so if you aren´t satisfied with your character you can re distribute each skill accordingly via a respec.

Grabbing loot is also a huge part of the experience. Trust me when i say that there are literally thousands, upon millions of different weapons in the game all of which posses different stats, length of barrels, rate of fire, reload times and clip capacity to even crazy augmentations. Expect to find anything from Combat rifles firing Incindiery  bullets to shotguns unloading shock rounds. These are usually stored in red shiny loot cases and the color coded level of rarity and stats makes it easy to identify if these guns are worth equipping or not.   
 
However you wont just find guns. Loot also comes in the form of shield, class and grenade modifications. Class mods can boost your skills with a great deal of percentage while the shield mods can drastically effect how your rebounding shield fares in combat. Lastly, instead of giving you hundreds of different grenades, the mods can instead alter the effect of the grenades you throw to give them cluster, teleporting or lifestealing effects to name a few and as fore mentioned, the rarity of a loot drop is easy to acknowledge by looking at the color of the text and difficult quests and bosses will result in better loot.

Borderlands is overall a very addictive and rewarding experience as each quests grants you new gear and hubplaces to keep the cycle of acquiring and turning in quests goingand pillaging chests, corpses, lockers, washing machines etc. is always exciting. So yes, you will loot, shoot, explore, undertake missions, level up and fight bosses but what really gives Borderlands an edge is its four player co-op mode that is seamlessly incorporated in the game. You can start a single player session and then at any time invite other players to join the fray, which in result will toughen up enemies and increase the odds of getting better loot drops. Playing Borderlands in this fashion is really what makes the game  and hunting for better gear and tackling enemies together really makes the game a lot more intense, lively and overall more entertaining. But if you need to let off some steam--you can issue a duel at any time or pay a visit to an arena to duke it out with different match variants and rules.  

You can easily spend serveral hours just tackling the main quests, but bounty boards and various characters also offer plentiful side missions to double the lenght of the game. Further more, the game also encourages multiple playthroughs as beating the main story will unlock a more thougher mode where all the enemies and items are powered up.

Borderlands features a really cool art style with a comic book astethic to it. It makes the world feel cohesive with great looking environments and enemies that animates very well upon expiring. There is however some stiffness to it as you will notice constant traces of texture pop in and bland characters that just blends in with the scenery. The vehicle physics can also get really wierd and loves to get hung up on objects. Then there is almost an overflowing array of bugs and glitches that occur, none of which are serious but contribute to hurt the game´s presentation. The guns however are the main standout, they feel great to shoot and benefit from detailed modelling. From a sound standpoint, Borderlands features soothing and ambient soundtrack that makes exploring feel immersive and voice acting and weapon sounds are all great. Overall Borderlands packs an impressive visual punch with the sound design to go with it, but the bugs and texture pop in knocks it down a few notches.

Borderlands manages to combine a lot of things while still giving something back. First person shooter junkies may confuse it for just another average shooter with an exotic artstyle but anyone who is craving for something slightly different wont come away dissapointed. Regardless if you are looking for a great game to enjoy with friends or a first person shooter that offers something more beyond just shooting, then Borderlands will have you covered in nearly every way and apart from some shy storytelling and visual blemishes, it still manages to cross the border and into a wealthly realm of great role playing games.