Offers a huge amount of missions, upgrades, enemies & - most importantly - guns.
Borderlands has got what is easily one of the most distinctive art styles of any FPS out there - everything is surrounded by black lines, almost as if the game is some kind of comic. I spent 5 minutes walking back & forth across the landscape staring at the lines that first surrounded the rise of the hills, moved forwards into the foreground, faded, & then reappeared again as I moved away from them (easily amused I guess). With this kind of art style, it may come as a surprise that such a 'cartoony' game is rated 18, but the clear-cut lines defined on enemies is contrasted by the vibrant gushes of blood & ruptured internal organs that spew from their corpses after blowing their bodies completely in half with a single sniper shot.
The plot for the main game is rather lacking - what little attention that has been placed on the story is mostly focused on the game's backstory rather than the actual events of the game. As for the ending, it's.....disappointing, to say the least. The game more than makes up for this with its characters, the most iconic of which being the 'Claptraps' - small boxy robots that love to dance & are one of the biggest sources of the game's humour.
But above all this, the main area that the game focuses on is easily the gameplay department, & it places a huge focus on 'loot'. The economy focuses much more around selling unwanted shields, character/grenade mods & vast quantities of munitions than it does on the money gained from completing missions. You can gather loot when it's scattered by fallen enemies, or from just about any object with hinges - be it lockers, safes or toilets. The game makes a good job of marking these out by having a bit of green on objects you can loot - which really stands out in the wastelands, shanty towns & warehouses which you traverse for the most part of the game.
Now, onto the dlc - which, let's face it, is the main reason this SHOULD be attracting you over just buying the original (hopefully I'm the exception rather than the rule). The Zombie Island of Dr Ned is pretty much the same as your classic B-movie; a doctor/scientist comes across a way to reanimate people, & decides to use it for global conquest &/or making money. The environment is completely distinct from the main game's look, as most of the dlc is set in a dark swamp with your classic jagged rocks & huge, dead trees. The dlc does a good job of presenting a spooky atmosphere, but the humour from the main game is still present, with classic films & the dlc's events themselves often getting made fun of. However, the missions entitled "Brains", "Braaains", "Braaaaains", "Braaaaaaaaaaaains" & "Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains" get incredibly tedious after some time, especially if you don't begin them as early as possible (I only found out about them after completing all other missions, & was not pleased when I found that I needed to get a total of 435 zombie headshot kills).
I am yet to complete Mad Moxxi's Underdome, as I have largely played the game solo, but having completed a short round in each venue I expect it to be great for parties to play. I've found the item bank to be very useful too. However, there is practically no story behind this dlc, & even the backstory is only explored very minimally with Moxxi's ex husbands - there is also little logic to be applied in just how the game's bosses & Vault Guardians have all managed to get stuffed into a big arena complex.
The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx is where the dlc really picks up, as it focuses on what happens immediately after the main game ends, where an incredibly melancholic General Knoxx is sent to clear up after the Vault Hunters - that is, you - witnessed a large quantity of Crimson Lance troops get slaughtered (doing the vast majority of said slaughtering yourselves). As well as a relatively 'civilised' feel (much of the dlc takes place in an actual town, highways & industrial complexes), the dlc offers an even bigger expansion on loot gathering, & features what is easily the games hardest (albeit optional) boss - a titanic prehistoric cross between a crab & a segmented worm known as 'Crawmerax the Invincible'.
The final dlc was the one I found the most enjoyable, even though I believe it was the shortest out of the 4 (still lasting me a good 6 hours or so). 'Claptraps New Robot Revolution' focuses on exactly that - a claptrap reprogrammed to assassinate the troublesome Vault Hunters (handily named the 'Interplanetary Ninja Assassin Claptrap') observes the abuse & exploitation of its fellow Claptraps, & rebels against humanity, forming a 'Robolution'. The dlc features plenty of humour with numerous communism puns, such as the INAC's explanation of the exploitation of the 'proletaria-trap'. The 'assimilation' of enemies due to just how compatible Claptraps are was a fantastic idea, & it's certainly a great addition to be able to face the game's classic enemies with "-trap" on the end of their names & wires & brains-in-a-jar stuck to their heads.
I have, sadly, received rather large amounts of slowdown during my playthrough. When I first enter an area, it will take somewhere between 2 & 10 seconds for the textures to actually render, & this will slow the game down a fair amount for that period, but it's generally not a problem as there are very few areas which include any form of action straight away. Whenever the image of the 'Guardian Angel' appeared in front of my characters face, & also several times when the game was controlling my character for me, I received horrific frame lag - with some frames sticking for up to 7 seconds. Finally, there have been a couple of times when battling through rounds in Mad Moxxi's Underdome where the game has lagged just as much, which got very distracting during, say, the horde wave. This has all occurred during solo play, though of course it's possible that it's just due to my disk. I have, however, cleaned it & checked it for scratches several times now. All of this occurs relatively rarely though, & only the latter had any real effect on the gameplay.
I've managed to clock somewhere over 2 days on Borderlands, & I am yet to start playing with a second character (you have a choice of 4, which all have their own significant playstyle), or even move onto my current character's 2nd playthrough. Borderlands GotY edition clearly has a heap of playability.