A good mix of game genres that works really well, and is a ton of fun playing with one or more friends.
First and foremost, Borderlands was designed to be a cooperative game with up to three of your friends, much like another standout co-op game called Left 4 Dead. I played from beginning to end in splitscreen with my wife, and found the experience to be more fun than if I had played alone. In fact, in many ways, it felt like party-play in a session of World of Warcraft. The four character classes compliment and support each other, yet could play solo if you so wished. One primary advantage of having teammates is the ability to heal a downed comrade, preventing an expensive trip to the "New U" checkpoint. The game's difficulty is also ramped up for each player added, but the rewards are equally increased to match.
Playing Borderlands feels like a mash-up of most typical shooters and World of Warcraft "lite". The shooter angle is straight-forward enough with your typical mix of gun types, including rifles, shotguns, snipers, pistols, grenades and more, with the normal control schemes. Where the WoW, or even Diablo elements come in is with questing, or missions as they are called here, leveling up your character and skills, and the loot reward system. You are able to assign skill points to customize your player class to suit your style of play.
The game is broken up into zones, or areas which you travel from one to the other. However, the nature of the game is open-ended, so once you open a new area, you are free to travel there whenever you wish. Following the progression of the primary and optional missions leads you to each of these areas. Some of the primary hub areas, or what I call zones, are large open areas with multiple transition points which lead to other zones or instances. What I've been calling instances are zones that only have one way in and out, and are the game's equivalent of a dungeon. Most often, these areas are just as large as the hub zones that lead to them. You can travel everywhere via foot, Runners (armed buggies), or the fast-travel system once you complete the quest that activates it.
As you traverse through the game, you'll find vast outdoor areas best travelled by Runner, cramped indoor or underground complexes, and other areas with a mix of both including some towns and outposts. Riding in Runners gives the game a bit of a Mad Max feel, as you and a buddy can share the driving and gunning duties and face off against bandits in their Runners. There are also arenas scattered about. Some arenas are boss battle areas, others allow cooperative play against waves of baddies, and there are even arenas that pit you against your friends in one-on-one or team battles.
Aesthetically, the game has a cell-shaded cartoony look which lightens up the mood. There's plenty of humor injected into the game in everything from the dialog, quests, and actions of many of the AI characters. The planet of Pandora is a wasteland full of ruin and bandits. A corporate mining planet abandoned by the corporations and left to rot and be overrun by the lawless people left behind. Between how the game looks and how the game plays, I was often reminded of a plethora of reference material; such as Mad Max, Fallout, World of Warcraft, Left 4 Dead and others. And I mean that in a good way.
Borderlands does have a few quirks that keep it from a higher score. In the beginning, the game is very challenging, as some of the missions are of a higher level than your character. This requires a lot of careful strategy in how you handle battles. Taking cover is always an option, but I often found myself still getting hit even when there was no line-of-sight from me to the enemies. If you explore every area and complete every side mission, you will find yourself over-leveled, or ahead of the curve by the time you reach the halfway point of the game and wishing for a little more challenge. Character animations are stiff, and don't always match the actions. The example in mind is when your buddy looks down his scope to shoot, his character model still fires from the hip. And player and most AI characters have no facial animation at all, including speaking. A little disappointing in a game where you are playing with friends at your side all the time.
The story pales in comparison with full-on role-playing games, and has a somewhat lame endgame, but it is fairly standard fare for the shooter genre. But you don't play Borderlands for a deep and engrossing story. You play this game because you want a reason to shoot a lot of stuff and collect better weapons so you can shoot a lot more stuff. And Borderlands excels at this. Weapons are generated randomly, so you will never find one with the same stats twice. I was a little disappointed that I never found that rocket-launching shotgun that melted people's faces off with acid or other similarly awesome guns like I read about before the game was released. However, the mix of weapons is still amazing, and I love sniping enemies from a distance with my "sniper shotgun" that lights them on fire!
In the end, anyone who enjoys action oriented RPGs or lighthearted shooters will love this game. You just can't go wrong with a short visit to Pandora. And if my wife who never wanted to play a shooter in her life absolutely loved this game, then so could you!