A slick, satisfying action RPG.
The story is definitely not going to win any awards. There is no psychology, no philosophy, just a good old treasure hunt. You play as one of four different characters on a quest to find a Vault, rumored to be filled with endless material wealth. Your "guardian angel" a mysterious woman in light guides you along in your quest.
So while the story itself isn't that good it's packed with plenty of humor. Borderlands is a funny game. While occasionally a joke falls flat, you'll laugh anyway at how stupid it was. The quests in particular are extremely enjoyable due to their dark humor. Keep an eye out for Claptraps, those darn robots are always dancing!
The game is primarily a shooter, but their is a heavy action rpg slant to it. Your damage dealt is handled by level, so it's entirely possible to get in over your head. Due to a superb leveling system, it's also possible to come back and dominate if you wish.
The main selling point is the weapons. As has been advertised there are tons of weapons in this game. Pistols, rifles, smgs, sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, and more. As each weapon is broke down into numerous parts, amongst nine different manufacturers, and then different colors to boot possibilities are nearly endless. Take a rifle for example. In the ordinary assault rifle there are 10 parts; barrel, accessory, grip, body, sight, clip, grip, trigger, stock, and shoulder. Now the game has hundreds of these parts and they are randomized and put together on the fly. Now think about all the random stats. You easily have at least 400 possibilities right there!
The changes in the weapons are more than superficial. Weapons also have all kinds of crazy effects. You can find elemental weapons that fire corrosive acid, explode on contact, or cause enemies to burst into flames. The actual projectiles change too. Expect to have pistols that shoot curving bullets, shotguns that firing bouncing beads,and so on. Whenever you pick up a weapon you'll want to try it out to see just how it "feels". It's even possible to pick guns based on manufactor. Vladof has the fastest fire rates, SES the highest clip capacity, MALIWAN has the best elementals.
The game also makes it easy to tell what weapons are superior or not through it's excellent interface. Weapon titles are color coded according to rarity. Orange is legendary, purple is very rare, blue is rare, and green is uncommon. In addition hovering over a weapon you're about to pick up will cause a box with that weapon's stats to appear. Green arrows indicate a superior stat, while red arrows an inferior one.
Other aspects of the interface are well made as well. Your map is roomy and has a lot of information on it. Inventory is easily manageable with various slots for everything. All items can be arranged by type as well. Your quest log also has color coding. Red is an impossible job for your level, yellow a tough one, green an average one, and gray a ridiculously easy one. The same carries over to enemies. If you can't harm that enemy a skull will appear next to his name. If it will be a tough, yet possible fight and yield sign appears next to his name. The interface definitely does a good job of providing you with feedback so that you're never doing anything blindly.
The AI is also strong enough to keep the action lively. They move around a loot and act realistically, even throwing grenades. There's enough here to keep fights challenging and entertaining. Later enemies develop certain strengths and weaknesses, so it boils down to finding the right pattern and then dominating.
But enough about the weapons, how about the leveling? There are four classes of characters, the soldier, the hunter, the siren, and the beserker. Each has a special class exclusive action skill. The soldier gets a deployable turret, the hunter an attack falcon, the siren cloaking, the beserker well beserking. In addition each class gets three skill trees filled with three tiers of skills each. Each tier has two skills, except the last in each branch, which is only one. Each skill has fiver ranks. When all five ranks in any branch a filled, the next tier in that branch is unlocked. Each branch has it's uses and are another way of developing the character to your play style. For example Mordecai's three branches are Sniper, Rogue, and Gunslinger. Sniper focuses on rifles and critical hits. Rogue focuses on loot and your attack bird. Gunslinger focuses on repeaters, revolvers, and melee. In my opinion, the skills are well done and add a nice layer without overwhelming any pure shooter fans who want to try this game out.
Just like in other RPG's, Borderlands puts a large focus on questing and exploration. There are weapon crates hidden in hard to reach places. It's always worth searching them out as you never know what you'll find (you may even find an alien weapon). Various other lootables such as ammo, health packs, and cash are present and are worth grabbing up. In Borderlands there is always something to loot.
The quests are a lot of fun. The main missions deal with primarily boss fights. Alot of them are rather funny, and have some slick introductions. These drop of about a half way in, but there nice while they last. While most quests are fetch this or scavenger hunts, the story behind such quests is oft hilarious. Besides you'll be doing a lot of scavenging anyways, might as well keep an eye open for the quest parts while you're at it.
Graphically the game was wise in taking an artistic approach. The bold lines give everything a comic book look, and the character, environment, and enemy designs are unique and cool looking. Firearms are incredibly slick, sometimes intentionally ugly, and often eccentric. There's quite a bit of detail in the environments, especially in the few indoor missions. The game also supports SSAO, rendering some great subtle shadow effects. All in all it's a nice looking game, but if you stare too long some cracks begin to show. For one despite shooting for a cell shaded "look", some sharper textures wouldn't have hurt...
The sound design is some of the best I've heard. The voice-acting is strong. The enemies scream some great taunts, one of my favorites is "nobody kills my buddies but me!". The music does a great job of setting the mood, and getting you into combat. The real star is the firearm sounds. Everything sounds powerful, and impactful. Assault rifles "thump", shotguns "boom", repeaters "clap", everything sounds how you think it should and overall it's very distinct. It's easy to tell what's type of weapon is shooting at you by sound alone.
Borderlands is an incredibly slick action RPG. At it's core it's an FPS, and the strong adrenaline filled combat shows that. Everything is visceral and powerful. Finding the critical hit points on all the monsters is a fun challenge. The game has some great quests, and can be incredibly funny (sometimes disturbingly). Fans of both genres should give it a look, solo or co-op.