A great start for a new franchise.
You have the choice of 4 characters at the beginning. There is a hunter, who has the ability to send a sidekick to kill the enemies and recover some items. There is a badass guy who can run and hit with his fists. There is a siren who can become invisible and a soldier who can assemble a turret to kill the enemies. In my walkthrough, I selected Mordecai the hunter, so I will write my review based on this experience.
The first thing you will see with his sidekick is that if you are too far from the guy you want it to kill or hidden behind some cover, the bloodwing as it is called will not be able to get to the enemies. So you will have either to be closer to your target or get out of your hole before sending it. Enemy AI can sometimes be very wise and come and get you, and some other times it can stick to a place and not move before it get killed. Other than that, the gameplay works fine, you have some slots in your backpack for your guns, shields and abilities that can be expand by rescuing some claptraps, which are most of the time friendly little robots.
The graphics are very cartoonish and stylish. It is the first time I see something like this in a AAA game and that looks great. Sound is also great using Dolby Surround. However, the voices were still low compare to the rest even after trying to tweak them.
The Game of the year edition comes with all four expansions including: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and Claptrap's New Robot Revolution.
The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned speaks for itself. You kill zombies, period.
In Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, you will have to get through waves of enemies to get a skill point. That's disappointing because of the time you have to invest in it. You have to complete an entire level, which consists of 5 rounds of 5 waves before being able to save. That's if you do not die, if you do, you have to restart about 1 round.
The Secret Armory of General Knoxx is the biggest dlc. It contains a lot of cool guns and gadgets. However, you have to be at least level 35 before thinking to be able to survive more than 10 minutes in it. A sad fact about it is that you will have to travel a lot with your vehicle, without being able to save in the other maps as it is the case in the main game. Each time you start the game, you will come back to T-Bone Junction, which is the headquarters even if you were 3 maps further. This time again, that means you have to have a lot of time ahead of you before playing it.
Claptrap's New Robot Revolution is also self-explanatory. Claptrap wants to control the world, so you will encounter a plenty of angry robots. For me, that's the best dlc.
Missions gets repetitive after a certain amount of time, but you can still have a good 40+ hours of fun before getting bored. I never encountered a crash or major bugs. That's amazing considering the fact that the environment is wide open.
As I told previously, for less than 20$, it sure worths buying this game before Borderlands 2 comes out next fall.