Borderlands almost went back to the store after two frustrating hours of play time. Our weapons sucked, the missions were too difficult and re-spawned enemies had us spouting expletives that would make Tony Soprano blush. But then we earned one skill point, then another, and in a short time, we upgraded our characters' stats and transformed them into efficient killing machines. That's when a possibly over hyped game turned into an addiction, where playing for an hour somehow became two, then four and six. Those first two hours are tough, but if you stick with it, Borderlands will become a rewarding and fun experience that'll keep you slaughtering bad guys and roaming the wasteland for months.
Inspired by Mad Max, Borderlands is a post apocalyptic first person shooter with role-playing elements. You start by selecting one of four characters, each of which represents one of four classes with unique abilities: Soldier, Siren, Hunter and Berserker. From there, you step off the bus (literally) and explore the planet Pandora, searching for a mysterious Vault that supposedly contains untold riches.
To get there, you'll need to complete a plethora of different missions, most of which will be familiar to anyone who's played Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series or most recently, Fallout 3. Kill that guy, find this key and collect a certain number of items becomes commonplace and, admittedly, somewhat repetitive, but developer gearbox software keeps things fresh and thrilling for two reasons: you earn cash for successfully beating these missions, and there's a tremendous amount of loot to collect, spearheaded by the game's best feature, hundreds of thousands of weapons. Borderlands' weapon generator allows for an unprecedented number of crazy (and deadly) toys, including rocket-launching shotguns, SMGs that spew lightning rounds and a wide assortment of machine guns, pistols, sniper rifles and other death-dealing gadgets. Killing someone, especially a boss, becomes a quest to see what loot he'll drop.
That becomes even more entertaining with friends. Borderlands supports local two player split screen and four person online multiplayer, allowing you to team up with some buddies and explore Pandora together, ganging up on monsters and bad guys while splitting the various rewards you collect along the way. Meanwhile, the more you play, the more experience your character gains, letting you spend acquired points to develop his or her skill tree. Sure, you could play solo and still have a blast, but you'd miss out on coordinating strategies and bickering over who gets to grab the newest gun.
On top of that, the game looks gorgeous. Gearbox cell shaded everything (save the water, which makes for a strange contrast), giving Borderlands a cartoon/hand drawn appearance. In addition, the designers did good work with the animations, especially the monsters that realistically leap across the sand and soar through the air. As for the human enemies, blowing off heads and limbs never gets old. Plus, there are a nice variety of bad guys to kill, including axe-wielding dwarves and guys with malformed arms.
As much as we dig the game, however, it still manages to drive us crazy. There's too much of the same mission, and those re-spawning enemies feel so 1990s; once we kill something, it should remain dead. This is especially true with the skag, one of the first creature types you'll encounter. The damn things come back no matter how many times we slaughter them. Gearbox could (and probably would) make the argument that Pandora's infested, hence their unbelievable numbers, but we still loathe the buggers. They're like cockroaches, but much larger and annoying; and they attack in groups.
They become easier to deal with, though, as you level up. They're also relatively easy to kill while driving a vehicle (just run them over), which is another of Borderlands' many highlights. Similar to Halo, one player can drive, with the other manning the gun turret. Of course, this also allows for quick getaways.
Borderlands surprised us. We went into the experience expecting a pulse-pounding shooter with fancy cut scenes and lots of drama (no surprise, since we play more FPS on consoles than RPGs), and instead found a slower-moving and tough (but immensely rewarding) slog through a beautiful fantasy world populated by imaginative monsters and more weapons than we know what to do with. We don't care how you play, alone or with friends. Just make sure you do so immediately.
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