Review:
Borderlands - Open Pandora's Box

Dear Santa Claus,

Last month I received an awesome gift in the form of Borderlands, but as a PC gamer I haven't got access to the DLC yet; so for Christmas I would like to shoot some zombies with my Hunter. Please make sure the DLC is available for PC by Christmas.

Sincerely,

Me.

 If you don't know what I'm going on about yet, then you're missing a modern jewel from your video game collection. I cannot recommend Borderlands enough to any RPG or FPS fans out there. It incorporates enough RPG elements onto the UT3 engine to keep fans of traditional RPGs happy and still retains it's core FPS engine whilst doing so.

I've been playing a lot of Borderlands recently. Since I've been kind of out o' the gaming scene since my old LAN centre shut down, I haven't been keeping up with the latest releases. Borderlands managed to slip under my radar, and I didn't hear any word of it until I saw a commercial about it just after it's release.

At first, I was rather skeptical. The entirety of the game seemed like a bright out-take on the Fallout series with added stat grinding and cel-shaded graphics, a combination which didn't seem like it would work in the slightest. A few days later and I'm anxiously waiting my copy of the game in the mail. To explain how I got from disliking to anxious waiting; I went around a friends house who convinced me to play the game with him in co-op mode for a couple of hours. I immediately fall in love with Borderlands and ordered a copy for my PC the second I got home.

Once I'd installed the game I started up my first character, and decided to test out the Hunter class since I'd only played on friend's pre-made Soldier. As soon as the quick control tutorial was over I immediately set about scavenging everything within the starting area and pondering why I wasn't allowed to make the Claptrap explode. After naming myself (I decided to go with E-Z-Kyialh) I actually got to start playing the game properly.
I couldn't get over how much I loved the cel-shading. It suited the slightly comic tone of the game so well, whilst managing to retain a semi-serious setting with the added detail on the skins.

Combat was what I expected for an FPS style game, though somewhat easy to exploit as a Hunter and landing a critical hit on everything that looks at me in a funny way with my character's natural sniper abilities.

The skill tree was probably what was best for me though. I expected Borderlands to make high level characters stupidly overpowered by making them good at everything. Instead I got a system that only improves and streamlines your abilities, leaving the core of the game untouched and ensuring that the player still has to think on their toes and work at it to remain good at the game.

I'm looking forward to some serious co-op play with a group of friends online soon enough, the only multiplayer opportunity I've had thusfar is the same experience that convinced me to buy Borderlands. I also need to test out the arena function sometime, I just can't resist the idea of a deathmatch between two player characters when I land critical hits with almost every single shot.

The revamped enemies on the second playthrough have thusfar proved to be challenging enough to keep an experienced FPSer such as myself to keep thinking ahead and preparing for whatever could be round the next corner.