I now know to avoid games built upon leveling up and looting (MMO MMO MMO). It was a relatively cheap learning experience as a rental, hence, the generous 2 star rating.

+ Rental cheaper than 1 month MMO subscription

+ Coop with friends

- Mind numbing

- Repetitive

- I've watched paint dry

- I lost less brain cells watching paint dry

- Played this torture longer, because friends were playing

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I was hesitant in picking up this game due to the fact that I absolutely loathe cell-shaded games. I don't know what it is, but something about it just makes the animation look so fake. After hearing a lot of buzz, however, I decided to give it a go. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself completely immersed in this game within minutes of playing. The cell-shading bothered me at first, but after awhile I realized that it gives this game a very aesthetically pleasing picture of what would otherwise be another barren wasteland like in Fallout 3. Now, I'm not here to bash Fallout 3 or anything. Believe me, I actually spent more time playing that game than I probably ever will with this one. This game is hardly flawed, however. If you like running around, shooting and/or blowing stuff up, and reaping the rewards both from questing and looting...then this is your game.

A lot of people liken this to a RPG/FPS hybrid. I would have to agree for the most part. The questing and character customization is very similar to games such as World of Warcraft. You have 3 different skill trees to progress down depending on which character you use, and they all serve a different purpose. I was a little disappointed to see that some skills were similar between the characters, but for the most part everyone has their own unique use. The questing is also similar in that you typically have to retrieve items, kill enemies and/or bosses, or just run to a location and do the whole "flip a switch" kind of thing. My only other complaint from the RPG side of things is that each character only gets one activated skill. Everything else is passive or adds to that skill. I'm not saying this is bad, but I think this game would have prospered more with some added variety.

The shooter side of this encompasses just about every other aspect. There are different types of guns to choose from, and some may be better or worse in different ways. When they say this game has a bazillion guns, they are correct. But that's not to say that every single gun is completely different. It's more like saying that Diablo 2 has a ton of different items, but in the end they all have their similar counterparts. Aside from guns there is also melee attacking, however I found this almost pointless except in the case of the Berserker's skill. Pretty much if you've played any FPS before, you won't find anything new here. At least, with the exception that some guns come with elemental attacks that are kind of cool. Imagine wielding a shotgun that electrifies people, or a pistol that causes explosions. These guns are quite invaluable, and the Siren makes good use of them.

Now if I have to say anything bad about this game it's this: it's VERY repetitive. I know people tend to use that term very loosely nowadays, but the further I got into this game the more I felt that I was just an errand boy who wasn't receiving adequate payment for doing favors for people. At around level 25 I got incredibly bored and just decided to take the game back to Gamestop. I still would say it's a fun game though, and the ending isn't as anti-climactic as most would have you believe (I watched it on youtube). This game just takes a lot of time and patience...and since I just got Dragon Age, which has almost all my attention now, I just don't have time to run around doing meaningless quests and chores for people.

I would also note that I played this game on single player only. I'm very picky about what games I play online, so take my review as being from the point of someone who did it alone. And for first time players I would recommend being the soldier. I liked all the classes except the Siren, but it was the Hunter I went the distance with. If you pick this up I hope you have more fun with it than I did, because all things aside it really is a good game.

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This game is very fun to play online! I think the single player option is nice but not the true way the game was meant to play. Its easy to pick this game up and run through a couple quests in half an hour or even join on someone else's game. the action is great and if you minimize travel time between action can be rather short. cars are fun and the addition of challenges make for a fun addition to the game. The four classes are a nice idea but the ability to develop their skill trees differently give these classes more variability.

The mods for the grenades and class skills are excellently done. Also the ability to level up in weapon skills prevents any class from being limited in weapon choice. This game has many layers to it that keep it more fresh than other MMO-type games.

i would recommend it to anyone that liked Diablo/Diablo II's action/RPG elements. The First person shooter element of this game is great!

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I have played many great games for the ps3 such as MW2,Uncharted 2, Brutal Legends and many others and trust me if you love those games you are defiantly going to love this game! You may think theirs no way this game can have over 500 guns...trust me it probably has over 20 times that many guns! I have only picked up the same gun in this game once and I couldn't believe it! Theirs a choice of 4 characters/classes in the game and I have played them all and love each and every class. Each one brings something new and different to the game. The story is fairly long and the multiplayer is absolutely amazing! I have played this game online so much that playing single played is boring because you miss out on having all your friends join and quest with you. Even if you don't have access to ps3 online I still most definitely recommend getting this game! I am positive that you will love this game!

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This game is great to play with friends. It is Diablo 2 meets Halo.

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For an old guy like me, Borderlands is perfect. You don't have to be too fast. The game takes a long time to complete. It takes some strategy. I finished COD:Modern Warfare II in 3 days. I've been playing Borderlands for over a month and I'm still not through it.

My only complaint is that it cycles through night and day and you can't disable this feature. Night gets a little tough on my eyes.

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Borderlands is only the sixth game I have played on my PS3. Although COD4 Modern Warfare is my favorite game so far, this is a close second. I like the RPG elements of the game (it reminds me of playing Knights of the Old Republic on my old Xbox) combined with the first person shooter. I haven't hooked up the PS3 to high speed yet (trying to decide which provider to choose) but I'm sure it is a blast in online play! I've had the game for a month now and I've only played through single player with two of the four player classes. There is good replay value, even if you do play the same missions each time you change characters. I can't wait to get online and see what else Borderlands has to offer!

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So I pre ordered this game because it looked just plain awesome, forget the naysayers out there, the cartoon like look gives the game something that stands out, not to mention that it's one of the few RPS's out there, the only one besides Fallout3 that i play anyways. But i got this in the mail and put it in right away. For a breif second I thought that i was going to be able to make my own character as i read through the book but realised that it was just a modification change.....those sly [...], getting my hopes up only to crush them, and then pick them right back up again with an amazing game. Anyway for the first 10 minutes i was looking for a spot to turn up the difficulty forgetting the RPG aspect where there isn't a difficulty, and was let down that the game was going to be too easy, well i was happily mistaken.....don't hear that too often now do ya....to find out that even a lowly skag that is 2 levels higher than you is retardedly hard, but in a good way, i fought to of these beasts to the bitter end almost dying and was happily satisfied with killing them only to be confronted with a badass skag minutes later that completley destroyed me, YEAH RESPAWN!!!! but after another hour of play and 1 or 2 levels i found myself destroying these creatures almost as if i was eating chips, i just couldnt stop it tasted so good....i guess that's a good analogy.......And then came the vehicles, at first the controls seemed a little odd because they were new but i eventually got the hang out it and took an entire raider outpost with my rocket launcher and machine gun, although i still press triangle to get in and out of the vehichle, thats the only control that seems bass ackwards, thank you halo, i have the PS3 version by the way, but im writing this review on the 360 as well, because this game deserves that much credit, The waypoint's for the quest is great too, it keeps the player focused on something so they don't just go around killing creatures, although, i suppose you could do that, but you wont keep gaining XP, its a good thing i guess, but the waypoint still leaves that free open world idea, I'm looking forward to the online play, wich i have a feeling is going to be awesome, and after i finish up with the first town, wich im asuming thats what the first area is from reading previews, im looking forward to the randomly generated open space between the towns, if they still have that feature, either way this game still gets 5 of 5

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I went into a local game store a few months ago and was all set to pick up Tekken 6 when another box caught my eye. It was some shirtless guy in a painted gas mask committing finger suicide like he was on the phone with his mother and scenery coming out instead of brains. I don't remember how I'd heard of Borderlands before that day but I remembered hearing it was awesome. So I ask the one guy working there who actually plays games (what the hell?) which one: Borderlands or Tekken 6. He didn't even consider it. Borderlands. I swear it looked like he was about to say in a very David Lee Roth voice "Borderlands, mothahF**KAAAHH!!" and then start wailing on an electric guitar and drink a dozen Red Bulls. Now thats a ringing endorsement! I postponed the King of Iron Fist Tournament and picked up this one, slid into my trusty PS3 and prepared to have my skull violated with awesomeness and Road Warrior-y carnage.

Well, it didn't do all that, though admittedly that was a lot to expect of a game. It started off in a weird way. A little robot thing made me follow it to some guy. So, now I'm not looking for a treasure? I had heard it was part RPG but I thought that meant I would get to the point where I could punch off heads, incinerate people, be an unstoppable juggernaut of violence and bad manners. Basically, I would be able to do to enemies what I thought the game would do to me. I thought I would become Godlike minus the responsibility of running the universes. All RPG meant was that I had to shoot people in the face more than once or twice to drop them. I understand why bosses would be like that, but I mean regular enemies. It seems like I never really surpassed anything, they were always stronger than me. That would have to mean that every guy I shot had killed thousands of people before I found them. That or levels are meaningless and considering its in a desert, I'm going to presume the latter. I know in RPGs, the enemies keep up with you, but they're different monsters from different parts of the world, usually with more fire in it. They're the same guys throughout with a new type tossed in every so often. It seems like levels are just numbers and ways to tell you the game doesn't think you should be able to shoot accurately yet.

On the plus side, this game is intense at times! Enemies flooding in from everywhere, all with shotguns, all with really high quality shields, all with bad intentions. Sometimes it becomes frustrating when you respawn right into the crossfire that never stopped and all the guys you killed are back, but usually its just frantic enough that its challenging and gets the blood pumping but its doable. The negative paragraph was way longer but thats just how I think. Really, the visceral fun of the game almost always outweighs having to spend a lot of ammo to survive a firefight.

I'm not online, so I can't tell you how it is online. Sorry. Its probably a lot like most online FPS games: fun until you start dealing with the other players' personalities.

Should you buy it? I never did end up getting Tekken 6 so I can't say if the guy was right to recommend it so easily, but I can say with confidence that its fun. There are some frustrating parts and sometimes it feels like the cheapest game in the world, but 90% of the game is spent in loud, lead-filling joy. So, yes, buy it.

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A challenge. A real challenge. Thank you 2K Games. Thank you.

Don't be scared. This game isn't insanely difficult, it just doesn't follow the watered down gameplay rules that game studio consolidation has rammed down our throats recently. This means that, if you are a skilled player, you won't fail a mission two out of three times as a matter of chance regardless of your best efforts to succeed. If you are an inexperienced gamer, or a complete goob (Forest Gumpian gamer), you are not going to be given a victory screen one out of three tries just for showing up to a firefight while failing to put forth an honest effort to win it. You don't get to conquer this game simply by laying down sixty dollars for the disc as seems to be the expectation nowadays. Forest Gump is the only one who gets to dumb luck his way through life like that.

An honest effort in Borderlands involves a mix of military tactics, patience, and common sense. No soldier in the real world wins a battle by running into the crossfire and taking a hundred rounds to the forehead. In Borderlands you aren't going to 'Level Up' by making this terrible mistake on a habitual basis. You are going to find yourself in this situation occasionally but for the most part just being smart about your actions will save a lot of grief. This game isn't hard. Just don't steal defeat from the clutches of victory because some other popular game let you get away with it.

The graphics are a refreshing change from the norm as other FPSs are beginning to all look alike. Yeah, cel shading is easier to program but ease of programming is not a rating category that I will ever care about. The controls do mimic many other FPSs out there which makes learning them a bit easier. You aren't going to waste hours waiting to feel comfortable with the button layout. The action is intense and achieving a 'Level Up' is an addictive element that feeds on itself and makes mission successes very gratifying. Guns are both weapons and currency in the game. You can't say you don't like a gun in Borderlands without implying that you don't like getting paid. It's a colonial apocalyptic wasteland and firearms are definitely in high demand. Be an in-game entrepreneur and not just another angry consumer when it comes to arms dealing.

'Fun' is the appropriate word to describe the Borderlands experience and Mad Max can't compete with this level of apocalyptic entertainment. Grab a friend. Grab three friends if you're playing online. You are all going to enjoy this experience and you'll appreciate the fact that the sense of accomplishment you are all feeling comes from actually trying, not just simply showing up. Thank you 2K Games.

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This is the review from my website [...]

I heard a little bit about this game in the last few months, but not too much, and after seeing pictures of the game and its unique art style I was a little put-off by it. However the thought of a first person shooter / role-playing action game you can play with up to 4 players online with a million different weapons to find has kept me interested. I did pick up Uncharted 2 last week but that game has been hijacked by my cousin so with a gift card I had for Bestbuy I figured what the Hell and picked this up yesterday.

I got home around 3:00pm and didn't stop playing until it was time for dinner around 7:00pm and even then I did not want to put down the controller. As far as the graphics go the pictures online do not do them justice, when you are playing in this world full of machines, broken down towns, and creatures it looks beautiful. Their hasn't been much of a story so far as far as I can tell you are on some fictional planet where their are stories about a treasure full of alien weaponry and wealth beyond your dreams this place is called the Vault and countless mercenaries are on a quest to find it including you. The quests are your usual go here collect certain amount of items, return them, then go somewhere else kill certain enemy, return, however it's a blast doing them and I haven't got tired of it yet. I played online with two other players I did not know, but they did have headsets and were very mature and helpful, together we did a few quests and earned some cash to upgrade our gear and refill ammo and such via vending machines in the town, which is how you do your shopping. I would best compare this game to a Diablo meets Call of Duty meets Mad Max, you gain levels through XP and can upgrade your characters abilities through a tree like system similar to Diablo, and their is tons of loot that drops which is color coded based on rarity, and the game plays like your modern first person shooter.

This review is for the PS3 version, however at its core I'm sure the Xbox 360 version is pretty much the same thing, I only got it for the PS3 becasue most of the people I know in my life have that system at this time. I am going to give this game a 5 out of 5 as it is truly a fun game and I can see it holding my attention for a long time with it's loot and leveling system and enemies that adjust in difficulty with the more you play, plus the whole co-op play. I hope this game does well, so maybe they will update it with more content over time as well, if you haven't heard of this game and are into either the first person or role-playing action genre you owe it to yourself to check it out.

MY RATING FOR THIS GAME: 5 out of 5

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I have been playing borderlands for 3wks and have the lillith character at level 24.

Anyway this is a 1st person shooter that switches to a 3rd person view when you drive or are manning a mounted machine gun.

The gameplay is pretty fun. I think it starts a little slow with you just killing a lot of dog creatures but gets better when the human bandits are the enemies. At first you walk to and from areas then you are able to drive or walk. Killling enemies on foot gets you more exp pts but the game doesent allow you drive everywhere. Some areas are to narrow and must be gone into on foot. ANyway you take on missions from a mission board (i think these are the non story missions) and ones from people you meet (I think these are the mission ones). Each mission has a level and if it is the same as your characters level is normal. If the mission is higher level than hard and lower trivial. I have been doing all the missions just to keep my level up so the missions weren't to hard. Oh yah you gain exp and level up by killing enemies and completeing missions.

The human enemies are pretty neat. Sort of like out of mad mad road warrior. Most of them if not all wear masks. The non human enemies are ok but can be more annoying than fun. Some of them like these insect crab things are kind of cool because you shoot their head and it takes a little damage then they turn sideways and if you shoot the back you get a 1 shot kill. The human ai is pretty good they shoot a lot and run for cover and there are a lot of them and they are pretty relentless. Ther are some bosses too.

The guns are pretty neat. There are a lot of them. It seems though as other have said you find a few guns that are really cool and the rest are pretty low powered. So you look at all the gun but usually keep the special ones you have. There are also grenades that have a lot of different attributes like teleporting ones that follow the enemy or ones that take life from an enemy and give it back to you. There are also sheilds for protection.

the graphics are ok. cel shaded. The environments are pretty samely looking so far. There is the wasteland part, outposts, caves, and some interior buildings.

The game is fun especially using the weapons against the humans. I died a lot and it was pretty challenging. When you die you can be remade from your dna for a cost. You usually start off somwhere in the stage you left. There are usually a few waypoints in a various area so you dont have to begin at the begining. Also seems like when you go back that most the enimies you killed are gone so you just have to kill the ones that were left. It seemed that way at least. It does seem that when you make your way back through an area that it is sometimes repopulated. oh yah to collect your reward for each mission you have to go back to the person or mission board that gave you the mission. So I usually just do a bunch of missions and then turn them in for that area all at once instead of doing the turn in seperate for each one.

the story is you are a merc looking for a trasure called the vault.

Also the game is pretty violent.

now with the techinical issues.

i dont have internet so this is a game out of the box no patches.

the load times take a long time. Real long like minutes.

the robot that opens doors didn't at the begining of the game and I had to reboot the game.

the game never came back from loading once.

the game froze while i was driving and fighting other driving enemies

there has been some slowdown at times. Not a lot but pretty bad one time.

also the map sucks. There is no mini map to look at you have to contantly press select and look at the map and it seems even then I go the wrong way. saboteur and mercs 2 have a mini map that you can plot your course and just follow the line which was great.

the diamond on the map that shows where the mission objective is can be off. This is relevent when you are trying to find parts to a gun and are standing over the area only to find out it was a little off.

Anyway it is a pretty good game but I just have been playing it lately as kind of a need to finish missions and get it over with rather than a need for more fun. It usually turns out to be fun and I do like the game.

I just feel that most reviews make the game out to be much better than it is. I am not finished yet but have done about 60 missions and feel i can form a pretty good opinion.

Anyway i liked saboteur a lot more than this or any of the other games I got recently including uncharted 2 and killzone 2.

Kevin

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Borderlands is a great game. It is actually what I wanted Fallout 3 to be. Its an FPS but has the mission structure and length of a full blown RPG.

Hours and hours of co-op or single player fun. You can do either and the game just scales based on how many players are playing at once.

The art style is great and really sets this game apart from the crowd. It is colorful and vibrant. There is a twisted humor underlying the entire game which helps give it a great atmosphere.

If you like FPSs and or RPGs and are looking for something that will last you a while (like 50 hours) (even longer for multiple play throughs) this is a great deal.

Worth every penny! Get it!

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I'll admit it, these days, I'm a game-skeptic. I've just been burned too many times by mediocre games or even solid games with mediocre gameplay to actually purchase a whole lot of stuff on the market. So I rent.

I knew about 15 minutes into Borderlands that this was a buy. There was no turning back, this game was going to consume many, many hours of my life (or lack thereof). Simply put, this is one of the best-balanced, best thought-out, best graphic (for its type), best sound/music snarkily humorous overall games I've ever played.

A lot of time and thought clearly went into Borderlands, and the gameplay, graphics, loading-times, sounds, enemies, guns (!!!), and rewards system are almost peerless. Borderlands makes you want to come back, time and time again, to get that better sniper, to get that better shield, to up your experience to improve your skill...it has such drawing power, and as I found out, replay value. Once you are of a high level, running around and spanking previously insurmountable enemies with ease. The DLC thats been put out so far extends an already beloved game, doing what DLC should do: take a game you love and crave more of and...give you more!

I can't even begin to say enough about the pop-culture references this game digs up. Suffice to say, if you are a pop-culture geek, you will go into a geektastic shock when you fight enemies like Hanz & Franz, play missions like "Scheming That Sabotage", hear references to the old-school videogame Gauntlet, movie quotes, and even two great soundtrack songs from indie-greats Cage the Elephant and DJ Champion. These developers either grew up embracing pop-culture, or certainly did their homework.

This is a remarkable game, and I think one of the best I've played on this generation of game platform. You may rent to confirm my thoughts, but you'll soon be a proud owner.

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Borderlands starts out real slow and almost at the very point of being boring, the pace starts to pick up. You find yourself finding better loot, money and modifiers to make you one badass killer. The graphics are simply gorgeous and you feel no remorse when you blow a baddie's torso into 17 pieces. The reason is that the art style makes you feel as if you're killing in a comic book and it all isn't real.

It is also one of the most addictive game I have ever played. There are 50 levels to make you the ULTIMATE killer and when I'm in the office, thru meetings and discussions, all I can think about is leveling up the next time I hold the controller in my hands.

To further make it more enjoyable, jump into a 4 player co-op setting and you'll have 4 loonies killing and enjoying the experience. This game is a definite MUST BUY. It is a great stress reliever but the problem is the difficulty in quitting the game as it is extremely engaging. 4 hours playing Borderlands feels like 40 minutes.

Beware: this game is as addictive as crack just more economical.

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