Borderlands

Most of my gaming time in the past few weeks has been taken up by a single game: Borderlands. In it, you play as one of four "Vault-Hunters", Mordecai (A Hunter with his faithful pet, Bloodwing), Lilith (A "Siren" who specializes in dealing Elemental Damage), Brick (A big-ole guy who packs a mean punch), and Roland (An ex-soldier who clearly retains all of his training. The Vault-Hunters' job is to find the long-lost "Vault", on planet Pandora, which is said to contain vast amounts of treasure and wealth for any person or people who find it. To do so, they are guided by a mysterious woman who, without spoiling the ending, isn't exactly what you think.

Gameplay is broken down into a few basic things. The first is the fighting. You can use one of many gun types, from shotguns to rockets to alien guns. As you use the guns, you become more skilled with them and can pack a bigger punch. There are literally thousands of different guns due to the random gun generator, which can create guns with very creative effects - a sub machine gun with a sniper-esque scope, a rocket launcher which shoots an electric beam, or even a shotgun that can shoot rockets. Things like this are very common place in Borderlands, and make the replay value very high.



The second portion of the game is the questing. There are quite a few quests in the world of Pandora, and definitely enough to keep you entertained for long periods of time. The problem with that is while the quests can be humorous or fun, they can become repetitive, as most devolve into killing monster "A" or touching object "B". Not saying they aren't well thought out, doing these quests can lead to a greater understanding of the game world around you.



The third is one that most people could miss entirely. I speak of course of the online gameplay. It is in itself the same game as the single player, but with the added benefit of playing with your friends. Let me tell you, I haven't had as much fun on the X-box as facing down some of the most difficult bosses in this game with a few of my friends at my side. But outside of friend-only private games, there are also open games where you can play with total strangers. This can be very entertaining, but there is a catch - a very large amounts of online players mod, and while this can be fun, it can ruin the game for other people. This modding consists of making guns that can kill anything in a single shot, or leveling characters way past the intended cap. Gearbox has taken leaps to fix this, but it really is a prevalent problem in the community. Just something to think about.

Now, to rate the game, I would give it an 8.75 out of 10. It is indeed quite enjoyable, and can keep my attention for hours easily, but the modding online can really bring someone down, and a few glitches here and there can be frustrating. All in all though, this game should be on any Xbox 360's must-buy-list, and any visit to Pandora can only lead to entertainment.