Customer Reviews

Borderlands

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(46)

 

 

...with a completely ridiculous (or rather, a complete lack of) end payoff.

I won't touch on the DRM issue, as I bought my copy from Steam, and experienced no problems.

The opening of the game sets a mood that is not carried out throughout the game. Early on, the game treats you to small cutscenes to introduce characters and bosses, but after the first few characters you meet, it does away with this, and from then on you're simply introduced to bosses with a small scene that shows their anem in big letters. It's catchy, but it could've been a lot more.

The graphics are taste-dependent, but there were some issues that I had, namely with what appeared to be screen tearing, especially while using vending machines. Other than that, the graphics look amazing when turned up high enough, and if comic book panels moved, this is what they would look like.

The combat is very engaging and satisfying. The different weapons (at last count, the developer said there were something like 17.5 million possible) are, of course, mostly crap and merchant-fodder. However, every now and then, you find a REALLY nice gun. I found it best to keep a couple different damage tyoes in my inventory: mainly shock and corrosive (which is the best kind to use agaisnt late-game enemies). While the weapon drops are randomly generated, bosses (who respawn upon re-entering the area or game) will always drop the same weapon. Keep in mind that their weapons are not necessarily better than the ones you may already have. When fighting higher level or very tough enemies, it's a good thing to know where their critical areas are. Scoring a few crits can mean the difference between wasting a whole magazine on an enemy, or just a few rounds, and therefore between death and victory.

That brings me to the subject of death: I have never played a game in which death is more exciting or satisfying when it doesn't happen. Upon "dying" you fall to a knee and are able to continue fighting while a health bar depletes. If it finishes, you respawn at a New-U station (for an automatic fee) and any boss you were fighting is restored to full health, which is simultaneously annoying and challenging, but both in a very good way. If you score a kill, however, which egts harder to do as your screen goes black, you get a Second Wind!, hop to your feet at partial health and full shields, and continue fighting. You can also remap your skills for a very small fee, and do it many times, which is useful for testing new strategies and skill sets.

Missions are the average RPG fare--fetch this, kill this, kill he who has that item you msut get to go on with the story...which brings me to the most dissappointing part of this otherwise great game: the ending.

I understand being set up for a sequel, but I don't think I would buy this game's sequel, at least not at full price. For some, the ending may break the whole experience--I'm not sorry I got this game, but I won't be playing all the way through again.

Bottom line: if you like loot, esp. in the form of guns, and frantic gunplay with varied and humorous enemies (shotgun-wielding mutant midgets?, an enemy designation that's called "badas$", and various pop-culture sci-fi references), and don't mind minimal story and a poor ending, this game is for you. I really can't bring myself to hate this game, it was VERY fun, literally until the very end. Wait until it's $30 or so, and you won't go wrong.

I started following this game about a month before it was released. I honestly wasn't 100% sure what to think about it, some stuff just seemed like it wouldn't be that great. But the game delivered for sure. I enjoyed it a lot.

You can customize how you want your characters, which makes it fun and adds variety. You see a soldier in the game and you don't know if he will be able to heal you, give you ammo or add a little bit of fire power to your group. This applies to each class. The weapons are fun as well, sometimes it is a pain to get a weapon you want, but when you finally do, after going through many weapon crates it makes the weapon you wanted feel so much better to finally own.

So far the game online has been great as well. I have been playing with a group of about 6-8 friends who swap into each other's groups when needed. There have already been times (Already = less then half way to the level cap) where me and my friends can look back and say "Remember when we were fighting those weird bugs for like 5 minutes straight?"

Overall great game, lots of variety and easily could get a game of the year nomination.

"Borderlands" for PC has finally arrived. This game is playable as a single person, or as a 2-4 person multi-player, which includes 4 player co-op.

About the game:

The game has a very cartoonish quality to it; very obvious at first but you quickly become use to it, to the point of not even noticing it. In fact it really seems to add to the mood for the setting of this game.

This is first and foremost a FPS but has RPG like upgrades (now termed a RPS or role playing shooter) to the different skills of the 4 different characters. Like traditional RPG you have story driven goals as well as many side quests; quests that present your characters for possible significant rewards in the form of money, weapons, upgrade points etc, but at the risk of greater danger.

You get to choose between (and keep) one of 4 characters; you then proceed to develop that player's skills; skills that are kept over from one game to the next, even in CO-OP. The carry-over also applies to any weapons, shields, armor etc. found within the game. Nice!

The four characters that are available to play are:

1.) Lilith, who specializes in incendiary, shock and corrosive attacks. Her unique skill is 'Phasewalk'.(invisibility).

2.) Mordecai, who specializes in sniper rifles and revolvers. His unique skill is 'Bloodwing' in which he can send out 'birds' to attack enemies for him.

3.) Roland, who specializes in combat rifles and shotguns. His unique skill is 'Scorpio Turret'; a portable machine gun turret with shield. Roland is also the 'medic' for the group.

4.) Brick, who specializes in explosives and fist. His unique skill in 'Berserk'.

Of course all the above 'unique' skills are time limited and require a cool-down period before reuse can occur.

In addition all players earn points to increase their skill tree (which tend to automatically level up somewhat as player level increase). This includes, to mention a few, such things as in damage inflicted, resistance to damage, health regeneration, increasing rate of fire, reload time and weapon ammo capacity and many more; some skill tree enhancements are related to the particular individual and his/her 'unique' skill.

As well there is a significant vehicular component to this game, giving you the opportunity to show your driving prowess, either alone or as either driver/weapon user.

GAME PLAY: SINGLE PLAYER...

Initially, I was very disappointed with the game; the cartoonish quality, the very irritating and repetitive dialogue from the robot (Claptrap), the fighting, etc. The overall effect was less that I imagined, considering all the hype.

However, once I got to level 5 and started to earn XP points that I could apply to my skills, thing improved significantly. I started to meet some better opponents and also began to find some very interesting and powerful weapons.

Also, seeing the hit points fly off enemies as you hit them with gun fire and watching their life bar disappear is a real rush. Making it to the next level and getting points to increase your 'skills' was also a very rewarding part of the game. These were the aspects that made this game a very good FPS with RPG qualities.

Almost no two weapons are the same; most have some benefit and drawback,(increase damage but slow reload time) etc. BUT there are some weapons out there that real gems; having almost all strong positive attributes and few or no drawbacks. And that is what, along with the XP upgrades, make the game SO interesting.

Shops, random chests and hidden caches can, at times, provide exceedingly rare and powerful weapons and add-on modules.

Another nice bonus is the fact that you can RESET your skill points (with some minor costs) allowing you to 'respend' your XPs, if you've chosen unwisely the first time. This is a great feature.

Negatives for Single Player

1.)Game becomes quite repetitious as you go along, especially as you advance in skills/weapons.
2.)Respawns are from the same place, with the same 'enemies' every time.

GAME PLAY: CO-OP (ON-LINE):

From a team orientated co-op point of view, well in a word...disappointing!

Through GAMESPY...initially I had difficulty just trying to get connected but lately I've been able to join on-line games fairly easily, however these are with random players...these games were basically undisciplined and chaotic. There was little or no concept of 'team' play, nor did I have any control over choice of missions, where we traveled to, etc.

I was NEVER able to set up a private game with my friends. And I now understand this is because I didn't have the correct 'ports' open on my computer to allow people to join a game I hosted...you'd have thought there would have been some explanation or instructions regarding this...but no, nothing!

Through LAN...have never been able to connect with anyone.

SUGGESTION REGARDING ON-LINE PLAY:

HOWEVER, on-line is a great way to met tougher opponents and level up more quickly. Do this by HOSTING an on-line game, (name it whatever you like and then save it, so then you'll be able to play this game on-line whenever you want). If you have the right 'ports' open you may get other players to join you...if not, then just play like you would single person, but reap the rewards of better loot, XPs etc. While 'hosting' you control where and what missions to accept, where to travel etc.

COMMENTS:

I'm really liking the Single player game a lot more than I thought I would; after play co-op L4D for months I didn't think I every say that again about single person.

With regard to on-line co-op play: well it's too bad they didn't use 'Steam'. The on-line play through STEAM is so well set up; easy to connect and simple to invite 'friends' to a private game.

The 4 player co-op, may turn out to be a great game, if you can set it up with your own team. And while the co-op game features harder opponents, it also brings to light the crucial downfall of the multiplayer game (and in fact, the single game as well), that being, THE LACK OF RANDOM SPAWNING OF ENEMIES (a feature that has made L4D so playable game after game). The same enemies spawn at the same spot, every time through. If anything, this game has made me realize just how unique and well constructed the L4D format of co-op gameplay really is.

The 'carryover' of improvements and skills from one game to the next, it's easy to see a co-op team (with the same 4 players) could very quickly became a formidable group.

And finally, some minor annoyances:

1.) There appears to be no way to get rid of (or by-pass) the half dozen or so flash screens at the launch of the game,. Spacebar, enter, or Esc. does nothing to abort this tedious repetition every time you start up.

2.) The mapping system; when you turn on the map (and you'll use it often as the layout is somewhat confusing) always start with a close up shot of where you are. The problem is that your target (waypoint) is usually off the map, requiring you to zoom-out to find it. This occurs with EVERY visit to the map, even seconds apart.

CONCLUSIONS:

To me, there was that compelling quality to "Borderlands" style of play initially for the SINGLE PLAYER game, however this was not enough to prevent it from becoming quite repetitious and even boring towards the end.

The on-line co-op game...so far unable to set up with friends to have a team oriented game. Whether the co-op on-line play will prove popular...well, I've some doubts! Only time will tell.
However playing on-line by hosting a game is a great why to speed up your results.

STAR RATING5:
1.)Single player...2 1/2
2.)On-Line Co-op...1 1/2 Stars (maybe even less)

R. Nicholson (cujo)

P.S.
A MANUAL is now available on the STEAM web site.

I just picked up the game after following the development and I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed. There are lots of good things about the game, but a few major problems just keep it from becoming a Great game.

First, the Good things. The game itself looks great. I know many people have been thrown off by the cell shaded graphics and some people may have called it "cartoonish" but I like it. It adds color to an otherwise dreary world and it probably makes it so that lower end video cards can run the game at a descent frame rate.
And the world itself looks big. And I mean really big. I haven't explored all of the areas just yet, but it looks like just exploring the world itself will take a while.
The gameplay itself is pretty good. I like the innovation of having a level up system and assigning point to skills (like Diablo 2) merging with a First Person Shooter. I think the skills themselves could use a bit more polishing, but all in all, it works for me.
The guns are a bit bland at first, but once you start collecting guns that deal extra damage (like acid or flame) it starts to get a whole lot better. In fact, one gun I found in the first hour didn't look like much where the stats were concerned, but I changed my mind very quickly when I tried it out and enemies started erupting in flames with every hit.

Now some of the bad things. The game is buggy. VERY buggy. In the first hour of playing alone on my better-than-average system, I received 2 "general protection fault" errors and one unexplained crash to the desktop. After a few more hours of playing, the errors increased to about 7 and I got one Blue Screen of Death on Windows XP Pro SP3.
The save system flat out stinks. It is a save point system that simply does not belong in a PC game. You save by passing certain points in the game; however they never make it clear to you in the manual where those points are. Many times I had to backtrack because of a crash and I found I had lost over 20 minutes of game time. That might be fine for a console system like the XBox, but not for the PC.
The advertisements say "87 bazillion guns", which for me was something that might have worked out to be a plus, but in the game it's a little more complicated. With the exception of the special weapons I mentioned above, many of the "bazillions" of guns are the same gun with only minor differences in accuracy or fire rate. Many of them even have very similar names, which makes it difficult to keep track of which guns are better and which ones you can sell.
And last, but certainly not least: SecuRom. I didn't know the game had it until after I had picked it up. If I had known that the game had SecuRom, I would have waited for the price to come down or pick it up from the bargain bin to get it. I will not continue the debate here, but in my opinion, having such controversial DRM is a big negative. If you don't know what SecuRom is, please look it up and decide for yourself whether or not you want to have that type of program on your system.

I really wanted to rate the game higher, but with the SecuRom knocking off one whole star and a bunch of bugs crashing the game at random intervals, I just couldn't. If they come out with a patch that solves those bugs, I might revise my rating, but for now I stand by my 3 stars for what could have been a 5 star game.

This is one of the first games to be released as a functional product only to be later broken by defective-by-design DRM (Securom). I don't need software on my computer that I can't control, thank you very much.

The DLC was a shoe-in purchase for me, but since Gearbox decided they wanted to punish me, I'm not exactly motivated to give them my money. I only wish I hadn't bought the original product.

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Quick info for anyone who has this game and having trouble playing coop.

These are the ports you need to forward 7777, 28900, 28910, 28902, 27900, 6667, 3783, 29900, 29901, 13139, 6515, 6500

Opening these ports will allow you to play online.

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Now the review.

This release had 1 major problem at release... Co-op was not working right out of box. In other words, if you get this and install it, co-op wasn't working. Which is pretty bad since this is basically a co-op game. However this has been fixed and you can add the ports needed to play multiplayer. If you don't know how to do port forwarding... Find someone who can show you or google it. But if you're not very technical or handy with a computer this may be a problem until a patch comes out and fixes this. Keep that in mind.


But that being said, this game is a absolute blast.

While the story and ending is bland at best and definitely seems like it's lacking a lot that's not what's important. As someone put it, Borderlands is about the journey... not the destination and it's completely true.

This game is probably one of the best games I've played with friends this year - bar none. Even from the get go when I was playing with friends it was a blast. Doing missions with more people becomes incredibly challenging and so much more rewarding, the more people that are playing the more enemies there are and the harder the enemies get.

It's not just the challenge but the sort of virtual camaraderie that takes place. It might sound silly but it's true and I haven't seen something like this in a long time.

The graphics fit the game well, even though the game can seem quite violent it still gives off a very fun vibe because of the vibrant colors and cel shaded look. You don't need an expensive computer to run this game either and you can still enjoy the great visuals this game has to offer which is a huge plus imo.

The audio is great, the gun shots sound very good and realistic and make you believe you're shooting what you're actually shooting. The music in the game however... Could've been better. It gets annoying listening to the same battle music over and over so I muted the music and I just play my own mix of smooth jazz and other things in the background as I play and it makes things so much better. The voice work is great, albeit sometimes just down right silly sometimes.

The games quests are easy but most are the general rpg style "Go here, collect this" or "Kill 5 of these, kill boss", etc. But some of them are extremely challenging. ESPECIALLY boss fights.

The loot in the game is amazing, I've found guns that regenerate ammo, ones that have infinte ammo, I found a sniper rifle that does more damage than a shotgun, I've found a smg that fires spiral bullets and bounce off of walls. If you love collecting loot, you'll love this game haha it's absolutely crazy - and I love it. I've gotten pistols that did more damage than shotguns, one pistol aptly named "Patton" has a lovely little quote in the description saying, "May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." there's lots of cute and fun little things like that.

Also, if you die, you lose money when you respawn (At the "new-u" stations). At first it's not a lot, you might lose like a couple hundred but later on you're easily losing 100k+ at a single death. So it can add up quite a bit and bankrupt you if you're not careful. The more money you have, the more you can lose.

There's a level cap of 50, each of the 4 classes has 3 skill trees, each with 7 skills per tree. So that's 21 (Plus your class skill, like using a turret, bloodwing, phasewalk, etc). The skills... Are ok. There's some really good ones but a lot of them seem kind of useless depending on your play style.

Also, there is things like deathmatch, team deathmatch however... Here's how it works.

When you're in a game with people, you go to the arena. There you can pick what teams people are on, whether its deathmatch or tdm. There's 4 different colors for the 4 different people. Then you spawn in the arena and fight, in team deathmatch, if you die you'll be sent to the room before you went into the actual arena, the place where the host picks the teams and settings. Once the other person on your team dies, or kills everyone else, you'll respawn and play a new round together. Some people might find this annoying. For deathmatch, you just keep respawning in the arena until someone gets the max kills. However you can not play with anyone that's NOT in your server. The people in your game will be the people you play with. I know some people were upset about that and you ARE limited to just 4 people. There's no capture the flag, etc etc. Just deathmatch and team deathmatch. And there's only a few arenas too, like 3.

I knocked off 1 star because of the problem with multiplayer at launch. I know you can fix it (I did) but this simply shouldn't be a problem at launch. But I do understand it as well, so it's not that big of a deal for me. All in all, this is a great and fun game. I can see myself playing this with my friends for quite some time, building some good, fun memories... Which is what it's about for me. Having fun and being with friends and this does an excellent job at it.



EDIT: 11/2/09

I think everyone should consider this really quickly before you buy this, assuming you haven't already. This game, while fun, doesn't have much to offer you after you've played it through even just a 2nd time. There is some DLC that's coming, I believe the first one coming includes zombies of some sort but... Most of my friends and myself have basically stopped playing this. Maybe after they release some DLC we might get back into playing it but right now, there just isn't anything to do. Honestly, I wouldn't recommended buying this right now, it just doesn't seem like it's worth the money. Also, If you're easily bored with a game, I would really stress you spending your money elsewhere. Sure it's fun the first time you play it with friends but it's really hard to keep it fun and interesting afterward. Most of my friends just ended up playing bumper cars, with real cars, because they were bored. So, consider that if you don't have friends that will be playing regularly, you might be pretty bored and lonely.

Also, a thing to note... Especially since I've heard a lot of people complaining about it. You WILL run into people who only care about one thing - loot.

If you play with friends, it might not be that big of an issue. But if you host a game and let other people join, you're bound to meet one of them at least. They just stand by kills waiting for loot to droop, they run off to get to chests and things like that while you're fending off monsters and they won't even help you. This is VERY common in borderlands. But it's not exactly borderlands fault, but it's something to be aware of. It can be very frustrating that while you're fighting off all these guys, there's one guy who runs ahead, opens everything and gets all the loot.

Thankfully you can kick. It took me a while to learn but you go into the "view lobby" option and then select their (You have to use the keyboard arrow keys, I could never select anyone with the mouse) name and press the delete key.

So all that said and done.. Even if you're playing with friends, this will almost certainly get boring after your 1st or 2nd play through.

i preordered this game (pc version) in high anticipation of what it would be and got it only to find out that it has so many flaws is it unplayable in co-op mode.
online play is managed by gamespy, an act so unspeakable evil that it boggles the mind. you cannot mute players and have absolutely no microphone control whatsoever, talking just turns on the mic... which is retarded, when i want people to hear what i am saying i want to hit a button and talk to them, not let them hear whatever i am saying all the time. and you cannot mute players that are... lets say "noisy" opening a private game and inviting a friend is pointless because random people just join the game as if it were open publicly. and that is IF you can actually join a game without it timing out 500 times. or doesn't crash or time out/lose connection within minutes of starting the game.

single player for the game seems to work fine, but a main reason i bought it is because of the supposed multiplayer feature so i can play it with my friends.

overall i am disappointed in the way this game turned out and am hoping that they release major patches to fix what is wrong with the multiplayer aspects.

Overall, Borderlands is a pretty fantastic first major outing for Gearbox,

The multitude of weapons to find and play with can make any chest a fun surprise, and enemies behavior varies enough within their own factions to keep fights fairly interesting, and even more so when you group up with friends [which raises the difficulty of the enemies]

Plot is rather lacking, but honestly, its got enough compared to other CO-OP enabled games such as L4D, Army of Two or Diablo [all of which have the option of playing solo or with a group]

The reason, however, that I have left this game with 1 star is for the following:

1: Deliberate release of a finished product six days after the same game released on the console [there was no officially announced reason. Product was DRM locked up until the company presumably felt like letting the game release] I purchased the game two days after it shelves and ended up with the whole game and a four day wait.

2: Extremely poor console port: While the game was developed for both console and PC, its extremely clear the game was developed console first, PC second. The 6 days between street date and actual game activation was plainly not spent fine tuning or polishing the game for PC.

2a. Many game settings must be set within config files outside of the game, requiring the gamer even know how to attempt this, or search out a guide. In addition to this, apparently every patch to the game will over write these config files with the default values once more.

2b. Menu interaction does not even attempt to be intuitive. All menus were clearly designed for use with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard, with many controls non-intuitive on the keyboard. [the recent patch has since alleviated these issues, but the patch was long in coming]

2c. Mic chat is on without option [until recent patch] this causes issues with echoing when standard PC voice communication programs like ventrillo or skype is used. Only recently were menu options to mute and lower/disable voice included.

3. DRM added onto DLC. For what ever reason the developer or published saw need to include DRM with the recent DLC released for the game, a drm application known as secuROM. This limits the maximum installs to 5 [this does not count against repeat installs, unless you were to reformat the hard drive and install the DLC, this would count against your 5 installs.] As an aside note, the only assured way to remove the DRM, even after installing the software it was included with, is to reformat the computer. Its roughly as difficult to remove as a rootkit, but doesn't necessarily risk compromising the OS.

As it stands, I will not be purchasing the recently released DLC, I will not be recommending this game to my friends until proper PC support is provided, and I will not be purchasing any further DLC releases as long as secuROM or other form of DRM is included. I only just reformated my computer to remove EA's DRM, which had shut down my DVD R/W drive and caused it to be non-functional. [it worked fine when placed in a second computer, and upon reformatting the original computer] Aside from that, I refuse to be treated like a criminal and have the software I paid for be so harshly controlled. It says 'buy', not 'rent', and I dang well expect to have control of software I buy.

There have been excellent FPS/TPS games with a comic-book aesthetic, XIII and Armed and Dangerous spring to mind. Unfortunately BORDERLANDS is not one of them.
There have been excellent RPG/FPS hybrids, like Fallout 3 or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. But BORDERLANDS is not one of them either. And, this is not even the real problem. The real problem with BORDERLANDS is that it does not even know what it is...trying to be!

The graphics are color-book cartoonish. They did stay inside the lines but they get no brownie points for the end result. Unique designs and creative explosions are nowhere to be found; instead, the environments look like they were designed with a cookie cutter. Loose focus for a moment and you might find yourself hallucinating of having entered a violent PIXAR cartoon - complete with a Wall-e lookalike. One without a real story that is.

For a game that pretends to be an RPG it makes no real difference what "class" you choose to be (the hunter, the siren, the soldier, or the berserker), the "special abilities" fail to offer distinctive flavors. Leveling up is just window-dressing, as the enemies not only they re-spawn but they seem to match your level. And, on top of that, the quests are really boring (I had not been so bored with an RPG ever since that pathetic sequel to a great game, Dungeon Siege II).

Speaking of DSII, remember how paying to have your weapons enchanted was useless because the items you could buy outright were far superior? Guess what, the quest rewards are far better than anything you can find. Sure, there are different weapons galore but quantity of weapons could never outweigh a couple of well-thought out weapons.

Finally, could someone please explain to me since when do CPUs need...drivers - and what is this stupidly packaged game doing installing an AMD DRIVER on my INTEL i7 PC? Honestly!

Now, let's talk DRM. Again, 2K GAMES insists on special, custom-made versions of SecuROM. Using SecuROM as a disc-check is my red line. I can accept it as a barely palatable solution. BORDERLANDS is supposed to do only that but it clearly cannot shake its RootKit ...pedigree.
There have been reports from gamers who managed to buy the game before the official release date and could not activate the game before that. That's right BORDERLANDS requires OnLine ACTIVATION (one can install offline ONLY after downloading and installing a third party LICENSE driver). So much for a simple disc-check...

An OnLine ACTIVATION means you do NEVER ACTUALLY OWN the copy of the game you paid for. The possibility of you reinstalling and replaying the game again in the future depends on the availability of the required activation servers AND the will of the game publisher to ALLOW you to do so (neither of them a given).
I find it infringing on my rights as a consumer and a citizen when the products I pay in full get stolen back by the seller himself under the guise of ..."fighting piracy" (an ironic excuse already).

BioShock was a good game ruined by its overzealous DRM scheme. In the end its publisher smelled the over-brewed coffee and had the Installation Limits (but not the Activation requirement) removed. At the time of its release BIOSHOCK was a good game but not good enough to be worth its trouble.

Well, BORDERLANDS is not even good.

Borderlands is a mixed bag, with a generally fun game being interspersed with a number of questionable or half-finished decisions that really hamper the overall product from being something really great.

The PC version of the game suffers from being a direct port of its console brethren, such as configuration options only being accessible by editing an .ini file rather than in game menus and the menus that are in game not properly supporting the mouse wheel. The keyboard control is awkward for menus because of this, as they're obviously designed for a controller; even adding multiple ways of scrolling text or entering/exiting menus would have been fine, but it's not there. The field of vision is limited, making it a little hard to see around you well; it can be edited through the .ini files, again, but it distorts the video and makes it a little nauseating to use. On occasion, the FOV can make it a pain to examine the stats of an item prior to picking it up.

The game itself is fun enough for its action components, but the MMO-style quests are poorly implemented and the story is almost non-existent. Quests tend to have you running back and forth across wide swaths of land in order to talk to one person, or pick up one item, and can often lead to pixel hunts while you search through areas of terrain for that one item that's glowing the proper color and is interactable... they're more or less pointless aside from getting some xp and maybe an item, and the quest text is completely forgettable if not outright annoying.

Borderlands is fine for just an arcade-type experience, running and shooting and looting, but I was hoping for more depth than that and it just isn't to be found here.