First person shooters, love them or hate them they're very much in vogue during this current gaming generation and like with any other popular genre most of them are going to be somewhere in the barley average to awful spectrum, of course there will always be the rare gem, be it Bioshock, Modern Warfare or XIII (alright its not a recent game but it's still fantastic so shut up!). I'm still undecided whether or not Borderlands belongs in this category, but it certainly isn't in the same league as the legions of generic, bland FPS games you see today.

As I have mentioned Borderlands is a first-person shooter, but this here first person shooter is described by the designers as an RPS (role-playing shooter). It has the gunplay and eponymous viewpoint of the first person shooter and the XP accumulation, levelling up and quest system as well as the loot hunting feature from the role-playing game. This game manages to combine these two elements into an extremely enjoyable combat system with menu and upgrade screens that are elegantly designed, intuitive and easy to navigate. Another feature in this game that stands out like a hooker in morning mass is the amount of guns you can make people become dead with. I've heard there are over three million different guns, yes you heard correctly that's 3 million, differentiating themselves from each other mainly in stats such as accuracy, firepower and fire rate, also some guns fire corrosive, explosive, shock or incendiary ammo which has a chance to corrode, explode, well you can pretty much figure that one out by yourself (at least I hope you can, if you cant I'm rather surprised you can actually read this review).

One more thing I'd like to mention about this game before I air my grievances about it is the online capability, it seems a rule in today's gaming culture that anything involving guns has to involve firing said guns online. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see that while Borderlands does have online capability it's mainly co-operative with optional duels between players. It really was a welcome break from the seemingly compulsory banality of deathmatch and capture the flag which attracts almost as many people as Jesus.

Now, enough about how this game is good, nothing is without its faults (apart from Clint Eastwood) and this here game is no exception. One thing about it that seems awesome at first but is really crap that borrowed an awesome coloured suit for the day is the sheer ridiculous amount of guns you get, while I understand that having a lot of guns is never a bad thing and it is and impressive feat to have that many guns in a game, it is possible to have too many. The silly amount of guns combined with the fact that the game is based heavily around loot hunting and the game gives you a new gun every five minutes results in many flow breaking moments of trying to decide whether or not to pick up that sweet gun you've just found, while this isn't that bad of a problem in and of itself it happens with such frequency it has the potential to become quite annoying. Having said that you will almost certainly find a really good gun that you like somewhere along the way and mostly use that to rain death upon your enemies.

The game has rather impressive presentation, with a gorgeous cell shaded animation scheme, the maps are a quasi-Martian mix between deserts and mountains with barely any difference between the different maps in the game they're all pretty much the same desert plus a town and boss base with a connecting road, the game does try and mix this up though, albeit just by shuffling around the desert, mountain, town, base and throwing in the occasional mine or tunnel level (that you'll only need to visit once). I get the feeling Borderlands is trying to be a sandbox but comes across as being more of a sandtray, yes you do get the freedom to explore wherever you want, but only through one mildly linear map at a time.

Another egregious flaw is the texture popping whenever you enter a new area, and this isn't the usual texture pop where the game realizes and scurries to correct the problem like someone caught masturbating in the school toilets. Borderlands takes it's sweet fucking time getting the textures sorted out, while this only happens when you enter a new map it's so noticeable and some missions require staying in one map for all of five minutes that it can really grate on you after a while. Another flaw in the presentation of this game, admittedly a rare occurrence but so bas when they do happen they're downright insulting when it does happen are the dips in frame rate, these make the game seem as if it was personally animated by a Parkinson's sufferer after drinking six cans of red bull.

Oh shit I just remembered I haven't talked about the story yet. Borderlands follows a group of four rag-tag mercenaries, but it will only really follow the character you choose, on a journey through a desert planet to find a "vault" filled with riches and technology beyond your wildest dreams. While not a bad storyline in anyway, it really has nothing I would call good about it, it's only striking feature is complete lack of anything striking about it. That's all I can really say about the story, told you it wasn't that great.

In summary Borderlands is an extremely enjoyable game, the shooting and stat-based RPG elements blend perfectly together and the ludicrous amount of guns means that there's going to be at least a few ones perfect for you out there and trying out the varied arsenal the game offers is a complete joy. I would recommend this game to fans of the shooter genre primarily as the game lacks a deep upgrade system that some role-playing gamers may have been expecting. I can give this game a sincere recommendation, its faults and flaws while annoying do little to diminish the actual fun of the game, added to that it's respectable longevity and the four different character classes give it fair replay value, Borderlands a sound choice for anyone looking for a bit of variety in the otherwise monotonous FPS market. I give this game a solid and well deserved

B