Upon my first few minutes of game play I came to realize my true weakness. Glorious loot drops. As a previous hardcore WoW addict I appreciate the familiarity of a tiered loot system. It gives me the satisfaction and not to mention giddiness of running after a brightly colored item just to see it’s stats. Comparing weapon damage, accuracy rates, special effects Squee! I’m in heaven! I think that’s the biggest draw for me.

As far as I can tell the story is this. There are four of you and you’ve been raised on stories about a mysterious vault on the planet Pandora. This vault is legendary and contains jewels and wealth beyond imagination. You’ve just arrived and been dropped off at the starter town of Fyrestone. Your mission? To find the vault of course! But the scattered townsfolk of about 2 need to be won over. So your mission starts with earning the trust of the locals.

So far I’ve worked my way up to level 17. Dustin and I play on co-op mode. I’ve taken the Siren character who has a neat special ability of invisibility. She enters into it with a shockwave of electricity that damages surrounding enemies. From there you can run up to an opponent and wait for the effect to wear off (about 10 secs) or you can melee them. Upon exit of the invisibility mode another shockwave smacks attackers again. Her special ability was kind of lame at first, but as you gain levels you’re able to put points into WoW style talent trees. I can now ninja up to enemies and slap them with a corrosive touch! Oh and I got my first artifact which has now turned my shockwave into a firewave of doom!

Dustin chose the wicked cool Sniper Dude. I’ll admit I was half tempted to choose him myself after the opening scene and his fancy blade spinning stunt. Not to mention he just looks cool. With this character you are proficient in snipers, obviously, but you have the option of swapping out to various weapons. There are pistols, shotguns, sub machine guns, snipers, rifles, bazookas and revolvers. It’s all a matter of preference, though the descriptions in the starting scene tell you what your character is more favorable to. The sniper dude’s special ability sends out a hawk called Bloodwing to attack nearby enemies. I’m sure he gets better with added points and levels too, but Dustin’s the expert on him.

Other than those there are two other playable characters. The soldier and Brick. I haven’t played Brick yet. I’ve been playing as the soldier, whom I’ve affectionately named Dozer, while Dustin’s off doing other things. Now this character I liked right off the bat. He’s big, he’s bad and he has a friggen turret gun! That’s his special ability. For some reason Dozer makes me feel like an actual bulldozer. I forgo the silly need for hiding behind chest high debris and instead run up all bad ass like and BAM! Shotgun to the face! He’s certainly more durable than my main chick.

Besides the loot and the action, the actual look of the game draws you in. It’s a tumbleweed cross between an old western and the Thunderdome. You have your dusty deserts, your dune buggies, creepy dogs called Skags and of course your gun totting bandits. The characters are somewhat cartoonish but not in that Saturday morning sort of way. It’s more like a graphic novel drawing. The details are rugged and have an gritty feel to them. They fit rather well in the background cgi.

What about flaws you say! Well now every game has it’s flaws and Borderlands is no exception. Co-op mode has my biggest gripe. It of course splits the screens so you can duel play, but in doing so it makes the pop up information grid when you point over a loot drop pretty difficult to read. The inventory screen does not re-size but stays the same as single player mode. So that means you have to scroll back and forth to see both sides of the screen. It’s annoying but after a while you get used to it.

Another frustration is the lack of any real cover. Okay so this isn’t really a flaw but it does take some getting used to after playing Gears of War. Chest high walls aren’t as effective in this game. If there’s even a slight hole you can bet your ass that you’re going to get shot through it. It adds to the realism so I take it back, this isn’t a flaw. It’s just friggen inconvenient at times.

So in conclusion: I recommend this game if you are a fan of rugged Thunderdome type FPS’s. The loot drops add an awesome layer of greedy glee and perfecting face shots is almost euphoric. The game play is smooth though some of the loading times can be a pain. Throw in the gritty feel of the graphics and this game turns into a well rounded bad ass package.

That’s my two cents and let me leave you with these last words and the preview.

“Oh, there ain’t no rest for the wicked,
Money don’t grow on trees.
I got bills to pay,
I got mouths to feed,
There ain’t nothing in this world for free.
I know I can’t slow down,
I can’t hold back,
Though you know, I wish I could.
No there ain’t no rest for the wicked,
Until we close our eyes for good”