Walking into Borderlands, I was unsure what to expect from the game.  From its onset, it had been plagued with comparisons to Fallout 3 or Diablo (including from yours truly), leading to the distinct possibility of it being lost in the holiday shuffle.  Along the way, a new art style, and surprisingly fun game mechanics sent Borderlands from being mediocre to becoming one of the best titles to come out in 2009.

When you get into Borderlands, the first thing you need to realize is that the story can be completely forgotten.  It is a chunk full of complete nonsense that is lost in the shuffle of all the action that happens on screen.  You and three other hopefuls have come to the planet of Pandora, looking to find a vast treasure that is kept in a location only known as the vault.  Shortly after your arrival, you are contacted by a strange woman via intercom that wants you to protect the vault from a group of mercenaries that have also come to Pandora to gain its power and wealth.  Yes, it is confusing and convoluted, but as stated before, you never really have to think about the story, as you are constantly on the go in Borderlands.  Action is around every corner, and the sheer number of main and side missions will keep you preoccupied.

Borderlands decided to go Kenny Rogers at some point and get a complete facelift, delaying its release by about nine months, but what a difference that decision made for the title.  Every single item in Borderlands has transformed from standard post-apocalyptic textures, into a bright and colorful cell-shaded wonderland.  Well, danger infested cell-shaded wonderland, but nevertheless, the look of the game is amazing, and helps Borderlands create its own identity in the midst of first person shooters.  It was fun just to walk, or drive around the world of Pandora and admire the detail that was put into the backgrounds and characters in the game.  I was a bit dismayed that the enemies came down to about a dozen different types, but they looked so great that I never had any qualms.  It also helps that you are busy kicking ass and taking names at every turn.

Yes, combat is the primary focus of Borderlands, and it never disappoints.  Around every corner, you find new and different creatures that have one goal in life – to kill you.  Lucky for you, you will find over 16 million different weapons to lay down a swath of destruction.  One minute, you will be content with a handgun that shoots out acid covered bullets.  Then you find a shotgun that shoots six explosive rounds and has a sniper scope, and decide it is the new hotness for your killing pleasure.  The weapons are a bit cookie cutter at times, but there is just something about getting that “one more kill” to see if you get that next rare weapon.  Combat is fluid, and fast, with each encounter typically consisting of several enemies of different types attacking you.

One mechanic that you will come across in combat is how Borderlands handles death.  When you shields and health are brought down to nothing, you enter a state of combat, where you can fight to survive.  During this state, you have a short amount of time to take out an enemy.  If you kill an enemy before you fade to darkness, you come back to life with a second wind.  You can continue this pattern as many times as you can be successful, and it removes some of the pain of dying at the end of a heated battle.  If for some reason you do end up dead, you will be teleported back to the last save marker that you passed, which normally reside at the entrance of a new area.

Just a small note here, but the original score in Borderlands is absolutely fantastic.  It is a mix of country twang, a dash of classical, and a heavy pinch of rock.  Sprinkle some electronica on top, and BAM, you have a soundtrack that is the best that I have heard since Mass Effect.  Kudos to Jesper Kyd,Raison Varner and company for putting together an eclectic mix of tracks.  When a game has you heading to iTunes or Amazon to grab the soundtrack, you know it has to be something great.

While single player is all fun and games, four person co-op is where Borderlands really shows off its brilliance, and it’s ineptitude.  Borderlands is designed to support full drop-in/drop-out four person co-op, with the difficulty scaling on the fly depending on the level of the person or persons joining your game.  Once someone joins your game, you each share the cash that you find around Pandora, but weapons loot is first grab, first satisfied.  You can also challenge other players in your game to combat, where you can see who the better fighter is.  Just rolling around with three other players is so much fun, but only when it works correctly, and this is where Borderlands kills a great thing.

Borderlands uses Gamespy for its networking backbone, and while this by itself is not a losing proposition, the idea of someone having to open ports for gaming in 2009 is just ridiculous.  No one should have to go into their router and open up five different ports to play a multiplayer game in this day and age.  Numerous forum posts have been created, discussing the issues people have had trying to play multiplayer.  Gearbox has not helped the issue, as they have decided DLC is more important than releasing a patch to fix the nagging networking issues.

Multiplayer is not the only area where Borderlands starts to fall off the rails.  Numerous bugs and glitches show up at random, putting a damper on your enjoyment.  At one point, I was travelling up an elevator with three other players when we all fell through the bottom of the elevator.  With no way to make the elevator come back down to the ground, we had to quit the game and reload from a previous save point.

The funny thing is that even with all of these problems, I have to admit that I had a lot of fun with Borderlands.  Once I opened the ports on my router, I was jumping into co-op games left and right.    The game is just a ton of fun to play, and I never found myself getting angry when a glitch or bug would show up.  I just worked around the issue and continued playing.  It is sad to give Gearbox a pass for such blatantly bad design flaws, but Borderlands is that good.  It muscles its way past its faults to provide gamers with a mindlessly fun experience, which is why Borderlands gets a 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out Borderlands and other PC reviews at Test Freaks.