Borderlands

Borderlands is a First Person Shooter mixed with an RPG style story. You play as 1 of 4 characters which you pick at the start of the game. I chose Siren (Lilith) who uses the Phaseshift Skill which allows you to run fast and avoid groups that may be in your way and can also be used as a weapon itself.

The story is based on the planet of Pandora upon which you are trying to find an alien structure known as "The Vault", as you go through the story you must do quest's in order to find pieces of the "key" to open the vault. The Vault can only be opened once every 200 years and is said to hold many treasures within, which is where you come in. You heard about The Vault and wish to find it, leading you to Pandora and the start of it all.

When you first start you recieve a message from a mysterious woman who will try and guide you to getting to The Vault. Once you get off the bus you meet a very strange robot called CL4P-TRP aka Clap Trap, there are several of these through-out the game, most of which you have to repair, doing so will get you backpack upgrades for your character (trust me you need them). The first town you come to is called Fyrestones, this is where you start doing the quests from, you can also do side quests but only after a few of the main quests via the bounty board. Through the side quests you can new weapons and money for buying ammo storage upgrades, new weapons, sheilds or even health packs. You will also get grenade mods and others as you continue through the game.

While you are going through the game you will notice alot of weapons dropping from your enemies, these can either be sold or you can keep them, if they are better then a current weapon of the same style e.g SMG. You will notice that the weapons have different elemental types and also different level requirement. You will also find that some of the weapons that drop from the bosses will last you for quite a while as most of the others are all lower in stats for them.

Something that annoyed me about it though is the lack of storage, there is none, the only storage you have is what you carry around with you, once its full you have to sell or drop things, ammo doesnt count towards storage. You will however gain upgrades to your storage by repairing clap traps you find that are acting like they are dying (kinda funny to watch).

Most RPG's have a Hard Mode programmed into it which means you have to beat the game first to unlock it, however, Borderlands has a slightly better version, its called Playthrough 2. Everything is alot harder this time through then before, all the levels on creatures are higher so naturally it makes them stronger, a good thing though is that you get to keep all your weapons/items/upgrades/skills from your previous playthrough.

Your skills can all be assigned in the skills menu from which you can pick different ones and if you choose, you can even reset them at a new-u station so you can try another style on them. You can even change the colours of your character at a new-u station.

One thing I have noticed about the online play which uses the GameSpy Arcade network is that it lags, alot, some people have reported about how the game will suddenly disconnect even the host. If you want to play online I highly suggest you use Tunngle, the ammount of Borderlands rooms on it has sure proven that its popular and theres always games you can join in on, will also be alot easier for your friends too, it kinda works like hamachi (although borderlands refuses to let you use hamachi). You just make a lan game or search for one and your away. Alot less lag (barely noticeable) and its a great way to find new ways of doing things.

Overall i think this is a good game to play, it can give you many hours of enjoyment and you get to shoot things :P

Peace for now.
Simzy

Edit: Added part about Tunngle.