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Kill until you can't see.

The gloves are off. It's go time. Borderlands has declared war on an old review of mine and I can do nothing in the way of ignoring obvious parallels between what it accomplishes and how it matches up to the obvious drawn comparison, Fallout 3. Straight to the point, it pukes all over what Bethesda wanted to create in an open-world first-person RPG. It actually does it by keeping things smaller and more contained than a fifteen minute walk to shoot something and pick through a garbage can. But just like the game's Pandora, nothing is perfect and experimenting with new toys can sometimes lead to completely unexpected missteps.

The plot in Borderlands is slim as they come. Word has it that there's a holy grail of alien weaponry and riches, referred to as The Vault, hidden somewhere in the bloodthirsty valleys of Pandora. Whether or not it exists, a fabled woman appears to you who encourages the search for this stash on the basis that it really does exist. Some say, the chosen explorers who have come closest to the vault have a woman appear to them. What an interesting coincidence.

The first is that the game plays pretty well. While not employing the finest first-person shooter mechanics to date, they are relatively some of the more comfortable that I'd come across on consoles. There are a handful of preset styles which should cover most players' preferences, and even then can be tweaked with sensitivity adjustments and other expected adjustments. The game even courteously cuts corners in a few places, such as holding down the action button to pick up all available items within reach rather than having to individually collect eight bits of ammo and cash. Unfortunately, this command didn't seem to be the most responsive and picking up items was a hit or miss ordeal for the better half of it

The second is that you can do all of this with friends-online or local. Splitscreen is an interesting monster because the game provides no extra ammo or items in order to compensate for the fact that players are sharing between each other. The same goes for online play, but the local co-op tended to be a bit more flawed as it carried players along with each other in the best interest of keeping things square between characters. For instance if one person completes quests and turns them in, along with doing a lot of the combat, player two can be a lazy grasshopper all he wants and is carried along through with the shared experience. This is a great way of making sure nobody gets left behind, and is slightly offset by giving the person who got the kill a few more XP than the other, but it seems misguided to an extent.

I started out talking about Fallout 3 and now I'm going there again. If I had known Borderlands was going to be the way it turned out, I'd have said that in a year a game was going to come out that not only refined the gunplay and exploration aspects, but let you do it with a group of your friends as well. While Borderlands opens up slowly like most open-world titles do, everything changes once you learn how to get a vehicle. This is where a lot of the game gets more interesting, because it turns the sections from a place to wander around on foot into a much more Wild West of shooting and chase sequences. This is the sort of action that really compliments the rowdy nature of the game and turned out to work really well in practice as it was probably expected to on paper.

On the other hand the game has its fair share of bugs. One being that most bosses seem to be in situations that are easy to exploit and camp out in a corner until you shoot off their last bit of HP. Another being that occasionally things will just break. At one point I ran into an overly powerful adversary who I wasn't yet ready to kill. Fortunately for my character the creature got stuck on an invisible section of the arena and stopped moving completely, giving me the six minutes of constantly firing my weapons that I needed to kill it. There are also pop-in issues and delayed textures that load after a few seconds of being on screen. The game even crashed a couple times, which was half-expected. While I don't expect things to run like a dream in a sandbox title, it's clear that more problems were overlooked or not taken into account than maybe should have been.

The cel-shaded style compliments the game and will set it apart. Right from the introduction it knows exactly what it is: a relentless killing machine that loves everything about itself. What gives it character is how upbeat everyone is about the constant violence in their world. This is where the art style change the game underwent really compliments its attitude. The soundtrack doesn't add as much, on the other hand, and is nonexistent for the most part. It takes a more dramatic spin on things and doesn't contrast well with your character's cocky remarks after a headshot or low blow.

As much fun as I'm going to have in my life with comparing this to Fallout 3, they are different games in the end. Each knows what it is and while a crossover crowd will exist, both titles will cater to the userbase they aim to please. Borderlands is definitely a lot more concise and action-oriented, which works out really well in my opinion. The multiplayer aspect gives it a lot of longevity, which is supplemented with New Game+ features as well. Mission variety is decent and enemies are well varied within their types, although the most addictive part of the game's missions will be the underlying RPG elements that allow further customization and adjustments throughout the length of the title. Borderlands will have a lot of people coming back for more despite its shortcomings, and is by all means a notable title for the year.