A Trip Through The Borderlands

This last week or so I've mainly been playing Borderlands, a sort of post-apocalyptic FPS RPG with definite nods to Phantasy Star Online (although I know some people will beg to differ).

Verdict: surprisingly good.

You basically go about doing quests, gaining experience, levelling up, picking up loot, all the stuff you'd expect to be doing in a game like this, except it's a first-person shooter. Now regular readers will know how bloody useless I am at FPSs, but this one isn't too bad as far as difficulty goes. For a while I was really dominating the opposition until I discovered aim assist was on by default, but I turned it off and it got better, much better.

The devs claim there are thousands of guns in this game, basically they all have varying stats and effects (and often puke-inducing colours) and it's great when you come across a new more powerful weapon to try out.

The drawbacks? The menu system is rather akward, it takes ages to get at inventory items and they're not organised in a logical way, plus you have to press a button to compare the relative merits of new equipment which just makes things even more akward.

I had the pleasure of playing with a couple of people in co-op and it was very entertaining. Depending on the levels of the players and who is hosting it alters the enemy levels accordingly, so it is possible for lower-level players to speed-level as long as the other players are able to keep them alive - this is where good teamwork comes into play.

Generally it's a good game, lots to do, although the environment do become rather drab and repetitive after a while.

I need to step away from it for a short while as I've played nothing else all week and it's in danger of becoming a bit played-out, but rest assured I'll be striving to get to the end of at least one playthrough, despite my ineptitude!