With games like 'Killzone 2', 'Call of Duty' and 'Halo', it's very difficult to make a new entry into the bloated first-person shooter (FPS) market. But if anyone can do it, it's the team over at Gearbox Software, thanks to around ten years of FPS experience.

Set on the planet of Pandora, 'Borderlands' sees you star as one of four characters — each a distinct class.

There's Lilith the Siren, Mordecai the Hunter, Roland the Soldier and Brick the Berserker — and each one has their own special abilities, such as Lilith's ability to go invisible and Brick's ability to go into pseudo 'roid-rage mode. You're all after a mythical alien vault said to contain an almost immeasurable amount of alien technology, but that's about all the story you're going to get.

Right from the start, 'Borderlands's unique visual style grabs your attention. Originally, the game was supposed to take on a more realistic style, but as development went on, the game's visuals were given a cell-shaded makeover. Thankfully, 'Borderlands' looks all the better for it, a pleasing change from typical Unreal Engine games.

The open-world environments are large, albeit tainted by the typical Unreal Engine brownish colour. Thankfully this is mitigated to some degree by the cell-shaded style.

Of note is the huge variety of enemies in the game, ranging from skags (small but vicious dog-like creatures), to bandits and flying pterodactyl-like Rakks. These enemies all look particularly colourful, such as the blue and black Scorpion Ants and the yellow, exploding slug-like creatures.

The game gets suitably gory, with enemies being dismembered, set on fire, decapitated — in other words, it's certainly not a game for children despite the cartoonish style.

Back to the enemies: 'Borderlands's enemies are nothing to be scoffed at. Each creature and human has their own weakness and attack patterns. Skags will charge at you, lunging with their mouths wide open, though all it takes is a shot or five in the mouth to put them down. Humans will seek cover and pop out to take pot-shots, with some just running straight after you if you're taking cover yourself. But of course, headshots always work well against humans.

You might also be pleased to know that enemies don't level up with you as they do in 'Fallout 3' and 'The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion'.

Gazillions of weapons

Of course, what's a first-person shooter without weapons? And 'Borderlands' packs a massive surprise for players in the form of over a million weapons — and no, that's not marketing speak or hyperbole. In fact, Gearbox Software claims that there are over 17 million weapons in the game!

The one downside to this system is that weapon differences can be negligible at times, resulting in many weapons having more or less the same characteristics save for one or two minor statistics.

Despite this, the game constantly throws out a lot of surprises when it comes to weapons — from a rocket launcher that fires three shots at a time, to a revolver that fires shotgun shells. And things only get better as you level up and progress.

Multiplayer is where the game excels in, with two-player split-screen co-op and four-player online co-op being supported. Playing the game for four straight hours with a friend proved to be one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've had all year.

The game will scale the difficulty according to the amount of players in the game, making multiplayer just as challenging as single-player. But the best bit about multiplayer has to be the fact that you can use your single-player character, bringing any acquired loot from your game to someone else's story mode and vice-versa.

The loot system is another feature that makes 'Borderlands' a must-play. Any enemies you down will drop items such as cash, grenades, ammunition, weapon modifications and guns; often resulting in frantic dashes to grab them when playing in multiplayer. The system works well, allowing you to pick up all items in close proximity to you by holding the action button down.

Vehicles also make an appearance, in the form of rocket-toting buggies — with vehicular combat being pretty simple. Though there is nothing quite as morbidly satisfying as knocking down an enemy and seeing it explode into bits.

'Borderlands' had a lot of expectations, as all new IPs do these days. But, boy, did it meet those expectations! Those expecting a story will be disappointed but when the action, weapons, gameplay and visuals are this good, who needs it?

8.6/10

Buy this game: PS3 | Xbox 360 | PC

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