Subtle.

Understated.

Nuanced.

These are not words I would ever used to describe Borderlands. No, Borderlands is a frantic, over-the-top riot of a game. If it moves, shoot if it. If it doesn’t die, it’s probably on your side. But shoot it just to be safe. Let’s call it the crystal meth of video gaming.

To stand out in the shooter crowd, Borderlands bills itself as an RPS, a role-playing shooter. That means a thin veneer of role playing elements are added onto the meat of the shooter. As you arrive on the planet Pandora, you have your choice of four character archetypes: the grizzlied soldier, the deadly siren, the zany sniper and the big guy who punches things. For the most part, the characters are interchangeable, with the RPG elements providing the key differences. Each character type has three skill trees with different powers and abilities that you can improve with each level up. Each character also has a unique special power that can also be upgraded and improved, with fairly devastating results. The powers provide nice differentiations between the characters, but for the most part, all of the characters when equipped with the same weapon can play more or less the same.

Once you’ve got your character picked out, there’s a fairly straight forward Wild-West-meets-Sci-fi-but-not-Firefly plot to be undertaken, with missions that involve killing things because you have to kill things, and killing things to get to something else that you need to kill. Preservation of life is obviously not a key priority on Pandora. Compared to your standard RPG, there isn’t nearly the depth of secondary characters and subplots to interact with. Instead, you have the main plot, and then a smaller series of sidequests that seem to exist just for variety.

The real meat of Borderlands, and where it really hits its highest note, is in its on-line multiplayer. You can just explore the world, or redo any of the missions from the storyline with up to three other players. Playing a mission single player is good, playing it with four players is fantastic. The enemy difficulty ramps up with extra players, creating some fairly frantic and intense firefights when you get four players going together.

The multiplayer is well executed, being generally cooperative, but with some competitive elements mixed it. For one, when an enemy drops items, it’s a free-for-all between the four players to see who can pick things up first. When you’re almost out of ammo for your strongest weapon, there is nothing more aggravating than seeing another player scoop it up before you. But that’s part of the game’s charms, where your only working with your co-op partners to a certain extent. Plus, you can always drop the gloves and go mano-a-mano with another player.

In the game, guns are Borderlands bread and butter, and they are abundant. With several gun models, plus a huge assortment of enhancements and upgrades, there are millions of possible weapons you will encounter. Pistols, shotguns, rifles, bazookas and sniper rifles are just some of the base varieties, which you’ll find augmented with bigger magazines, extra damage, and generally more mayhem. Part of the game’s fun is going after increasingly stronger enemies to try and find an even more powerful gun than the one you are currently using. Its the safe obsessiveness that made Diablo a legend.

Your other equipment includes shields, which provide not only protection, but can also have secondary properties like elemental resistance and extra health, grenades that can be modified with various boosters, and special artifacts. On one hand, the limited number of upgrades keep things fairly simple, but on the other, if would have added more to the RPG side of the equation if they’d gone deeper with more types of equipment and upgrades (googles, boots, etc.) to provide even more customization options. That, and more personalizing in the character’s look would have been great; other than some minor colour palette swapping, there’s nothing to differentiate one soldier from the next in on-line play.

Borderlands uses the Unreal engine, and the much-talked-about visual style brings a refreshing twist to an engine that we’ve all seen before. The cartoonish quality to the visuals matches perfectly with the game’s over-the-top vibe. I like how when you get up close to a rock, you can see what look like pencil strokes.

There are the usual issues though with texture loading, most apparent with the vending machines, but other than the that, the semi-post-apocalyptic wasteland of the planet Pandora is an colourful and dangerous place.

There were a couple of gameplay issues that were off and on sources of annoyance. When I was on the offensive, pouring a hail of bullets into an unsuspecting skag, it would become suspecting and charge at me. I think I’ve spent more time in retreat than moving forward in the game. I understand there’s a careful balancing act to be done between making the game too easy overly challenging, but as a general rule, when you encounter enemies at a similar level to your own, be prepared to do a lot of backpedalling and shooting.

The other issue I had was in my playthrough as Mordecai, the sniper. Despite my best efforts, I just didn’t seem to be able to snipe much. I had a very powerful rifle, and I was making headshots on distant and unsuspecting enemies, but they just weren’t dying. At least not anything tha provided even the slightest hint of a challenge. It was enough to make me question why I wanted to play a sniper in the first place. That’s kind of the whole point of a sniper, surprise kills from a distance. And frankly, being a sniper in multiplayer is almost pointless, because no one is standing around waiting for you to line up and take the shot.

As a shooter in the fall of 2009, Borderlands (like every other game)is certain to be eclipsed by Modern Warfare 2. But that doesn’t mean Borderlands should be passed over. Far from it. Borderlands is a wild ride, bringing just enough RPG elements to the shooter genre to create something worth playing. If you like shooting things in the face, you’ll like Borderlands. No subtlety, nuance or understatement there.

A review copy of the PS3 version was purchased by GamerPops.

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