"Role-playing shooter" may be a fitting descriptor for Borderlands, but it's slightly misleading. It does combine role-playing and first-person-shooter elements, but it doesn't do so in equal portions.

It has all of the loot, character progression, and quest structure of RPGs (specifically MMOs), but the gameplay is nearly all shooter. Stats do factor into hits, determining both the damage you can do and the chances of landing a critical hit, but this isn't Fallout 3; it lacks VATS, and if you aim for an enemy's weak point, you're more than likely going to kill your foe with a few rounds.

It's an RPG for fans of shooters -- but not vice-versa. Fans of RPGs shouldn't instantly turn away, but they should know that how well you aim is as important as your level.

Fortunately for RPG players, the game isn't as difficult or nuanced as "regular" shooters. If you're three to four levels above your prey, you can be confident that you can casually walk into a group of bandits and casually walk away from their dead bodies. You can upgrade your character with skill points not unlike those found in World of Warcraft, which help alleviate the burden of having to play the game as a shooter.

If fans of the RPG structure can learn to cope with the lack of tactics, and if shooter fans can learn to deal with a lack of gunplay fidelity, both sides can find a hopelessly addictive experience (though these sides aren't exactly mutually exclusive).

For fans of the RPG, the sheer amount of stat comparison that goes along with "bazillions of guns," as well as the character progression that makes you feel like a juggernaut by the end of the game, help you appreciate the shooting aspects all the more. When your character pulls off criticals with sniper rifles and pumps upward of 1,000 points of damage into enemies with every shot, seeing the numbers literally flying off enemies, you'll feel yourself sliding more and more into familiar territory.

This same sense of empowerment resonates with shooter fans as well. When facing some of the harder quests, you're constantly outnumbered but rarely outmatched. One factor could be the unchallenging enemy A.I. -- more often than not, the difficulty's based on the numbers of enemies or their rank ("badass" enemies are the game's version of elite foes). 

Heavy firefights are frequent, and you'll feel as if your skill carried you through them all, even if all your enemies are a few levels below you.

Though its backwater wasteland isn't the genre's typical fantasyland, it still happens to be a worthwhile setting. The colorful cell-shaded art style, while a little lacking in the texture and detail department, helps the game stand out from other shooters. This comic book look isn't just gloss, either. The entire game has a "baditude" about it; quests often make self-aware pop-culture references, the enemies have an eccentric design to them (did I mention that the game refers to its elites as "badasses" and "Badmuthas" in the second playthrough?), and the Soldier class often yells "Critical, biatch!" after...well, you know. (I recommend the Soldier class for fans of playing it safe, as the other classes simply don't do a good enough job at keeping themselves alive over a long series of battles).



Borderlands doesn't take itself seriously at all, which ruins any attempts at making anything close to an interesting story. But its tale is as present as the story is in MMOs that focus on broader goals over specific missions. You come across some interesting characters in your quest for the Vault, though most of them tell you to kill a certain number of enemies.

It doesn't amount to much, but let's face it -- you're playing the game to shoot bad guys and find the next epic piece of loot (maybe with your friends), not for the story.

Borderlands is best when you disregard the story's context and enjoy it with other people. The online co-op works superbly, with the drop-in, drop-out mechanic that we've come to expect from games today. Trading may be a sly reference to the EverQuest days (drop your item, have your partner pick it up, and pray he doesn't run off with your end of the deal), but other than that, it's more or less the same as playing an MMO that just happens to be a shooter (and is not Hellgate: London).

Enemies scale according to the number of players, so you should work together rather than split up. Your party should be around the same level for the best experience, but as a level 50 who picked a level 1 along the way somehow, I managed to help my new friend plow through six levels in about 3 minutes. Still, I recommend you all start fresh if you're planning on playing for extended periods of time. It's a great experience alone, but like most things in life, it gets better with more people.

The other multiplayer additions don't fare as well. Dueling, activated by having two players swap melee attacks, isn't particularly fun, though it does help settle disputes over loots better than "Nuh-uh! I got here first!" does. Arena matches are even worse; they serve no significant purpose. If you're looking for a shooter with any kind of competitive multiplayer, this isn't it.