Computer and Technology

Having some friends on your side makes things a lot more pleasant, given that about 99 percent of life on Pandora is your enemy. Human enemies range from bandits that are smart enough to wear shields and take cover to psychos that light themselves on fire and sprint toward you, screaming about rending your flesh from your bones. The local wildlife is universally hostile and includes skags (toothy dog-beasts), spiderants (armored insect monsters), rakks (raggedy death bats), and scythids (wriggling prehistoric grubs). Every type of enemy appears in various incarnations, ranging from young and weak to badass and on fire. These variations are generated anew during each encounter, so even when you kill a clutch of enemies in that same gully for the fourth time, it will be a different bad-guy loadout. You'll fight hundreds of each enemy type throughout the game, and the fact that groups are varied goes a long way toward staving off repetition. The two-seater vehicles also offer some locomotive variety, and many of the areas are much more fun to traverse on four wheels than on two legs. You can conjure the lone vehicle type from the many Catch-a-Ride stations. The touchy handling takes some getting used to, and you can run into some exaggerated physics problems when crashing into rocks. However, there's nothing quite like vehicular homicide to stave off bandit-killing fatigue. In or out of a vehicle, the simple act of killing enemies is pretty fun, and since you're constantly reaping loot and experience rewards, even repeated encounters have some incentive attached to them.

The combined incentives of killing enemies, gathering loot, cashing in, and leveling up are the main driving forces in Borderlands. The various quests you undertake cover a good variety of motivations, but most follow the pattern mentioned in the previous sentence. The 1 percent of life on Pandora that isn't your enemy will often have quests for you, though only a handful of characters are voice-acted. Of these, there are a few standouts, including the bumpkin car-rental mogul and the borderline sociopathic archaeologist, but for the most part Borderlands offers precious little in the way of non-player character contact. This makes playing solo a lonely experience. Though the action is still satisfying and the world is still interesting, solo players will have a slower-paced adventure in which the flashes of comedy also serve to underscore how sparse those flashes are. The main story is thin and the final encounter is pointless and thoroughly unsatisfying, so anyone hoping Borderlands will deliver a climactic conclusion is almost certainly going to be disappointed.

After you uncover the secrets of the Vault, you are once again set loose into Pandora, where you are free to quest on and remember why you enjoyed your previous hours with the game. Borderlands has tens of hours of quests to fulfill, and you'll likely find yourself enticed back to explore new skills, find new guns, and kill more enemies. Though the core action doesn't change drastically over the course of the game, it is woven together in such a way that once it ensnares you, you'll want nothing more than to plunge into Pandora at any chance you get. Combat is satisfying, and upgrading your skills and equipment is engaging. The constant stream of loot and experience is rewarding, and sharing it with some friends makes the experience that much richer and more exciting. Despite its hostile (albeit stylish) environment, Pandora is a great planet to visit if you want to shoot some stuff. Just be sure to bring some friends along for the ride.