I was very nervous picking up Borderlands. Sure, I'd read all the reviews that said what a fun game it was and all, but after all, I already have Fallout 3. Did I really need another game set in a post-nuclear style area where everybody is searching for a Vault?

I plucked up my courage, deposited my money at the local game store, drove home and discovered that, yes, I absolutely did need another post-nuclear style game that has 87 bazillion different types of guns.

Keep in mind, I'm playing this on the PS3, so everything I say revolves around that console; I have no idea how the game plays on the PC or the 360. Suffice it to say that Gearbox and 2K Games have figured out how to reinvigorate the FPS genre by letting you build your character as you progress, picking and choosing the skills you want, so even two people playing the same "class" will wind up with vastly different types by the end of the game.

Borderlands takes place on Pandora, a desert world where might makes right, raiders and bandits control the pathways between fortified outpost towns, and very few people have any compunction about putting a slug into your face...or your back. Think about the Australian outback shown in the Mad Max films, and you'll know the sort of thing I'm talking about. Into all of this drops...you. Pandora's own guardian angel. Ostensibly, you're there to find the Vault just like everybody else. But before you can go about finding the Vault (and the water, food, women and wealth it contains), you need to find your bearings. You're a newbie in the world, nobody knows you from Adam (or Eve), and while you can shoot people, this isn't the best way to get them to part with much-needed information and money. So, you start doing favours for people...a little of this, a little of that, and pretty soon you start getting cash. And guns. Lots of guns.

The box is not lying: there seriously are 87 bazillion weapons in the game, and every last one of them is different. Even two weapons with the same name will have vastly different stats, or at the worst will look graphically different: one may have a longer stock, one might be painted bright yellow, another might shoot flame rounds, etc... There are a multitude of pistols, revolvers, assault rifles, sniper rifles, submachine guns, rocket launchers and shotguns to be pried from the cold, dead fingers of your enemies, purchased from vendors, or looted out of footlockers, and you'll have tons of fun finding each and every one of them and putting them to good use, mixing and matching your inventories, and deciding what you want to get better at using vs. what you'd like to ignore for a bit. Using a certain kind of gun gives you more experience with it, so as you get better with pistols, for instance, you'll get more accurate and be able to fire faster and hit for more damage. As if that wasn't enough, you can also haul around grenades and apply various effects to them, giving them properties like Bouncing Bettie (hops up and explodes at waist-level to cause more damage), MIRV (explodes and releases more grenades that then also explode), Sticky (sticks to any surface for a few seconds before detonating) or Rubber Bounce (rebound them off walls, floors, ceilings, around corners, etc...). You can also purchase upgrades for your weapons that increase the size of the magazine you can carry, webbing to let you carry additional grenades and so forth.

And then there's your choice of characters: Borderlands isn't for wussies at all. Unlike Fallout 3, most of the denizens of the world recognize only the language of hot, screaming lead, so there won't be any would-be politicians wandering the wastes. If you want somebody to hand over their gear, you're going to have to kill them and take it. And since all your buying and selling needs are done via machine, there's no haggling for a better price: you pay what they tell you or you don't get it. Fortunately for you, it's very simple to acquire money: if you aren't taking it out of the pockets of some masked gimp you blew in half with a shotgun, then you're looting it from boxes and lockers that some idiot left unattended. Karma be damned: there's no such thing as stealing in these wastes, so loot like mad if somebody was dumb enough to walk away and leave their footlocker unlocked. All four of the character types are hardcore sociopaths with their own likes and dislikes and skill trees. The soldier loves his combat rifles, and can deploy a shielded turret for help in a firefight. The hunter loves his long-range sniper weapons, and has a bloodfalcon buddy he can unleash to harry foes. The siren can turn invisible with her light-bending camouflage and attack while in stealth mode, preferring to add elemental effects like Fire to her weapons. The berserker pretty much loves to fight with anything and has no trouble tearing apart the bad guys with his bare hands if it comes down to it.

For all the emphasis on combat, Borderlands has a surprisingly simple armour system. Unlike Diablo, where you might find a "Godly Plate of the Whale" falling off of a demon or a "Loincloth of Thorns" in a barrel, Borderlands has only one thing: shields. Your shields function just like Master Chief's did in Halo: they absorb the damage before it gets to your health. Once your shield is depleted, your health bar becomes fair game, and it takes your shield a bit to recharge. Shields can have different effects: some will have more energy to deplete, others will recharge faster, some will heal you over time or grant you resistances to elemental effects like Fire or Corrosion. It's up to you how you use them in the game, but they are a majorly important part of surviving on Pandora. Even if you croak, though, there are two things in your favour.

First of all, the game gives you a chance to redeem yourself when you lose your last bit of health by entering into a special "Death Cry" mode. In this mode, you are immobile save for the ability to turn in a circle. If you can manage to kill an enemy while you are in this state, you'll pop back up with a portion of your health meter intact, earning a "Second Wind," which is a nice change from just getting splattered all over once your life bar reads zero. If, despite all your effort and ammo expendature, you cannot manage to kill anything, you will fall down and go boom, but even this won't stop you for long as the nearest New-U station will reconstitute a completely New You from the stored fragment of DNA, right down to your full arsenal at the time of your demise. When not being reborn, you can also use a New-U station to rename your character, change their physical look (hair colour, clothing colour and so forth), or even reassign all the skill points you have earned so far if you decide that you'd like to build your character differently without starting the game over. This final option does cost money, which makes it impractical to do over and over again, but it's invaluable if you discover a given skill not helping you out all that much, or if you just want to try playing the game as a different type of character for a while.

All in all, Borderlands is showing itself to be wildly addictive: several hours of playtime will go by and you won't even notice that the time has passed. I was worried that the cel-shaded graphics would be a turn-off, but for some reason they just work very well with this type of game and I don't even notice that they are that way once I'm immersed in the world. The voice acting is a hoot, especially the "Claptrap" helper robots that assist the player with various tasks but also get bored very easily in a world where they were clearly programmed to be over-the-top optimists and will attempt to call attention to themselves by dancing, falling over things, or other slapstick improv. Injured ones whine pitifully on the ground, asking if they are leaking, and wimpering, "I...I can see the Code...". Quests so far have been pretty much of the "Go here and kill/shoot this" or "Go here, get this, and bring it back to me" variety, but it's difficult to do anything much beyond that in a first-person shooter. Don't expect Fallout 3 or Oblivion-level dialogue tree options, it's all pretty simple fare. Your enemies tend to level up as you do, and you get fewer and fewer XP for killing lower-levelled enemies so once you hit level 10 or so, it's usually not very judicious to waste ammo on a level 2 enemy. Damage numbers pop up every time to show when you have hit something, and the game displays the enemy's total HP and shield energy (if any) in graph bar-style above their name. Your level is very important, however, because the higher your level, the more damage you dish out. The same is true of your opponents though, and the game is nice enough to show you via a little skull by the enemy's name that something is way out of your league. If you start shooting at something and see a plethora of 1's start popping up, you know you're in over your head and it's time to run like hell and hope you don't get cornered.

Those of you who enjoy FPS games like Bioshock or Resistance: Fall of Man will get a bang out of it. Those of you who like action RPGs such as Fallout 3 or Diablo II will likewise have a good time. People who prefer more "pure" RPG experiences like Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate may not be as impressed with the twitch-style combat mechanics and the lack of tactical options or role-playing opportunities, but for everybody else, Borderlands is at least worth a rent. You can tackle it alone, with a friend in split-screen, or online multiplayer in both co-op and deathmatch formats, and everything your character does will carry over into your save file, so playing in multi-player will give you items and experience you can apply to your single-player campaign mode. In addition, just like Diablo, having more players in a game makes the monsters that much harder to fight, but makes the loot drops that much more powerful and bumps up the XP value for critters.

I don't normally blog about current games, but Borderlands is an exception I am willing to make for the good of all. Take it from a girl who wasn't sure: this game is a ton of fun, and it belongs in your collection.