Borderlands.

Three friends and I started "Borderlands" tonight. I can characterize it mostly as a four-player Fallout 3 with a loot system gone mad. There is an endless amount of handguns, SMG's, rifles, sniper rifles, and shotguns, all with different attributes like firing rate, firepower, magazine size, zoom level, accuracy, and then some have special attributes like +30 incendiary damage or +100% melee damage. It's a bewildering assortment, but then you include things like healing shields versus guerilla shields, grenades, sticky bombs, ammo upgrades, and it quickly becomes overwhelming. And in typical fashion, Jason jumps in feet first and is an instant arms dealer expert on every weapon, able to differentiate the wheat from the chaff at first glance while the rest of us spend whole minutes mulling over the decision to sell the rifle we just looted or to keep it. But its the obsessing over details like this that really captivate me for some reason. The game is addicting to inventory management junkies like myself that are always looking for the next best gun to pick up or buy. Like I said, it's like Fallout 3's inventory system taken to the next level.

I wasn't sure about how I'd feel about the cell-shading aspect of the art design, but it comes across as a pretty arbitrary choice... it's no better or worse for it, but it does make it more distinctive. And the desert locales make it work well in that whymsical, Roadrunner and Coyote type way. So far I'm a little disappointed in the bestiary, there's only a handful of enemies that you run into during the first six hours or so of the game, and mainly consist of various small to medium sized animals and bandits wearing goofy Roadwarrior costumes complete with hockey masks and leather straps. The art direction as a whole isn't quite as sharply realized as Fallout 3, which I think sublimely harnessed the 50's propaganda style and contorted it into sharp satire and jarring irony. The post apocalyptic cyberpunk motif of Borderlands doesn't work quite as coherently, but it's still entertaining and kitschy in its own way.

The quests feel a little on the generic side but they're sufficiently varied to keep you interested. The vehicular combat is fun but a little clunky because you use the mouse cursor to steer. The buying and selling system works but weapons seem to lose a startling amount of value after you buy them.. sometimes losing as much as 75 to 90% of their value, but maybe that's realistic given the game's setting.

Which brings me to another point, the story mostly seems arbitrary and nonessential, it's all about going out and clearing areas of enemies, looting, and upgrading your equipment. I don't get the sense, at least 6 hours into the game, that many of the quests are connected or continue any kind of narrative, which Fallout 3 did so well. Also the character building and skill trees fall short of the dizzying array of attributes, perks, and skills that flesh out your character in Fallout 3.

They are obviously two very different games but it's the closest thing to Borderlands that I've ever played, so I keep falling back on comparing the two experiences I've had with them. After all, when a masterpiece like Fallout 3 is released, what else can you do but use it as a standard for games that come after? To that end, I think Borderlands is a satisfying scavenger hunt of a game that you can spend a lot of fun time with, especially if you enjoy multiplayer with friends and if you're looking for a change of pace and less heady storytelling after coming off a Fallout 3 runthrough like I have.