OK, you steered me right with Batman, so Borderlands will be my next purchase...

i dont think youll regret it... but its hard to say. its the kind of game youre going to love or hate. and ill warn you ahead of time, the first part of the game is pretty crappy. the first 10 quests or so are "tutorial" quests, and theyre very poorly implemented. but if you can get over that hump, theres a very entertaining game underneath.

entertaining enough to get me up to 192.7 hours played at this point :) my brother and i hook up and play online almost every weekend, at least for a little while...

i think its also worth mentioning that the game has a very similar loot mechanic to diablo-ish games. that is to say, highly random. if you get very lucky very early, it can make the game seem too easy... but if you get unlucky (as one of my characters has) then it can make for some tough going.

this is mitigated somewhat by having gear awarded for some of the quests... the quest rewards are also randomized, but there seems to be a certain minimum quality... which means youll at least have some average gear to use. and sometimes, you roll a natural 20 and get something retardedly good as a quest reward, although not often (only happened to me maybe twice...)

one of the things i really like though is that if an enemy is using a powerful weapon, theyll drop THAT WEAPON when they die (the enemies gear is randomized also)... which means if you run into some bandit that got a good roll and has a crazy good gun, hes going to be crazy hard to kill... but when you do, you GET that crazy good gun. it makes the risk/reward equation work out great...

I knew I'd made a good purchase when I saw this line: "He has nine toes. And three balls."

I took him out with back-to-back headshots, which was easier than expected, but satisfying... then his damn dogs nearly ate me.

Fun!

do you have it for the xbox or the pc? if youre on the pc we can play sometime, like i said my brother and i play almost every weekend... if youre on the xbox... well, that sucks. the game is a lot of fun co-op with people you know... and very UNfun with random people in pickup games.

what class/character did you decide to play first? the soldier is probably the most well-rounded, and easiest to play at first... but i think the hunter is the most fun... ive run both of those to the level cap (61 with the DLC), and a siren to around 20. tried out brick for about an hour but i just didnt like him at all... im sure at some point ill go back to him and run him to 61 as well, just for the sake of completeness...

after youve finished the game once with a character you can play again in "playthrough 2" and in my opinion, thats when the game gets really fun. 2x to 4x the number of bad guys, all of whom are much tougher, hit harder, and carry (and drop) much better stuff. i dont think i ever died once in the first playthrough, but the second one will occasionally surprise me and ill get my ass handed to me because i wasnt paying attention...

Crap, I need to add a comment feed reader or something to remind me to check back in. :)

I play it on the Xbox. I got tired of trying to keep a PC up to spec, years ago. So there's no way to connect via Xbox live from a PC? That seems silly.

I started out with (and am still playing) the Hunter (level 25 or so, now). I always like snipers. I'm sure there's some psychological profile there.

You never died even once on the first playthrough? Jebus. You're a twitch king. Maybe you'll be the one to defend the Earth, when Ender's Game becomes reality.

i dont think i did (die the first playthrough, that is)... im a long way from a twitch king, borderlands is just really really easy on the first playthrough difficulty... on the first playthrough, you can be very methodical, make good use of cover, and be careful not to draw too many bad guys on you at one time... theres only two or three spots i can think of where you get mobbed and gang-banged without a good way to get away. most of those are the boss fights...

also, playing a shooter like borderlands is a MILLION times easier with a mouse. i cant understand how anyone plays with a console controller... you NEED the speed and precision a mouse gives you. man trying to get headshots/criticals would be a nightmare with one of those xbox controllers...

Interesting re mouse vs controller. I've tried playing shooters on a PC, and just sucked at it, but maybe that's purely due to spending very little time developing skills on it. I love the Xbox controller -- I've noticed that's the style the military is using for drone controllers, just to transfer the kids' existing skills, of course.

Yeah, there were times when I just went out and started shooting, without thinking about cover, ammo, weapon type, etc. I mean, it's a game. :)

But around 15th level I started getting serious, and now at 25th, I make sure I have a cycle of weapon elemental types, etc... in other words, it's becoming work.

Last night, I went back to Fyrestone and just had fun shooting peons for 20 minutes, before going to bed. Doesn't matter that they're 1xp each. It's fun to play God. Angry God. Angry, capricious God. :)