Gavin Bard was not available to pen this review as he has been sent on location for an interview of intergalactic proportions. In his stead, Faceoffgames has spared no expense in procuring the writing of a talented video game journalist from the distant alternate future of “a few years from now.” Without any further delay, we present to you Mr. Rockatansky's review of Borderlands.

I want somebody to go tell Gearbox that I've got a bone to pick with them. I haven't seen one Australian cent piece for this game, and I'm as sure as oil is scarce that my exploits inspired the feel for this game. Just look at the world of Borderlands! Just look at it, I'm surprised I didn't go into flashbacks when I was speeding around the post apocalyptic alien world in one of those makeshift vehicles.

Of course when I was tooling around in my dystopian wasteland it didn't have such eye pleasing rotoscoped visuals. Mine involved more leather and muscular dudes in hockey masks. Although, thats another thing, look at all the enemies in this! If I didn't get flashbacks just from driving around in this large, well fleshed out world I would have certainly had them after seeing the bandits and human bad guys you are forced to blast away at. I would even say that they would be humongous flashbacks. Thankfully there are plenty of other types of enemies to fight that weren't taken from my autobiography that will keep your travels more varied than mine were.

This gun is just one of infinity.

I guess I can only complain about them using my life for the games apocalyptic theme, because I don't remember ever having to fight aliens or spiders to find artifacts, and the Outback isn't really an alien planet. And, I mean lets face it, I'm a pretty bad ass guy but I don't exactly have a huge list of skills to improve on. In Borderlands you have four classes to choose from that offer you different special skills and skill trees to tweak the character to your play style. This is where the RPG elements of the game shine, as each character and their different possible builds can lead to a completely different experience. The decent amount of skills can add to different strategies for each character, from Lilith's hit-and-run invisible ghost explosion thing to Brick's if-it-moves-punch-it-to-death views on life. I only ever had one skill- kicking ass, and I only did that with a small selection of weapons. With Borderlands, believe every bit of hype you heard about its weapon generation system. If you find the same weapon twice, you should probably play the lottery. It really makes me wish I had a shotgun that shoots acid rockets anytime I had to fight some weirdos in BDSM gear.

Plenty of options for death dealing.

Also drastically different from my life is how the world of Pandora is greatly improved by playing it with friends. I'm not a man who likes to travel in groups, but even I realize that this game was built to be played co-op. This is the only place where Borderlands shows some flaws though, as the game could have been improved taking more elements from RPGs. Duels are kind of useless and would be better if you could have them over who gets what loot, and being able to give weapons to another character could have been done better than having to drop them and have the other guy pick them up. Not being able to give ammo or money also seems odd. Even then, none of these are even close to gamebreakers and are only minor inconveniences when compared to the amount of fun it is to kill things in this game.

The perfect blend between cel-shading and looking awesome

It also has to be mentioned that, despite my desire for royalties, Gearbox should have their praises sung from every bandit and large spider infested mountain top for including only cursory DRM. because if I remember correctly this is one of the harbingers of the end times- a major release not punishing its buyers by drowning them under intrusive and frustrating DRM. It is nice to see a company who realizes that the pirates are always going to get around it, so why make it harder for the legitimate consumer to play? Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.

Fighting the urge to yell "Boom Headshot!"

Come to think of it, the only complaints I've noticed, from the future I mean, have seemed to align with the fact many people apparently misjudged what this game was trying to be. Oh, it isn't long enough! It is a first person shooter, since when was 25+ hours too short for that genre. Oh, there isn't enough replay value after the second playthrough! Ok, yeah, after the second play you are most likely going to be at the level 50 cap, but now you can farm for better loot. Oh, it is underwhelming solo! Of course it is, so was Left4Dead, but thankfully the game isn't supposed to be played like that. Did anybody even watch gameplay videos or read a preview?

Bunch of complainers. Borderlands is turning out to be pearls before an annoying troll with a metal frisbee, as angry I am at it being thematically ripped from my life, because this game has very few flaws outside of peoples misguided expectations. Let me put it this way, I spend most of my time talking to a dog and scavenging a nuked out wasteland for food and even I didn't think this was going to be a Fallout 3 clone.

What was your excuse?