Boarderlands * * * * *

This s another MUST GET for the 360 owners out there. As the cover suggests, this game will blow your mind! The gameplay is a first person shooter with a skill tree and leveling up. It meshes an RPG and a First Person Shooter flawlessly! Picture Fallout 3 without all the conversations.

Its gunplay plays like Halo 3 with an open world, missions and a loot system added. The loot system generates BILLIONS of guns shields gernade mods and characer mods. This is where the RPG aspect comes into play. Killing enemys gives you experince and causes randomly generated loot to drop. The loot can be used as in any RPG, but instead of changing your armor you decide what shield you want. there are fast regeneration shields, shields that regenerate health, shields that send out electric/acid/fire bursts once depleeted. Gernade mods give your gernade that extra kick in the pants, you have sticky gernades, bouncing gernades, electric gernades, acid gernades, gernades that pop up and spread out, gernades that explode on contact, gernades that steal health for you, gernades that do two of the mentioned abilitys and many many more! There are vehicles, but I find them best used for travel. You can attack a machinegun or rocket launcher to them, but it is far more effective to plow your enemys down. Vehicles also double as an effective spawn point if you die and the vehicle survives.

It plays well as a single or multiplayer game. If you go multiplayer you get harder badguys and better/more loot. you can also challange your friend to a duel by smacing them to see who has the best loot and skill upgrades. You will be supprised how diferent two of the same character can be!

There are 4 characters to pick from and aside from a basic color scheeme the appearance is not customizable. But that just adds to the fast paced nature of this game. You have the "assasin", the "tank", the "mage" and the well... soldier I guess.

The "Mage" is a female character that phases out of the regular plane of existance and moves faster for a limited time. When she leaves and comes back into enemys vision she causes an electric field that causes prolonged damage to all enemys arround her. This is the player I have goten the farthest with and depending on the skills you persue you will find that you have diferent abilitys. The way I have gone I catch on fire whenever I kill an enemy so anyone arround me takes fire damage. She specalizes in elemental wepons that cause reidual damage such as electris, fire, acis, and explocive damage.

The Assasin is a sniper character who has a ravin that goes out to attack for him and gathers loot/health for you. Im only a level 10 so Im not too sure where he goes when he gets stronger.

The Tank goes into a rampage mode where he does lots of damage, gegenerates health and takes less damage. I havent seen him in action, but I know he specalizes in rocket launchers and gernades.

The soldier is another character that I have yet to play, but he sets up a shielded turret that protects him while attacking for him or with him. he specalizes in rifles and shotguns

Visualy this game is gold. Honestly when I first heard about this game using cell shading I was a bit put off, but the graphics are outstanding!

Closing coments: GET THIS GAME NOW!!