Borderlands

Not every day does a Kiwi bloke or lass have the chance to go possum hunting with a relative and feel the responsibility of using a firearm. It is also not every day that you get the chance to use a small number of firearms from a stockpile of... oh, say.... six hundred and fifty thousand variants of death. Well for those creaming themselves over the prospect of having that much choice available, there is not much longer to wait. Gearbox Software and 2K Games are unleashing this gun-nuts wet dream dubbed 'Borderlands' around November. The game is a cross of genres and an unusual choice of graphical styling; add together the randomly changing open world and you have a game that lets you make your own ripples in the water.

Borderlands uses a combination of open-environment settings and dungeon runner-style underground caves. On the surface of the planet 'Pandora' it mostly appears to be a barren wasteland with the exclusion of a few shanty towns. Underneath the surface of the planet, however, corporations had been digging to search for alien artifacts that would advance technologies beyond what was already available. They found nothing, so they packed up and left. With the corporations gone there were no more jobs for the settlers, no more income, and no more order.

The planet plunged into what can only be referred to as a 'space cowboy western' with bandits looting villages and causing chaos. You play one of four characters that are part of a team dedicated to finding the alien artifacts. Each character is a different class and can level up during the course of the game. This means they can develop stronger proficiencies with certain weapons, increase their max health, and perform the task of killing bandits much better than before. This RPG element, combined with the focus on being a first-person shooter, should be interesting to see as a final product. Not to mention you can pimp out your character with over half a million different gun variants. Sweet!

This overdose on guns you keep hearing about works in a much more simpler way than imagined. Each weapon in Borderlands has certain characteristics like rate of fire, damage, accuracy, and so on. Certain weapons are capable of firing different kinds of ammunition too, such as a revolver that can fire shotgun shells. Each type of weapon in Borderlands is different to another in terms of their stats and ammunition type. It is this feature that creates the 650,000 variants of weaponry available; but don't fret, guns that are dropped or discovered are highlighted a different colour to show whether they are more powerful than your currently equipped weapon or not.

Borderlands is looking pretty damn sweet and should be a fantastic breath of fresh air from the current sludge of FPS titles that have been released. The game will also feature full four-player co-operative play for those with the passion for teamwork. Borderlands should hopefully be coming out late this year, but it will be well worth the wait. Check back with us from time to time, we'll definitely have a review up for those perked up by Borderlands. Happy weapon hunting!