Borderlands is a computer game series that is in many ways symptomatic of the 'malaise of modern gaming' (which is not 100% true and therefore a theory) especially considering how style has trumped substance (which is a problem modern gaming shares with many other modern things). The gist of a Borderlands game is:
It is a first person shooter set on a richy detailed, busted cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic wasteland/junkyard alien planet with cool monsters and villainous humans and it's also a bit of an RPG (because those are hot right now) in that you have experience points, skills, and criticals (and also a vast, grim, and forboding numerical grind). All weapons and equipment are randomly generated with varying stats, there are multiple protagonists with different powers, persistent account wide bonuses, and a variety of challenges and accomplishments. Also the series likes to use hit songs in advertising as well as in-game!
All of this, and it's arguably less fun than even Doom 1 or 2, which are a million times less complex or intricate. To my mind the Borderlands series is a perfect example of the pretty, lifeless, grindy, downright boring and chore-like video games proliferating in 'serious' gaming. I finished the first game a couple of times (to my eternal discredit) and only played around 8 hours of Borderlands 2 (so far I haven't gotten a single interesting weapon and the fights haven't been fun). So the most important things in FPS games, the guns, are randomized. Generally the randomized guns are excessively useless. The inventory system is yet another terrible console/PC crossover abortion, so good luck selling the random loot guns the game is stingy about dropping.
The enemies in true RPG fashion take a bunch of shots to die, which would be okay if the gunplay was tight and precise or completely outrageous and arcadey. Instead the guns are somewhere in-between: there are accuracy penalties for moving but sometimes you're shooting 10 rockets. The aesthetic hasn't gone anywhere: toy guns that look like toy guns might or might not shoot like toy guns, or a serious looking gun might shoot like a toy gun. You might be plinking away with them for the next few hours. Everything ends up taking a long time to die as you prod them with wacky hijink guns. Every so often you level up and invest a skill point into something that will make you incrementally better, by one or two percent. In the end, the skills you take barely matter, so long as you follow the skill trees to their limit. The UI is dogshit, though it might be tolerable for console controllers.
The first game never 'got' me, but in several perverse fits of boredom I did complete it. First time I beat the terribly uninspired boss and got the shitty ending and shittier loot I was already very tired of the Borderlands formula. Multiplayer is like a sliiightly less dead single player: if you play with strangers it's not always that great or fun, but since the mechanics of the game are simple and unvariable it is only really any good with others and even then it is aggressively mediocre. With friends you can introduce fun into the game, which is open enough about you bringing your own fun as long as that doesn't mean killing an enemy in less than thirty shots.
Bizarrely enough, this game doesn't use a plot device to disburden itself of dated 'ammo' systems... combined with crappy little low-damage guns you can bet you'll run out of ammo in big fights and be forced to switch to even crappier, but different, guns which utilize different ammo. Or you have to double back and buy ammo at a vending machine (social commentary, anyone? Move over Simpsons). Why on earth they didn't give the player unlimited bullets, which would suit this outwardly outrageous and over-the-top game quite well, stumps me. I guess they wanted it to be a bit of a simulation as well, or the people who developed it were professionals building a project designed by a committee of unfunny, intolerable, and short-sighted fools.
But wait: it's got vehicles! The driving mechanics are that you steer with the mouse (a big and fat questionable decision), but when you drive you can run into dudes, which does a little bit of damage to them, so that you get to hit larger enemies maybe 10 or 12 times before they die, assuming you can maneuver correctly. Vehicular combat is outrageously frustrating and shallow, especially in Borderlands 1, where there is a vehicular boss that is pretty much guaranteed to blow up your ride in no time at all (which typically sends you into a pre-death last-stand mode where you can plink enemies with your terrible random peashooter until you fade to black and respawn away from the arena) and send you to hell and frustrate you, unless you have a partner to distract the boss, who will then keep the both of you in 'last stand' mode until you kill him, give up, or manage to win by attrition (respawning a bunch of times).
You get shields but most enemies will break them in less than a dozen hits. Groups of enemies will bring your shields down really quickly, and kill you, and then you'll go into last stand mode, and you'll have to kill one of them to get a second wind, or else respawn (which costs you ingame currency). I find it kind of funny that they took a 'realistic' approach to damage in a game that purports to be so wild and chaotic... because it forces the player to use cover and grenades and be tactical, which none of the classes, nor indeed the gameplay, nor most of the weapons in the game, really allow or encourage. You can't be tactical when you're locked in an arena with a bunch of fast and/or brutally powerful enemies. So your character will never really get into epic firefights where they stand and deliver with faceless shucks you gun down by the dozens... instead you'll creep around, most likely with a sniper rifle that does appreciable damage, and pop heads for crits, and generally play safe by necessity. Or you'll be frustrated while the game casually tramples you. All the 'exciting' weapons are either gimmicky or quickly made puny when you outgrow them.
It's also not funny, despite an abundance of voice-over work. Sometimes a guy will be so busy telling a long and involved joke that he will be cut off by the long and involved jokes several other characters want to tell you at the same time, ruining whatever narrative the game might boast, since there's no way to know what they would've said, even though it would've most likely been stunningly dreary and unfunny. There is a lot of design in the maps, and most of it will ensnare your character when you're trying to move around and fight, and take you forever to traverse when your vehicle gets destroyed. There are invisible walls, as well, if getting snared on the scenery wasn't enough. There are a multitude of secret areas where you can get your fill of .05 percent chances at good gear. Diablo 2, a notoriously stingy timesink, almost looks generous by comparison.
There are differences between Borderlands 1 and 2, but none of them make enough of a change to the fundamentally dry formula to actually make the game as engaging as it could be. Newcomers to gaming would be tempted to consider it a good game, and oldtimers would be tempted to call it shit, but in truth it is simply quite mediocre. Very, very mediocre... but it looks exciting, of course. I write about video games from time to time because I find myself more and more an outsider looking in, ever further from the spirit of the time and consistently alienated and puzzled rather than amused or excited. Now, it's unfair to state that gaming has gone to shit: there is more choice than ever, but many of the bigger names are completely incapable of the kinds of experiences I figured would naturally result from the vastly superior tech of this era. Instead of a deeper experience you get a more polys, sharper textures, new entries in aging and tired fanchises, longer load times, slower gameplay, and miles of padding.
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