I had certain expectations going into Borderlands; the same expectations I have going into any dungeon crawling, Diablo-clone style game. I expected to walk around a world with little sense of direction beyond a grocery list of quests to fufill (on the menu: 5 wolf pelts, 10 goblin spleens, etc.), meet fewer than 10 individual NPCs whom at least 1 of would be so dedicated to selling you crap that his commitment to capitalism would supercede common sense (the town of Baldur's Gate is overrun by zombies and the world is about to end?! Sorry, not even a discount). I expect to travel to plenty of diverse environments, meet lots of interesting people and wildlife, and then proceed to murder them all for their various possessions; color coded for my convenience. I've walked down this road plenty of times, so I wasn't expecting to be surprised. And while I got exactly what I was expecting, what I wasn't expecting was to have so much fun while I did it.
Borderlands is a game that oozes style and substance out of every pore, from its hilariously over the top Desert Punk environment to its diehard dedication to what can only be called gun porn, the game doesn't pull any punches when it comes to delivering a good time, though it does come at the expense of any sort of story or narrative framing beyond on the most blatant of excuse plots.
I'd "summarize" the story for you, but honestly, the term isn't necessary. Borderlands' plot is so simple that it literally can be told in only a few sentences. The planet Pandora is a piece of crap, full of nasty monsters and nastier people. There are no natural resources, pretty much the entire population consists of insane convicts (and the "sane" people aren't much better), and any support from the galaxy-spanning mega-corporations that initially colonized the planet ditched it long ago. But there is a legend of a Vault; a mystical alien artifact that serves as the giant MacGuffin to drive the characters, the "Vault Hunters", to come to this crapsack world to seek fortune and fame. If this seems simple to you...well, it is. And with the exception of one or two being "wait...what?" plot twists near the end, it progresses about how you'd expect. But the game doesn't suffer for it, and despite the lackluster narrative the characters you meet are actually fairly well done and have plenty of personality to make up for it.
But we didn't come for the story, did we? We came to get guns, and them use them to kill things to get bigger guns to kill bigger things, in a delightful circle of violence and wealth that never really gets old. You start with a choice between 4 different classes, the Leader/Healer "Soldier", DPSer/Stealth "Siren", Damage Dealer/Rogue-type "Hunter", and the Tank/AOE damage "Berserker". Each have different skill trees to upgrade and their own special "Active Ability" which helps differentiate the otherwise similar characters. Though the differences between them seem small on paper, when you actually get in the game with a party you can really start to appreciate what each can bring to the battlefield. In addition, the characters contain a good amount of personality in their appearance and spoken battle lines (though since there is no actual dialogue for them with NPCS, you never really get to know them as characters and will more or less simply view them as avatars after a while).
Combat in Borderlands is an excellent mash of twitch FPS reflex skills combined with some slight RPG number crunching that fortunately never becomes intrusive or removes skill as a factor. Firefights are fast and furious, with both melee and ranged enemies to deal with, but even when you are being overwhelmed by numbers you will never necessarily feel out of control in a fight thanks to a well thought out shield system and the fact that death is fairly cheap in this game. The actual shooting is fairly uncomplicated, not taking into consideration where you shoot the enemy on most occasions (a few enemies wear armor, but they aren't super common until the end of the game). Critical hits are given for shooting enemies in specific locations i.e. the head on most humans, but they are always pretty easy to figure out.
The games advertising boasts that it contains "87 Bazillion guns", and really they aren't far from the truth. The game has an excellent randomization system, meaning that though two guns may look and be similar, you'll rarely, if ever, find two identical guns, not even taking into consideration elemental effects and special traits the guns might possess (800 bullet clip and the ability to fire the entire thing in less than a second? Yes please!) This creates a nice sense of progression as you go through the game, as you'll constantly be showered with new and better loot, meaning you'll always have something new to play with as you go up in levels. Like the aforementioned pistol (yes, that was a pistol!!!), once you get beyond the regular trash guns you'll start to see all sorts of creative and dangerous weaponry. Anything from a shotgun that shoots rockets, to rockets that spread like shotguns. From SMGs that fire 4 shots at a time to sniper rifles that can put an entire clip into one spot in less than a seconds, chances are that there is SOMETHING in this game that will put a good old-fashioned malicious smile on your face.
At the end of the day, Borderlands will probably last you 20 hours or so on your first playthrough, though it will probably go much much longer when you take into account multiplayer and just a general desire to get the best of everything (and if I know some people, they won't stop till they do). And if you are anything like me, you'll probably enjoy every minute of it.
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