Gearbox's Borderlands takes place on the world of Pandora, a sprawling Mad Max inspired wasteland populated by a few small towns, savage fauna, roaming bands of outlaws and one giant secret - The Vault. Upon starting the game players are prompted to choose one of four Vault hunters and after a brief stop in Fyrestone, set off on an epic adventure that traverses the inhabited and the more uninhabited regions of Pandora, following a trail of clues to find and attempt to unlock the secret of The Vault.

The game is a genre-bending hybrid getting by through the unique blending together of game play elements from both the first person shooting and role-playing genres. This combination of mechanics has been executed in emphatic fashion, providing players with un-putdownable game play. Whilst it no doubt draws similarities to Bethesda's Fallout 3, Borderlands is its own animal and a quite different experience.

Unlike Fallout 3, where the shooting aspect played second fiddle to the role-playing elements, Borderlands is first and foremost a first person shooter. The controls are tight and well refined bearing a stark similarity to those used throughout the Call of Duty series, this is great as it means there will be reduced learning curve for experienced shooter fans and an easy to pick up control scheme for newcomers.

After booting up, players are given the opportunity to step into the shoes of one of four playable characters. Each character handles different weapons with varying degrees of proficiency and has their own class-specific abilities called "Class Action Skills". The hunter is proficient with sniper rifles and has a pet bat he can summon to attack his foes, the soldier prefers shotguns and assault rifles and has the ability to deploy a shielded sentry turret, the siren is adept with elemental weaponry and can utilise the phase walk ability which makes her invisible for a short time and the berserker is an explosive expert with the ability to enter "berserker mode," giving him ultra fast health regeneration and super strength melee attacks - and really, who hasn't wanted to punch someone's head off at some point?

Each of the different classes handle weapons in essentially the same way, but their special abilities, which players will come to use quite frequently make each character unique in their own way. Once they reach level five, the four heroes are decked out with a set of three skill trees similar to those seen in World of Warcraft or Too Human. As the chosen vault hunter levels up, they are given a skill point which can be used to populate any one of the available skill trees. The different skill trees provide upgrades for various aspects of each of the characters' makeup, granting additional bonuses to their special abilities, weapon proficiencies or support roles. The skill trees are robust and can be mixed and matched so that no matter how people decide to play their characters, there is a class build to accommodate every taste.

Interestingly, the game lacks any selectable difficulty settings, instead allowing the player to have free reign over the difficulty of the game play. Enemies inhabiting the different region of Pandora have visible levels and depending on the level of the player, this will determine the difficulty of the encounter. In introducing this kind of difficulty scaling to the game play, Gearbox has succeeded in providing an experience that caters for all skill levels. In the end, the style and pace of game play is completely at the discretion of the player who can hang around for a while, completing all the side-missions, killing various similarly-leveled monsters to grind out a level or two or push on and challenge themselves with higher levelled enemies.

Whilst the single player is an engrossing and fun-filled romp across the land of Pandora, the game can also be enjoyed in co-operative mode. Borderlands supports two player offline split screen and up to four players online via xbox live. To cater for the larger party size, the game will automatically increase the difficulty of the enemies to keep it challenging and will also distribute money and experience evenly amongst the players involved. The multiplayer aspect of the game also allows players to duel each other and to access multiplayer arenas in which players can square off against each other in short rounds of organised death match goodness to take a break from the unending denizens of the wasteland.

The presentation of Borderlands is great, undertaking the same kind of transformation as the most recent instalment of the Prince of Persia series; the game has thrown off the shackles of realism and stumbled into the realm of cel-shaded goodness. This facelift has given it a unique, cartoony look not seen in a shooter since XIII and makes it instantly stand out from the competition.  The audio side of things is passable, with the characters, monsters and ambiance all doing a fairly good job to immerse the players in the environment.

Borderlands does have its flaws, driving around in one of the vehicles can be tedious at times as quite often they will become stuck on the smallest things and remain fastened to them, forcing players to go it on foot until the next vehicle station.  In co-operative mode, whilst the game splits up experience and money, there is no way to divide loot garnered from treasure chests reducing the game to a "finders, keepers" situation at times. There is also a few frame rate issues on occasion when enemies get up close and personal. These small annoyances can be irritating at times, but they can be easily dismissed due to sheer enjoyment earned from the rest of the experience.

Borderlands is straight up fantastic, the blended genres provides an innovative and wildly enjoyable adventure that is a definite game of the year contender. The game has massive longevity, a single play through of the game completing the core story, a few side-missions and a hefty bit of exploring will take the average player upwards of 17 hours. Offering four unique playable characters, the addictive co-operative modes, random loot drops as seen in your standard MMORPG, more than 130 missions to deal with and with additional downloadable content already on the way, this game is destined to be residing in the trays of many, many xbox360 consoles for a very, very long time.

Story: 7.5/10 - An interesting, but very basic story that in the end could have been so much more.

Gameplay: 9.5/10 - As the trailer said "The FPS and the RPG had a baby!" This sentiment perfectly describes the well balanced mechanics of the two genres incorporated into the finely tuned game play.

Graphics: 9/10 - The Cel-shaded graphics look fantastic and the environments are well mapped out and suitably varied.

Audio: 8/10 - The characters and enemies in the game all sound fairly convincing, unfortunately some of the voices are a little obnoxious and repetitive. The music is fairly standard and not unpleasant to listen to.

Overall: 9.5/10

Reviewed by Paul Williams