
	Platform PC Genre Shooter Publisher 2K Games Developer Gearbox Software ESRB M (Mature) Released October 12, 2010

- A great bundle that'll suck many hours from your life - Cool aestetic - Fun multiplayer

- After long stretches it can start to get boring - Didn't actually like the end of "Borderlands"

Review: Borderlands (360) Review: ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead (PC) Review: No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way (PC)
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Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition

Score: 9.0 / 10

As it relates to games, this time of year my mind always turns to "bang for the buck", "gaming goodness per hour played" and a whole host of other cliched lines that can be directly attributed to my thrifty nature. I want something inexpensive that I can play for hours, draw out the experience like some kind of pedantic game

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- PC Game Reviews
- Shooter Game Reviews

review that runs on and on, but with better graphics and a consistent sense of humor that makes me want to play.

Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition is one of these games.

If you wanted a reductive description, Borderlands is a hack 'n' slash dungeon crawl though the hack 'n' slash is replaced with bullets and the dungeon crawl is

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replaced with a (mostly) wide-open landscape awash with things that want to kill you.

For the base game, the over-arching MacGuffin objective is to locate "The Vault" which may contain fabulous wealth and alien technology, but there's plenty of side quests that wrap around that objective to stretch out the story to a very long length. While the add-on packs -- strangely you have to download them; they aren't on the disc -- lack the kind of MacGuffin end point after a sprawling adventure, they're certainly fun, especially when played with a few other human controlled companions. The game difficulty scales depending on the number and level of the people playing so it's always challenging.

Really, the strength of Borderlands is its multiplayer. Playing solo is just fine -- levelling up, finding all sorts of upgrades and loot, battling some really strange looking bosses across a variety of environments -- but it becomes a much more fun (and social) experience when played with some partners.

For $49.99US, Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition is a no brainer. All those good things you've heard about Borderlands over the last year are true, now go play it yourself.

- Aaron Simmer

(December 3, 2010)