Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Borderlands is a pretty unusual game and  I have been trying to think of what other game it most reminds me of. The answer, bizarrely, is Far Cry 2. Both games are first person shooters set in large open worlds with hostile native populations. Driving features strongly in both games. Both games have a quest driven main path but both also offer plenty of side-quests and opportunities to wander off the main path for non-linear exploration. While Far Cry 2 does not have much in the way of character progression the upgrading and maintenance of weapons is a parallel to the constant search for new weapons in Borderlands. Even the much maligned "respawning enemies" feature that everyone hated in Far Cry 2 also features in Borderlands. I really think Borderlands resembles Far Cry 2 more than it resembles previous role playing shooters System Shock 2 and Deus Ex. Those games had strong story lines and complex role playing elements whereas as Borderlands emphasises its first perso...

I suppose I should have smelled a rat when the game store assistant did his best to convince me to buy Dragon Age instead of the pc version of Borderlands. I know Dragon Age is good and I will play it eventually but at the moment Borderlands with its heady blend of RPG, Shooter and Co-op is more like what I need. My hunter character is now level 13 and I am definitely enjoying the single player game: Nice cartoony graphics, simple but enjoyable rpg elements, Fun shooter gameplay (with vehicles). The quests drive the story along nicely although there seems to be some gaps: I didn't find any quests between level 5 and 10 for example. Multi-player is another story. The PC version's online matchmaking uses Game-spy and it is really bad. Apart from the fact that the listings are unhelpful making it hard to choose a game to join there appears to be a variety of connection problems that prevent me joining a game 9 times out of 10. I tried hosting my own games but nobody ever joine...