I spent all day yesterday trying to decide whether or not to buy Borderlands. I already have a backlog of games from just the past couple weeks -- Demon's Souls, Brutal Legend, Tornado Outbreak (hey, I kinda like it), and Halo 3 ODST, with Dragon Age, New Super Mario Bros., Modern Warfare 2, and possibly Assassin's Creed II (don't know, never played the first one) and Tekken 6 (never played a Tekken game either) to join that list.

(Uncharted 2 isn't helping the backlog situation much as it has made me want to go back for seconds and thirds and multiplayer and all that stuff... but that's ok, the other stuff can wait because Uncharted 2 is that damn good.)

For a while, I thought Borderlands would be the odd man out -- the game on my wish list that I'd end up skipping in favor of other games. I was hoping reviews would help make my decision and that either they'd be so good that I had no choice but to get it or so bad that I wouldn't, but they were neither. After watching a video of the gameplay, I decided to break down and get it.

It turns out that it's a pretty cool game. It does the FPS combat well; even though the game is a hybrid FPS/RPG/MMO type of thing, it doesn't scale back the combat at all for an RPG player who might not play much FPS. At the same time, it doesn't scale back the RPG elements for FPSers who aren't into RPGs. If you aren't good at FPS, you're probably going to get killed quite a bit, and if you don't have a clue about creating and building a character and how to tell a good piece of gear from a bad one, you're going to be behind the eight ball a little bit.

It should be noted though that even though there seems to be this notion floating around that Borderlands is a game for "hardcore" gamers, it is quite possible for a wide range of audiences to enjoy it. The game is not "casual" (casual vs. hardcore is silly anyway, but that's something for another time), but at the same time, I've played stuff that is a lot more "hardcore" than this. It's simply an effective mix of genres, and it certainly helps to have experience in each, but it's not so advanced that you can't learn if you don't.

The game has a stylish look and feel, and it gets right the loot grind and questing that help make games like Diablo and MMOs so addicting. It's not too common for me to play a new game for two or more hours on my first play; I usually get my feet wet and then come back to it later. But after it got done with the tutorial, the loot grind/quest grind addiction started to sink in, and before I knew it I had hit that two-hour mark. So if you get hooked on the types of things I'm talking about, then you'll probably get hooked with Borderlands.

The big key to this game though is whether or not you want to do co-op questing and if you are friendly with or know people who are playing the game. It's certainly possible to go solo and have fun, and it is still indeed fun alone. But this game would be most fun doing group questing, and even though I'm only a couple hours in and could wind up being dead wrong, my early thought is that it won't work too well with strangers over XBox Live. Players joined and left the game on a whim before any quests could be completed, and since there's no loot rolling system, I'm left to wonder if there would be problems with loot etiquette and/or loot ninjas.

I also have to imagine that it will be tough to get three strangers together in this game who are at roughly the same spot level and quest-wise. There's no "looking-for-group" chat function like there is in an MMO where you can send out a tell looking for people who need to get a certain quest done, so you kind of need to do the best you can in the multiplayer lobbies. That might not be as much an issue if the community grows large, but last night, it seemed empty.

That last point is something to keep in mind. Like I said earlier, I very nearly left Borderlands off my buy list, and I have to wonder how many others will as well. Will this game slip through the cracks? Will there be enough of a community down the line to keep co-op going?

It's a good thing the game is still fun to play solo. Is it as fun to play without friends? Probably not. If you don't have people to play with, should it deter you from trying the game? Not necessarily. But if co-op is important to you, I think this game would definitely be better playing with people you know. Overall though, it's a pretty cool game... maybe not quite GOTY material, but I think most of the people who buy it will like it.

(I was a tank in WoW, so I pretty much had to pick this guy as my character)