Guns & numbers

"Sweet! I got a new gun!"
"Is it any good? Is it better than one I already have?"
"I...um...well, I'm not sure." (lots of number checking & experimentation follows)
"OK, technically, yes...but only in certain situations."

This is a conversation I have with myself far too often in Borderlands. It's a good bit of fun. RPG elements and leveling make you want to stick with it. Same with the quest system. And on top of that, it's a very good shooter. The controls feel perfectly mapped and responsive. I guess that's a very good thing when shooting and moving is what you'll be doing more than 95% of the time in the game. It suffers from the same problem as Bioshock 2 however, because you constantly have to look at the ground to see what kind of goodies and loot are down there. Visually, you can see 'em from far away, and they're even color coded, but to actually decide if it's worth picking up you have to look at your feet, then exactly in the right spot to determine if it's something you need or want. The potential of incredible loot is almost enough to make you check it before you've even safely cleared out all the bad guys in the area. So I often end up taking damage while I'm staring at the stuff on the ground. Whoops.

I actually bought this one, and that seems like the perfect situation. There's not much story at all that would keep you wanting to play it all the way through, but it's addictive enough to keep pulling me back in every few weeks for an hour or two.