Borderlands E3 Preview

The guys at Gameplayer tell us why they think Gearbox's Borderlands deserves the #9 position in their "10 Most Impressive Games of E3 2009" feature.
Quests range from your knock-off-10-of-one-critter types through to actual dungeon-style instances where you and four other players can go into arena battles to defeat particularly tough bosses in the search of epic loot. There is even a PvP component that plays out like the Thunderdome from Mad Max 3.

Speaking of loot, this is where the 500,000 weapons come into play. Just like WoW, loot is the main driving force for a lot of what you do with random drops for not just guns, but armour, equipment, items and more all spilling out from the guts of felled enemies and colour coded to identify their epicness. These can be used to not only customise your character, but also your vehicles. And the always enjoyable blend of futuristic sci-fi with rustic, post-apocalyptic landscapes gives Borderlands a flavour that is so stylistically different from the Tolkien-themed gameplay usually applicable to these gameplay mechanics it comes across as refreshing.