Lots of video games start their life as a crossing of two ideas or slight twist on an old formula. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is Metroid meets Castlevania. Dead Space is Resident Evil 4... in space! Warcraft is clearly Blizzards own spin on the Warhammer setting except not as bleak. Hell you could even go as far back as the original days of video gaming to do this when it comes to the classics. Everything that's old is new again is just as true in the medium of video gaming as it is in books and movies.

Borderlands has been advertised as "a first-person shooter and RPG made a baby" and that's actually a fairly apt way of describing the game. The experience is a solid one but not without its flaws. However these flaws are minor enough that, for most, they will not cause much of an impediment to enjoying this game.

There isn't much of a story to be had here, more of a set up for an adventure. You will choose between one of four mercenaries who have arrived on the planet Pandora for their own reasons. However once they arrive here they find themselves on their own and end up turning their attention to looking for the legendary Vault, a treasure trove of alien treasures that would make the explorer who found it rich beyond measure. Thus the character embarks on a trek across the length of Pandora to try and find the legend itself.

Each of the four mercs plays out fairly similarly with only a very few minor differences in their starting capabilities. As a matter of fact the main differences between the characters are their class skills and their action skill. The class skills are broken down into three trees each with a different specialization, quite like Diablo II. Some of these class skills focus on increasing your ability to use class preferred weapons (the Hunter can reduce a sniper rifle's swaying) while others focus on increasing the effectiveness of the action skills. These are the real difference between characters, each class having its own action skill. Lilith, the Siren, is one of the cooler ones as she goes invisible to enemies only to reappear with an explosion.

That's all well and good but let's focus on what's truly important: the gameplay. If you've ever played a FPS then you know what to expect when you start up Borderlands. Running, jumping, shooting and strafing are all going to be very important to completing this title. There's even a vehicle with a mounted turret that controls a bit like the famous Warthog from Halo. The above mentioned class skills are where the main body of the RPG element comes in. Since you only get one point to place per level, and there are 21 skills per character, you really need to determine quite carefully what sort of character you wish to create.

Some have immediately jumped onto the comparisons between Borderlands and Fallout 3. The post-apocalyptic setting, first-person shooter meets RPG but there's a fundamental difference between the two. Borderlands is more about the first-person shooting than it is about the RPG whereas Fallout 3 is the exact opposite. There are no player stats to consult when pondering what weapon to use nor behind the screen dice rolls to determine if your shot hits. There are two main things that modify your weapon effects: proficiency with your weapons, increased by using the gun, and the guns themselves.

You have a number of guns at your disposal – shotgun, combat rifle, sub-machine gun, sniper rifle, rocket launchers and a variety of pistols. Rather than having a wide variety of pre-set guns with minor differences, like comparing the Battle Rifle to the Assault Rifle, Borderlands is all about the randomly generated weapons and what they're capable of. This is where the vaunted thousands of guns people have been talking about come in.