So I rented Borderlands for the Xbox 360 a while back, I just never got around to writing about it until now. I’m a busy guy. Whaddaya want from me?

Anyway, Borderlands. It’s a team-based first-person shooter RPG. That is quite the jumble of genres! I decided to give it a rent after listening to Major Nelson, e, Stepto and lollip0p talk about it at PAX East. They praised the gameplay and leveling system, so I decided that sticking stats in a shooter is a pretty good way to get me interested.

The graphics and voice acting are amazing. The game has a beautiful cel-shaded art style that lends itself surprisingly well to a game of this type. The environments are very lush and detailed, and the whole thing kinda gave me a “Fallout with more colors” vibe.

The game employs a mission system very similar to World of Warcraft (which I’m sure didn’t invent that particular type of questing system, but I figure everyone will know what I’m talking about. Shut up) where you meet a guy, he’ll tell you to kill x amount of whatever creatures are in the area, you do it, you go back to him and get rewarded. I thought it was a really cool way to add a new layer of incentive to keep playing a first-person shooter.

There’s four characters you can choose from: Brick, a Berserker, who is great at taking damage and using melee attacks, Lilith, a Siren, who uses magic in addition to guns, Mordecai, a Hunter, who uses sniper rifles for long-range damage, and Roland, the typical Soldier class. Each provides a very different style of play, so teaming up with other players is to your benefit.

The problem with adding stats to a shooter, though, is that there’s a lot of times something should work, but doesn’t because your stats are low. I first started playing as the Hunter, and I’d try to use the sniper rifle on enemies from far away. They’re not moving, the crosshair is directly over their head, I’d fire… miss. Then they’d start coming after me. I realize that my accuracy or whatever wasn’t leveled up, but what’s the point of having a sniper rifle if I can’t perform a headshot on a non-moving target?

My other complaint is really no fault of the game’s, but for me, it was rather dull because I was playing by myself. It’s very obvious that Borderlands was designed from the start to be a cooperative experience. I can imagine it being a ton of fun teaming up with four buddies and coordinating attacks on enemies and racking up experience, because hey, I used to do that all the time in Phantasy Star Online. As a single-player experience, though, Borderlands is severely lacking. If you don’t have a good crew to game with, you’re better off with Fallout 3.

To sum it up, Borderlands is by no means a bad game. In fact, I’d say that it’s actually really good, just not for me. If I knew a couple of people who had it, I can definitely see myself setting aside some time each night to really sink into the co-op mode. As it stands right now, though, it’s not really my thing, but I definitely see the potential in it. If any of you out there every feel like giving it a shot, let me know, because I’d love to try it again and experience it the right way.

Today is the debut of a new feature here at PK Bloggin’! entitled Snap Judgements. I have a GameFly account now, and as a result I’m renting games for the first time in about seven years. I’m adding anything remotely interesting to my queue with a “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” philosophy. I’m not going to like everything I play, which is where Snap Judgements comes in. I’ll give you my thoughts on the first half hour or so of a game, and whether or not I plan on continuing. It should be fun and generate a lot of hate mail, so why the heck not.

Today’s Snap Judgement is Darksiders for the Xbox 360. I heard about this game a little while ago, and until I put the game in my console all I really knew was “it’s like Zelda but darker.” Well, I thought “Zelda but darker” was Twilight Princess, but what they hey. I’ll give it a shot.

There was a little back and forth between Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett and Penny Arcade’s Gabe. In Luke’s review, he made statements about Darksiders character designer Joe Madureira’s work on the game, claiming “Its bulging, ridiculous characters are like something built to appeal to 16 year-old boys from the 1990′s.” Gabe took a lot of offense to that and said that statement said more about Luke Plunkett than it did Joe Mad.

I’m going to have to take Luke’s side on this one.  The art style in this game is a mess. I’m sure there’s some people, especially American comic book fans, who love Joe Mad’s style. That’s good for you, and you’ll love how this game looks. For me, it does nothing. When a characters arms are almost as wide as their chest, and he could hold six or seven of his own head in his giant metal hand, it looks messy to me. But my opinion is my own, and I have to listen when everyone bashes the work of Akira Toriyama so now we’re even.

The combat isn’t terribly exciting. It’s just mash X until the enemy takes a certain amount of damage, then push B for a cinematic kill. I don’t have a problem with button mashing combat, as long as it has a certain level of polish and finesse to it. Bayonetta did this flawlessly, with combat that’s stylish and exciting thanks to the lithe, agile protagonist. Darksiders hero War is a slow, plodding beast, with legs he probably stole from some kind of Hell elephant. You’re pretty frequently attacked from the back during mid-combo, and since you only have one attack button you don’t have a nice variety of combinations to pull off like in Bayonetta. It’s just slash, slash, spin slash, upwards slash, repeat. Over and over and over.

The one really cool thing from the first level is you can pick up cars and throw them. You throw them really far, too. There was a giant Hell demon thing I had to weaken by throwing cars at his face. That was pretty neat.

Oh, and Mark Hamill’s voice is in the game. I’m a fan of that.

I’m really not into Darksiders. I still have Final Fantasy XIII to finish (I’m slow, I know, but I’m an adult with a full time job, so leave me be) and I got a few Xbox Live Arcade titles that were on sale this week, plus I’m running through Pokémon on my DS as well. I’m probably not going to play it again, and since I haven’t earned any Achievements yet I can delete it from my played game history and move on with my life.

It’s not TERRIBLE, but it’s not really for me.