Borderlands can be summed up in three words: lots of guns. Whereas most first person shooters throw you a new gun occasionally (and then contrive a situation to make you use it), in Borderlands you can’t turn around without tripping over a gun you haven’t seen before.

In Borderlands, you are an adventurer, looking for a mythical ‘vault’ that contains treasures beyond your wildest dreams. You start off being dropped off in a dusty, run down, sparsely populated town that is overrun with bandits. Once you’ve chosen which one of the 4 characters (Lilith the Siren, Brick the massive Berserker, Mordecai the Hunter or Roland the Soldier) you want to play as you're welcomed by Clap Trap the robot, then you get rid of the bandits and then set about getting the locals to give you the information you need to help find the vault, which of course they’re more than happy to do... as soon as you’ve run a few errands for them. And of course, virtually all of the errands involve killing someone or something, or retrieving an item that is being jealously guarded by someone or something that will fight you to the death before relinquishing it. No wonder the towns are so sparsely populated!

Each mission comes with its own piece of fiction, some of which lead you closer to the ‘vault’, but most of which are just filler (although, they are all quite humorously written), but frankly, the plot isn’t what keeps you playing Borderlands – it’s the process of constantly finding new, better weaponry with which to dispatch the local thugs and wildlife. While there are the usual archetypes of weapons (pistol, submachine gun, shotgun etc), each individual weapon has its own set of traits that affect damage, rate of fire, accuracy, magazine size, and add other weird effects (such as setting targets on fire). It means that even two similar-looking pistols can feel completely different, and as some weapons are rarer than others, there’s always a feeling of anticipation when you go to take a look at a weapon you’ve just found. It can make it hard to put the controller down when you might find an amazing weapon on the next mission, or when you’ve just found something new you want to try out.

I think it’s these experiences that mean the game is undoubtedly best played with a friend or three in co-op, but it is still enormously fun on your own. You can jump into a friend’s game to help them out, or they can jump into yours on the fly. Matching levels closely isn’t vital but it’s always best if a higher level joins your game, as the XP gained will tend to close up the level gap. But a character’s level difference doesn’t really matter, and the game will, for instance, even allow a level 7 to join a level 40’s game. Because the enemies will be set to the host’s game’s level you obviously won’t be able to do much damage (in the same way as going to an area too high for you in a MMORPG) and are extremely likely to die doing this. You also won’t be able to complete missions in advance of your own level, but you can gain quick XP for party kills and pick up dropped weapons that are too high a level for you to use which you can sell, helping to raise your bank balance no end and make upgrading every facet of your character easier. On the flipside if a higher level joins your game they will find killing enemies extremely easy and in effect be able to “PL” (power level) you in a similar way to many MMORPGs.