Just try to understand, I've given all I can, 'cause you got the best of me...

Borderlands is like Marmite. You either love it or hate it, there's no middle ground. I know quite a few people who bought it, and all had the same experience: mild disappointment at first because it isn't as much like Fallout 3 as they'd wanted, and then a few hours in either adoring it for what it is, or abhorring it for what it isn't. That's aside from my brother-in-law Trev, who has verbally masturbated at me at every opportunity he's had regarding the game since well before it's release, I'm not sure he was capable of the initial upset.
I'm of the former. My first day with it was a difficult one, physically as well as mentally because the game is very unforgiving at first and I very nearly met my demise in the first unavoidable encounter with the game's ever-present bandits. I carried on making frequent visits to the game's spawn points (poles with lights on, I was so upset they didn't make the checkpoint noise from Sonic) until I was about level 11, and then I had half an hour or so of plain sailing before there was a level hike in the enemies too, then it was back to the spawn points every 5 minutes again. Now my level is around the mid twenties, and I'm starting to cruise once more. For now.
As always, the mulitiplayer had me feeling a little underwhelmed, my first go was with the aforementioned Trev and his younger brother Ross, and they'd played about 24 hours of it solid and were around level 25, compared to my 13 and I basically sat and watched while they did stuff. They took me to the arena and we had a bit of a deathmatch, but with 3 players in a very small venue, even if I was strong enough to slightly upset the other two, it just felt like we were playing Quake II on the PS1, not a part of my life I want to go back to. But I'm still yet to find a multiplayer shooter that's better than Perfect Dark on the N64. CoD fanboys attack.
The second time I tried MP was with Raz7el, who was in the 'hate' camp, and it was much the opposite experience. I was level 23 I think, and he was level 7. Too easy for me, and he didn't see any action.
Borderlands is also like Marmite, in that it looks like shit. No, it's not a pretty game, and looking at old pre-cell-shading screenshots makes me wish they hadn't bothered. Although it makes a change from all of the other Unreal Engine 3 powered games where all the characters look like action figures. Thing is, the cell-shading isn't actually done properly. A lot of the black lines on the scenery are actually drawn on. A bit cheating, isn't it?
Last night, after realising that all I'd done all week was eat, sleep and play Borderlands I thought I'd reach into my shame pile to add a bit of variety to this week's post, and as I'd finished Wolverine quickly last friday to make way for Borderlands, the next game was Halo 3 ODST. Groan.
Guess what: I like it.
The squad thing going on makes it feel a lot more like Killzone, and I'm not being forced to blow off the Master Chief every few minutes like in the previous three. In fact, in the Hour-and-a-half-ish that I spent on it the big green twat didn't even get a mention. And the romance sub-plot in ODST involves a woman who is actually real, which is a bonus. I'd have preferred there to not be one though, they always seem out of place in this sort of game, see Gears of War 2 for example. I meant Marcus and Anya, not Marcus and Dom. Speaking of romance subplots, who should show up in ODST but Nolan North?
And that's about it. Preordered my copy of Dragon Age Origins this week, and I'm planning on hitting GAME at opening time to get it so I've got a couple of hours with it before writing. And to sign out on a laugh, while cataloging my game collection I came across the German cover for Tomb Raider Chronicles. Dr Dre would be so proud.