During the last crazy fall release bonanza, there were a couple of titles that got stuck into the “I’ll play it in a few months, after I’ve beaten some other titles, after Digital Overload, etc” pile. One of these titles was Borderlands. So I’m late to this particular dinner party, but man the food is still fantastic.

When I first saw Borderlands, it didn’t really grab me. I saw co-op, which is always a plus, but I also saw a first-person shooter. Neat art style, neat randomly generated guns, some RPG elements, but still a first-person shooter. I guess I wasn’t in the mood for one, because I waved it off as “nothing special, I’ll get to it later”.

Still, there was something about the game that stuck with me, kept me curious. Over the next couple of months I continued to hear little tidbits about the game, about the new DLC. My interest in the game grew, and I finally had a little free time and popped it in to see what it was about. I played for a few levels, enough to get the point that it looked like a fun game, but it looked like a really fun game if played with friends.

So, for the last week I’ve been playing through Borderlands with a couple of buddies from my World of Warcraft guild, and it’s provided us with some epic readings on awesome-meter. We’re all level 35 and nearing completion of the game, and we’re already pysched to get right into our second playthrough for more bandit-head-bursting action.

Borderlands has been out for months. There’s not a lot new I can say about it. However, if you a) haven’t tried it and b) have at least one friend willing to get into it with you on co-op, I can just about guarantee you’ll have a blast. As it was described to me, it’s “Diablo with guns”. There are four classes to choose from, but with the talent trees, class mods and millions of weapons, there are a ton of ways to play each one. If you get hooked on Borderlands, there is a lot of replay value for your dollar here.

I will also say this… I’ve purchased a fair amount of DLC for various games, but ‘The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned” was easily, hands down some of the best 800 Microsoft points I’ve ever spent. We haven’t gotten into ‘The Secret Armory of General Knoxx’ yet, but given the amount of content we enjoyed with Dr. Ned, we’re definitely looking forward to it. And that they just recently announced they will continue making DLC for Borderlands is icing on the cake.

I can’t even believe there was a time I had considered passing this game over. I am a newly-minted Borderlands junkie.