Borderlands Previews

If you haven't had your fill of PAX-based Borderlands previews, then you may want to turn your gaze over to Hooked Gamers and EndSights.

An excerpt from the former:
Borderlands features a unique, almost cell shaded art style. Originally meant to have a more realistic feel, the new look definitely helps set this game away from the others coming out this year. The setting remains the same, inspired by a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic world. Much like an RPG, most of the game will be compromised of quests, with 160 in total, 30 story missions and 130 side quests. Each rewards the player, whether it is through a new weapon or piece of the story.

Another main draw for Borderlands is four player drop in, drop out co-op. There are four characters, each with their own back story, skills and abilities. Mordecai has come to Pandora in search of a man from his past, and is a lone wolf sniper. Roland is a member of a highly trained private military organization that provides support for the other characters, increasing experience gains, health regeneration, and weapon damage. He also has infinite ammo, making him very useful. Lilith is one of only six Sirens, a group with incredible, uncontrollable powers such as turning invisible, slow down time or speed up allies. Brick, as his name suggests, is the powerhouse who enjoys using his fists to smash enemies. Each character has a skill tree that, as he/she is leveled up can be developed to a certain play style. Better yet is that characters carry over, so if you have leveled Brick up to a high level and join a friend who is just beginning, you continue to use your high level character. Your friend even benefits by getting higher level drops than he could originally get.

And a little something from the latter:
Throughout my time with the game, I was able to play two seperate classes, each with their own unique feel. The first of which was the Soldier. It was quickly made apparent that this was the tank class in the game. He was able to take a large amount of damage, dish out a fair amount of damage on his own, and had a pretty neat special ability letting him drop a shielded turret on the ground to provide cover.

The other class I got to play was more of a damage-dealing class which I believe was called a Siren. She was able to dish out gobs of damage, but wasn't nearly as capable of soaking up the damage as the soldier. I found her special ability to be qutie a bit more fun though, which let her become invisible, then once she came out of invisibility, dealt a devastating AOE attack on nearby foes. Also, both classes had their own personal talent trees much like you would expect from something like World of Warcraft. As you level up, you'll be able to fill those up and gain new abilities. The differences in the classes were pretty stark and seems like it will add some nice replayability to the final product.