Borderlands

I dumped a few hours into Borderlands and ran through the first ten or so character levels on the day it came out. The next day, I sat down and filled a notebook page with all the stupid shit I hated about Borderlands.

No idea what I did with that notebook. I remember that I was mad about how the comedy is a heinously awful mix of references and recycled jokes. NPCs are just quest dispensers, which seems unnecessary since there is a message board where people post quests. The world doesn't make much sense and the developers don't seem to care if you even know what you're doing. Early on, I repelled a bandit raid on a town and then later found out that the people I was killing were bandit raiders, and the junk heap I was running around in was a town. Population: 1. One quest dispensing NPC.

After I made it through a few quests, I received a notice that the weapons store was re-opening back in town. I ran back to greet the new shopkeeper and found an empty building with two vending machines that sold guns and ammo. Apparently when the population of Junk Heap City doubles overnight, Mad Karloff's Fucking Gun Emporium can afford to plug the machines back in. What is this place?!

I let a day or two go by before I played a few more hours. That was when it finally (finally) dawned on me that everything I had hated and put on that piece of paper was meaningless because this is a multiplayer game. All the game needs to do is give you things to kill, levels to gain, items to gather, and a way to do that with other people. The fact that I was playing it single-player made me expect the kinds of things you find in single-player games, and that was stupid of me.

Borderlands.

You get quests to shoot monsters or shoot people or, you know, turn on windmills and shit. After you shoot those things, they drop money or ammunition or new weapons. Weapons belong to a few levels of rarity and random modifiers of varying quality. There are a few different classes of weapons and proficiency in each increases with use (I actually really really like that part). Then you turn in the quest and get some more money and maybe another weapon.

This is followed by a new quest.

Do enough quests and you'll level up and get better at finishing quests.

It's better if you do this with other people. Single-player will just piss you off and make you sound sarcastic about everything.