[synkr0nized]

Borderlands doesn't keep you due to the time needed. It keeps you due to addiction to drops and hoping the RNG works in your favour whenever guns drop, chests are opened, and store supplies are refreshed. And the humor. Sure it's not new after the first time, but it's still fun. Then you can experiment with builds, try the other classes, try different class mods, and switch up your weapons. Just playing the story is only part of that.


OH MY GOD I NEED MORE GUNS PLEASE. You took away New Haven but gave me that whole armory. Mmmm.

And also driving your friends off of cliffs and other such nonsense 'cause you have more money than God and enjoy keeping them from finishing objectives. Why, yes, I do want to see what it's like getting smashed in the face by a drifter*! Oh, I'm sorry, gunner, did you not get a second wind after our car exploded? Also, the physics, or lack thereof, in the game engine make for a lot of... things that are silly and fun when playing multiplayer. Then there's the sabotage like blowing up vehicles before people get in them and making them walk. I'm a siren; I'm as fast as a car on foot anyway.


* I am the head of the Drifter Aeronautics Program. We have reached high into the sky in our quest to graduate ace pilots. Sadly, most applicants have not survived.



I suppose having good friends who like to play -- which we have been doing quite a bit of recently -- "correctly" and otherwise makes this much more appealing to me than wandering around chasing after my dad. That said, man, Fallout 3 is an amazing game and totally worth the hype it generated, and as Aerozord noted it can eat up huge chunks of time. I doubt the total time logged on any of my characters in Borderlands comes close to the played time for a single run-through.

EDIT: Also of note is that while there are arenas and duels and things set up for PvP in Borderlands it's really not balanced. And I'm not talking about going online and having a modder drop into your game; It really seems like I can kill anything without much effort as a siren or gunslinger with tresspass, but *shrug* maybe my friends just suck.

edit2: See below. That's kinda why I play F3 rarely. I have to have a nice bit of time just to progress little parts of the quests and story. I enjoy the NPC interaction and the different ways to level/build your character and even the combat system, for the most part, but the in-between travel, realistic as it may be, can get old fast.