Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software describes Borderlands as an RPS - a role-playing shooter, a mutant hybrid of FPS and RPG. At first glance you'd certainly be forgiven for thinking it's an FPS - the standard view behind someone else's eyes with the ever-present gun barrel poking up in the bottom of your field of vision.

There's a few clues that it's not a standard FPS though. The first is the bar at the bottom of the screen that shows your progress through your current character level. The second is the little XP blings that pop up as you make your way through the game - gunning down some Mad Max character as he tries to put a bullet through you, or eviscerating some freakish slavering creature as it tries to feast on your skin. But action scenes are far from RPG style - you'll need those twitch reflexes and delicate aiming skills from your FPS arsenal to make a dent in the hordes of bad guys that'll come screaming at you.

So, right from the get-go, Borderlands looks like a bit of an interesting take. Graphically it is very solid, although there's nothing jaw-droppingly amazing about it - well-crafted and huge open environments combined with good models and animations create a game world that you're certainly not going to be bored wandering around.

As you level up your character, you'll get access to more varied and more powerful items - especially weapons. There are over - get this - 500,000 weapons in this game, the vast majority of them procedurally generated by some clever routines that mould together various components of weapons in various styles (sniper and assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, and many more). Each weapon not only looks unique, but has unique properties - some might shoot electric bolts and come with a night scope and some might be regular shotguns that fire off buckshot.

This massive array of weapons highlights one of the main goals of the game - the collection of loot. Taking advantage of the desire of RPG gamers to constantly have the best items they can find, this is a recurring theme that came up in the presentation. While there's a couple of special unique weapons in the game (a gold plated shotgun was mentioned as something you can pick off a dead boss character), it's clear the hope is that players will happily wander almost endlessly around the game looking for the Perfect Weapon that will complement the abilities of their character.

Now, all the above might sound pretty sweet, but it's only going to get to sound sweeter if you didn't already know that you can play this game co-operatively, with up to 4 players. The word "Diablo" was thrown around a little bit during the presentation; while I'm sure noone is trying to say it's going to be that huge, the intent is clearly there - a game you can jump into with a bunch of mates, battle some beasties and compare who got the best swag when all the body parts are lying around the floor.

One thing that came up a couple of times was the inventory system. Basically to solve the always-ugly issue of wanting to have an infinte inventory but not have to deal with the harsh realities that would have to result in terms of trying to display that on your character, Gearbox have this system called a "storage deck" that your character has. Essentially how it is explained is that all your items are rendered down into raw information and then stored digitally in your storage deck, meaning your carrying capacity is now limited by "bytes" as opposed to something lame like, say, mere slots in a bag. So, while this is certainly a new way of dealing with the inventory problem, at the end of the day the fact that the storage deck is just a bag metaphor isn't exactly lost on anyone.

We didn't get much of a run-through of the overall story in this presentation, but this is definitely looking like a game to keep an eye on. The combination of RPG and FPS is really well done, creating a hybrid game that manages to capture great elements from both styles without sacrificing anything in the process. The added bonus of having co-operative play - especially when considered with the incentive of developing a character and building up a boastworthy inventory of weapons and items to lord over your buddies - gives this quite a bit of potential. Keep an eye out.