To those who call Pandora home, there is but one way of life: looting! Some choose to pillage the lawless countryside, while others set their sights much, much higher. The Vault — a fabled collection of priceless alien technologies — is rumored to be somewhere on this planet and is ripe for the picking, assuming you get there first!

It’s been a long time since we last saw the wasteland first-person shooteRPG known as Borderlands. It’s received a complete aesthetic makeover, and instead of looking Unreal, it now looks, well, unreal! Our demo started us off as Rolland, a well-rounded hero (and one of four playable characters) who knows his way around a firefight. The first few levels lead you through the typical RPG tropes of kill collection and item recovery centered around ridding the town of Fyrestone of its bandit infestation. Before we knew it, level five was upon us and we received our first skill point — which you must spend to activate your character’s unique ability. In Rolland’s case, it’s a deployable turret that doubles as cover. Each additional skill point you earn may be spent in any of the three available skill trees: offense, defense, and utility. You can also mix and match between trees to build the character that’s right for you.

After a climactic finale with the bandit leader Nine Toes, we moved on to co-op play. Developer Gearbox made sure to stress that whether you play by yourself, in split-screen, or online, the game is one and the same. For us, it was easy to imagine several lazy afternoons exploring Pandora with a friend, snagging loot and leveling our characters together. Unfortunately, in our playtest, our four-person team consisted of two snipers and two support characters who would barrel into the fray, dealing as much damage as they could before going down, leaving our snipers to mop up afterward. Hopefully, when you and your buddies get your hands on this title, your team will fare a little better.