Borderlands, the science fiction RPG shooter from Gearbox Studios, was starting to look an awful lot like Fallout 3 with cars. Not that such a comparison is in anyway a bad thing; hell the idea of a game like that makes me drool like a Catholic Girls School janitor.

However a recent deluge of screenshots show a game that's just a little more, well, groovy looking.

The attached screenshots of Borderlands newly revealed art style demonstrate that the developers are aiming for quite another direction than the harsh unforgiving worlds of most RPGs. The style  reminds me an awful lot of a more mature version of Jak 3 on the PS2 (recently reviewed in TAGS’s Spare Change Column, read it now!).

Just for the record, despite the Mad Max aesthetic, Borderlands has a more traditional science fiction setting than you might expect with events taking place on a colonised planet called Pandora that space faring frontiersman are flocking too for its mineral deposits and vast tracks of land (laugh at the Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference please). Some rather unusual alien technology (again similarities to Jak 3 and the Precursors) is discovered on the planet and war erupts between the colonists over controlling this technology. Naturally some of them go a bit flaky and start dressing up in grubby sports gear and spikey clothes.

There are four unique playable characters in the game that can each be levelled up and have their own back stories to learn about. The game also involves a lot of Diablo-esque randomisation. Weapons and armour in the game will be randomly created with over 500,000 variations of each. Examples given were revolvers that fired shotgun shells or a sniper rifle that fired homing rockets. While there will be established villages with fixed paths between them everything in between will be randomised including encounters with enemies and allies and structures like bunkers, towers, camps and exploding cacti. So in case you didn't all ready learn from that trip to Mexico on exchange and have some bad tequila and hug that cactus that looked like that girl you liked, stay away from the cacti.

It certainly sounds as if a players experience of the game will be pretty unique with each play through. Always a good thing. It's always bothered me how little other game developers learn from Blizzard. Mixed feelings on MMORPG's or not, you can't deny that they've ever made a bad game (and don't you dare bag on the Lost Vikings!). Borderlands has a general release date of 2009 and while these lovely screenshots are all we have to go on just now, some gamplay footage is likely right around the corner.