(tldr at the end)
Alright small story to start us off I got Into the Radius in December of 2020, i played it for about an hour before giving up on the game for the arbitrary reason of there not being any hand animation for picking up some objects. That was More than unfair and honestly, it was childish. Now, however, as I was looking at my backlog of games Into the Radius stood out to me as I felt like I never gave it a chance so after installing it I was ready to go back Into the Radius (see what i did there, i am so cool)

The Ambiance, World Design, and Art Direction are great. starting with the art direction, everything feels very down-to-earth in terms of the buildings, items, and random props while also feeling alien and otherworldly when it comes to artifacts, enemies, and anomalous hazards which builds this sense of dread as you see normal-looking buildings getting torn apart and infested with horrors beyond our comprehension which never fully goes away even as you get used to the oddities of the Radius. The World Design helps to add to the feeling of danger, loneliness, and dread by setting arenas in things like small villages, factories, and train yards. Nothing larger than life but all feel corrupted by whatever is going on in the Radius around the large ominous black orb that hovers in the sky as a constant reminder that nothing is okay. While builds are reused from area to area I found that it never really detracted from the game and if anything it helped create this sense of cohesion in the game world for me, I do need to clarify quickly that the inside of the buildings are not copy-pasted however just the room layouts of them, the loot inside and the furnisher are hand played with care so no need to worry about that. The Ambiance is great. While not reinventing the wheel by any means Into the Radius's Ambiance is a damn great wheel. The sounds of footsteps, the cracking, scuttering, and chattering of enemies, the sounds of typewriters typing when walking around office areas, hearing trains chugging up behind you as if you're about to be hit, or hearing a car drive by as you walk a battered old road, screams in the distance and shadowy figures standing far away enough to make one second guess themselves on if its an enemy or not. Really it's all great, all of what I just wrote has to do is get you once, to spook you once, to have an impact as something you may remember from your time play through it all. And now onto some more mechanical things. The Gunplay, sense of progression, weight management, and stamina are all great things in this game as well, with some minor exceptions. Stamina, which is used for running, depletes at a generous rate but the total will be capped by hunger/exhaustion. Hunger is simple, you don't eat for a while and your Stamina gets capped eating will reset this debuff. Exhaustion is affected by your carry weight as the heavier you are the more your character will need to put in more work to run thus capping your Stamina, however, if you stop running Exhaustion will slowly reset meaning it will take double the time for your Stamina to regenerate. Speaking of carry weight, and also running. the carry weight in this game is rather good and it's simple. The heavier you are the slower you walk and this also affects running speed as far as I'm aware. Your backpack and your pouch can hold infinite items in them so the only real factor in how much you can carry is the Carry Weight system and even with everything I had by around mid game I couldn't get it that far above 40kg which still allows for running to be quick enough to work well. but as you put items into your bag physically a cluttered bag can be a pain in the ass which is the other reason you do not want to grab everything you find and keep an entire armory on you at all times. Moving on every gun in the game feels great, from Pistols to SMGs, Assault Rifles to Battle Rifles, and even Shotguns and Sniper/Marksman Rifles everything has a decent and/or appropriate amount of weight and heft behind every shot which means it's hard to go wrong when picking up a new gun in terms of raw feeling alone. The progression is the main thing that sticks out to me the most about this game which is why I wanted to save it for last in this section as it is extremely good. Starting from a basic Makarov Pistolet and working your way up to things like an AS "Val" or a FN "Scar" 17 as a main weapon with a Desert Eagle(357) as a sidearm feels great. You almost feel like you're in a constant arms race with the enemies as every time you complete a "Top Priority" Mission you get access to new guns and most likely get taken to a new zone where the enemies have gotten stronger as well. This feeling makes getting any new gun exciting but something to bear in mind is that every weapon is an investment. You do not just buy a weapon, you also need to buy that weapon's ammo, mags, and any upgrades you want to put on it such as attachments and stat upgrades.

Sadly this game isn't perfect and does have some flaws. I'm going to start with what I see as one of the bigger ones and that is Shotguns just don't feel that strong. Early on they seem fine if not a little inconsistent at times but around late mid-game to late game they just fall off a cliff, Buckshot becomes nearly useless as stronger and better-armored enemies will just laugh it off, while Buckshot can still kill weaker enemies, shotguns are long guns meaning they'll take up your main weapon slot and in said latter half of the game you can't afford to have your main weapon only useful some of the time. However, you can get Shotgun Slugs at any point in the game, the only problem is that shotguns still don't feel stronger than most other weapons for the primary downsides of either needing to load in shells one by one with the Spas-12 and under or with the mag capacity of 5 with the Saiga 12 and overall shotguns have lower accuracy than most other weapons meaning even when using Slugs you will have a harder time hitting most things in the medium to long range. First off I think adding something like flechette shells would greatly help give Shotguns that distinct feeling that Shotguns lose in the later parts of the game, also maybe a small accuracy buff when using Slugs would be nice. Accuracy is a strange thing, for the most part, it's fine as bullets mostly go where you point the gun with some minor deviation but then you try and run while shooting a weapon and see a bullet go flying off to the far left or right. Running and Gunning will often waste bullets as the gun Accuracy stat tanks when trying to do so, while I understand why this is the case, this often results in planting your butt in a spot of cover and taking a potshot every now and again if you get pinned down. You can't run to a new spot and try to kill an enemy while you run meaning you just stay in one spot, kill one enemy, move, and repeat, to be fair it's not that it doesn't work most of the time it's just that this game isn't a fast-paced shooter and if you play like it is one you aren't going to get very far. I few more minor things:
1 grabbing attachments off of guns can be a bit finicky
2 using ammo boxes can be a pain sometimes
3 some props and buildings have collision boxes that are a smidge too big leading to some
shots hitting invis walls if you aren't careful

Into the Radius is a great VR game with some small problems. From its Art Direction to its Sense of Progression, it's a quality experience through and through. While grabbing things may be a bit jank and shotguns feel kinda underpowered I can say that I had a great time and if you're looking for a new VR game to play this is a damn good choice.

So I think it's safe to say that most people who play Borderlands games now 'n days got into the franchise with Borderlands 2 and never really think about Borderlands 1. I found it strange that people never really talked about it as Borderlands 2 was so popular that one would think that the game that came before it would live so completely in its shadow to the point of complete irrelevance. This curiosity has led me to play through Borderlands 1 and this review on my general opinions on the game. However, before we get into the review I want to state that whatever my opinions are if you love the Borderlands games you will like this one, even if it is a bit watered down, as it has all the elements that the future games have but maybe get it at a discount. (Full TLDR at the end)

Gameplay:
So let's start with the most important part. The gunplay varies from passable to bad depending on what gun you are using. Most guns feel fine, shotguns, assault rifles, pistols, and revolvers(which are a different gun type but use pistol ammo), all feel fine as they all have weight to them and the animations aren't bad but launchers and snipers feel awful. The AOE on launchers is inconsistent and they don't feel as heavy and devastating that a good rocket launcher should, and snipers are barely accurate as they don't shoot where you point them really, though all guns have this problem snipers just feel it the hardest. However, the best gun two gun types have to be shotguns and assault rifles as they both do pretty good damage all around and feel great to use.

Weapon Manufacturers are in the game but are far less specialized. For example, Jakobs guns in Borderlands 1 have very high damage but low fire rate and reload speed, they also never manufacture elemental weapons. In Borderlands 2 they still do high damage but also fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. While the Weapon Manufacturers' differences still feel noticeable they come into their own in the later games with more pronounced quirks.

The Vault Hunters are fine but basic, Lilith can walk thru enemies, Brick can punch stuff, Roland has his trusty turret and Mordecai can Bird! While the Action Skills are fine the skill trees for the vault hunters are a bit basic, though it does work fine for the game, it can make leveling up a bit boring as most of the time it's just a minor stat increase, though I did have fun still so it's not all bad.

Healing is quite different than in the other games, you have healing packs that you can buy and take with you in your inventory. This is an interesting concept for a Borderlands game but these health packs get outclassed by skills that heal you can shields that heal you. While cool in their own right inventory health packs aren't useful for most of the game and they did get fazed out in later games.

The last thing I want to talk about in this segment is just the boring quests and the amount of them. Ok, so one thing Borderlands 1 does a few too many times is that it does this side quest dump, it just drops a butch of quests on you, and while you don't need to do them all the pure flood of quests is overwhelming. Most of these side quests are either fetch quests, kill quests, or both and outside of xp, the payouts are usually not great. And I mean flood like when you first get to new haven you can get three side quests from the bounty board, but the first quest you do in new haven is so simple you are going to do it immediately but doing so gives you three to four MORE side quest, it's just not fun to feel like I have to wade thru waist high water every time I do a main story quest.

The key thing here is that even though most of the gameplay is just ok it set the stage for Borderlands 2 to refine it all into a better game that drew people in. But what about some of the other aspects of the game well let's see.

Music and Sound Design:
The gun sound effects and gun animations are nostalgic, While I didn't play this game as a kid it reminds me of some old shooters I used to play, and to extend on what I said prior while the gun animations and gun sounds aren't bad but they have dated to a point, though I do have a fondness for games of this age I can see most modern players being put off by this.

The overall sound effects are done well and are well-detailed. from the big and noticeable sounds to the small details it shows just how much passion was put into the sound design, as whenever I started to pay attention I could always find little things that I liked.

The music has a wasteland kind of grit to it, but its uniqueness of it tapers off toward the end of the game but it does retain some uniqueness thru and thru

The Voice acting is great, full of character and the script isn't half bad. You don't hear a lot of the voice acting outside of enemy and vault hunter quips but not only are both done well but whenever the game gives you some other NPC dialog it's up to the same standard as the rest of it.


Art Style and Story

The area design is somewhat boring but has some fantastic standouts that make it hard for me to write about it, on one hand, I'd say most of the game has a lot of boring areas that are just bland. They work as combat arenas but that's about it. But then you get to some areas that are so well crafted and lively that I was put into a sort of awe at how well it felt to look at things in the environment. Overall while the later games get better at keeping things lively it did take them a while to get the formula down.

The overall Art Style has aged well but is still a little boring to look at. Not that is bad per se but compared to the more vibrant colors of the later games it's more muted, Plus the colour pallet doesn't help with the muted tone but I think its part of the general style of Borderlands 1

The humor is something I call "us southern dad" funny, it never really got a laugh out of me but I did say audibly say "That was funny" a few times. It's amusing but not to the laugh-out-loud extent, really it's just ok.

The story feels like a background element instead of the driving force. Most of the story is told through mission info text boxes and this is fine but if you don't read the info boxes you don't know what's happening
(which is fine, if you want to know the story then read it) but if you do read them then the story mostly boils down to "Go kill this guy cause I say so" or "Go get this stuff cause I say so". The story is really not a focus and if you go into the game knowing that then I don't think it's that much of a problem.

DLC:

This segment is going to be quick as the DLC for the most part is more of the same as the base game, however, something of note is that the DLC does try and build upon what the base game was doing, making improvements and the like. While playing the DLC something of particular interest caught my eye. The DLC feels more in the style of Borderlands 2 than Borderlands 1. This is done by having more dialog and character cutscenes that help tell the story but id say that the dialog in radio calls don't aren't as wordy in, say Borderlands 3, and aren't nearly as annoying but the DNA is still there.

Conclusion / TLDR:

Borderlands 1 was, at the time, a great game I'd reckon and still is great fun today. But it's not for everyone and is still pretty dated by today's standards. The gunplay is pretty rough even for 2009 but the art style, music, sound design, and alright gameplay, it set the foundation for Borderlands 2, and everything after that is history. Whether you're a new fan of the Borderlands games or an old fan I think there still is value to be found here as even if it's muted to some extent Borderlands 1 is still a fine Borderlands game. However, If you are looking to get into the Borderlands games I will say that you should start with either 2 or 3, and if you are unsure if you should give Borderland 1 a chance I'd say buy it on sale.