I actually never finished playing Borderlands. And by God I tried. I had reached a point in the game where I had ended up with very powerful weapons, more powerful than anything I could buy and 99.999% of those that I found. Gun collecting became boring.
Going on fetch quests and fighting the same few enemies? Boring.
Driving around in a weirdly physic'd car that didn't have at least proper driving sound effects and damage models fighting enemies that weren't even a token match? Boring.
Slaying skags by the thousands? Boring.
etc. etc. etc.
Eventually I just gave up. I had "beaten" the game only insomuch as having leveled up a character to the point that he had achieved virtual godhood in the game. Nigh-impervious to damage, wielding weapons Zeus would have feared, there was no progression anymore, I had beaten the difficulty curve simply by grinding my way ahead of it.
That's where it goes until around New Haven on the second playthrough. THEN it starts getting crazy again. You start feeling vulnerable and excitement picks up.
I'm not saying it's a good thing that you have to trudge through the game 2+ times for it to really shine, but I absolutely HATE grinding and gave up MMO's because of it... and I can't even begin to guess how many hours I have spent grinding this game because it's so damn fun.
That's what I've heard, but I just couldn't see putting the hours into it to find fun days or weeks later...when I could just play something else that was fun now.
Out of curiosity, did you find Diablo especially fun?
I mean I enjoyed Diablo, but not quite as much as some people did. I think whole system of grinding for better gear definitely appeals to a certain audience of gamers.
I also noticed that in the article he nags on Mass Effect 3, stating that the writing was juvenile, yet I really didn't think this article was written with maturity in mind :P.
It's an interesting problem in game design I think. If one of a game's principle mechanics is weapon progression, it's fun only so long as the weapons continue to progress. It's exciting to see what new powers you've just been granted.
It reminds me of tech trees in 4x strategy games. They're fun until you've maxed out the tree.
Some games make you choose a particular path that you have to commit to, making you replay the game to see different parts of the progression tree, but I've always hated those.
A big problem, and this is where Borderlands lost me, was that the enemies simply became too easy/boring. I ended up just driving across the world ignoring the enemies as they weren't challenging to fight and I had no need for loot.
Some games make the opposite mistake, like Oblivion. You level up, but so do your enemies. So there really doesn't "feel" like a reason to level up. You don't really get anything for it.
So the hard part is finding the right balance where your weapons and stats improve, but so do your enemies. But at just the right ratio to make you want to grind for stuff, but to keep it from getting boring.
It's a problem as old a the first Dragon Warrior (which incidentally solved it by having the player enter new parts of the world with harder enemies, leaving the easier enemies in already explored areas).
To answer your question, I thought Diablo's environment and atmospherics were fun. I got bored with it eventually about halfway through the game. I think I found a gold cheat someplace and just loaded up with gear and finished the game off.
Going on fetch quests and fighting the same few enemies? Boring.
Driving around in a weirdly physic'd car that didn't have at least proper driving sound effects and damage models fighting enemies that weren't even a token match? Boring.
Slaying skags by the thousands? Boring.
etc. etc. etc.
Eventually I just gave up. I had "beaten" the game only insomuch as having leveled up a character to the point that he had achieved virtual godhood in the game. Nigh-impervious to damage, wielding weapons Zeus would have feared, there was no progression anymore, I had beaten the difficulty curve simply by grinding my way ahead of it.