Borderlands 2

Game Info

I’m a dwarf dual-wielding a triple-barrel shotgun and a pistol with a bowie knife strapped on the end.  e-z-e is a girl who creates magic spheres and revives me all the time.  We’re killing midgets for a half-robot man, and this all makes perfect sense.  Welcome to Pandora, Vault Hunters.  Prepare to die.

Borderlands 2 brings us back to Pandora, a desolate planet with an ancient alien presence that, obviously, must contain something valuable… but all that’s in there are tentacles.  This time around, rumors of a second vault that obviously contains something valuable has summoned vault hunters from across the galaxy.  Unfortunately, in the five years between the games, the CEO of Hyperion Corporation, Handsome Jack, has amassed power and made himself ruler of Pandora.  So now whenever vault hunters visit, he blows up their train.

That’s the opening cinematic.  And although it seems excessive, it fits perfectly with the universe the Borderlands series has crafted.  For better or worse (almost entirely better), Borderlands 2 is more Borderlands.  There are tons of guns, enemies, and things to do.  The dialogue is both serious for what’s happening (a crazed dictator trying to destroy the planet) and madcap (he has a pony made of diamonds named Butt Stallion).  You’ll run in to the characters from the first game, as well as a ton of the NPCs too.  There are a few new ones, including a little girl that looks like she came from a Gorillaz video, and this time around, they move.  They’ll walk around towns like in any other game!

But the core of a shooter is shooting, right?  Borderlands ups the ante with its random loot generation, dumping “bazillions” of guns into Pandora.  And they’re all over the place.  The aforementioned triple-barrel shotgun is fun, but how about an assault rifle that shoots grenades?  An entire brand of guns are reloaded by you tossing it like a grenade and just pulling out another one.  Some guns get more accurate the longer you sustain fire – which is weird and completely different from what we’re taught be shooters of short controlled bursts.  However, melee comes more in to play than in the first game.  The ninja assassin character, Zer0, uses a light sword that, coupled with his “deception” power (which is Lilith’s Phase Shift from the first Borderlands), does massive melee damage and can eventually cause decapitations.  Good stuff.  The skill trees return as well, and are largely unchanged.  Added, though, is the Badass system, where completing challenges (100 enemies killed with SMGs, 10 locations found, etc) gains you tokens, which can then be turned in for permanent bonuses for all your characters.  These are small improvements, but help greatly as the game gets tougher.

Pandora is a lonely place, but this is alleviated by the dearth of co-op options available.  Online, private, splitscreen, and even online splitscreen – four people on two systems – are all options here, and it’s a good thing.  The borderlands are open, vast, and mostly empty, so bringing along a friend or three is really the way to go.  And although the enemies get harder, the loot is better and camaraderie is always welcome.  Added to that are the little soundbytes the characters say to each other.  Banter such as “I stopped shooting to revive you!” brings additional levity to the game, and reinforces the fact that these four are pretty cool with each other.  This is a world you don’t want to go alone.  Even though there are more towns, NPCs, and vibrancy to the life of Pandora, it’s desolate.

I mentioned it before – but graphically, Borderlands 2 is a long-form Gorillaz music video.  The space-techno-western vibe the game exudes meshes perfectly with everything that is going on, from the psychotic battles to the psychotic enemies.  It’s a heavy-inked, cell style world that suits the tone perfectly.  Remember, it could’ve been really bland.  The art style goes perfectly with the denizens of the world, so what could’ve potentially looked like a Half-Life 2 clone has turned in to a crazed cacophony of different-colored explosions and fat guys with midgets strapped to their shields.  There are elements in most games that just don’t work together – Borderlands 2 has, literally, none of these.  Enemies flinch when shot (something I enjoy in games), and will sometimes stumble or falter from a particularly hard hit.

The sound design works perfectly as well, especially Handsome Jack.  While all the voices are well-done (although Roland sounds slightly different, but this may be because he has more lines than “We got guns over here!”), Handsome Jack’s condescending, snide monologues really raise the bar.  He’s got access to your ECHO device, and has no problem annoying you for the entire game.  The characters chat with each other frequently, and even little snippets of dialogue in side missions are great.  Clap-Trap is back as well, and he’s…  well, he’s Clap-Trap.  The music is well-suited to the setting, with a westerny-twang most of the time, coming into dubstep and heavier stuff during combat.  It’s really about as good as it can get.  But best of all, and most improved, is the voicechat on PS3.  The first game was the awful, awful Powered by Gamespy dreck that has ruined games for PS3 owners.  No longer the case, Borderlands 2’s in-house voicechat is clear and lag-free. And although the intro song by The Heavy is definitely no Cage The Elephant, it does have its own cleverness.  Plus, watching a midget get hit by a train.

Borderlands 2 is, by far, the best game released thusfar in 2012 and has set the bar very high for any future excursions into Pandora.  An improvement in every sense, Borderlands 2 is the sequel we deserve from every franchise.  The games slated to come out during the rest of the holiday gaming season have a long way to go to top this instant classic.  Go get Borderlands 2, and get to shooting.

*Note that a score of 10/10 does not mean the game is perfect, but means that we felt the developers executed everything they meant to in a way that led to an unforgettable experience.  While there may be a bug present or a slow spot in the game, we felt that the highs so outweighed the lows that it deserves praise.