Borderlands 2 Review

Borderlands 2 is one of the most anticipated titles to come out this year and is the sequel to one of the most memorable games from this generation. Sporting its (not really) cel-shaded highly stylized look, Borderlands 2 is a first person shooter game like no other that mixes it up with elements of questing and loot-hunting games like the Diablo series with blowing stuff up with guns.

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Borderlands 2 puts you back on the planet of Pandora, the same planet in the original game and set five years later. You are now a new Vault hunter, looking for a new fabled Vault (which is said to hold great treasure) after the first Vault was opened at the end of the original Borderlands. You’re then introduced to the new game’s antagonist, Handsome Jack, which is probably one of the funniest and most terrifying villain ever in a video game.

Apparently, Handsome Jack has become a tyrannical dictator figure of Pandora and is the head of the Hyperion Corporation due to the series of events in the first game and you find yourself siding with the Crimson Raiders, a rebel group featuring the original protagonists you played as in the first Borderlands. Along with the Crimson Raiders, you go on missions to help the people of Pandora and to stop Handsome Jack’s plans that may destroy Pandora.

A lot of Improvements

Borderlands 2 brings many welcome improvements to the original. Even just from the initial part of the game, it starts out much faster and smoother than the original Borderlands. I found myself having access to game’s main hub area, Sanctuary, in a mere couple of hours and was caught up to all the basics of the game.

Borderlands 2 just looks so much better than the first game with better textures and a much fine-tuned art style that very much makes this game one of the prettiest to come out this generation. Instead of trying to look realistic, Borderlands 2 goes the other way to make graphics visually appealing with its almost comic book or cartoon-looking aesthetic and vastly improves over the original with more variety in color and settings. You get to see more greens and even snow than the dull browns you probably see in every other game in this generation.

PC gamers will be happy to know that their version of the game will best performing and the prettiest, as opposed to the poor port to the PC of the first game. A true testament to how pretty Borderlands 2 is, I played on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 and even the aging hardware of these consoles can still show just the amazing work that Gearbox Software put into the game.

Writing & Story

The writing is one of the funniest I’ve ever found in the video game. If you liked the first game’s humor, Borderlands 2 is just that but better and a heck of a lot more. Many of the jokes are the silly, over-the-top, and random that are intended to surprise players are seeded into the dialogue and a lot of the game text.  It’s very much the meta, referential and self-aware humor you would find on the internet a lot these days.

It’s not very surprising considering the writers of this game, Anthony Burch and Mikey Neumann, have written on internet blogs and have made internet video series’.

One thing I found about the humor of the game is that it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Some people I regularly play a lot of games with found the game’s humor as unfunny or even annoying. The common thread I found with these people who didn’t like the humor were the older crowd of gamers so the humor may appeal most to people under 30.

For a game that cracks a lot of funny, it has the penchant of going dark immediately.  Some may find that jarring when they’re laughing one second and just have their jaw-dropped in horror the next after something horrible happens in the game.

Along with the great writing, its enhanced by the great voice acting. I’m not surprised considering Gearbox Software is in Texas, home to many voice actors who work in Anime. It takes great writing to bring out the amazing talent of these voice actors and it makes me care more about the game’s characters.

Weapons and Gear

One of the bullet points that the first Borderlands game trumpeted was the almost limitless variety of guns and gear that you can find in the game. Well, the second game boasts much more than the first. Weapons in the game come from different in-game manufacturers and each manufacturer will have a specific trait associated with the brand. Like say, a brand like Bandit will have a gun with a big magazine, while another brand like Maliwan will always have an elemental effect on targets.

Many will find a weapon to suit their own playing style and will even have their own preferences as they get to try the bajillion types of weapons in the game. Whenever I found that my guns aren’t doing much damage anymore, I would always find a better weapon. Weapons and gear even have ridiculous surprises in them and are in line of the game’s humor such as gear that can talk and reacts whenever you use it.

Classes and Customization

Borderlands 2 introduces new classes that are different from the first game yet retain the features of the original classes. I never got the chance to play more than one class in my limited experience in the first game, but the new classes will still feel familiar to players of the first game. Each of the classes will still have three different skill trees to give players the option of tailoring their own playing style.

Those who loved the customization of the first game will love the new stuff in the new game. Some may dislike absence of the option of picking your own colors for your character and are now turned into different preset color scheme collectibles. However, now you have to option of different heads for each class that match the collectible color schemes.

One new feature that needs to be in modern RPGs that allow you to have multiple characters is the new “Badass” rankings. This new system allows you to points towards gaining small stat bonuses from accomplishing mini-goals in the game. Like say, killing a certain amount of enemies or collecting certain items will give you badass points and these accumulate and reward you with a Badass token. This Badass Token can be used to redeem for a very small stat bonus (about 0.6%) you can choose from a random selection. Though the bonus is small, you can easily gain these tokens and build up your stat bonuses. The best part is that these stat bonuses are available across ALL of your characters in your account, so starting a fresh character will have you rocking all these stat bonuses from the beginning of the game.

The Missions

The unique aspect of Borderlands 2 is in its mission-based structure in a vast world which isn’t common in first person shooters. Missions vary in the story and side missions with rewards in experience, money, and items. This is where the writing of the game shines, with missions having objectives that are very fun and even emotionally evoking.

A great mix of the humor is interwoven onto the missions itself with the references to pop-culture that can provide a quick chuckle. Some may miss out on it or not get it at all but there will still be some universally humorous cue in there thrown in to maintain the mood.

Keeping true with the writing and just challenging your expectations, the game’s surprises will frequently have fun with missions and adds spice to the usual fetch quests or killing a set number of enemies.

Multiplayer

The best part of the game is the online multiplayer. Unlike most first-person shooters where competitive multiplayer is the norm, the Borderlands 2 is a pure seamless co-op experience. Whenever you’re online, friends can hop into your game anytime by default. You can turn it off or even have it invite-only or even set it to public where anyone can join in the fun. The game encourages you to play with other people and that game makes it very easy even on the consoles.

The Gripes

The game has a bad habit of being riddled with fetch quests which have you running across the same maps over and over for different missions. While these are mostly in the optional missions, completionists may get weary of the constant chore of going through the same environments while looking at a confusing map in the menu. Though there are shortcuts that can be discovered to ease the pain of backtracking, many of these shortcuts are not very obvious or are one-way.

One unwelcome addition to the game are missions that you can fail. You can still restart it again for another try but for a game that easily satisfies much of your looting and grinding needs, failing missions just takes the fun out of it. Most are almost impossible when you play alone, requiring you to drive across the map in a hard to drive vehicle through bumpy terrain. Though as impossible as it sounds, its easily exploitable once you play with another person who can be across the map and just activate whatever it you’re supposed to hit. It can provide a challenge for some but the challenge is gone once you play with someone else. 

The mission structure with the drop-in/drop-out multiplayer can provide some confusion in which missions may have been done or unlocked. If you want to complete everything and get all the rewards, you will have to keep track of certain things and it can prove difficult with the way you can organize missions.

Final Verdict

I love Borderlands 2, most of the complaints of the game can be easily overlooked and very much avoided once you get the hang of it. Borderlands 2 is for people who love to play with other people and love to gather loot, it can get boring after a certain point but the support that Gearbox put into the first Borderlands will make sure that you won’t get tired of their game. It’s the kind of game that rewards you for the time you put into it and not really friendly for people who don’t have much time for games with RPG elements.

The writing may turn off some people but it isn’t necessary to enjoy the multiplayer or the loot gathering aspects of the game. If you wanna shoot things to level up and explore a world, you will have fun.