Borderlands 2

Developer: Gearbox Software (Famous for: Borderlands/Brothers In Arms)

Publisher: 2K Games

Let’s just get this out in the open. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about Borderlands 2. If we take each aspect of the experience and evaluate them on their own merits, nothing that it has to offer is especially brilliant. The mechanics are responsive and well designed but aren’t groundbreaking in any way; the art style is pretty but its nothing we haven’t seen before; and the mission structure is fun but can feel like a grind with its almost constant “go here, kill this guy, grab what he drops and take it back to where you picked up the mission” layout. That said, Borderlands 2 isn’t a game that shouts about any ground breaking, genre defining mechanics. What it is, is a game that has clearly decided what it wants to do, then gone out and done a solid job on everything, leaving us with a game that is more about the sum of its parts than any specific feature.

Playing the now standard RPG card, players earn XP for everything they do. Whether this is for killing an enemy, completing a mission or merely discovering a new area of the map. Players work towards levelling up their characters in exchange for access to better weaponry and skill points to spend on their character skill tree. It’s with this that we see one of Borderlands 2’s more interesting aspects. Unlike many modern games, selecting a character isn’t just about slapping on the character skin that you find most appealing. Instead players are asked to contemplate the way they play games in general. Do you run head on into combat guns blazing? Choose the Gunzerker. If you prefer a more subtle approach, then choose the Assassin. This may sound straightforward, but it drastically affects the way players have to approach battles, providing a genuine incentive to go back and try out other characters once you complete the game.

Deciding about how players want to play the game is something that they will have to constantly think about and wrestle with throughout the entirety of Borderlands 2. Everything a player kills, opens or just plain old smashes will spray forth an array of loot that has stats and arrows defining each feature of the weapon, shield or mod. It’s lucky that the menus are a joy to navigate then, because you will be seeing a lot of them. Players will inadvertently find themselves pouring over each piece of loot they pick up, painstakingly trying to decide whether to sell it or incorporate it into their arsenal.

It’s strange to think that games have been trying to make us feel attached to our pets or companions in games for years because it seems that Borderlands 2 has achieved just that - apparently by accident. From time to time, you will pick up a piece of loot that just seems to click with your play style. Whether it’s the fire rate, magazine size, damage rating or elemental effect that does it, you’ll find yourself becoming attached to that trusty pistol or shotgun to the extent that when you happen across something with better stats, you find yourself making excuses about why its better to keep the old weapon.

This addictive loot system is given a further twist when players make forays online with their friends or other players. Each time a kill is made, the inevitable loot drop follows, but doesn’t double up like it does in other loot driven games such as Diablo 3. This means that players must cooperate to share the spoils of battle out equally. You can compare and trade loot and if a dispute over a particular weapon occurs you can also challenge one another to a battle, with the winner walking away with the coveted piece of kit.

Up to four players can cooperate in any given world and each time a player is added to a game more enemies will come to battle and boss characters will be given a further health and damage boost, making it advisable that players looking to play the game together should discuss their planned character choices before they begin. This is definitely the way Borderlands 2 should be played. The nature of the loot dropping will likely put many off going online with random companions, but if you are fortunate enough to have a couple of friends who own a copy, then it simply adds yet another layer of enjoyment to the game.

Through all this enjoyment there are, unfortunately, a couple of glaring weaknesses that come to the fore once some significant time has been invested into the game. The narrative was something that the developers were hoping to build upon following the original Borderlands’, quite frankly, terrible story. In an attempt to combat this, every character has been given a voice and the well-known mission boards from the first game take a distinctly smaller role in favour of quest giving NPC’s. In fairness, this does add a little more life into the once painfully arid Pandora universe, and the voice acting is for the most part well directed and acted, however players will get the feeling that these NPC’s could have just as easily been mission boards. They stand in the same place the whole time, and are very wooden in posture and movement throughout your interaction with them, which is a shame.

It seems that 2K had an idea about how they wanted to develop interactions in the world, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Making this worse still, is that NPC characters have a tendency to want to speak with you over the radio whilst you are being attacked. Due to the frantic and intense nature of the battles, there are few who will have any idea about what was said after the dialogue has concluded, and will either pause the game and read the mission brief, or just blindly stumble towards the next waypoint and hope their task becomes apparent once they arrive.

Perhaps my biggest issue with Borderlands 2 however, is the level design. Pandora is an expansive world with many, many different zones and areas to explore, so it is somewhat perplexing and frustrating that players will find themselves continually going over the same ground. Groups of enemies always pop up in the same places, with an almost clockwork regularity. Because of this, players will complete several missions within each zone and begin to notice they are fighting the same waves of enemies over and over again in a sort of mix and match formula. As players level up, these same fights become less intense, to the extent that they will eventually just blow through them without any problems. However, this doesn’t excuse its presence in the game and can be described as nothing short of poor mission design.

When all is said and done though, Borderlands 2 is a really enjoyable game. Players looking for a narrative-driven experience should steer clear, as it serves no other purpose than to push the action forward, and provide a few laughs along the way. It’s a shameless gamers’ game that should be played for the pure mechanical, loot hoarding and level grinding enjoyment of it. What Borderlands 2 lacks in innovation, it more than makes up for in sheer entertainment and copious amounts of dirty jokes. Unofficially kicking off the horde of holiday releases, Borderlands 2 will undoubtably be remembered as one of 2012’s standout games.

3 GOOD POINTS:

+ That pretty art style is back.

+ Duelling a friend for an awesome gun.

+ Firefights are frantic and intense.

3 BAD POINTS:

- Level design is at times awful.

- Storyline serves only to drive the action forward.

- Not much of an improvement on Borderlands.