Borderlands 2 is Gearbox Software’s follow up to the moderately successful first-person shooter, Borderlands.  The series is all about RPG influenced cooperative shoot em up gameplay.   I was personally a little disappointed with the first Borderlands, but was told this game had more of a focus on the story and comedy, so I was excited to give a franchise I saw a lot of potential in another shot.  So let’s take a look at Borderlands 2!

The story of Borderlands 2 picks up from where the story of the first game left off. Wait, there was a story in Borderlands 1?!  ...Anyway, a man named handsome Jack has taken control of Pandora after selling a rare substance known as eridium which became available after the vault hunters from the first game destroyed the monster and opened the vault.  Now a new set of vault hunters has come to Pandora to investigate rumors of a new vault on the planet.  After narrowly escaping a murder attempt at the hands of Handsome Jack, the Vault hunter meets Claptrap, who accompanies them on a trip to Sanctuary, a city safe from the clutches of Jack and his company, the Hyperion corporation.  They are told to do this by Angel, a mysterious girl who appears on screen sometimes for no discernable reason and without explanation as to how.  Once in Sanctuary, the player meets up with the four vault hunters from the previous game and begins an adventure to take down Handsome Jack and Hyperion.

The story’s alright, though a bit more heavy than I expected.  Given the advertisements all making this game out to be a comedy, I didn’t expect moments that tug on the heartstrings (which I won’t spoil here, but trust me, they’re in here).  The comedy is okay, with subtle references and not-so-subtle references to pop culture everywhere.  But I didn’t exactly die of laughter, most likely because a lot of the references are already outdated.  It serves its purpose, but it’s nothing that will grip you until the very end.  The characters are amazing though.  Handsome Jack is enough of a dick to get you riled up and want to shoot him in the face, but the game goes ahead and shows that he’s a human being too.  An actual character.  A relatable one.  (Are we sure this is Borderlands?!)

Borderlands is known for being one of the few series left that still uses the cell-shaded graphics style and it looks pretty nice.  If nothing else, it lends a unique feel to the world you won’t find in most games.  It is a bit strange seeing the really nice, realistic water compared to everything else, but you get used to it.  The music complements the world and gameplay well.  Its deep guitar gives it an almost western feel to the action.

Unfortunately, Borderlands 2 has quite a few issues presentation-wise as well.  When loading into an area everything is missing textures which take a couple of seconds to load up.  They could have just made the loading screen two seconds longer and not broken the immersion, but it’s not a huge deal.  No, the huge deal comes down to two aspects- first, whenever angel appears on screen the whole game freezes for a split second, which normally isn’t too distracting, but during combat I was yelling at her to shut the fuck up.  Second, and most unfortunately, the frame rate has some issues.  When in combat the frame rate dips a bit, but when playing with four other players it fucking minimizes.  I figured it went down to around 10 fps quite frequently during multiplayer, which is really bad when that’s really the only way to play the game.  Speaking of which...

Borderlands 2 is a first person shooter with RPG elements thrown in.  You go to inhabitants of Pandora, get a mission, go shoot guys, then come back for a reward.  The RPG elements come in with the weapons and class upgrades.  There are four main character types to pick from: Commando and Siren from the first game and two new additions in the Assassin and the Gunzerker.  The main difference between these types is their special ability.  Commando gets a turret, the siren has psychic powers, the assassin can become invisible and the gunzerker can go into rage mode and wield two weapons at once.  There is also loot to grab everywhere you can look.  Money, different weapons, class and grenade mods, typical stuff for the genre.

The game is a mixed bag for me in this department.  On the one hand, the variety of the weapons and great controls make for an excellent FPS.  On the other, playing alone is nearly impossible and the RPG elements aren’t fleshed out very well.  To my first point, the actual PFS gameplay is awesome.  Shooting feels satisfying and responsive and the huge variety in guns, weapons, classes, and mods makes for some really chaotic fun if you can find the right loot.  

Guns can also deal elemental effects in addition to damaging your adversaries, with different effects on different targets.  For example, fire burns flesh while electricity destroys shields.  Cool stuff.  The shooting in this game is hands down some of the best I’ve played in any game thus far.

The problems, however, often outweigh the positives.  First, money is almost useless in this game.  You can use it to buy ammo and... Nope, that’s about it since the guns and shields sold at the stores are often far underpowered compared to the loot you find roaming the overworld.  The loot itself is another issue.  I feel like good loot only drops when you play multiplayer, which is a bad system considering the game is unfairly difficult for solo players as is.  On top of that, the frame rate issues can really break you out of the zone, especially when sniping.  I’ve heard this might just be a PS3 issue, but since I haven’t played the other versions I have to assume they’re just as bad.  Oh, and check this out.  Got stuck in this wall within the first hour of playing.  The glitches are all over the place in this game.

None of this would be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the game is terribly designed.  Let’s say you see a side mission that’s supposed to be really hard, but it’s got a decent amount of experience and some awesome loot as a reward.  So you keep trying over and over again until finally beating it.  You go to turn it in and get your weapon… only to realize that it’s got a level requirement.  Why?  I worked hard to get this weapon, I earned this weapon, I earned the right to be a bit more powerful in my next enemy encounter, but I can’t use it.  This is one of the biggest issues with the game along with the extremely overpowered enemies, enemy attacks that are practically un-dodgeable, and worst of all, enemy difficulty scaling.  The enemies in this game don’t change their tactics as they grow in level.  They have way more health and their attacks do more damage, but the strategies you employ to beat them are identical.  Imagine playing Pokemon with all of pokemon able to level up like normal, but they don’t evolve or learn new moves.  You’d be pretty bored after a while, right?

The biggest two issues, however can be seen in the final fight, which I won’t spoil here.  First, one of the baddies had a shield which I could destroy by killing the bot making it, but the bot got trapped underground and the only way for me to get it out was to kill myself.  These kinds of glitches are really detrimental to the game and can lower the fun had immensely.  On top of that, the final boss doesn’t target the player.  It has one phase, and in that phase it moves between 3 spots and attacks the center of the arena.  By moving to the side, I managed to not get hit even once by the boss and took the bullet sponge down in like 10 minutes.  Even worse, my turret was made useless because of the raks everywhere distracting it.  Because of course the game wouldn’t let me fight the boss 1 v 1. He needed to invite friends along too. Come to think of it, not a single boss in this game could be fought on their own.  I understand that putting sidekicks in the area helps the player to get a second wind when they’re down, but sometimes I just want to fight a really good boss.  The sad part is that Gearbox stayed so inside the box with their game design that it actually holds back the excellent gunplay and good story.  Not to mention that these problems occurred while fighting the FINAL BOSS.  Thanks for playing our game.  Fuck you!

I get that Borderlands 2 is supposed to be a cooperative experience, I really do.  But if your game has the difficulty scaled to an unfair and frustrating degree for solo players, then solo players aren’t going to enjoy it.  However, my short time playing multiplayer before PSN forced me to sign out three times in a row showed me the potential this game has.  Which is why I’m giving Borderlands 2 two ratings.  If you have friends to play with and enjoy some great FPS action, Borderlands 2 gets an 8 out of 10.  But if you’re like me and have no friends… Borderlands 2 gets a 6 out of 10.  It’s still okay, but anything that would take this game to new heights is lost without teammates.  But hey, it’s not all bad.  At least I have all of you, right?