His Review with Ian Abbott
One of the measures of successful game design is knowing when and how to finish. Finishing a game, when a player is ready and satisfied with the entire exposition that they’ve just encountered or leaving them hungry for a little bit more through future DLC is an expert art. Borderlands 2 is an example of a game that is bloated and expanded beyond its natural reach through monotonous mission design. With over 100 missions completed, I’ve invested over 60 hours of play time to complete it though the Borderlands magic evaporated two thirds of the way through and I seriously lost my love for this game. Up until then I had been a fanatical completionist; taking on and gleefully completing every side mission, looting all boxes and constantly juggling my inventory whilst spending a fair amount of time in front of the well-designed vending machines tweaking my spoils, buying and selling all sorts of gun-smithery ephemera and hunting out the elusive purple and orange items until there was a lack of new enemies to flex my finely honed loot shooting fingers against.
The rhythm of the game is like a heart monitor; huge set pieces with whirlwinds of furious activity followed by 45 minutes of relative silence, oodles of travel and little bits of looting. It’s not a “Joy-puking” (PR speak) gunzerking killing fest. It’s a game that has been carefully designed, with inordinate amounts of detail packed into the landscape, soundtrack and characters but elongated unnecessarily. I got to the stage in the final 17 hours where it no longer mattered if I opened chests or not. I had accrued so much money and such a vast arsenal that it became very hard to die and once a game that purports to be all about the loot reaches that stage, the fun starts to spoil and my gaming satisfaction dissolves very quickly.
Borderlands 2 is absolutely littered with witty dialogue and irreverent, self-referential humour to lap up. The main supporting cast of NPC characters that are found amongst the missions set the tone for the world; with Claptrap, Tiny Tina and Dr. Zed among my favourites usurping previously held ideas of what a robot, a 13 year old teenage girl or a GP should be getting up to. Tiny Tina in her American South Texan drawl introduces one of her tasks: “This here's Mushy Snugglebite and this is Felicia Sexopants. These fiiiine-ass womens could stop that train for yas, but I'ma need their badonkadonks first, and they got stoled by the bandits a few days ago. Go get 'em!” With all this wit and repartee on display it emphasised the silence and lack of personality of my own character Zero (a silent assassin) who offered little in response. There were no verbal barbs or sparring from my vault hunter and I was made to feel alone in the world like The Man With No Name (the original vault hunter) in Sergio Leone’s famed spaghetti western Dollars trilogy.
The creative teams behind the character design and mission setting might well have been targeting a set of players who were born in the early 1980s as there are several encounters throughout the game which demonstrated a definite homage to late 80s/early 90s cultural relics. My particular favourite was a delivery task, where I had to make my way underground, navigating a series of sewers before encountering four enemies; Don, Ralph, Mike and Leo, all who have a penchant for pizza.
The possibilities of 4 player co-op is proffered by Gearbox Software and shouted from the rooftops by the publishers 2K Games that this is where the ultimate Borderlands 2 experience is to be had. So I spent two very different times exploring what it means to play online. One with friends (so generous in their play: “there’s a shield that can absorb bullets with 378 defence points – who wants it?”) where we played through a couple of chapters as each of the four classes on offer and diligently explored each level, hunting for vault symbols, punishing enemies as a magnificent quartet and generally looking out for each other. I also hunted out a non friend co-op experience and played with three other Zeroes. They rampaged through the chapters we were engaged in, not talking, not sharing and selfishly completing missions and side missions that I’d not even heard of before travelling on to the next area. This lack of respect for others and seeking out a personal loot quest certainly helped level me up quickly and ramped up my XP but felt rushed, ill considered, out of control and an experience not to be repeated.
I’ve been left feeling that the game offered me both infinite variety and restriction of choice. The quest to find and kill Handsome Jack in order to return peace to Pandora is simple, yet it was the detail and definition of those early characters, missions and landscapes that hooked me in, made me play it for hours at a time and fall in love with it. However, a fine line was crossed when I went back to several locations for a fourth and fifth time; I felt like I was promised Jack but he was nowhere to be seen and escaped again, just like Dr Claw did at the end of every Inspector Gadget episode. My frustration monitor spiked, snapped and this “Space Western” rode off in to the sunset without my gaming love attached.
Her Review with Tracey
Greetings from the charcoal outlined, crudely constructed timber and corrugated iron outposts of Pandora. Be it across sandy dunes or icy cliffs, thar be vaults out there for a plunderin’ and despite the most handsomest of Jacks charmingly threatening to kill me in a million different ways, I can’t stop myself from hunkering on, blasting my way through countless enemies, stopping to loot any lockers, barrels or fancy-pants chests along the way.
Borderlands 2, a direct sequel, with a story that picks up shortly after the first, promised to be bold and brassy in its humour, intensions, tone and style and it delivers but perhaps not to the point where I was joy-puking in unrivalled wub-wub induced pleasure. Rather it was more a repetitious ebb of flow of crazed, frantic bullet bursting gun fights with silent inventory management or buggy riding from location to location on one of the hundred side missions. I found it surprisingly linear despite the open world as some areas were only unlocked once I’d hit a particular story line. I inadvertently explored an area full of fire wielding marauders and died within 10 seconds as needed much better equipment and a higher level to take them on. Following this I also got to ride a pig-shaped motel sign so it’s fair to say deviating away can have some reward.
I love loot. I am the type of gamer that can’t just plug through to the next section of a main story line without having completed all the current side-quests beforehand. The optional side quests are not only important for looting and levelling, here is where some of the best characters and giddy plots are to be found. My smile muscles were given a work out. There was even some big laugh out loud guffaws as the writing is sharp and zany with a wild-west twist. The characters are larger than life (literally in the case of voluptuous garage owner Fat Ellie) with quirks, dance moves, abnormally proportioned limbs, drooly drawling accents and a violent outlook on life. It’s this colour and personality that initially kept me engaged but also turned me off after a long session. In bite sized chunks Borderlands 2 is a brilliantly fresh escape from any other sci-fi title ever; over a few hours, the adrenaline coursing through every pixel of the game burnt my eyeballs and the monotonous firing and opening boxes (despite their pretty opening mechanisms) exposed the lack of depth that for me would have launched Borderlands 2 into the realms of masterful-best-game-ever territory.
I predominately played as either the Gunzunker or Commando characters but there was very little different between the two, apart from their special ability. Most of the game was spent looking down the barrel of a variety of guns. Similarly to Ian, it seemed once I found a rare gun that suited my style of play, I tended to ignore much of what was dropped – even after fighting a big ugly boss – or would find myself really disappointed as often, the randomly generated loot wasn’t as good as what I had. When things got hairy, the Second-Wind feature where if I made a kill whilst my life was slipping away, I would be given a new chunk of life was much welcomed and did provide some ease against tougher opponents. Especially when playing local co-op. Adding a level of strategy to proceedings, when navigating the excellently designs, multi-height, twisted levels, reviving a friend or trying to hold on to life as the other player respawns meant the big bosses didn’t have time to regenerate their shields or health as they would when playing solo. The difficulty is ramped up when playing with two but so is the reward (though it’s shared between players meaning communication and negotiation was key. If all else failed, there was a swap system allowing co-op players to trade items and a cowboy duel option to permanently solve disputes!
Overall, though there is a long and perky story to follow, exploring it with friends feels so much more satisfying and it’s not necessary to have played the original Borderlands to enjoy this sequel. With so many sci-fi titles choosing industrial, rusty or grey metallic space station locations, here there is human influence graffitied all over Pandora and it makes a richer landscape for it, whilst the vocal performances against a space western soundtrack that lazily twangs or excitingly gallops over the action is outstanding. Ignoring the repetition, this shoot and loot is a helluva lot of fun and a title that once owned, is one to come back to time and again with a whopping replayability factor. For those times when only a crazy wild banger will scratch a gaming itch, Borderlands 2 borders on brilliant relief. It's well worth visiting.
Borderlands 2 is out now on Xbox360, PS3 and PC.
BREAING NEWS: Out a week earlier than planned, Gearbox today announced that the Mechromancer DLC featuring a brand new Character called Gaige, who can summon a robot called Deathtrap, will be available from today. Aimed at inexperienced gamers with the Best-Friends Forever Skill Tree (which makes it easier for newcomers to play co-op with experienced players through help like a decreased need for shooting accuracy) the DLC is free to anyone who pre-ordered Borderlands 2 from certain retailers or can be bought for £7.99/800 Microsoft Points.
