The original Borderlands was a game I just didn’t get. I played it back in the day when it first came out, and it just never hit me the right way. I don’t know if it was the cell shaded art style, the crappy vehicle controls, or the storyline, but I just didn’t like it. I have, however, decided to take a leap into Borderlands 2, to give this series a second chance to impress me.

Was it a mistake?

Story

(Spoilers for Borderlands 1 follow)

Borderlands 2 is set a few years after the Vault from the first game was opened. Instead of the Vault being filled with gold and loot as the Vault Hunters believed, it was actually a prison for this huge ancient beast bent on destroying the universe, or something. He was killed, and the Vault Hunters just kinda shrugged and walked away from their dreams of glory. However, a consequence of opening the vault was that a ton of purple stuff got sprayed all around the planet, known as Eridium. This valuable substance attracted the president of Hyperion, Handsome Jack. He enslaved the planet and claimed the victories over the ancient beast monster and opening of the vault. Now, you play one from a group of new Vault Hunter on a quest to open the second vault, and free the planet from the tyranny of Handsome Jack.

Honestly, the story is very dumb. There are ‘major’ moments when characters die, but all it does for me is just open up huge plot holes. You die an enormous amount of times in the game, and you’re telling me they couldn’t have just been reconstructed? They didn’t have a shield on? Come on. Anyway, if Jack wants you dead, why keep all the cloning machines throughout the world active? Because he wants more money? “Aw sweet, I got 5000 dollars to add to my trillions!” Major plot holes like those go unexplained. However, it’s obvious that you don’t want to play Borderlands for its story, so let’s go to the gameplay1

Gameplay

You can pick from four different characters to play on your journey, and they each possess their own special ability. Axton is the commando, your basic run and gun class, and he can deploy a sentry gun to support himself in the field. Maya is the siren, with the ability to freeze opponents temporarily. Salvador is the Gunzerker, a brute, murder-everything-in-sight, character. Lastly, there is Zer0, the awesome and badass daft punk ninja, who can shoot out a hologram to distract enemies. I played Zer0, obviously.

The game is an RPG-FPS game, ala Fallout 3. You kill enemies, level up, and just grind for hours. There are a ton of side missions to do, and bosses respawn after a quick restart of the game. Gather loot and sell it to have enough money to buy more items to gather more loot and sell it again. Just in case you don’t understand how much this game loves to grind, there are even achievements for just opening up containers! Open up 10,000 boxes? Challenge completed! It’s insane.

Of course, the loot itself if widely varied. Each gun looks unique and cool. The modelers for this game really had a huge job. There are five types of elements that your new gun could have. Explosive, Shock, Corrosive, Fire, and Slag. Explosive just adds extra explosive damage to your weapons (and also uses a ton of ammo), Shock is effective against removing shields, Corrosive is good at dissolving armor, Fire is good at burning unarmored people, and Slag makes enemies more susceptible to damage. Each are good in their own right, and each are pretty cool. In general though, if you have a really good gun, chances are you don’t really need an elemental weapon. Most times you can just murder people fine with a good critical hit. One thing I did find strange, is that I was hoping at some point to find a sword for my ninja guy, which never came to fruition. How dare you tempt me like that, Gearbox.

Multiplayer is one of the biggest selling points of this game. Play with your friends to.. grind together! Neat. Everyone on my friends list wanted me to play at one time or another, and I never did. Yes, that’s right, I never played multiplayer in Borderlands. To me, multiplayer doesn’t add much depth to the game. “Wow cool we killed a boss together, want to do it again?” Now before you start getting all mad and saying “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND IT”, I played multiplayer in Borderlands 1, and it was still dumb. Borderlands is the kind of game I want to play by myself. I can never co-op in RPG games. It takes away from the feel of it. I want to traverse the lands with myself and my thoughts. It’s hard to explain.

Graphics

Borderlands 2 has its signature thick-outline cell-shaded looking art style, and every part of it looked awesome. The lighting was amazing, and the textures look really good too. There are day and night cycles, and it transitions rather well. Level design is generally okay, but at times it is really annoying. Especially when you have to keep going back to the same place over and over, either to just grind more, or to do a side mission that popped up there. If you restart the game, you’re thrown back at the beginning of the level, and you have to do it all over again no matter how far you got. Be careful of that.

The sound was pretty good too. Not an amazing amount of ooomf going on, but the array of guns each had their nice sounding shots. Explosions left a little bit to be desired though. Voice acting was also pretty good. If I’m supposed to feel like beating the crap out of whoever is speaking, the developers were successful.

Conclusion

I know I said I didn’t get this series at the beginning of this review, but I think I do have a good grasp of what it is now. I just don’t like it. I really don’t understand all of my friends’ fascination with it. It’s fun to shoot and run around, and its references and jokes are (sometimes) funny, but the game just leaves a bad taste in my mouth for some reason. I could never play it more than an hour at a time, and it just felt… stupid. Maybe it’s just me, but the game isn’t all that great. You might enjoy it though.