miniReview: Borderlands 2

Game: Borderlands 2
Publisher: Gearbox
Platform: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Price: $59.99
Notes:  It may be difficult to find friends around your level.

First person shooters are my weakest area. How did I fare in this game?

Gameplay:
Oh was it brutal! Who knew I could die so much in the first area. The game focuses purely on an FPS experience with some RPG elements – leveling up, skill tree, etc – with up to four players in co-op mode fighting their way through hordes of creatures, robots, and psychotic criminals.

I chose Salvador of the Gunzerker class (not only for the Bara appeal) but I felt playing as a tank character might help me through much of the game. As his name implies, the Gunzerker specializes in guns, and is noted for his special move where you whip out two guns at the same time while rapidly regenerating health. Most of the time, the Gunzerker’s regenerating health ability lets me survive much longer than I normally would in a typical FPS. I’m not one to pay attention to enemy tactics, and will go head first into enemy fire. Though it’s not the best route to play, I tend to shift between long distance sniping, abusing barriers to attack enemies through gaps in the wall, or all out melee attacks.

My main concern over gameplay comes from Co-Op. Unfortunately character levels do not scale based on the game’s host, and your friends will obliterate everything until you realize you’re underpowered when trekking alone.

 

Graphics:
I’m a big fan of cell-shaded graphics. Back in the days of Jet Set Radio, you couldn’t foresee cell shaded graphics looking this good. It’s detailed to the point that sometimes I forget that it is. There’s definitely no disappointment in the graphics department.

Sound:
Probably the game’s weakest areas. The music isn’t bad, but there aren’t that many tracks that stand out aside from the Snow and Desert areas. The music switches tracks between combat and non-battle, and I feel both tracks could have been a remix of each other to keep the theme. As much as I like Salvador, his grunting noise is a tad obnoxious.

Playability:
Controls are fine, though somewhat awkward when doing melee attacks mostly because you are in first person and it’s hard to visualize when the weapon physically hits the enemy. Replay factor should be quite high with a new game + mode, and a treasure trove of loot to hunt for.

Other Things:
If you’re on XBOX360 you have to be very wary of joining other people’s games with all the cheating going on. This is supposed to be fixed in an upcoming patch.

The Bara Factor:
Not much eye candy to see here. You have Salvadore and Axton, but unless someone creates a shirtless mod, you’ll just be focusing on shooting and nothing else. (Which is what you should be doing right?)

Next time we’ll talk about how we can gay up this game a bit. Though it will never be to the extent of Saints Row: The Third.

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