Review – Borderlands 2
FPS/RPG
We need guns. Lots of guns.
Rich
As much as we gushed ourselves daft over the original Borderlands, at least until the frankly terrible DLC spoiled the party, we did always wish for a bit more in the way of variation. After all those fetch quests did start to grind after a while and the sparsely-populated locations of Pandora weren’t always the most exciting place to be.
Well, Borderlands 2 doesn’t offer that much extra to veterans of the first game. The beautifully cell-shaded graphics still look great (as long as your eyes haven’t been treated to any PC games in the last few years) and the loot-based, FPS action is still as enjoyable and addictive as ever but unfortunately there is still far too much backtracking and fetching for our liking and while moments of genuine hilarity occasionally poke through, the core gameplay is a little too familiar and samey to warrant as many plaudits as last time.
Grabbed by the balls. Ahem.
There are some improvements, such as a slightly better difficulty curve and more favourable loot drops (no more playing three-quarters of the game with the sniper rifle you discovered on day one) but we’ve still got the same four classes as before (albeit slightly modified and not always for the better), horrible vehicle controls and billions of mostly-unwanted weapons based on the original six archetypes.
Played in co-op, Borderlands 2 remains a fun title with seriously addictive qualities and some true laugh out loud moments but it does occasionally just feel like you are sharing chores. Played solo it can feel all too much like fucking around in a desert populated by pricks who either want to shoot you or make you do something menial.
Any game that rewards us for shooting midgets in the face can’t be all that bad and there still isn’t anything on the market that does this kind of thing better so we’ve still got to score this pretty highly (we are fucking hopelessly addicted to the fucker after all) but, a few bright spots aside, Pandora’s not really changed enough in the last couple of years to warrant the full price spend and if you wait for the inevitable price drop you’ll no doubt have missed the co-op boat.
Rating: 
8/10
“if you wait for the inevitable price drop you’ll no doubt have missed the co-op boat”
Unless you know Pete and I, in which case you’re safe for… oh I dunno… three or four years! I much preferred this one to the first, although the first will always hold a special place in my Crimson Crate, and I’ll be maxing out the PC version (with Axton, which may end up being a bit too easy) as soon as I have my feet cleared of reviews.
People seem to be going mental for this, but then they did the first one and that left me cold. Still need to go back and finish the vanilla game at some point.