One Life Left: "Borderlands 2"

Borderlands 2 was a tough sell for me. The first game, Borderlands, was great in its own right: it was a four-player cooperative shooter that had you and any buddies you may have online join up and shoot some aliens while on the hunt for loot and ultimately, the vault, a legendary place said to be filled with alien treasure and technology.

But despite its frantic fun, the first game suffered some major flaws: the world was huge, but mostly empty, and if you didn’t have any friends (or an internet connection) the game became incredibly dull. Top that all off with a healthy dose of “terrible ending” and you’ve got the perfect recipe for some gamer skepticism.

However, when its developers Gearbox announced they had gotten Anthony Burch, writer and creator of the “Hey Ask Whatcha Playin?” web series to write the story, hope suddenly crept into me. As it turns out, those hopes were well placed, Borderlands 2 kept everything that made the first game great, and fixed a lot of things that bogged down the first game.

Borderlands 2 takes us back to the planet Pandora. On a side note, why do people like Gearbox and James Cameron think “Pandora” is a clever name for a planet? Might as well just cut the thin veil of mythological referencing and call it something like planet MurderDoom. The events of the first game introduced the element Eridium, which catches the eye of the intergalactic corporation, Hyperion. Hyperion’s CEO, Handsome Jack, wants to find the second vault of Eridium and plunder it for all that its worth, and the player must stop him.

The story is a lot more interesting now thanks to the inclusion of a solid antagonist, something the first game desperately needed. Handsome Jack is the caricature of the one percent. He constantly taunts the player with his wealth and uses it to his advantage. It also helps that Jack has moments of occasional hilarity, which I cant help but compare to the supercomputer GLaDOS from the Portal games.

There is going to be a lot standing in your path: Pandora’s citizens, bandits, the local flora and fauna and robots. Lots of robots. But luckily, you can pick one of the four available classes and team up with some friends to take down Jacks hordes once and for all.

For my play-through, I picked Maya, the siren, who has the special ability to use interdimensional energy called a “Phaselock” to lock an enemy into place where you or your teammates can basically take free shots while it remains active. As my character leveled up by gaining experience through completing quests, killing enemies and other such tasks, she can upgrade her special ability in a way that’s unique to her. I built her in such a way that whenever I used Phaselock, all sorts of nasty things would happen to my enemies.

All three of the other classes also have unique abilities, including the ability to dual-wield any two guns (Gunzerker class), throw out a gun turret to help you out (Commando) or turn invisible to stab enemies in the back (Assassin). All three also offer skill trees that allow the player to build the character to match your play style.

The gun-play is tight with plenty of RPG elements seamlessly streamlined into things that would typically be reserved only for the FPS. If you haven’t played a Borderlands game before, damage in Borderlands is calculated around things like the damage of your gun, your stats and the stats of the enemy. And in classical RPG fashion, little numbers that appear above the enemies’ head are what determine how much damage you’re inflicting per shot. On top of damage, there are other stats to take care of such as shields, health, reload speed, magazine size, changing weapon speed and other such things. While it sounds difficult to keep track of, it all becomes second-nature once you get the hang of it.

On top of all of this, the status effects make a triumphant return. Certain guns have special effects that do bonus damage to certain enemies. Guns with fire properties are good against flesh, guns with electricity take out shields and guns with corrosive properties take care of armor while the newest element, slag, makes the enemy weaker to absolutely everything else. It’s always good to keep one of each on hand as situations will always be changing around you.

Speaking of guns — there are a lot of guns. As a matter of fact, Borderlands 2 currently holds the Guinness World Record for most guns in a video game. You never really keep the same guns because as you progress through the game, you find better guns, usually selling the left overs for some extra cash to purchase things you need.

You can also find unlockable skins for your characters or vehicles, new shields, grenade mods that change the property of your grenades and relics, which permanently give you some sort of stat bonus. The rarity of the gun depends on the color in which it is highlighted, with gold being the rarest.

While I definitely recommend this game, as it is a tight, well-built FPS with its own flavor, the game can definitely reach dull levels if not played with other people. It was meant to be a multiplayer experience, after all. Luckily the game has split screen and online play, so hook up, grab your favorite gun and show Jack that money isn’t everything.