Nelson Schneider's Game Review of Borderlands 2

87 Billion More Useless Guns
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/31/14

When the MeltedJoystick crew decided to play the original “Borderlands” last year, I came away from the experience with an overall favorable impression. I figured that if Gearbox, the developer behind this new-in-the-7th-Generation IP, could add some more spit and polish to “Borderlands 2,” treating the game more like a lead project rather than an untested side project, they could end up with something really spectacular. And, indeed, Gearbox has started treating ‘Borderlands’ as a winning franchise, lavishing the sequel with more of everything that made the original game unique in the sea of samey FPSes that has come to dominate the modern “AAA” release schedule.

Unfortunately, when Gearbox decided to simply turn the dial up to 11 in every aspect of “Borderlands” for “Borderlands 2,” they amplified the flaws along with the good parts, resulting in a sequel that ultimately fails to surpass its progenitor.

Presentation
“Borderlands 2” takes the faux-cell-shaded styling of the original game and improves it with slightly-higher-resolution comic book textures that look great up close but still look a bit blurry and pixilated through a high-powered scope. Naturally, these ‘good enough’ textures are a result of the game being a multi-platform release for the aged 7th Generation consoles, but it wouldn’t have killed Gearbox to release a hi-res texture pack as free DLC for the PC version (much like Bethesda did with “Skyrim”).

The non-player characters, even the generic townsfolk, are a lot more unique-looking compared to the original “Borderlands” and there are a LOT more of them. Likewise, the brown-and-gray badlands environment in which the entire original game took place has been expanded into a wide variety of environments (though with an unfortunate emphasis on snowy areas, which are white-and-gray), including several that are filled with vibrant colors. Enemies, however, still tend to be difficult to pick-out from the environment. With the greater variety of NPCs comes a greater variety of enemies (though there are still no female bandits), and players can even get in on the action with a variety of unlockable skins and heads available for customizing character appearance.

The audio in “Borderlands 2” is also slightly improved over the very high-quality original. The soundtrack is a bit more diverse and interesting, weapon sound effects are overall improved, and the voiceacting is just as great as before (though Marcus’ awesome manufacturer-specific sales pitches have been replaced with less useful banter)… only now there are a lot more NPCs who have a lot more to say. There are even a few moments in the later DLC packs where the playable characters themselves make unique remarks about current events, which would go a long way toward solving the problem of characters that feel like dumb mutes had this kind of commentary featured strongly throughout the game.

“Borderlands 2” resolves most of the annoying technical issues from the first game, though a few minor ones still linger, like quest objectives not working correctly until a restart, and crashing when trying to join a multi-player game in a specific DLC area. It’s still a significant improvement, thanks in large part to “Borderlands 2” relying on Steamworks for its online functionality rather than the now-defunct Gamespy.

Story
The single biggest improvement to “Borderlands 2” over the original game is the quality of the writing and the cohesiveness of the narrative. All of the excellent NPCs from the first game return to reprise their roles. On top of that, the playable characters from the first game return as fully-fleshed-out story-centric NPCs with all kinds of personality that they were missing as playable characters the first time around. Indeed, the way “Borderlands 2’s” story is put together, the entirety of the first game serves as a stand-alone prologue, establishing the setting, tone, and a handful of events that have been skillfully retconned into the sequel’s canon.

In “Borderlands 2,” players return to the frontier planet, Pandora, searching for alien vaults filled with treasure. However, before the introductory movie is even finished, it is revealed that the vaults are a lie perpetuated by the villainous CEO of Hyperion Corporation, Handsome Jack. Not only is it great to have an actual villain this time around, but Handsome Jack is a spectacularly evil bastard, displaying monomania, a hero complex, and a wicked sense of humor, constantly taunting the players with evil schemes and traps, all while manipulating them into unwittingly furthering his own goals.

Each of the playable characters is more fleshed out than the previous batch of Vault Hunters thanks to the fact that most of them (the DLC characters are excluded) have an audio log in their starting inventory that gives some of their backstory. In addition, the non-DLC characters have additional backstory available via hidden audio-logs that are scattered throughout the game’s huge world. The cast includes Salvador, a Hispanic dwarf who loves guns more than anything; Axton, a clean-cut ex-soldier turned mercenary; Maya, a long-necked Siren fleeing the control of the Church; Zer0 (yes, spelled like that), a haiku-loving assassin who may or may not be an alien or robot; Gaige, an angsty, pigtailed schoolgirl with a love of engineering and anarchy; and Krieg, a beefy psycho who makes Brick from the original game seem mentally stable and loveable.

None of this cast of disparate characters has any relationship with the rest. They are all stand-alone individuals who have found themselves manipulated into coming to Pandora, all for the purpose of fulfilling Handsome Jack’s master plan. Their only hope is to work together with the Vault Hunters from the first game to thwart Jack’s schemes, shake-off Hyperion’s iron-fisted control of Pandora, and clean-up the gigantic mess left by the aftermath. In the process, the Vault Hunters encounter a cast of lunatics and find themselves sidetracked on numerous occasions.

“Borderlands” had a lot of side missions. “Borderlands 2” has an absolutely insane number of side missions. “Borderlands” had a dark sense of humor at times. “Borderlands 2” never stops telling off-color jokes. There is just a ton of stuff to do in the game and almost all of it is funny.

Even the DLC is an improvement over the first game. While the DLCs for “Borderlands” started out fairly bad and progressively got better, “Borderlands 2” goes the opposite direction. All four of the full-sized expansions (the ones included in the Season Pass and GotY Edition of the game) are sizeable chunks of content packed with missions, jokes, and a self contained story. “Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty” sees the Vault Hunters heading off to a dried-up vacation resort in order to race the titular Captain Scarlett to a buried treasure. “Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage” sees the Vault Hunters joining a soap opera/gladiatorial deathmatch at the behest of the hilarious Mr. Torgue (the figurehead of the Torgue weapons corporation who acts like a professional wrestler) in order to win fabulous prizes. “Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt” sees the Vault Hunters on safari with a prominent NPC from the main story, only to end up involved in a villainous plot to resurrect an incredible evil. “Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep” sees the Vault Hunters from the original game playing a game of ‘Bunkers & Badasses’ (like D&D, but with Vault Hunters as player classes) that reframes the entire plot of the core game within a fantasy world as the titular Tiny Tina works through her grieving process.

While all four of the expansion packs can be summed up in a single sentence each, they are surprisingly deep, with plenty of interwoven plot threads and ties back to the base game’s narrative. The rest of the DLC add-ons, however, feel like cheap cash grabs. These add-ons take the form of “The Raid on Digistruct Peak” and five so-called “Headhunter Packs.” Digistruct Peak is simply a short map that max-level players can run through over and over in order to unlock increasingly-broken difficulty levels (more on that later), while the Headhunter packs each feature two missions, three jokes, and one unlockable head customization for each character. Sure, the missions are okay and the jokes are funny, but when each of these packs can be completed in 45 minutes, it doesn’t really feel like money well-spent (and none of these mini-DLCs are included in the Season Pass or GotY Edition).

Gameplay
“Borderlands 2” is functionally identical to the original game. Characters have a health meter and a shield meter; shields recharge after a short delay while health requires a first-aid drop or regeneration perk to recover. Every weapon has an accuracy stat that affects the size of its crosshairs and a recoil stat that affects how much those crosshairs expand during sustained fire. Characters gain experience by killing enemies and completing missions, which grants increased levels. As characters gain levels, they unlock perk points that first unlock their unique Action Skill, then can be spent across three character-specific skill trees in order to gain a variety of interesting passive bonuses. Weapons and shields all have levels, and a character must be high-enough-level to equip any given piece of gear. As gear level increases, the numbers for weapon damage and shield capacity increase along an uneven scale, while gear rarity results in significantly better base stats across the board, following the typical Hack ‘n Slash and MMO rarity color scheme of white/green/blue/purple/orange.

While these mechanics worked reasonably well in the original game, in turning the dial to 11 in “Borderlands 2,” Gearbox intentionally broke the balance and turned the game into a horrendously tedious grind fest. In the original “Borderlands,” it was possible to find orange rarity gear in vending machines and it frequently dropped from random loot chests and enemies. In “Borderlands 2,” each orange weapon only drops from a specific boss enemy… randomly. If these drops were guaranteed, it would be a fantastic improvement, but instead the drop rate is something like 0.2%, which mandates tediously killing/reloading/killing/reloading ad nauseam to have a shot at getting some orange gear… that will last 5 levels before the scaling (read: BIGGAR NUMBARZ!) turn it into a pea shooter.

Why not just use purple gear, then, if orange is so hard to get? Well, that’s because purple and blue gear is just as rare as orange (only it can drop from all enemies instead of just bosses). Simply playing “Borderlands 2” as a normal player would, with no repetition or grinding, results in a shower of garbage white and green loot that is barely useable (as in weapons that are hideously inaccurate and weak, with no redeeming features). It seems to me that these insanely low loot drop rates (which are worse than any MMO I’ve played, which is insane since MMOs are essentially “Loot Grind: The Game”) are an attempt by Gearbox to get players invested in their extra-game nonsense: Specifically, Shift Codes. Shift Codes are alpha-numeric strings that Gearbox has been releasing via social media and conventions that grant a number of Golden Keys. These Golden Keys can then be used by players to open a perpetually-refilling Golden Chest in the game’s hub town. This Golden Chest ALWAYS contains purple rarity gear. If not for the ability to exploit the Hell out of the Golden Chest, I don’t think anyone in the MJ crew would have had decent equipment.

The fact that good gear is so hard to come by wouldn’t be a problem if the game was balanced around players using white and green garbage loot. However, the game is clearly balanced around players min-maxing, thus instead of min-maxing making the game significantly easier for the min-maxer, the game is simply average for that player and stupidly difficult for everyone else. The out-of-whack scaling and expectations of top-tier loadouts are particularly noticeable in the DLC packs, which are filled with optional, nearly-impossible ‘Raid’ style bosses that one-shot players constantly and can absorb every bullet ever made without flinching while players try to figure out their gimmicks. Even normal enemies turn into bullet sponges at higher levels, as their health scales into the stratosphere and all default enemies are replaced by Badass, Super Badass, or Ultimate Badass variants. Furthermore, it is obvious that Gearbox wants players to replay “Borderlands 2” over and over on increasingly unbalanced difficulty levels, as Normal (first playthrough) caps enemies and loot at level 30, True Vault Hunter Mode (second playthrough) caps enemies and loot at level 50, and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (third playthrough) caps enemies and loot at level 72 with the possibility of playing through Digistruct Peak to unlock up to 8 Overpower Levels that don’t grant perk points but simply bump all scaled numbers up another notch (which, of course, completely defeats the purpose of the only well-executed RPG element in the game, which is the passive bonuses provided by the skill trees).

Why do I say these difficulty levels are unbalanced? Well, compared to the scaling in the original “Borderlands,” the rate at which enemy health/shields/damage increase along with the rate at which player loot damage/capacity increases in significantly faster. And the higher the level, the larger the numerical jump each time, resulting in new characters using gear with damage/capacity in the double-digits while an Overpower 8 character would be using gear with damage/capacity in the MILLIONS. This is the same kind of ridiculous scaling that broke “Dungeon Defenders” on Nightmare Mode, which led the MJ crew to completely ignore Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode and the Overpower levels and be content with capping out in True Vault Hunter Mode.

Aside from the wildly unbalanced scaling and outrageously stingy loot drops, the only other major change in “Borderlands 2” over its predecessor is to overall weapon design mentality. Each of the different weapon manufacturers now has a specific gimmick. While some of these make sense, others don’t, and still others completely destroy the flavor of a particular brand. Returning brands are Dahl, Hyperion, Jakobs, Maliwan, Tediore, Torgue, and Vladov, with S&S replaced by Bandit (yes, bandits are now building their own guns…) and Atlas completely missing after the events surrounding the defeat of General Knoxx. Most weapons were relatively indistinguishable from each other in the first game, but that is definitely no longer the case. Dahl guns now have universal burst fire when scoped; Hyperion’s super-accurate guns (which I loved) have been ruined with the addition of auto stabilizers that make them ‘more accurate’ the more they are fired, but also give them humongous, ridiculous amounts of sway when scoped (it’s worse than trying to aim while drunk and riding a merry-go-round); Jakobs guns still don’t have elemental capacitors but now feature a universal semi-auto trigger that ‘fires as fast as you can pull the trigger;’ Maliwan is always elemental and essentially unchanged; Tediore guns are now 100% disposable, allowing players to chuck a spent gun and have it act as a weak grenade before having a fresh, fully-loaded replacement teleported into their hands; Torgue has taken over the Explosive element exclusively, but features extremely slow projectile velocity; and Vladov, while largely unchanged, has replaced Hyperion as the default ‘normal gun with good stats’ company. Bandit guns are fairly run of the mill as well, featuring large magazines and long reloads as their main gimmick. The fact that Marcus Kinkaid, the friendly neighborhood arms dealer of Pandora, no longer harps on these differences each time a player approaches a vending machine makes for a bit of trial and error to figure out which brands are the best fit for any given player.

Shields have also been changed, largely for the worse. While there are several new varieties of shield, including Adaptive shields that change elemental resistance to the last damage taken, Amp shields that consume a small amount of capacity in order to increase the damage of the player’s next shot, Nova shields that explode repeatedly while down, and Spike shields that deal backlash damage to melee attackers, the only good type of shield from the first game is gone. Healing shields were the only type to use in the original “Borderlands,” but getting any kind of health regen out of a shield in “Borderlands 2” requires insane amounts of grinding for the ONE orange-rarity shield with that feature or even more insane grinding of raid bosses on the highest difficulty to gain access to a special (pink rarity) version. Sure, every character (except Zer0) has health regen in their perk tree, but Gearbox should have made these new shields compelling enough that people would choose them over a health regenerating shield instead of filling the game with crap shields and taking away the good ones in order to force people to use the crap!

Overall
“Borderlands 2” is more “Borderlands” in every way, for better or worse. In exchange for more diverse and beautiful environments, unique-looking characters, and one of the best, funniest, and most cohesive stories ever to grace the FPS genre, we must sacrifice gameplay balance and loot drop rates upon the Altar of the Perpetual Grind. If Gearbox wasn’t so intent upon turning “Borderlands 2” into a social media advertising vector or appeasing MMO fans who think grinding and regrinding for the perfect set of gear every 5 (or less) character levels is the pinnacle of ‘fun,’ “Borderlands 2” could have been perfect. As it is, the tedious and ill-considered RPG mechanics get in the way of the game being a solid skill-based shooter.

Presentation: 4.5/5
Story:
Base Game: 5/5
Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty: 4.5/5
Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage: 5/5
Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt: 4.5/5
Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: 5/5
Digistruct Peak: 1/5
Headhunter Packs: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5