When Borderlands released three years ago, it raised expectations for what gamers should expect from co-op RPG shooters. Embracing a cel shaded art style and giving players the freedom to travel where they desire with tons of weapons to toy with, Borderlands helped define the “looter shooter” genre, easily earning a lot of praise, a lot of money and of course, a sequel.
With Borderlands 2, Gearbox Software aims to maintain what fans loved from the original and improve upon its faults. Have they succeeded? Read on to find out!
Borderlands was a big game. Borderlands 2 is even bigger. Much bigger. While it’s not designed as an open-world sandbox, the world of Pandora this time around contains a larger variety of open environments that players can traverse to via fast-travel stations or paths on the borders of each map. Within the environments themselves, most areas contain vehicle stations where players can digitally spawn one of two rides that can carry two or more players. They aren’t that much different and there’s a missed opportunity there, especially considering some of the enemy units in the game (i.e. the flying Buzzards).
Like the first game, one of the main selling points of Borderlands 2 is the four-player cooperative gameplay it offers, and again like its predecessor, there are four unique playable characters to choose from. Each character has a unique character-defining ability, from placing a gun turret to dual-wielding any pair of weapons, and each comes with three skill trees for players to progress towards. The characters from the first game are replaced by new faces Axton, Maya, Salvador and Zer0 – who can all be customized with unlockable skins – but the originals all play important roles in the game’s story, often serving as quest givers.
Not only is Borderlands 2 bigger, but its campaign is much longer, clocking in at just under 60 hours for players who pursue most of the side quests. In that respect, the game’s narrative is divided into chapters, each with one main story-based quest. Within each chapter there are plenty of side-quests to accomplish, and this part of the game is still lacking. Many of those 60 hours can be justifiably removed as many of the side quests involve fetching and retrieving items or killing a certain amount of this and that. If the game didn’t often require so much back-and-forth travelling, many of the quests wouldn’t feel like chores or obstacles. This issue is made worse mid-game when the story drags a bit and where players can pile on side-quests only to realize that after completing a few, the others don’t offer rewards or amounts of experience worth working towards.
Borderlands 2 holds true to its looter shooter origins, continuously and consistently rewarding players with loot piles after loot drops after loot piles – most of which scales as the players do. You’ll quickly find that most of it isn’t worth picking up due to its low value or obsolete stats though. This acquired junk instead will be used to trade-in for cash, but Borderlands 2 doesn’t do much to give players an incentive to save up. With money, players can go to stores and vending machines, only to find items not as good as what they already have after a few hours of gameplay, or they can blow it on the slot machines. The slots are the game’s way of giving players a fun chance at earning more valuable loot, the most valuable of which are the super-duper-rare orange items and Eridium, the latter of which can be used on the Black Market to buy permanent player inventory upgrades (i.e. more ammo storage or inventory space).
Eridium is the plot-driving element (literally) of Borderlands 2. The story of the original game followed four Vault Hunters searching for a legendary vault rumored to be full of alien technology with the help of the mysterious Guardian Angel and the hilarious Claptrap robot – only to find something much, much worse, before sealing said vault for another two centuries. The sequel picks up five years later where the events of the first game’s vault battle have littered Pandora with the valuable Eridium mineral. Evil Handsome Jack is harvesting it and as a result, has exponentially expanded his power, allowing his Hyperion organization to practically takeover Pandora. He aims to use the key that opened the original vault to open a second, equally as problematic vault, and it’s up to the Vault Hunters, new and old, to put an end to Jack’s reign of terror.
The story is serviceable and fans who enjoyed the lore behind the first game will be satisfied with how it evolves in the sequel. In terms of gameplay however, the story quickly is pushed aside in favor of open-environment gunfights against hundreds, if not, thousands of bandits, creatures, mini-bosses and a variety of whacky characters. It’s a very simple formula, held higher thanks to creative and entertaining characters, both good and bad.
Borderlands 2 may feel extremely similar but it does make improvements to weapons, offering smoother gameplay, improved AI on enemies and far more varied environments and creatures. That being said, the environments - despite being presented in a wider range of aesthetics – are still mostly dull and empty, serving only to offer players interesting set piece battles, loot, and loads of fun Easter Eggs including pop culture references and shout-outs to other games (see: Minecraft mine).
As an obviously console-focused game, the inventory menus on the PC are not well designed for the mouse or screen resolution in mind. There are a few graphic glitches in organizing inventory, as there are with texture pop-in and obstacle clipping, but for the most part, Borderlands 2 is a cleanly designed followup. If you loved your time in Pandora the first time around, you’ll absolutely love Borderlands 2. It’s more of the same with enough changes to offer something new and special. We recommend you play with friends, as that much time alone in Pandora may not be as rewarding (we’re not just talking the obvious social implications but the game itself) since it raises the challenge level and quality of loot depending on how many players are partied up.
The game also features one of the coolest intros of any game in recent years, so that’s an easy hook if you’re unsure and want to try it out. And you should. It’s a loot chest worth of fun.
Borderlands 2 is available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Game Rant played the PC version for this review.
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Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_keyes.
Our Rating:
4 out of 5
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This is only almost a month late, which is typical of this site. Most people are either almost done with the game, or are focused on getting all legendary loot from the three big end-game bosses.
truth. love game rant but this review is way too late
Yeap, it is and we’ll explain why.
The copy of the game 2K Games sent did not arrive. We pre-ordered on Steam anyway, played it for just over a week until we beat the game entirely and at that point began working on the review. We’re almost two weeks in now and other reviews and features took priority since Borderlands 2 reviews were less of a hot topic that late.
Since we caught up (check out the reviews section for all the additions) we had the option to never put it up or put it up. We still want our opinions on games out there so we did and here it is. We don’t put up reviews until the game is complete (that’s another thing a lot of other sites don’t do right, hence our Mass Effect 3 review being one of the only ones to call out the ending in that first week).
We’re not a corporate-backed mega publisher so we don’t get early access to most products. A game that takes 60 hours to beat and a few hours to review therefore, will usually be little late.
By comparison, we had Skyrim almost three weeks early because, like Borderlands 2, it’s a very long game. That one was up day one, just like Dishonored and XCOM.
So, “UnbuildTheGame” we just put up three pretty important reviews for launch day and here you are saying it’s typical for us to be late on a game we were told we’d get but didn’t. Thanks for the comment, but we’re still going to put up reviews as opposed to not putting them up.
Come back later this week to complain about a late F1 2012 review. You don’t have to read it though.
I wasn’t saying it was typical for the site to give late reviews, necessarily, but late news in general. Several times, I have seen big news days and weeks earlier on other sites before I see that same news here. Sometimes, big news will come in and it won’t be reported at all, but that’s much more excusable and understandable as there can be a lot of things going on at once, but if you haven’t put out an article about news that is days/weeks old, almost, if not, everyone who reads this site will already know about it.
Can you send in a few examples news that is weeks old this so I can look? If you use the contact form, I can send you an email. I’ve never seen a news item that’s weeks old get written up as news.
I’ve seen older uncovered news mentioned with new news, but we don’t rehash news here. We editorialize it. That’s why our posts are 4-500 words where most sites are around 100.
I know I included a Halo 4 trailer we hadn’t covered alongside a brand new one and he….was kind enough to bring it to my attention.
I don’t know if that qualifies as us giving “typically late news in general.” But no, never weeks.
Late reviews are, indeed, common on GR. It’s no secret. I remember that Skullgirls wasn’t reviewed until a month after it came out. But I question your logic, Rob. You could’ve had the review up a week ago, according to you, but other “other reviews and features took priority since Borderlands 2 reviews were less of a hot topic that late.” Isn’t that why GR has about 10 writers? If not, why do you have 10 writers? You should be able to beat a game and immediately review it. After all, if you wait a week after you beat a game to review it, it’s not fresh in your mind anymore.
Day-old news is also very common in GR. In fact, almost every GR article is day-old news. The news is first published on other sites, such as Kotaku and IGN. Then GR gets around to it later in the day or the next day, or even a few days later; not weeks later, however. News that doesn’t get covered on GR that later gets mentioned in a GR article is also pretty common. Can you blame them for that? I don’t really know.
@Matt,
If only life were as easy as you writing down your expectations, it would be so much more baller!
“You should be able to beat a game and immediately review it”
Absolutely, I would expect the same of a full-time game reviewer. I just don’t know any personally.
By the way, who said I didn’t play Borderlands 2 at all in that week? I did, with friends, to try co-op. That’s part of the review process.
Matt, we are NOT a corporate owned publication. We don’t even have an office. We did NOT get this game early. It’s a BIG game. If it were possible to get this up earlier, we would have. There’s no argument to be had.
To your question about 10 writers. We have 10 writers who contribute a few articles each per week. We do that because without them, we wouldn’t have content. That’s the simple reason why there are 10.
Still seems a little wack.
Even if the news is weeks old or just a few minutes old. There are a lot of people that im sure rely on this site for their gaming news. I really only use this site and Screenrant for my game and movie news. I always come here first because like Rob said, they aren’t a big corporate site. And that is exactly what I love about them. They seem more human here than other places, and i applaud them for that and keeps me coming back. So all I have to say to Rob and everone else is keep up the good work.
Agreed! Most sites tend to have a lousy/lazy writing staff but every article posted here is thoughtful and interesting to read no matter how small or big the news story. I like to think of other sites as fast food news and this site(including Screenrant) as the full course meal of news! The quality is exquisite!
Rabbit93, boogoo,
Thank you both. That’s exactly why we do what we do!
this game should be a 5 star. its the best game this year.
I agree. Possibly one of the best games of the last ten years. Definitely deserves nothing less than 5/5.
could be.
To the commenters above, keep in mind that Borderlands 2 is a very large game, and that most (if not all) writers on GameRant and ScreenRant have jobs and other things to do outside of writing for the site.
Now having played Borderlands 2 since its release date, my only (current) complaint I haven’t been able to find rare weapons as frequently as I was able to in the first game. Even fighting the big bosses in the game (i.e. The Warrior, Terramorphous), they don’t drop as much rare loot as I had expected. Then again, I may have just spoiled myself by killing Crawmerax so many times in the first game.
BL2 should be a 5 star! Lol. At the least 4.5 but its all good, cooh review.
No way, lol.
This game has a few issues and if this is considered a 10/10, what would a Borderlands game be if it were fully open-world, loaded with only quests that were unique and story-driven, with loot that was more unique, and with progression that was more rewarding.
I think that sums it up very well, Rob. I would like more unique loot and I’m surprised I haven’t seen an alien weapon yet if there are any. I have played nearly 80 hours and have found less than 5 orange items is another complaint. I’d like more rewards other than skins!
the alien weps have been changed ot ‘e-tech’ (eridian tech), which is eridian crystals (or something like that) merged with gun manufacturers weps, one of the 1st missions for zed has you using a etech bandit LMG to kill 25 bandits.
orange loot from what i’ve gathered can be gained through certain enemies instead of being found (not that they cant), for instance the hellfire from BL1 makes a return as a monster specific drop in one of the ice area (the monster is a fire spiderrant). it’s just a matter of either personally going out looking for rare stuff via unique monsters (which can take hours of reloading to get the monster to respawn in hopes of getting a drop (if any)) or going on the gearbox forums and looking for a weapon thread (which should list the max level of a unique item and where to get it).
way harder and tedious then the original, plus the large variety in guns makes finding a new gun all the more time consuming and annoying >:(
the fact that there are barely any xp or weapon farming areas in the game makes it all the more annoying and tedious b/c you almost always get raped in a fire fight with enemies due to the increased amount of enemies on screen at one time and the smarter AI (which is good and bad).
i hope things change when i get more into the game (just saved roland form the prison) b/c at this stage i barely have any motivation to play the game seriously.
i would give it a 4/5 simply b/c the massive change in guns and enemies as well as tedious/boring missions ruins a lot of the fun the 1st game brought to us.
Saving Roland was a bit boring part. But it does get way better. Even the side quests get better.
Keep playing. The story becomes amazing towards the end. Yeah, you’re kind of at a boring part, but after about chapter 7 or 8, things get interesting really fast. Also, in the second half of the game, about 90% of the side missions pertain to the story missions. For example, there is one mission that has you finding ECHO logs about Jack’s past (and you learn a lot of surprising things about him from it), and another that shows how Hyperion first reacted to the spread of Eridium and the measures they went to to mine it.
how many chapters are there in total and do the fetch quests get less tedious or more or less the same as they are now ?
Borderlands 2 sucked Monkey ass.It always tried to be funny and it was bland and repetitive and WAY too easy.The only thing good I can say is that it was fun for about an hour and the graphics are unique.
Too easy? Are we playing the same game? Or are you just too “pro” for this game? Repetitive? There are literally hundreds of different enemies, and you fight each of them differently. Bland? It’s a wasteland, what do you want from it? Grass fields and rainbows? Well I’ll have you know that there is, in fact, a double rainbow in the game.
By bland I think he means the environments aren’t detailed. There are very few unique assets and objects on the environments itself, meaning there’s little exploration to be had vs. other open-environment titles.
I died a few times but soloing the game wasn’t that much of a challenge for me either. I never died in any of the boss fights. A lot of the enemies are re-skinned or re-sized variants of other monsters so I understand this as well.
Great review! I agree this isn’t a five star game. It can be a very grinding and unrewarding experience at times. Most of your hard earned level up points go towards unnoticeable upgrades and really takes a while getting to the good stuff in the skill trees. And the game encourages you to loot the hell out of everything but it just isn’t enjoyable when 90% of everything you find is weaker equipment. It’s still a great game though, the writing is hilarious and a blast to play in coop. I just can’t play it for hours and hours at a time without it feeling starting to grind a bit.
I would like to applaud and congratulate the amazing writers here at GR!! you guys do an exceptional job in thoughtfully reviewing games and related material, and I’d like you to know that it is very well appreciated!
I get home from school (HS) at around 7 or 8, and the first site that I visit is Game Rant, I am usually on it way past midnight, when there is school the next day!
I think that if you guys are able to have that impact in someone, then you must be doing something Extremely Great!
Please Keep it Up!!
P.S. I apologize for those of us who are not as appreciative of your time and hard efforts, who do not understand the difficult writing and editing process that goes into your reviews!
THANK YOU!