..Borderlands 2..

HANDS-ON PREVIEW | ? Comments |

Today we got our hands on Borderlands 2 at the 2K Games booth at E3. For our demoing pleasure, we were dropped into a co-op match. Right away we had to fight our way past onslaughts of robots with a variety of amazingly unique guns, across a high-tech city. So how did it all play out? Read on!

First, Borderlands 2 uses the same great cel-shaded look of the original Borderlands. The graphics are smooth, bright and crisp, and the overall design fits the attitude of the Borderlands  series perfectly. The game is truly about character and style. Whether it’s in the form of actual characters (like the robot that guided us through our mission) or the guns themselves, Borderlands 2 has plenty of both. There’s a good amount of subtle humor too, which is what you’d expect to see in a sequel to Borderlands.

Like its predecessor, Borderlands 2 still offers gamers the same fast paced, FPSing, along with the ability to gain experience and level up. It also gives gamers a variety of unique guns that they won’t find other FPS games. I had tons of fun throwing acid weapons at enemy combat engineers and blowing up huge impressive looking robots with grenades and rocket launchers. 

For this particular play through we were given additional points to spend to beef up our characters a bit and play with their skill trees. There were plenty of neat and useful skills to achieve, and much like the original Borderlands, there are plenty of RPG aspects to keep things interesting. Again, there are more guns than you can shake a stick at here, and that’s where Borderlands 2 really shines. In fact, there was so much emphasis on gun choice and variety; sometimes I forgot there was an actual mission I should have been accomplishing (rather than just going around the map killing everything I saw). Overall, the enemies seemed a bit richer and the AI a bit deeper than the first Borderlands. Enemies would do things I didn’t expect, and I would often have to reevaluate my run and gun tactics. With a variety of character classes, from stealth to those made for brute frontal force attacking, Borderlands 2 offers an amazing variety of gameplay for gamers of all types.  

We were given an objective in our game, but the map offered plenty of places to go and explore, so it wasn’t until I realized I had been caught up in the game for almost 30 minutes that I should probably wrap it up and check out my goal. At the end of the mission we were dealing with protecting a robot while dozens of enemies attacked. Spamming grenades and acid were my main tactics, but I have to say, it was a blast. I want more time behind the controller of Borderlands 2 to really experience all the class differences, skill upgrades, and weapons, because there is plenty of content here to explore, and just not enough time to see it all in one mission playthrough. To that I say, bring it on!

Rando Evans   Followtinydinosaurs Three things describe Rando: Good beer, good food, and video games. On occasion, Rando flies a zeppelin through time seeking power crystals.

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