SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Combining fantastic loot and shoot gameplay with a truly wicked sense of humour, Borderlands 2 is a wild ride from start to finish, and one well worth experiencing.
Having passed on the Borderlands franchise until recently, I can’t claim to be an expert. However, having spent the past week and a half on my first journey across the wild landscapes of Pandora, you can consider me a convert. In fact, I’ve willingly joined the ranks of the faithful looking forward to the release of Borderlands 3 in a few months’ time. Where some games attempt to be sophisticated and arty, Borderlands 2 is pure, unadulterated entertainment. Its developers seem to have managed to shunt something funny, or something just plain fun, into every single second. That’s remarkably ambitious, and the final game is all the more extraordinary because they just about succeed in doing that. While there have been other looter-shooters since, none have quite managed to replicate and deliver on the extraordinary ambition of Borderlands 2.
Five years after the events of the original Borderlands, the untamed frontier planet of Pandora has fallen under the rule of the Hyperion Corporation and its crazed leader Handsome Jack. As a Vault Hunter, a heavily armed mercenary looking to get rich from robbing Pandora’s mysterious alien Vaults, you arrive planet-side following an invitation from Jack only to be betrayed and left for dead. Surviving thanks to the efforts of one particular maniacal robot, you must team up with your fellow Vault Hunters to stop Hyperion from opening a newly discovered Vault and seizing control of the planet.
The main story is well-paced, relying on a sharp script and a cast full to bursting with memorable characters. In fact, the story, main missions or side quests, only gets by thanks to extraordinary character work on the part of the writers and voice actors. Each cast member, whether it’s familiar faces from the first game such as Vault Hunters Lilith and Roland, or entirely new characters, has clever lines and quirky side-quests to offer. A particular favourite of mine is Tiny Tina, the whimsical and ever-so-slightly unhinged teenage explosives expert, brought to life by a fantastic performance from Ashly Burch. Even the game’s villain Handsome Jack, voiced by Dameon Clarke, is a delightfully savage character: unrepentant, undeniably evil and possessing no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but not without nuance and an odd kind of charm. This is how Borderlands 2 does so well. Even the most horrible or downright annoying characters are weirdly charming, and no matter what far-flung corner of Pandora you might be in, there’s always an NPC with a personality and a side quest fairly close by.
You can also be certain that something funny can and will happen at any time. Borderlands 2 has a truly wicked sense of humour, ranging from dry off-kilter jokes, to immature skits about people being blown to pieces after receiving “surprise” packages, and on occasion, even a kind of sick dark humour. I mean ‘immature’ in the best way. It is utterly hilarious almost all of the time, and the humour comes at you from every direction, whether it’s from spoken dialogue or environmental details, and even from your quest log. The writing is nothing short of brilliant, and Borderlands 2 is dead funny. It delights in the bizarre, the weird and the gross. Everything from the story to the game world and its many characters is an unspoken promise: no matter what it might be, you will find something about it to laugh about.
The game world itself offers a wide range of different biomes and environments all rendered in the franchise’s wacky cel-shaded style (now upscaled to a gorgeous dynamic 4K), and with them comes a variety of enemies, from bandits to hostile flora and fauna. You might be skirmishing with bandit trucks while driving a ramshackle truck armed with a sawblade-firing gun across the drifting sand dunes in one mission. In another, you’ll be wandering through the undergrowth of a sickly chemical swamp, blasting at oversized insects with incendiary rounds. The constant shift of environments and enemies is enough to keep things refreshing.
Speaking of refreshing: how does a potential 17.75 million randomly generated guns sound? While I’m still giving the developers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to specific numbers, there’s still more than enough to have you happily blasting at things for hours on end. The standard array of weapon types (submachine gun, sniper rifle, pistol and so on) aside, the game’s elemental damage adds a pleasing depth to combat. Hostile animals might be vulnerable to fire damage for example, while robots might be resistant to it while still being vulnerable to acid rounds. The game gives you plenty of freedom to decide what weapons you want to carry and use, and with a near-endless supply of loot: money, guns and stat-boosting items, it’s never too late to switch things up and try out something new. The gunplay is bombastic and loud, and almost deliriously violent.
The game’s class system also offers distinct classes, each with their own special abilities. Even within a class, you can choose from three different playstyles and thanks to the re-specialisation system, you have the chance to experiment with a seemingly infinite number of combinations and have fun with all of them. You can thrive in single player, or you can group up and strategise, and spec your character for co-op play. Single-player is fun, but co-op seems like the way Borderlands 2 is really meant to be played. Having even one online buddy adds a whole new dimension to an already excellent adventure. It’s a blast. The game even offers a four-person vehicle designed specially for your online adventures.
Borderlands 2 is also particularly generous. A lot can be said for the base game’s content, but The Handsome Collection bundles together all of the game’s DLC, creating a full package that’s bursting at the seams with dozens of hours of content. Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep tops the list, thanks to a willingness to use as many pop and nerd culture references as possible, and to invent something that’s truly wacky. Unfortunately, other DLCs aren’t as comprehensive, but when taken together as part of the whole game, they add more excellent content to sink your time into. You won’t want to leave Pandora. Ever.
That’s what a game arguably should be: a time-sink of pure fun. In recent years, the industry has prided itself on a willingness to get serious and tackle harder topics, to take gamers on adventures that are ever grittier and ever more controversial. Not to say that we shouldn’t play those games as well, because many are excellent in their own right, but let’s not forget that games can be fun too. I can safely say that this half of the Handsome Collection is a wonderful reminder of just that.
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