SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Even though it ultimately feels more like an expansion than a full game, Pre-Sequel adds a few clever twists to the franchise’s signature mix of action and humour.
If Gearbox’s Borderlands franchise was a group of siblings, then Pre-Sequel is the quirky half-sister from Australia. While she certainly stands out thanks to a few oddball personality traits, the family resemblance is still obvious. This is Pre-Sequel’s greatest strength; that it successfully replicates the franchise’s signature character work, humour and action while also daring to test out a few of its own inventions. Paradoxically, that might also be this game’s greatest weakness: it offers more of the Borderlands you love but doesn’t necessarily offer better. Nor does it offer a substantial revamp, meaning that players of Pre-Sequel are essentially treated to an expansion pack masquerading as a full game.
In the aftermath of the opening of the Vault on Pandora in the first Borderlands game, Jack, an employee of the Hyperion Corporation hires four Vault Hunters to help him uncover a second Vault located on Pandora’s moon Elpis. When Hyperion’s space station is raided and taken over by a mysterious military faction known as the Lost Legion, Jack must lead his Vault Hunter team to retake the station and secure the contents of the Vault for Hyperion.
Players of Borderlands 2 knew Handsome Jack as a mad, twisted power-hungry villain. Pre-Sequel charts his rise to power, providing a compelling character study of Jack that spares no detail. Where previous games have very much focused on their respective Vault Hunters, this game is very much Jack’s. Dameon Clarke knocks it out of the park once again, giving life to a story that is in some ways more philosophical than previous games. There’s a great focus on Jack and his hero’s journey, and the corrupting influence of ego and the environment of the Borderlands universe on that. Is it possible, the game asks, for a true hero to exist in that universe without falling the same way as Jack?
It helps that our Vault Hunters also feel like they exist in the grey. Pre-Sequel’s characters (okay, apart from Claptrap) are morally ambiguous mercenaries, willing to get dirty hands in exchange for cold hard cash. They’re fun to play, and robust skill trees give you plenty of options to customise your playstyle. The excellent character work of Borderlands 2 is present here; our characters manage to carve themselves an interesting spot in this universe. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for our villains who, like the worst villains, are awfully one-note and non-threatening. They’re something of a disappointment in a cast of characters that are well-written and quirky. The game’s developers also have infused the Borderlands universe with their own twist: Australian accents, Australian slang and Australian humour. It helps Pre-Sequel and its planet Elpis distinguish itself from the other games and Pandora, combining the franchise’s signature wacky humour with a welcome twist, jokes about cricket and references to Steve Irwin included.
Gameplay-wise, Pre-Sequel offers a few extra mechanics, some of which don’t work particularly well. While you can now find cryo weapons, which replace Borderlands 2’s slag damage guns, they tend not to offer much of a tactical advantage, and on top of that, they just don’t feel that fun to use. The addition of laser guns is neat, especially given the game’s frontier-town-in-space vibe. Despite the new Grinder, which allows you to free up inventory space by grinding unwanted items into new weapons and shields, the game’s weapon variety feels oddly limited. The lower gravity and oxygen supply mechanics are good fun however. Elpis has lower gravity than Pandora, allowing you to bound across the moon’s surface and using part of your oxygen supply, you can double jump into the air and shoot enemies hiding behind cover. It adds a neat new dimension to combat and the change makes the game feel just a little bit fresher. Being able to ground-slam into enemies superhero style and pancake them doesn’t hurt either.
Speaking of changes being made, Pre-Sequel has new problems with structure. Overall, there are fewer main story missions than in Borderlands 2, but Pre-Sequel’s feel much longer and they can sometimes feel like a bit of a drag. You wind up having to complete a whole load of menial tasks: walking around, flipping lots of switches and clearing out enemies before progressing. And as good as the Jack-centric story is, the pacing doesn’t feel quite right. Coupled with confusing level design that has you wandering around looking for the exit, and random spikes in difficulty, including an early boss that took us multiple attempts to crack, and you get an experience that isn’t always so great.
So, space isn’t quite the final frontier. However, fans who’ve already had a run-in with Handsome Jack will find this a worthy addition to the Borderlands franchise. It might feel more like an expansion pack than a full game thanks to a number of problems, some of which it inherited from Borderlands 2, and others which are all its own. Still, there’s plenty of Borderlands fun to be had here, and if you look at it from that perspective, it still makes for a wacky loot-filled expansion of the universe all on its own.
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