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45 of 50 people found the following review helpful.
1,000 Degrees Hotter Indeed
By Allison
At the risk of being ignored right off the bat, I must admit the first game never hooked me. The style and heart was all there, but some mechanics just felt a bit out of place and I felt like the game dragged on in the early portions and the interesting moments were few and far between. I'm happy to say that this game no longer suffers from that.From the intro that once again wonderfully sets the tone, the to sense of humor that is much more prevalent throughout the game, to the finer handling of some of the controls I am finding that this game exceeds its predecessor in all that ways that tell you the developers were truly trying to make a great game and not just jump aboard the money train with a quick sequel. They've even gone out of their way to provide additional settings that most other developers seem to leave out. The field of view slider was a great addition to me because a bad FOV will set my head spinning within thirty minutes, but I've been able to play this game for hours at a time without any issue.The environments are beautiful and often a lot more detailed than you would expect to be, and I never find myself looking around trying to distinguish one portion of the game from another. While there seems to be some recycling from the original game (unless the bandits have been redone and they're just dead too quick for me to tell!) there is also a lot of new things to be seen, and some of the characters they introduce had me grinning on a fairly regular basis. But then I'm a sucker for well-placed sarcasm.The game itself is pure fun. A lot of the earlier mechanics are the same, but the special abilities and some of the talents feel a little more well thought out this time around instead of gimmicky. One addition that I've yet to make up my mind on yet is the bonuses you can unlock using the tokens you receive for completing in game achievements such as killing 50/100/etc of a monster, using 1000 bullets, etc. It certainly makes getting those achievements more exciting because now there is a tangible reward to it that you can use to boost your damage, shields, recharge timer, and a few other things -- but I wonder if after you pile the stats on for a while it starts to make the game far too easy. These bonuses apply to all of your characters, not just the character you unlocked in on, but the good news is that there is a way to disable it if you find it's making the game too easy for your taste.Also, for those of you like me who lived through the complete frustration of getting co-op to work in the first game, opening ports, fighting with Gamespy, and then getting dropped at random, I was extremely excited to see the ability to use steam for this purpose. It makes getting your party together so much easier and I am so glad that they went this route. They seem to have learned from all of their mistakes and the result is a truly fantastic game. If you liked the first game, consider this a great expansion. If you just couldn't get into the first game like me, you might still want to poke around. You might be surprised.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
Guns, Guns, and a Plasma Sword: A Recipe for Awesome
By K. Foster
The return to Pandora has fulfilled the hope of the fans. Borderlands 2 is a fun and exciting installment to the franchise, as well as being an excellent FPS in its own right. In this review, I will primarily give first impressions for people trying to decide if it is worthwhile. I've played roughly 9 hours so far, spread across three characters (Axton, Salvador, and Zero) all of which have their Action Skill. As of now, I intend to revisit this review after I play through the initial story.The general mechanics of the previous game have stayed the same. The game has a heart of an FPS while wearing the garb of an RPG. The game play is the standard shoot and fight, much like every other FPS. Like every other FPS, standard gunfight tactics are given purpose by a story (a good one so far). The RPG elements add a variety that is lacking in most other FPS. Specifically, the collection of experience to unlock new skills and the ever changing inventory and weapon improvement add a new dimension to the otherwise familiar game design. There is little substantial difference to the general approach between Borderlands and Borderlands 2. Both have the same inventory slots, the same three-branching skill trees and the same randomly generated equipment. The new menu system is a nice touch. It is a little easier to use than the old one and it has some nice features that were absent previously. For example, it is far easier to recognize what items are equipped and to distinguish between guns in the inventory. I haven't noticed anything significantly different between the last incarnation's multiplayer and this one.The Characters seem well balanced and more varied than last time. While the general idea of skill specialization continues from the first, the new trees are more focused and will lead the players toward particular play-styles. In comparing Axton in Borderlands 2 to Roland from Borderlands, I noticed that Roland's skills had a focus, but easily could adopt a different play-style for the situation. Axton, on the other hand, feels like he is going to be very efficient at a particular play-style, but not as easy to "switch hit" for various contexts. That said, Axton has a lot more 'tricks' than Roland did as well as having the skills be a little bit better than Roland's corresponding skills. The other I noticed about the characters is how the class mechanics are sorted. While it seems like all the old archetypes from the old are in the new, they have different approaches that drastically change how they are played. Axton is, as suggested, as re-imagining of Roland, their roles are similar. The other three classes have a different approach however. It appears Zero has the old Phasewalk ability (although altered) and the melee focus of Brick. This makes Maya and Salvador of Borderlands 2 play differently from Lilith and Brick of Borderlands. Their abilities are similar in spirit, but not in play-style. Salvador has an extreme gun focus (as is appropriate for Gunzerkers), that keeps him further back and less exposed than Brick was. I haven't played Maya yet, but I have a feeling that something similar will happen with her. I point this out as my girlfriend finds Zero's mechanic very difficult to use compared to Mordecai from Borderlands, even though they both have the assassin/sniper archetype. Don't just assume that the same character aesthetics will result in the same play-style.Graphically, the game is even more beautiful than before. I've been to two locales, and already I noticed that they spent more time on the aesthetics of the environment than last time. The icy tundra environment and the dusty badlands are uniform and enticing at the same time. Landscape variation and objects create a more interesting area than they had in Borderlands. The environments are detailed, artistically arranged and stunning. I understand the story enters jungles at certain points and I am really looking forward to that. The detail of the characters, friend and enemy, are highly detailed. Every time I look through my scope or turn in a mission I notice new details. It has significantly higher detail than Borderlands and it makes for a much more immersive experience. The bold outlines are brought back to maintain that Borderlands style, but there are more subtle details added to make things new and interesting. I like comparing old items to the newly skinned/meshed ones and the improvements are noted.I have few complaints, but these are noticeable enough to warrant 4 rather than 5 stars (although I think 4.5 is more accurate) and so I'll mention them. The one that I notice the most is how resource heavy this game is. My computer isn't top of the line, but it runs Skyrim on full with no hitches. However, in certain firefight my frames-per-second dropped tremendously. While in single player, I don't care, but in multiplayer this causes problems as enemies don't slow down. Of course, these slow points where heavy in the particle effects, usually when someone is on fire, explosions are going off and electricity is arcing from enemy to enemy; so it doesn't happen often, but it happens. The other intensive resource intensive part is when in the menu; this really bugs me. I notice cursor lag and menu switching lag while in the menu system, particularly the equipment/inventory page. The gameplay lag is forgivable given when it happens, the menu lag is obnoxious and hopefully can be cleaned up with a patch.Overall, Borderland 2 is a great game. I highly recommend it to both people familiar with the franchise as well as people who are looking for something new. The design and feel of the game are well thought and implemented. Borderlands 2 should provide an enjoyable experience to everyone who plays it.
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
BL2 > BL1
By Kreeper
Well Imo..I really was looking forward to this game. Me and a friend were joking around getting amped up for it about 15 minutes before the unlock on STEAM and man were we amazed. We started out doing the story and the challenge with people in Coop makes it really fun. We had 4 friends in our game from the start and had a good time with no problems game side other then scrambling for ammo. Ammo shares when 1 person picks it up now. If you thought Claptrap was hellarious in the first game you'll have fun with this one.This game actually rocks. Rocks? More like it Kicksass. The game looks really good and runs really nice on my machine. Cranked the graphics up and no skips at all that I noticed. The weapons are really cool and fun. I was kind of worried about the Coop play but we never had trouble at all with it. Made it to the first town area before we threw the towel in last night and lets me say its bigger than any town in BL1. The place was really done well. Got to see some people from BL1 which was cool. Voice acting is really good to. We found some slot machines in the town to..wasted all of our cash but had a blast doing it.I didn't recieve my pre-order stuff last night but the Dev's said it was a bug. No big deal honestly. I was having so much fun playing the game with our errors or launching bugs that I wasn't worried about the pre-order items.my only gripe with it was the install. game unpacked fine but had to run a CNET or framework program and once it finally got done had to restart my machine. After the reboot it ran the program again. I finally just skipped it and went straight into the game with my friends. Also speaking of friends you can actually join on the main screen of the game which is really nice. You dont have to wait for a invite or anything.I've only played for about 4 to 5 hours and having a really good time with it. Anyways like I said before...If you enjoyed the first you will not be dissappointed. 5/5 from me.
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![Borderlands 2 [Online Game Code]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u0vb-kBGAYXwfThsv3cM0bFe_-1El5edD5R_Wc3bOpbzJkrt6Uicm6h2xGMlpml-a9jPoziyzOpa8euTUjYneMN5i9-uRTLDPBoc6kLCM8_lk-CEa9tnI5_ABrtoVLHQU=s0-d "Borderlands 2 [Online Game Code]")
