Borderlands 2 Review

I was introduced to the original Borderlands by a buddy of mine about a year before its release in 2009 and I immediately fell in love with the idea of a 4 player co-op game. After I picked up the game I spent countless hours with my family and friends traveling around Pandora, enjoying the humorous dialogue and killing anything that moved. Needless to say, when Borderlands 2 was announced I was as happy as a fat kid with a corn dog! It has become an obsession over the last few months and it was all I could do to avoid watching all the gameplay footage released by Gearbox. I wanted my first night with the game to be filled with surprises and it almost seemed like Gearbox wanted everyone to know everything about the new game before its release. I know there are people out there that enjoy a ton of prerelease info, but I enjoy the anticipation. It’s like Christmas, how fun is it Christmas morning if you already know everything you’re gonna get? I’ll step down off my soap box now, but you get my point.

Borderlands 2 has delivered a lot of what I was expecting in this new installment to the franchise. If you love RPG’s and games like Diablo, then you’ll love this game and all it has to offer. Since its release on Tuesday I've been able to play as all four of the new Vault Hunters. I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter who you choose to play as you will find that Gearbox has made them not only more rounded, but also much more bad***! (Ed.: though the game uses this language we keep it a family friendly blog.) I’d like to point out some of the differences I’ve noticed from the original title.

• NO MORE GUN PROFICIENCIES. 
You no longer become more proficient in a certain gun type by using them in combat. It appears as though this feature has not only been replaced by the "Badass Rank System" (Ed.: yes, that is what it's actually called in-game.), which I’ll talk about in a minute, but as skills built into each characters skill tree as well. All the Vault Hunters are also encouraged to use a variety of different guns, unlike the first game where each character had different skill sets that pertained to a certain weapon type. There is still about one skill per character that pertains to a certain weapon, but Zero seems to be the only one that is encourage to use a particular type of gun, that being the Sniper rifle.

• "BADASS" RANK SYSTEM
  Instead of the challenges awarding you experience for every tier you complete, you will now earn a B.A. rank, and as you move up in rank you unlock coins that you can redeem for small bonuses that apply across all of your characters. For each coin you redeem you get the choice of five to six different things that you can upgrade by a percentage, or fraction of a percentage. The choices range from Gun damage to Shield Recharge Delay. In fact any stat you can think of in the game has the possibility of being upgraded using this system. Quite brilliant if you ask me! (FYI, If you think this is “cheating” there is the ability to turn off these perk points.)

• AUTOMATIC MONEY/AMMO DROP RECOVERY
  If you played the first game, and you are anything like me, you didn’t bother to get out of your car to pick up every last money drop after you ran over a skag or bandit. Nor did you bother with picking up every last money drop throughout a bandit camp after a fight. Now you don’t have to worry about that, because they’ve added a feature that when you walk or drive over money/ammo drops from slain enemies you will automatically collect those resources!
  
• (News Flash! My Brother in law was playing around with the ammo and was watching his ammo cache while his wife was collecting and we figured out why it lets you pick up all of it, it's shared! Just like the cash you now share ammo gained for enemy drops.) Possible Glitch: This is a wonderful concept, and it works perfectly while playing a solo game, but I’ve noticed that while playing multiplayer on the Xbox 360 version that even when you’re ammo caches are full you will automatically collect every last ammo drop you walk over. This becomes frustrating when your buddy walks over the ammo you need and picks it up even though he didn’t need it. This same thing happens when collecting ammo from chests, you can visibly see that it’s got the full symbol but when you hold X to pick up what you need it collects everything. This makes sharing ammo chests more monotonous and time consuming. I hope they fix this little issue, because if this is how it’s supposed to work it’s going to make for some tough battles with low ammo.
• OTHER IMPROVEMENTS
• Customizable skins can be found and bought throughout the game, and skins can be changed at any time at New-U stations throughout Pandora. This is also where you can reset your skill points, making these stations ultimate overhaul destinations.
• New trade system to avoid that annoying player online that decides to steal all the loot you dropped for your buddy.
• Various quick menu overhauls including trash/favorite markers that can make selling unwanted guns and mods a quick and easy process.
• The addition of a special chest that allows you to transfer weapons from one of your characters to another is awesome. It’s not something you have at the very beginning but is revealed to you pretty early on.
• And much, much more!

This obviously isn't a comprehensive list, but these are the more dominant changes that I noticed in my latest sojourn to the planet Pandora.

The music selection for the new title does a really good job of setting the tone for every situation. I do miss Cage the Elephant, but you can't have everything, right? One of the greatest things about the Borderlands Series is how many times you can play through the campaign and still have an enjoyable time, and Borderlands 2 is no exception. With the four Vault Hunters, soon to be five with the upcoming addition of the Mechromancer via DLC, you can play through the game at least five times and you’ll have a unique and challenging experience that will keep you entertained for hours on end. I don’t want to go into too much detail about each of the Vault Hunters, because you deserve to discover their awesomeness all on your own … or you can find the information somewhere else, but if you want to watch a great video that will give you a perfect overview of the main skills of each Vault Hunter that highlights some of the new changes in Pandora, check this out!

I hope you enjoy the game as much as I do, and if you haven't picked it up yet, I recommend that you do so ASAP! Despite some minor flaws that can be easily fixed I give this game 5 out of 5 stars.

As always we would love your feedback! Which character do you like the most? Have you encountered any glitches? What's your favorite feature that they have added to Borderlands 2?

 Until next time, good gaming!