It borders on facile to say that Borderlands 2 is
Borderlandsier than the original Borderlands, but there’s a certain nuance
concealed within that tautology that justifies its place here. The first Borderlands was a game about
spectacle: the spectacle of giant gunfights, loot, shiny funny guns and special
powers that blow shit up. That
spectacle, for the most part, was spread out through a series of gray, brown
and tan maps consisting of deserts, garbage dumps and one time a garbage dump
in a desert! There was some snow late
game, and the expansions had a few interesting settings, but for the most part
the world of the first Borderlands game was painted with a very monochromatic
pallet. Even the characters were, in a
sense, of the same cloth: there was very little personality between them, spare
the weapons you were told to use for certain kinds of characters. Even that served more to limit the characters
you engaged with, rather than expand or develop them – when the game was over I
couldn’t tell you a thing about Mordecai’s backstory or why Lilith was a
siren. Roland had a shadowy past. That was the extent of character development.
Enter Borderlands 2.
The gameplay is more or less unchanged. You shoot shit and grab loot. But every other aspect of the game explodes
with personality. The loot is colorful,
handy, worthwhile and fun. There’s
something distinct about each and every piece of gear, even if it isn’t readily
apparent when you pick first pick it up.
The scope of the equipment, its functions, its constant pressing
feedback loop, it’s all ramped up in a way that’s difficult to define. But I’ll try.
In the original Borderlands, most guns worked more or less
the way every other gun worked. There
was a uniformity to how weapons fired, looked and felt. There was variance within it, sure. Guns acted like guns – they shot bullets,
they used sights that were pretty recognizable, and they did damage to targets
when those bullets hit.
Borderlands 2 violates that most fundamental formula. Guns don’t act predictably, and there’s no
rhyme or reason to how or why they might act the way they do. That SMG that does electric and slag damage
might also constantly inflict slag damage on you. The curse of that cursed gun? Who knows what the fuck that actually is
until you use it. That assault rifle you
found in the dirt? Turns out it fires a
bunch of acid mortars. Projectiles with
insane velocities, guns that shoot pixels that do delayed damage to enemies,
guns that blow up when they’re reloaded or have knives slapped on the front of
them. It’s all there, and it’s all
madness, and I’m still exploring just what all of the unique weapons that I’ve
encountered in Borderlands do. And that’s
just the guns.
The personality overflows from every element of the
game. Where the first Borderlands ran
you through a series of drab landscapes, Borderlands 2 opens into a snowy
landscape mixed with wrought iron and offal scattered across the
landscape. Within twenty minutes you’re
fighting enemies inside of a giant metal dragon. The stakes constantly increase. Shit gets crazy. Insane things happen. The game world is changed by your actions and
as you fight your way through droves of enemies with distinct behavior and
snazzy outfits, it just gets crazier.
Stakes consistently rise, landscapes shift, and the game’s pallet is
forever blossoming. Gone is the series
of endless deserts and junkyards, though you do spend time in a desert and a
junkyard and a junkyard in a desert. These
set pieces, however, are broken up by lush verdant landscapes, ice-plains,
mountainous ruins and futuristic cityscapes.
There’s never a moment where I felt like rolling my eyes as I looked at
a landscape for the umpteenth time. There
was always something interesting to experience, something new to engage with or
enjoy.
And characters! A mix
of recording devices doling out the history of various characters, paired with
the best kind of fan service imaginable manages to make the world of Pandora,
previously as generic as a world could be, into something…fun. It’s a place with a heart and soul all its
own, a place filled with characters who are actually interesting. There are other groups of adventurers, NPCs
that help you out, and a constant barrage of information, some of which is
hilariously self-referential. There’s a
lot of sloppy story stuff, but whatever.
This isn’t an arthouse movie, somewhere I’ve come to engage with an
interesting and thought provoking storyline.
This is video games a la Michael Bay.
This is about spectacle, bombast and sheer overriding fun saturating
every aspect of gameplay. This is about
making shit as awesome as possible and then celebrating that. It’s a game where you get an achievement for
high fiving a robot.
It’s not perfect, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s fun, and that’s enough. Borderlands 2 improves on the first
Borderlands in every way, and it’s clear that Gearbox understood exactly what made
their game work previously. A stripped
down core with lots of bells and whistles guides the entire thing, and the
nuance of it all, the real energy of the game, emerges in how those bells and
whistles violate that core game and alter it in interesting ways. It’s a clickfest the same way that Diablo is
a clickfest, but unlike Diablo there’s no aspiration to be anything more than a
rollicking good time in Borderlands 2.
Everything is over the top, fun and frenetic. If I’m pausing to resolve some sort of issue
or strategize to get through a particularly hard fight, the game’s kind of
failed me.
Borderlands 2 runs on bombast and swagger, internet
references and jokes for and about its core audience. It’s a loot fest with charm, and it doesn’t
need to be more. It’s a game with a
currency called “badass points,” for fuck’s sake. Enough said.
More on its problematic story some other time.
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