Borderlands 2 Review

"Back to Pandora!"

Campaign

Once again you start off with an epic cutscene that sets the perfect feel for the rest of the game that will take many of your hours to conquer. Keeping the same feel you begin collecting your basic HUD features, grabbing loot for the first time and gaining you skill ability. The game is heavily focused on you and better your friends doing many various quests that span tons of areas across Pandora. I mean the more questing the better, right! You of course will get that great feeling when grabbing a new weapon for the first time, oh did I forget to mention that they are randomly generated making there gazillions of guns to sort, throw and use whenever you please. From there we go into the completely new overhaul that the menus have been given. You have your area map, the basic quests section and then the new intense tree to give your chosen characters added bonuses with one point given a level to make them even further more of a badass. Next up is your inventory which has slots for all sorts of goodies, from tons of guns to class mods, differing shields, grenade mods for extra juicy explosions and Relic item. All these have a direct influence for your character and finally there is armor customizing options through looting. On top of all this there are badass points, yes points that make everything even more badass, which are just extra points you pick towards the various sections and are unlocked through completing separate in game challenges. Throughout your playthrough there will be a constant shuffling required for maintaining the constant streaming loot that only gets better and better. The world itself is large and much better this time around featuring many differing environments from snow, to Eridium mines and classic borderland areas. Within these massive lands are tons and tons of quests, mob of enemies, finally little extra surprises like Easter Eggs! There are many characters to meet in an awesome developing main story quest aided not only with your new vault cast, but many returnees also. I definitely suggest getting as full of an experience as possible as not only will everything be better, quests will also be ran through much faster. The main storyline itself will take tons of hours, don’t worry about a quick run, that isn’t available here. Of course even after finishing, you can go a second time with harder enemies, go back for quests and play around with friends. This never gets boring with the enemies that there seems to be available in large amounts and varieties. Mixed in is also the occasional boss battle fixed with a special hilarious tagline to some amount. Bringing me onto a complaint about this time around there seems to be droves of enemies clustered into areas and if bosses will royally kick your ass if you don’t have the level or weapons. Still it’s all the more rewarding.

Multiplayer

Everything in Pandora can be done alone, or even the better with three of your friends. Also a massive bonus is that when there are more people the loot becomes even better. The whole game itself just feels right when you're in a group questing. Loot is for the most part shared, though sometimes, as for say guns and mods it is a frenzy. From there you could duel for items if you really want the bling your friend stole from you.

Gameplay

Everything looks a lot more higher quality in style, though it does retain the cartoony feel from the last game. There are more weapons, characters, quests, vehicles, enemies, basically everything is there is a ton more of! The actual feeling of the game is very sensitive mixed with a basic shooter control scheme added with some abilities. This can all be customized though for however you feel it should be. Each of the classes present all have their own little take on the normal gameplay with the assassin Zero being a favorite, they each bring a little something different to the field and should be managed accordingly when playing.

The Conclusion

Borderlands 2 is fantastic. Straight up it takes everything from the original and just adds to it in large amounts. There’s more of everything, even, I know, more Wub Wub. Follow a Claptrap, grab some friends, return to the beautiful new Pandora and quest to your hearts content. Handsome Jack is also a dick, so you might want to kill him eventually, just saying.

Borderlands 2 for Xbox 360

Rating Overall: 9.5