Blog Quest: Critic-al Hit! Borderlands 2

            Hello internet creatures, long time no text. Today I shall be tackling the task of judging and degrading a game. I’ll be cutting it into bite sized chunks for your reading pleasure, and hope to get across why I thought this title fell a bit flat.
            I was super excited for this game after playing the guns-fest that was the first one. I spent hours upon hours shooting through Pandora, completing every little quest there was to offer. It was the first game in a long time I got every single achievement in, including all the DLC. The humor and the graphics was just my cup of tea, and the RPG aspects just rubbed me in all the right places. So when I caught word of a “2”, I was excited.
            I know it’s been just over a year upon its release, but better late than never and this is pre-DLC; I shed my critic on Borderlands 2.

Players

            So for the first chunk, let’s talk about the players. There are four player characters/classes you can select from. You can play as Salvador the Gunzerker, Maya the Siren, Axton the Commando, or Zer0 the Assassin. They took this page straight from the prequel, and made the classes affixed with the characters. In essence, instead of picking the Siren class and going about the story as a faceless busty chick, you’re going around as Maya, an escaped religious fear prop, trying to come to terms with what it means to be a Siren. (There is of course a unique backstory for each of the four, but I pictured the breast- I mean, best one)
            Having a backstory on your character is certainly a cool way to give some lore into the game. Though I tolerated being pre-written characters in the first game, this broke some immersion for me. I wanted to make my own character and imprint myself as a Siren this time around.  Though I’m aware we would miss out on finding my lost journal entries scattered around the landscape, but do I really care? Would removing this backstory, or even moving this backstory onto someone who wasn’t my character, really change how this game feels as a whole? No.
            Though I can see why they’re adding more characters into their Borderlands roaster, which I’ll get to in my next chunk.

Objectives

            This game handles objects in the most classic RPG way in the book. You’re introduced with Quest A, which when you complete leads to Quest B. Repeat n times until end. There is Quest A.a as side quests based around the main quest area that you can and should do for the experience, but there aren’t any fancy branched paths or choices. Or if there is choice, it’s more of an illusion of choice. The plot of this one is trying to stop the antagonist handsome jack, with the help of the protagonists from the first Borderlands.
            However if the reason why I can’t make my own character is so that they have fodder for sequels; I’m not sure I like that too much.
            Besides the campaign that I so elegantly explain, there is what I perceive to be the fun part- and that is leveling. This I feel is the main objective for you as the player as you crave the next ding to max out your skill tree.
            Another objective is getting these “Badass points” that you can spend as a simple number boost to your stats. I feel that alone these would be a pretty weak reward. However as it is something you gain from doing remedial tasks throughout the game world; it’s a nice side bonus.

Procedures

             In the game the way the player moves and acts remain constant. Once you pick up on how to move around, shoot a gun, and utilize your skill- you generally know how to move around the world. The only additional mechanics you may need to learn how to use is any skills you pick up via your skill tree. Though small, a lot of them change the way your class plays a lot.

Rules

            There are a few simple rules in this game that prevent the player from completing things before certain gates. One of the big ones is the inability to use items until you reach the level to do so, as in basic RPG fashion.  

Resource
            I was determining how detailed I wanted to get into the resources of this game; however I think I’ve taken it down to three:

• Loot: This consists of Weapons, class mods, shields, grenade mods, relics, experience, and money. All of this stuff you get from killing or completing. This resource is bountiful and you gain from progression in the game.
• Health: now I don’t just mean health, but in this regards I’m also referring to your shield level. This gets taken away from you by damage and you should probably avoid this unless you want to spend a trip to the reconstruction machine.
• Skill Points: This you get from leveling and only have a set limit amount of how many you can acquire. You spend these in your skill tree to unlock new flashy ways to kill things.

Conflict
             The conflict in this without spoiling anything is pretty funny. It gave me some ouu's and aww's, but there is only so much claptrap i can take.

Final Thoughts
            My final thoughts of this game is pretty blarg. To be completely honest i put down the game before finishing and i have yet felt the need to pick it back up. I feel it is the same game with different paint and some added leather seats. Perfect if you haven't played the first one, but if you have - like i have - this game will feel like you're going back into it with whole new DLC.
            Though fun, it hardly makes me want to finish. Where it had all the possibility to do so.

Until next time

Jordon