Borderlands 2 (PC, Mac, Linux, Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, Xbox 360, Playstation 4, and XBox One)

They say that the more things change the more they stay the same and it’s certainly true for the planet of Pandora. There are new bandits, a new vault, new vault hunters, and a new corporation trying to strip and fuck the planet — Atlas was so last decade, everything’s about Hyperion now. The CEO of Hyperion, known only as Handsome Jack, is aggressively settling the planet. He promises the locals that if they move to his new cities they’ll find peace and prosperity only to massacre them wholesale. You are a Vault Hunter who’s been hired by Handsome Jack to find the new vault — PSYCHE, he’s just trying to kill y’all so you can’t challenge his power. You escape but are you gonna take that attempt on your life lying down? No sir. Also, I promise there are no krakens in this game and a 99.9% reduction in Claptraps.

Handsome Jack in the flesh, so named for his unearthly charisma and face shaped mask — which is to say that it’s a mask of his own face… stapled to his regular face.

History

Borderlands 2 was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K games. It runs on a more refined version of the old engine, a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3. They brought Anthony Burch from Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’ fame to write for the game and it paid off with genuinely hilarious moments and moments of weight.

The game’s development is characterized by two controversies. The first being John Hemingway’s blunder referring to the downloadable extra character Gaige and her Best Friends Forever skill tree as being “the girlfriend skill tree,” described as being for someone who, “suck(s) at first person shooters,” therefore implying that girlfriends are not good at first person shooters.

Pictured is Gaige and her mechanical monstrosity D347-TP or Deathtrap for short.

Speaking of downloadable content, the game offers a Season Pass which sounds like it offers all of the DLC for the game when it is, in fact, just a fancy named DLC package. The Season Pass includes the four additional game campaigns and a level cap increase but it does not include the extra characters, Gaige and Krieg, as well as not including the Headhunter mini-campaigns. A lot of customers bought the game and then bought the Season Pass, thinking they would get every DLC that came out but that wasn’t the case.

Fun Fact: Handsome Jack’s name was just a placeholder for what his actual name would be but Gearbox liked it so much they decided not to change it.

Borderlands 2 was released on September 18th, 2012. It’s competition was World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (PC), FTL: Faster than Light (PC, Mac, and Linux), and Castle Crashers PC release.

Experiences

The last Borderlands game was a fun romp, tongue-in-cheek, running around and blowing up bandits. It never really challenged my morals or myself in any deep way. I was either killing monsters or people so morally bankrupt they were akin to monsters. Borderlands 2 however presented a moral conundrum that almost stopped me from continuing with the game. I would have to do something that I found so despicable, killing someone who was very young, in order to have a chance to save the world. This isn’t sacrificing a 14 year old to save cancer, it’s doing it just to have the opportunity. In the end I kept going forward because I couldn’t stop now. And that attitude frightened me a bit. I thought about Jack and how he himself might be doing what he was doing because well he can’t stop now… but I was doing it for a good cause, right?

Gameplay

These are the new Vault Hunters. From left to right we have Axton the soldier, Maya the siren, Salvador the gunzerker, Zer0 the assassin, Gaige the mechromancer, and my favorite Krieg the psycho.

Borderlands 2 is a loot based shooter. A vicious cycle — for your enemies in any event– of using your guns to kill dudes, to get better guns, to kill stronger dudes so on and so forth with a story in there so it doesn’t grow too monotanous. Each character also has an action skill like Krieg’s Buzz Axe Rampage which allows him to go mad chop people up or Zer0’s Decepti0n which renders him invisible and projecting a decoy that draws enemy fire. They lean toward different playstyles with their different skill trees so experiment until you find something that works for you or your equipment.

Splitting trees generally isn’t worth it but there’s usually something early on in another tree that’s just plain useful. AND LOOK! Your skills properly point out when your class mod gives them a bonus.

The enemies consist of the well-known bandits and Pandoran wild-life like the wolf-like skags, plentiful spider-ants, and the brand new betentacled Threshers. New among the hazards are Hyperion’s legion of assorted murder-robots so keep a corrosive weapon handy and watch out for the self-destructing ones that’ll chase you down.

You can play alone or with friends online. The console versions also have local multiplayer as well so long as you don’t mind split screens and screen squish. The game is definitely designed to be played with friends and is much easier with an ally. Between the addition of their action skills, team buffing abilities, and the simple power to pick you up if you get downed so long as their competent they’ll counteract the difficulty increase.

The Gush

Overall the game feels smoother in every way than its predecessor. You can crawl during Fight for you Life, the animations are better, everything seems to take less time. Enemy movement is also much more fluid. Psychos will roll, dodge, and react to getting hit instead of charging in a straight line.

The new characters do a great job of pushing their abilities to new extremes. Gunzerking takes Brick’s berserk to its logical conclusion and Maya’s Phaselock is useful and has marvelous utility. The turret has also been salvaged as it now has the ability to aim and look in all directions, no longer will skags and rakks get behind its field of fire.

Phaselocking doesn’t just hold people still it can also be upgraded to explode and revive allies.

The dialogue and overall story of the game is much improved from the original. With a story that elicited actual pathos and dialogue that elicited a lot of laughs it was something that intertwined with the gameplay and world into a greater experience. This game goes way over the top and at no point does it seem silly because it meshes very well with the art style.

Handsome Jack is an incredible villain. I love to hate him but sometimes he’s just left of decent. How he’s so close to doing the right thing but has been blinded by power, greed, and his smug sense of superiority. He grabs your attention, constantly jeers you, and makes you want to take him down.

The DLC in this game is a wonderful addition, Season Pass not-withstanding. The extra campaigns, characters, and mini-campaigns are all incredibly fun and filled with new characters, enemies, and loot. It’s reasonably priced and worth the cost.

It’s got a Dungeons and Dragonsesque campaign that’s just as fun and silly as it sounds. The ending of which made me weep like a small child.

The Kvetch

The quests are usually enjoyable and introduce interesting mechanics but some of them come in at bizarre times insofar that you’ll be grossly over-leveled for their enemies and loot related to when they’re given to you. They might be fun to play but won’t be worth your time in terms of mechanical benefit.

The Verdict

My 198 hours with this game are testament to how it fulfilled my desire for a better Borderlands. If you remotely enjoyed the first game but passed on the sequel then find some friends and go at it. If you haven’t played the first game and want to scratch the Diablo II itch then this game is a fine place to start, Borderlands 1 is not a requisite– you’ll be saving yourself a disappointment of Kraken proportions. The Game of the Year edition is still $40 but it’s often on sale on Steam so I’d recommend picking it up for 50% off.

Next Week: Medieval II: Total War

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat (PC)

We return to The Zone in the aftermath of shenanigans at its center. The zone is becoming more unstable — and yet safer in some ways. The military is stepping up their efforts to investigate the zone — although they’re shockingly ignorant of its workings. They begin operation Fairway, their bid to take over Pripyat and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and investigate the goings on there. They sent four helicopters into the center and they’ve lost all radio contact. You are Major Degtyarev being sent into Pripyat undercover as a Stalker to figure out what went wrong with the operation. You’re underequipped, underinformed, and otherwise unready to handle the rigors of the zone but it wouldn’t be a Stalker Game otherwise.

History

Sorry Stalkers in the making, I couldn’t find much of note about the development of the game. It was released by GSC Game World, like the other Stalker games and was distributed to the world by a cadre of different publishers. GSC was able to publish it in the CIS but Viva Media and Deep Silver released it in North America and Europe respectively.

It was released on October 2nd, 2009. It’s competition was Demon’s Souls (PS3), Saw: The Video Game (PS3 and XBox 360), and Brutal Legend (PS3 and XBox 360).

Experiences

If there was a feeling I felt the most in this game it would be confusion. I can think of no other FPS I’ve gotten lost in more. Between unmarked quest objectives, mysterious Zone stuff, and unclear instructions it’s difficult to figure where to go or what to do. It might seem like certain conversations are just they for flavor but many of them hint at tasks and most of those tasks offer no instruction whereas as some topics are just dead ends. ‘Find Barge and Joker’ translates into look it up or get lucky finding some dead bodies. It’s frustrating to have no clues whatsoever. If they mentioned something like, “Barge and Joker went west after the argument” or “They mentioned something about artifact hunting,” then I’d have some direction and feel like I wasn’t just wandering around and hoping for completion.

Gameplay

Like Stalker games before it Call of Pripyat is a horror based first person shooter. Unlike Clear Sky, however, there’s no longer a relationship between primary mechanics and story. There are no territory control mechanics or zone destroying threats this time around, the scales are much smaller and much more personal. The game is very much a sandbox that rewards the player based on how much they put into it. The reward for exploration is usually more powerful weapons or achievements that give the player additional benefits like free ammo or medical restocks in settlements. This game highlights the elements of survival in the zone much more, Degtyarev must keep himself fed and rested or his stamina, and eventually health, will suffer.

Even though it’s got fewer locations I’d say they’re better designed overall and they look great.

The game takes place in Zaton, a large swampy area, Yanov, a former train yard, and Pripyat, an small town. These areas form a sort of new frontier for the zone, these are areas that the player has not visited in either Clear Sky or Shadow of Chernobyl. Though the artifacts, mutants, and anomalies might be similar the politics and atmosphere have changed quite a bit. There’s no more Sidorovich, no more faction wars, and much fewer of the comforts they provided. Getting better gear will take a greater toll on the characters’ wallets or they’ll have to do some hunting. As such you’ll find fewer enemies in Exo-Suits or with incredible gear unlike Clear Sky which had a heavy soldier in nearly every squad.

You never know what you’ll run into in Call of Pripyat.

The Gush

Praise be to The Zone, the player can now shoot Bloodsuckers while they’re invisible. This might seem small but those bastards have been getting the better of me and wasting my ammunition for too long. They’re cloak is much less obvious to balance but I can throw a grenade and kill the damn things.

Not to say that they’re still not vicious as hell.

The world of Pripyat feels very alive. Squads of Stalkers go to anomalous areas to look for artifacts — and they can find them if the player doesn’t — while bandits will be on the look out for Stalkers to ambush and loot to steal. Mutants, zombies, and monolith leave their lairs and fortified areas looking for supple Stalkers to eat.

The quests in this game offer real choice as how to complete them. It’s no longer a matter of going here and doing this, it’s a matter of guys not knowing what to do and you fill in the blank. You go to pay someone’s debt and the assholes try to charge you interest, what do you do? You find a PDA holding information about someones secret weapons warehouse, who do you sell it to? The choice and consequences are yours.

Anomalous zones are now marked on your map so it’s much easier to find where to go artifact hunting. In addition you can now sleep in settlements so you can explore at night or during the day, whichever is your preference.

The Kvetch

Apparently the whole voice acting department died in a fruit punch anomaly between this game and the last and GSC got their replacements from people on the street. The voice quality has dropped off hard since Clear Sky. I think they’ve got 5 voice actors, all told, and 2 of them voice almost everyone and they’re really bad. I don’t know what happened but get ready for some grating voices and painful deliveries.

Back on that whole direction problem I was talking about in Experiences, it would be so much better if they told the player that certain quest objectives are just on certain maps. I needed to get some poison to eliminate a Bloodsucker lair and I found some locked tanks on a jeep holding the stuff. I figure there’s a master key in a military or industrial facility somewhere and I check every factory or barracks I can get my hands on. I ask everyone about the damn things. As it turns out the keys are on other parts of the motercade the tanks were on. There’s no hint or indication where the key is whatsoever.

And I’m not the only one with this problem. There’s a whole Gamefaqs post devoted to this quest.

I don’t know if it’s a glitch, I wouldn’t put it past a Stalker Game — this game’s the most stable of the three but still has issues –, but there’s a mutant called the Burer — remember Mr. Ugly face up there? That’s him — who can knock your gun out of your hands. It’s an interesting mechanic and a little annoying but I think it’s cool. The problem comes when I can’t find the gun afterward. I don’t know if it’s falling through the floor or flying to some part of the room where I just can’t find it. But it means my prized shooter is gone and I’ve gotta reload my last save even if the beast is dead. It’s unfun, unfair, frustrating, and happens to me at least once a playthrough.

The Verdict

The gameplay is much improved and everything feels more thematic overall. There’s a lot of unfair or non-existant signposting that leads to frustration. Quests are sometimes difficult to complete because you won’t know what to do next and there are just too many hidden objectives and goals in the game overall. This game is a guide game. You’ll play it with a strategy guide for WHEN you need it. It’s still fun and it’s still Stalker and it’s interesting to see the ecosystem of the Zone just go. But it still scratches that Stalker itch.