Overall 7.8 Graphics 7.5 Sound 7 Addictive 6 Story 5 Depth 6.5 Difficulty 7.5
8
Borders zanderlex
I have been a fan of the Boarderlands series ever since the 2nd game was released and I gave it a try. I found the PS3 edition of the game to be very interesting when I first bought it, and when I received my Vita almost a year ago, I knew that I had to get that version of the game. About 2 months ago I managed to pick up a copy of the game and even though I knew that the PS3 version was much better than this one, I still had a good time playing the game and thought that it was a good game. Not one of the best Vita games that I have played, but was still very entertaining.
GRAPHICS 7/10
As for the graphics, there isn’t much for me to say about them, they aren’t as good as the PS3 versions graphics because of the size but are still good compared to some other Vita games. I feel that the game might have a few scenes that appear as though they are a bit too animated, but I have seen this in quite a few Vita games such as The Walking Dead. Though this “glitch” takes away a bit from the graphics and makes the game less attractive than its console counterparts, there is little to not like about this aspect. For this game, I am going to give the graphics aspect a 7 out of 10.
SOUND 8/10
When it comes to the sound of the game, I feel that the developers have done a pretty good job with it. The various noises that are made when you perform an action are a bit lacking, but the music of the game is what makes up for it. The soundtrack of the game consists of about 24 songs made by composers who have worked on the music of dozens of other successful games. Some songs I find to be worthwhile include Fyrestone and the main menu song. My overall grade for this aspect is going to be an 8 out of 10.
STORY 7/10As for the story, the game takes place a few years after the original game and in my opinion is pretty bland compared to some other games that are similar. It's just a mismatch of various actions scenes involving the Vault Hunters. There are a ton of fights and traitors and backstabbing, but that's about it the way I see it. There is some uniquness, but not a lot. My grade for the story is going to be a 7 out of 10.ADDICTIVNESS 8/10As for addictiveness, the game is amazing. The game is a lot of fun, there are many great scenes with a ton of action that can leave you breathless. There are going to be quite a few scenes that you miht want to play over and over again and the entire game itself is the kind that you might want to start over and go through everything again because it's so much fun. The level of addictiveness isn't as high as some other games but still has a high level of worth and deserves an 8 out of 10.DEPTH 10/10I would have to say that the depth aspect of the game is its strongest point because there is simply so much. First off, there's the length of the game and the content which offers a ton of stuff for you to do. Once you have that out of the way, there's so much downloadable content for you to go through. There's perhaps a dozen different campaigns to download and play through. The entire game itself offers a lot and because of this, I give this aspect of the game a perfect score.DIFFICULTY 5This game has been difficult at times, but there's nothing you can't solve by trying over and over. All you have to do is get used to the mechanics of the game and learn the controls and the game will be fine. After you have everything controlled, the only thing that will be tough is the occasional obstacle that jumps in your path which will require patience and tryin ver until you beat the challenge. As for the difficulty, I am going to give this game a grade of 5.OVERALL 8/10When it comes to all of the Vita games that I have played, I would have to say that this game would be near the bottom of the list, but it's still an amazing game that offers a ton of gameplay and exciting entertainment. If you have a Vita and you have played either the original game or the console version of this game, then I would suggest that you give this game a try. I found this game to be very enjoyanle and my overall grade for this the Vita version will be an 8 out of 10.
Graphics 7 Sound 8 Addictive 8 Story 7 Depth 10 Difficulty 5
Review Rating: 5/5
Submitted: 07-13-14
Updated: 07-13-14
Review Replies: 2
6.5
Borderlands 2: Bored of the Lands Sowong
Welcome to my Borderlands 2 review, I hope you like it more than I disliked this game.I know I'm 'Mister Positive' when it comes to the games I review but this time I'm giving my honest opinion. I've played games that I thought I would hate and wound up loving them. I found games that I thought would be brilliant and they were boring. This just so happens to be one of those times when I expected to get more of the same from a game I enjoyed and wound up with exactly what I wanted, but the trouble with getting what you want is that you never really wanted it in the first place.
The first Borderlands, hitherto known as Borderlands 1, was a game full of promise and fancy new shiny things which, while they had existed for some time, had never existed in this fashion. Here was a new spin on the MMORPG, a first person shooter with randomised weapons which randomly dropped with increasing randomness, meaning that you never got the same gun twice and each one was even more cooler than the last. I remember with the correct skills and right modifications my character could fire 300 bullets in two seconds, and that was awesomely inaccurate but cool. Bosses were satisfactorily menacing, bugs made their squishing noises when your gun popped them on the sweet spot, and you could spend hours at a time online with your friends shooting, grinding, leveling and all that noise but in the mush more personal way that your Xbox provided...
Borderlands 2 was a disappointment, don't get me wrong the review gets more positive towards the end of this dull game but we have to trod through the analysis of the dull before we get to that wonderful part. We'll be going through this in the usual method, with each bit broken down into story, depth, blah, blah, blah, but you know I kinda wanna freestyle, and I just might. Essentially though, this is two reviews, one of the main game and a second of the DLC or Downloadable Content to you not in the know, or Expansion Packs to you golden oldies.
The Story of Borderlands 2's Story: Was there one? I seem to remember a very stylishly produced cinematic in which the main characters defended themselves from a guy who was killing them despite the fact he had hired them? Which makes no sense, why bring more people to the place you don't want them to be? So instead of playing our old favourites; Mordecai, Brick, Roland and Lilith; we have four newbies, and a bunch of later characters who I don't care about nor have I downloaded yet, with talents and abilities we're not used to, and whose skills seem to rely on a bunch of scientific science-like mathematics, rules and regulations that I couldn't work out... so I went the guy who can carry two guns, occasionally. The names of these new four doesn't really matter because they aren't anything to do with the story, so we'll call them Gun Guy, New Girl, Zero (His name sticks in the mind) and Soldier Boy. These folks find themselves in the same situation as the last group, on a hostile planet, full of bandits and psychos out to kill them because they're different. They must survive in order to get to Sanctuary, or whatever it's called, which is a big wonderful place free from tyranny and Hyperion Robots. Hyperion is the bad guy, they're a massive corporation and you know how much massive corporations like to be bad guys. They are, however, not a faceless corporation, but the guy in charge just might be. He's called Handsome Jack and he hates you, because [
Insert plot hole here]. Basically you destroyed something valuable/ ruined one of his plans/ killed someone he knew/ are alive. There's no real connection as to why he wants you dead other than the fact your character is a vault hunter. All the playable characters do have back-stories, however these stories are hidden bonuses and you might never find out why any individual became a vault hunter. I have got most of them, or at least enough, to piece together that every main playable character wants revenge against Jack or Hyperion, which is useful because every other character in the game has that exact goal, even Jack's daughter. This smooths the game's rapid, boring degenerative brain disorder that it calls a storyline into a nice thin spread that allows your character to advance through each mission without really any difficulty. No one really has a major trust issue with you, and no one stabs you in the back because everyone is working for the same goal... So to cut things shorts, the story is terrible, it has a few moments where you're disgusted by Jack's actions, or feel sorry for one of the characters towards the end... but nothing is really explained, I mean, we don't even know why Jack wants power in the first place, and his excuse is that he just wants power to be evil, or something, I mean who really cares, clearly not the writers.
So the missions are the real story and the real driving force throughout the game, we get cosy little reminders of the places we used to be, and the people we knew, but we also get a lot of jokes which just aren't funny. There's a lot of 'poking jokes at one's expense' were the developers make fun of the fact that this is a MMORPG and results in the collection of a lot of items, or kills, for no reason at all, which just kills the mood. The first game did this as well but had the decency to be subtle. Blunt, in your face, jokes about flaws and practises in the game doesn't cut it. Do you remember Shank's Prison? Where he often made comments defying the fact he was gay, even though there was heavy emphasis that he was gay, the joke so blunt by the second comment you even wonder why they bothered repeating it 3000 times. Picture that, but all the way through the game and DLC. Really it just ends up annoying and comes across as unimaginative and like the producers really didn't care about their audience's entertainment.
Blown up by their own Depth charge:There was no depth, none at all, they blew it with the storyline and the mission descriptions and the narration. I mean, why should I care about the safety of the city if they can't be bothered to write anything more imaginative than "Collect 20 of these things because it's an RPG", it doesn't just break the fourth wall, it makes the game boring by taking away the augmented reality aspect that lets a game become interesting. I know the game is a game and unimportant but if you remind me of that, constantly, I'm going to believe it and play something else, then not buy any of your products again. In terms of what the game offers, really it's just new environments and one or two new monsters. Really there's nothing here that you didn't get in the first game, except for these new bug things that evolve into bigger, badder critters. The cars are the same, the guns are, more or less, the same but with a few new differences and the newest mechanic was a type of acid that caused more harm, but means having to switch weapons constantly. The character abilities were needlessly complicated for a shooting game, with each one needing certain things to happen first, or had very small time constraints. One thing which was an improvement was the unlikely looking critical points on the Hyperion robots which made shooting them more interested, especially as they wandered about with only one arm and leg as you shot them to pieces.
Graphics & Sound:I'm lumping these together because I have little to say about them both. Mostly the sounds are the same as the first game, the car goes vroom, the bugs splat when they explode and the main characters grunt and scream when they get shot. I think there's slightly more realistic blood splatter, screams and voices are cut short as you shoot these people dead and all these things are generally better than in the first game while being somewhat the same. The robot voices are pretty cool, but the explosions could be more explosive and there could have been some improvement on the enemy animals, graphically. There just seems to be more emphasis on the robots, like it doesn't matter if you killed dog-thing we know you're not gonna be looking at it for too long. The animation quality has improved for the majority of the creatures and people in the game, with almost realistic movements, especially in the walking boxes.
Addictiveness:I didn't know what to say for addictiveness, to be honest, I suppose the level for it varies. If you're playing the game by yourself the difficulty will be enough for you to feel like giving up the game entirely, but with friends the experience, and all my little grievances, is tempered by the fact you're sharing an experience, making your own inside jokes and generally having fun with friends. Alone you start to see the problems and get annoyed by the unfunny jokes, and miss out on the funnyside because there's no one there to remind you about it. There's also the gambling aspect of the game, which is annoyingly hard to ignore, and really pointless because you never win anything good and it's just an excuse to get Iridium earlier. I wouldn't say, however, that there is any other aspect with is addictive, except perhaps shooting the backsides off the ant monsters, that's a pretty good feeling when you hit the target just right. The only thing which kept me playing this game, I must admit, was the fact that I bought the season pass early on, but bear in mind I hated this game so much that I traded it in, left it for two years, then came back to it just to get my money's worth of the DLC.
Difficulty:Why have I put it so high as ten? Because the difficulty varies depending on how man people are in your party, and if you attempt half of the missions alone you'll end up dying a lot, unless you've got all the best gear. That's another thing, grinding is a pain, and more often than not you'll wind up with the worst items, and it can sometimes be ages before you find a gun that's better than the one you currently own. I mean there's been times in the game where it's taken 8 missions before you get a slight increase in weapon attack, but still not enough to be helpful. Even if you kill the end boss endlessly, you'll be lucky to find 2 very rare items.
DLC:Okay, time to put on the positive smile of sincerity. I liked the DLC for Borderlands 2 because they actually introduced something new. The main game seems like a cobble-together of Jak Renegade, Jak 3 and RAGE. Remember RAGE? Nope, because it was terrible. The DLC allows for fun either alone, or with friends, you get introduced to new insanity, get to be a pirate and an explorer, heck, you even get to blow stuff up and listen to a guy be EXTREEEEEMMMMMEEEE. The DLC brings back the new and unusual, it removes the tried and tested with characters, events and settings that 'might not work' but actually end up improving the experience because you're not sure what to expect next... while in the main game what to expect next was just a bigger robot. The worlds offered by the DLC are actually quite big as well, and new vehicles are brought in such as flying ships and fanboats, which makes for new, terrible, driving and awesome new vehicle weaponry mayhem. I for one spent hours harpooning sand worms, and blowing up giant daddy long-legs. The DLC does what the main game should have done, introducing the unfamiliar but with familiar mechanics, just like Portal did in Portal 2. The same type of game, the same type of scenarios and the same method of navigating these areas, but with a everything else being different. Games should try to knock us off balance but give us a steady platform to pick ourselves up afterwards. Fallout: New Vegas managed this by offering civilisation and creating poor scavenging as a result, meaning the player had to focus on different means to survive than they had done in Fallout 3. Skyrim shifted the focus of the gameplay from small scale monsters to massive scaled monsters, with superior flexibility when compared to any creature faced before in the Elder Scrolls, and while Borderlands 2 attempted the same: their jokes backfired and their evolving insects just weren't enough to alter the feel of the game.
Conclusion:I didn't like this game as much as the first game, which is bad. I wish I did, there were elements that I liked and characters I found hysterical. There were a few strong characters who we got to know a little better, but their lack of input in the game was annoying. Not to mention brief cameos of the old Main characters who also had a limited impact on the world and didn't do enough fighting, I feel. I can't say there was anything wrong with the delivery, it had that Borderlands feel, it had the right amount of action, it had cool guns, big bosses, and new enemies... but it didn't have enough different elements or even a different focus to make it feel like a new game worthy of our attention. You're still a vault hunter, fighting a corporation, but now with some people you're supposed to care about even though this is your first time meeting them. It almost feels like the best ideas were held back for the dlc, just so they could get more money out of their players. Really all the best elements in this game comes from the DLC, and the worst part is that these brilliant parts don't move into the main game, at all. You get a flying ship... like an actual Pirate frigate, but can only use it in that one part of the world... I wanted to fly it in the main game areas, I wanted to harpoon Skags. So, in conclusion, not impressed, not a bit.
Graphics 8 Sound 6 Addictive 4 Story 3 Depth 3 Difficulty 10
Review Rating: 5/5
Submitted: 05-31-14
Review Replies: 2
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