Over Rated but Worth a Play...Man it's been a while since I've done a review, I sure hope I'm up to scratch you guys enjoy something decent. Well here it goes...
Borderlands 2:"Over Rated but Worth a Play"Borderlands 2, or BL2 for short, was released late 2012 on steam. I first played this game at a friends house on his Xbox 360 and was impressed by the concept. It was the first stat based RPG in the FPS perspective I had seen, (of course there was Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim but that isn't really a shooter and the way BL2 is presented is completely different). To me this sounded great. RPGs are known to have rich and interesting storylines and to mix that with the action of an FPS would be great. Instead of waiting your turn to move you could just shoot the crap out of things and the diversity of guns my friend showed me just made me really crave to get a copy of this.
It actually wasn't until last winter I got this game for steam, which brings me to writing this review.
Graphics:
The overall presentation of Borderlands 2 is kept to the same/similar formula to the first game. Everything has a bold black outline giving it a cartoony feel to it. It isn't so unreal you cant get immersed into the game but it gives the game a unique charm to it. While I say it's unique CastleVania Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate used a similar art formula in some of the cut scenes, but what do you expect that series has nicked so much from other franchises.
The graphics are not the most demanding, no the most breathtaking of the time but even if it's not as complex it still has atmosphere and feeling to the player. I would prefer to have a game do something like this rather than a game looking amazing and realistic, or at the other extreme, too unrealistic that you can really feel the game. The balance between real world and video game world is displayed almost perfectly. The only thing lacking is a variety of textures, but I'll get onto variety more in the depth section of my review.
Sound:
Borderlands' soundtrack suits the game well. It certainly isn't the best soundtrack ever, it's quite far off from it in my list. However the game delivers what it needs to in a decent manner.
The ambient music works but it isn't exciting. Ambient music is really hard to pull off well. While the majority of the time the sound enhances the surroundings but there are times where you don't really feel it at all. Since you are almost always in action you are always greeted with the amazing battle theme. I guess it makes sense for the best song to be played the most but you don't really get to hear most of the ambient music. But it kinda makes sense since it isn't that interesting.
This brings me back to what I was saying about ambient music being hard to make. You need to balance something good sounding with the environment. It is a little hard to explain but a song you listen for fun is generally not ambient, and even if you are listening to someone like Aphex Twin it technically isn't ambient since it isn't enhancing your current surroundings. However you can easily make an ambient song by stretching out synth chords in pitch with the mood of the environment but songs like that are not interesting or memorable unless the chord progression is interesting.
You only get good ambient music if you meet that fine divider between purely atmospheric and a good song. I feel Borderlands 2 did meet that criteria for some of the songs and those tracks you can really get a lasting feeling for however the did run into the ambient cliche of just dragging out slow chords with the odd effect. It get a 7 out of ten because the battle theme is just too good to give it anything below 6!
Addictiveness:
Borderlands 2 is fun at times but is let down by bad level design. I want to get onto that more in the depth segment of the review but for now I'll just say that just because the world is huge and open, doesn't mean it is fun to play on. Sure it's fun to shoot things and blow crap up but you just get bored of your surroundings and that ruins most of the feel of the single player experience. This is one of those games where co-op is more fun but the problem most people seem to forget is that co-op ruins immersion.
Online is fun, since the game is so open and boring there is nothing to much to interact with that you don't kill, playing the game while chatting on skype is a lot of fun. You don't feel the game as I said but it is fun when you progress. You'll have laughs throughout with your friends and with the smart dialogue. It's obvious that this game was designed heavily to be co-op, it's more fun than immersive and that sets the replayability high, well for the time being....
Here are the down sides of enjoyment of this game. There was a GOTY version of this game which was a cheeky way to hide a weapon DLC. This DLC ruins co-op and the game in general. The weapons are way too over powered, especially since you get them straight away. This ruins co-op if you are trying really hard to kill an enemy with a gun with damage at 40 and someone in the same game cheaply kills it with their over powered weapon. You feel like nothing and it certainly isn't fun. This is why I recommend only playing with friends and making sure they are not using a legendary weapon from the GOTY edition.
Another flaw is the leveling system. It really ruins the fun flow of the game when you have to grind. I don't like it in Borderlands 2, I don't like it in Pokemon nor do I like grinding in any stat/level based RPG. It's just an easy way to make your game longer and I really don't approve of it. There are stat influenced RPGs that get the flow of leveling up right. Games like Final Fantasy XII. I cant say I've beaten that game but I beat the first disk with only fighting everything I encounter. I just flew through that game and it kept me playing. Grinding doesn't keep me playing...
Story
There isn't too much of a story to pay attention to. There is one but it feels a little cliche and it certainly isn't rich in depth. It's not intrusive but it does piece the game together decently. The acting is good and the dialog is enjoyable and humorous. Even though I don't really care about the main plot, it's still fun to listen to the jerk things that Jack would say or the stupid things clap trap will say.
What I'm getting at here is this game has character, not story. It is a bit tongue and cheek but that is kinda the charm of it, Borderlands is funny. Where it goes down hill is the serious parts, or shall I say the parts where it tries to be an actual story. This is unneeded and just doesn't mix nicely with the flow of comedy. That is why it only gets a 5 out of 10.
Depth
As I have said before, the over world in Borderlands 2 is huge and it is all free to explore. All of this is all well and good but seriously? Is it fun to walk around for ages killing the same enemies and slowly progressing, it could be if the design was interesting and varied. Skyrim did a good job of making a huge world diverse and fun to explore in, Borderlands however didn't do such a good job. Don't get me wrong there are some places in the game which are really fun to explore but all of those places don't seem to be the open world sections and heck most of the secrets are in linear places in the game are easy to. It may be open world but if there is nothing to find apart from a few ammo dumps and weapons what is the point?
The open world parts are not fun, they are empty, boring and just a cheap way to expand a game. It's understandable that gearbox didn't was a short game but it wouldn't have hurt us if you kept it in development for a few more months.
The textures get boring as well, as I began to mention in the Graphics Section. The game is mostly set in a snowy place. It makes sense for everything to be flat or mountainous like a real antarctic desert but there should be a more frequent change because really you can't do much with a biome as simple and as colorless as that. It feels like the game was recycling itself for the past few hours and that doesn't feel like depth or even progression, this is why you need a friend to entertain you while playing. It's like Single player isn't an option if you want to have fun.
Just remember, not all of the level design is bad. Just the non-linear open world parts, they are the attempt of an easy way through adding depth into your game. The linear, actual level parts can be really interesting and fun and those parts stay in your mind. It is a shame that this game is let down by poor open world.
Difficulty:
Face it, Borderlands is easy...
So what if you had to grind for hours to beat this one boss and it took you hours of play to get there. You task was easy, it just took a lot of time to do to put you under the influence that it was hard. There isn't any strategy you necessarily need to beat an enemy in this game, yes elementals do help but it is just as easy to take anyone out if you have a decent gun and your a decent level. To get to that level you'll have to grind, and sometimes a lot. I'm kinda surprised I haven't ranted a ton about grinding in the depth section since it's so time consuming but I didn't mention how terrible it is in the addictiveness section so I wont digress.
You may die a few times during your playthrough but you get unlimited lives as long as you have the money and the game makes sure you do at all times. I came to theorise that this is to keep a player, playing rather than pissing them off with a game over screen and I guess to see a game over screen in such an already easy game would piss me off...
As I said you'll only die a few times, most of the enemies have the same pattern and even some of the bosses share a few traits. There isn't much variety and you pick up your own playing style which you will probably stick to throughout the game since the enemies and weapons start to feel similar to each other.
I am being rather generous and giving this game a 4 out of 10 in difficulty, since it is difficult to fight an enemy that has x4 of your stats however it isn't difficult to grind to progress keeping it bellow 5 out of 10.
To Sum it all up
As the title of my review recommends, this game is worth a play. It is a lot of fun with the right sort of people. If you want a good single player FPS, go play Half-Life not this and if you want a good First Person RPG, go play any of the Elder Scrolls games. However if you want a good co-op FPS, play this...
Or portal it's much better!!This game gets too much praise and really didn't need a GOTY award. Then again some how CoD: Ghosts managed to get above a 70 metacritic score. It's not a bad game just not a
great game...
I hope you enjoyed my review of Borderlands 2
MechaMento ~ Peace Graphics
9 Sound
7 Addictive
7 Depth
6 Story
5 Difficulty
4
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