Gearbox Software and 2K are back with Borderlands 2 and the results are fantastic. There has been no shortage of first-person RPG games on the market, even some that are FPS games (recent Fallout games, Deus Ex Human Revolution, etc), but Borderlands is special. The co-op, loot, pop-culture references, story, and overall badassity of the characters easily make Borderlands 2 my favourite game that I have played this year and quickly one of my favourite series of all time. Borderlands 2 is now available for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 gaming consoles.
Let’s Recap
In case you aren’t quite up to snuff on your Borderlands 1 story, a quick recap:
You seek The Vault and are contacted by a mysterious woman named Angel giving you direction on where to go and how to open it. By building your reputation in the wastelands of Pandora, you find information on pieces of the key needed to open the vault that is said to hold unimaginable treasure.
Upon opening the vault, a crazy alien called The Destroyer emerges and kills everyone until you take it down and save the world, only to realize that there actually was no treasure, though you quickly find out in BL2 that a very precious element known as Eridium is now spewed out across Pandora after the vault was opened. The president of Hyperion, Handsome Jack, more or less rules Pandora with an iron fist because he now controls the mining of Eridium on Pandora. You start BL2 much like the first game being greeted by Angel and instructed what to do, where to go, and ultimately stop Handsome Jack.
If you did not play the first Borderlands game (shame on you) you can still jump right on into BL2. While the original four characters are integral to the storyline in BL2, the playable characters are all new. Everything is explained well and by doing sidequests (more on this later) you will learn a lot more back story to not only your playable characters but also the world of Pandora that you are exploring.
Co-op: How the Game Is Meant To Be Played
I have easily put in 80+ hours into BL2 already and without a doubt in my mind you should always play multiplayer co-op. In fact the more you play, the clearer it is that Gearbox developed Borderlands 2 specifically with cooperative play in mind. Everything is laid out cleanly and simply to promote co-op play including starting missions, finding friends to play with from the title screen, joining games that are already in progress, etc. Whenever you pause the game you can see all of your friends that are playing online and can seamlessly join their games, invite your friends to play, or continue in your own game.
The four character classes each provide unique skills which add to the value of playing co-op. While there is no requirement to have each person be a different character class when playing co-op, having different classes in a single game definitely has its perks. For example a commando is able to setup a turret to dish out constant damage or put out a shield, while the gunzerker’s class mod might regenerate ammo, all the while a siren can bring people back to life from across the room, as the assassin deploys a clone to go invisible and unleash some heavy melee damage or snipe from a distance.
I can’t emphasize enough how much fun it is to play co-op. Not to mention the fact that the more people you play with, the better loot that you will find. Sure you might get some 12 year old with a headset that irritates the hell out of you, but if you are the host you can always kick them.
