Borderlands 2

Welcome to Pandora, kiddos!

Linux

PlayStation 3

PlayStation Vita

Xbox 360

PlayStation 4

Xbox One

Nvidia Shield

OS X WW: November 20, 2012

Linux WW: September 30, 2014

PlayStation Vita NA: May 13, 2014EU: May 30, 2014

PS4, XONE (The Handsome Collection) NA: March 24, 2015WW: March 27, 2015

***Borderlands*** can be a bit hard to define. It's an action-adventure FPS game with RPG elements set in an open world. Let's just call it a "Wide-Open Sandbox". Borderlands is undoubtedly an epic game, and its sequel just gets even better!

## Plot

Borderlands 2 is set 5 years after the first game, on the same crapsack backwater planet called Pandora. After unlocking the alien vault and taking down its guardian, The Destroyer, the four vault hunters found nothing of value in it. Felling deceived, they left in disappointment and went on their separate ways.

However, the opening of the Vault caused a valuable purple mineral known "Eridium" started flourishing through Pandora's crust. And with the discovery of the element came the Hyperion Coperation, led by their new executive Handsome Jack, with intentions to secure this new resource and makes use of it to attempt to "bring peace" to the Pandora by crushing the outlaws and bandits that infest it.

Today, Jack rules Pandora with and iron fist and has blotted out most of the light by placing a giant H-shaped space station named Helios in front of Pandora's moon. Meanwhile, rumors about a second vault containing even more valuable loot started to spread on Pandora, attracting more vault hunters to this otherwise inhospitable planet. But first, they must get past Handsome Jack...

## The Review

### **Gameplay**

#### Characters

This time, the player controls one of the four new vault hunters who were lured into an insindious trap set up by Handsome Jack and was lucky enough to survive. The four characters are:

* **Axton the commando**: Loud, brash and reckless, Axton is a former Dahl mercenary who was dishonourably discharged and fled to Pandora to avoid the firing squad. His skills revolve around assault rifles and defensive states, and his special ability is to deploy a powerful automatic turret which can be upgraded to be made even more lethal (Rocket launcher, energy shield, extra gun? You name it!).
* **Maya the siren**: Maya was originally treated as a goddess in her homeward, until she realizes that the ruling order of monks have been using her as a weapon of intimidation. Her special ability, Phase Lock, somewhat resembles the Force from Star Wars, allowing her to snatch an enemy off the ground of inflict constant damage to it should it refuse to budge. Her skill tree revolves around elemental damage, healing and SMGs.
* **Zer0 the assassin**: Nobody really knows who he is, where he's from, why he always speaks in Haikou or why the hell he has just 8 fingers. Zero relies on stealth, he's capable of deploying a holographic projection of himself, thus allowing him to ambush enemies (damage drastically amplified) while they're distracted. His skill tree revolved around increasing melee damage and sniper rifles.
* **Salvador the Gunzerker**: He may be the stubbiest of the bunch (due to heavy steroid usage), but everyone felt more uncomfortable around him. Salvador's a Gunzerker - a berserker with guns! His skill allows him to dual wield ANY firearm and receive a health boost. His skill tress involve physical toughness and weapon handiness.

There're also 2 additional DLC characters:

* **Gaige the Mechromancer**: Yeah, a school girl, a chaos loving and slightly unhinged school girl, who fled to Pandora because her science fair project, Deathtrap, ended up committing murder. Besides her faithful combat robot, Gaige also has a skill called Anarchy, which swaps accuracy for damage. Her skill tress revolve around Deathtrap, Anarchy and damage output.
* **Krieg the Psycho**: Ever wondered what the twisted mind of the game's signature mook is like? Now you have the chance! Krieg has a split personality, his current psychotic one is on show while his sane one is represented as a "voice in his head". Absolutely no idea how he ended up like this, though it may have something to do with Hyperion. His skill is BuzzAxe rampage, which drastically increases his melee damage, allowing him to throw his axes and regenerate health upon kill.

#### Guns! Guns! GUNS!!!

Needless to say, your best friend in this game are guns, in Borderlands 2 there exist 6 category of guns:

* ***Pistol***: The most basic and balanced type of firearm. Usually suited for short-to-medium range combat. Sub-types include auto-firing machine pistols with larger magazines but lower accuracy, middle-of-the-road repeaters, and revolvers with longer range and higher accuracy but slower reloads and a smaller mag.
* ***SMGs***: Light automatic firearms with high firing rate and low recoil, good at close range and decent at medium range. Usually lower damage-per-bullet than pistols of lower level, but greater rate of fire means higher DPS, they tend to have high capacity magazines.
* ***Shotguns***: Poor accuracy but fires multiple pellets in one shot, delivers a heavy blow at close range. Sub-types include single-barrel rapid firing combat shotguns weapons with larger magazines, medium-range weapons with low spread, and multi-barrel weapons with huge damage-per-round but slow rates of fire and frequent reloads.
* ***Assault Rifles***: Versatile medium/long range weapon. Sub-types include accurate, high-damage semi-automatic rifles, general-purpose burst-fire or fully-automatic combat rifles, and high-capacity light machine guns with heavy recoil. Special assault rifles can fire grenades or rockets with standard rifle ammunition, though at a cost of multiple rounds per shot.
* ***Sniper Rifles***: Powerful, accurate weapons which are most effective at long range, but with heavily restricted magazine size and fire-rate. They are almost always equipped with scopes, and often have a bonus to Critical Hit Damage. Unlike in Borderlands, fully automatic sniper rifles are not limited to a single exotic model.
* **Rocket Launchers**: Yeah, baby! NOW we're talking! These powerful shoulder-fired weapons have many positive characteristics, but it return have low ammo capacity, long reload time and expensive ammo that can only be carried by the handfuls. Subtypes include high-velocity bazookas, low-velocity cruise missiles with devastatingly high damage and clustered rocket launchers for area bombardment.

In BL2, there are in total 8 manufacturers for weapons:

* **Dahl**: builds military spec weapons with camouflaged paint jobs, their weapons have high stability and decent rate of fire. When aiming down sights, Dahl weapons switch to burst fire mode, allowing them to fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger. They make assault rifles, pistols, sniper rifles and SMGs. Its arguably the largest weapons manufacturer on Pandora.
* **Hyperion**: build weapons have a corporate theme, a sharp, angular design with magazines inserted into the top of the guns. Their gimmick is "reverse recoil", meaning that weapons start out with severe sway, but sustained fire causes them to increase in stability instead of decreasing. The listed accuracy on the weapon is what is achievable after the sustained fire increases their accuracy to maximum. They make pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles and SMGs.
* **Bandit**: guns are rather crude and wild looking, and their names are ALWAYS misspelled. Bandits want to make powerful guns, but aren't competent enough to make them. They don't care about accuracy because no matter how accurate the gun is, Bandits can never quite hit their targets. The remedy for that? BIGER MAGGAZINES!!! SHOTN' MAKE BANDIT HAPRY!!! NO RELODS!!! NO INTERUPSIONS!!! Bandits make their own pistals, SMGGs, skaterguns, mashine guns and rockit launchers.
* **Jakobs**: guns are more like collector items that practical wasteland survival choices. They're handcrafted with vintage materials like wood and are all semi-automatic. Basically they fire as fast as your trigger pulling speed. But should that shot land (which is likely due to their high accuracy), boy it hurts! Because of Jakobs classic designs, their weapons are all non-elemental except for a handful of custom ones. They make pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles and shotguns. They are the only ones that don't make E-tech weapons, shields and grenades.