Borderlands 2 - Gameplay Demo

First of all please be aware that this post may hold spoilers towards the Borderlands 2 gameplay. I watched the cam version of the gameplay trailer shown and released virally this week. Some of the other information has been confirmed by other sites but if you want to avoid spoilers please don't read any further.

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The original Borderlands was a great take on the FPS genre with millions of guns and a variety of interesting enemies. That’s about it though. It didn’t have a brilliant storyline and it’s sectioned world was very brown.

A 'shaky cam’ video of Borderlands 2 being demoed at a recent event has made its way up on the interweb. The fourteen-minute video shows some of the new changes made to enemies and weapons in the game.

Borderlands 2 is still about shooting, but there is a lot more to it then that now. The revamped world of Pandora looks gorgeous with a variety of locations, area characteristics and much less brown. The over the top humour is still there and the creative character designs look to take the story of Borderlands to a whole new level.

It might be worth noting that the only major change to the user interface is the addition of a mini map which was strangely never included in the original.

The gameplay demo I’ve seen begins with one of the new characters, the Gunzerker, wandering a long a wintry path. The pale blue landscape is flush with white winds and flakes of snow that rush across the screen. The cold itself doesn’t seem to have any effects on the gameplay but danger awaits in the form of Bullymongs that rush from the ice around the player. These abominable creatures are all fur, muscle and claws. They hop around like frogs picking up items to throw at you that range from cars to icicles and snowballs.

As the player kills the Bullymongs we get our first look at the new guns. Each of the manufacturers in Borderlands has a subtle design difference to the next and the first one we are shown is the Tediores brand that creates disposable guns. Instead of reloading these weapons the player will throw them at enemies once their large clip is empty as they explode upon impact.

The next weapon we saw was a bandit assault rifle which has it’s own scrappy look that showed off the nuts and bolts that held the gun together. The design makes for weak shots but the a capacity to hold and enormous amount of bullets.

After the player fought their way through a few set piece areas they came across the first vehicle I’d seen in action. It was a similar style to a normal jeep and it has been noted before that the controls are expected to be much more responsive this time around. To demonstrate this improvement the demo showed the character driving over some smaller enemies as they fly over the jeep and the car continues without any hassle. The other change to vehicles is that they now support four players, three of whom shoot while one player takes the wheel.

Unlike the original any wounded enemies in Borderlands 2 react to their injuries with knockdowns, staggers, and stuns. There's still a slight disconnect between them being shot and their muted jerky reactions, but the impact time is much reduced.

The enemy AI looks better too as the demo showed enemies climbing onto roofs and giving chase to a fleeing player. Overall it should feel like a greater challenge then the run and gun original and hopefully mean people must implore a strategy to succeed.

The remainder of the trailer showed of a boss fight and also some new areas of the game. I won’t go into too much on the boss fight as I don’t really want to spoil anything and it’s quite comedic as is the style of the game. Suffice to say it includes a giant enemy, midgets and some huge shields.

There are also lush green fields in another section that shows the variety on offer when exploring the huge world. This included a beautiful waterfall with long blades of grace separating an outpost from a river. We’ve been told in some of the press releases that if you can see it you can reach it and I’m sure this isn’t far wrong.

This demo has got me even more excited about the sequel to the brilliant co-op FPS Borderland but will the game live up to my expectations? Will we see lest of the browns that glared out from the original? Will I ever see my beloved Mordecai again?