Borderlands 2 - Gun Looting

The one thing we all loved about Borderlands was it’s rich adult humour, it’s gallons of blood and it’s one-wheel foul mouthed robots. It looks like all those things are going to be coming back in hordes when the second instalment in the franchise hits in a few months time.

Pandora has received a welcome new colour pallet and looks set to keep us enthralled for months to come. The roasting sun doesn’t seem to have helped any of the local’s personalities either with the likes of Tiny Tina and Princess Fluffybutt being some of the names already mentioned.

The former actually looks like a rip of the Jokers old missus Harley Quinn with her Batcave like location and strange circus like attire. She actually one of the quest gives during the massive loot based quests so this shows that you can pick up extra adventures on your journey around Pandora this time.

The main town this time around is called Sanctuary where you’ll be able to fulfil everybody’s needs and desires. Your main type of quest follows the similar routine as before; killing specific characters, a certain volume of creatures or fetching items for the NPC’s. Although this sounds repetitive the co-operative elements seem to stop these games from feeling boring as you complete each mission in different ways.

The biggest draw for the Borderland franchises though as the bazzilion guns on offer – some fire plastma, others normal bullets with different speeds, accuracy and power. It’s a Diablo style loot grinder that give you the ‘5 more minutes’ feeling.

Borderlands 2 inches even closer to Blizzard’s dungeon-crawler in ways that make a ton of sense for its role-playing shooter format. Firstly, you’ve got a Stash that lets you drop items into a shared Dumpster that any character on your profile can access. So if you play as the Gunzerker and your new Sniper Rifle isn’t suitable drop it in for your Zero playthrough,

This cross-character sharing also applies to your challenges which allow you to increase your character in interesting new ways (most of which are completely outrageous). Another addition sees a new bank feature included which lets you hand onto items you aren’t currently using but might want to come back to later. The only thing missing from Borderlands 2 is the ability to upgrade weapons but I suppose that is what patches and updates are for.

Heading out into the vast areas of Pandora allows for some brilliantly fast paced gunplay that really can’t be described until you see it for yourself. Each enemy has it’s own set of weaknesses or easy kills a’la Batman Arkham City – one might require shots to the mouth while others require shooting in the back. It’s a good element to include into the co-op gameplay and means you must mix up your tactics depending on what you are up against.

Provided I don’t need a constant internet connection to play this I’ll be on it all day following its release. Being a fan of the original I’m certainly looking forward to looting my way through an FPS again and for those unfamiliar with the franchise there will not be a better time to get involved than when Borderlands 2 hits the stores.