Borderlands 2 Review : Shoot'em Loot

Borderlands 2 is a direct continuation of the original, which begins with the arrival to Pandora of four new search engines of the Chamber. They are not the only ones, of course: the Hyperion corporation also tries to get hold of it and in the end the protagonists must save the planet, kill a very bad bad guy and dig up a few secrets. It can't be said to be a prodigy of originality, of course, but the macabre sense of humour (with a drop of rawness) and the continuous references to pop culture that dot the whole adventure make it very different in tone from the usual within the genre.

It must also be acknowledged that Anthony Burch, the screenwriter for Borderlands 2, is right to identify and correct one of the main problems in the history of the first installment: the absence of an antagonist to match. All the charisma and presence that was missing in Commander Steele is found in Jack the Handsome, an omnipresent villain with the perfect balance between mean and sly. Burch also recovers and reuses as NPCs the protagonists of the previous game, many of the secondary characters (Marcus, Mad Moxxi or the fun Claptrap) and even introduces some of the most delirious characters we have seen so far in the saga, such as Ellie or Tiny Tina, a kind of crazy and pasty version of Ed's screwdriver, the crazy hacker of Cowboy Bebop.

Gearbox has also learned from his own mistakes, something he was already seeing with some of the DLCs of the first Borderlands: missions are more dynamic and varied, the story is told with a better pulse and cities/beaches like Sanctuary have more life and opportunities. Yet you still have the feeling that some aspects might have given a little more of themselves, such as vehicles or a personage customization of characters that doesn't go much beyond changing skins and heads (although it's more than the laughable three-color change of the previous game).

The same is not true for progression, better calibrated and with many more possibilities. The three skill trees give much more gameplay, and on this occasion even choosing the same class two players can adapt the character to more differentiated game styles, with a much greater skill distinction depending on the branch chosen.

The base will be four classes specially defined by its action ability: the command deploys a turret (which when improved can even fire a small nuclear warhead), the siren can float enemies in an energy bubble, the killer places a decoy while activating an optical camouflage and the gunzerker uses a second rifle while multiplying his firepower. The smartest of you may have noticed that they are repeating a couple of classes from the previous game, but having new action skills playing with them changes almost as much as from night to day.

To finish off the improvement in the RPG's own elements is the new Badass Ranking system. Basically the idea is that Borderlands 2 offers lots of small challenges (carrying out a certain number of shots to the head with a specific type of weapon, hunting a hundred skags, opening X chests, etc.) that when completed deliver points that we exchange for perks that apply to all the characters stored in our profile. It's an interesting mechanic, because it allows you to develop the game beyond traditional experience levels and encourages you to perform additional activities and try out game styles that you wouldn't normally explore without having any incentive to do so.

In any case, and being more of a shooter than a role-playing game, in Borderlands 2 guns are the real protagonists of the show. This prodigious Gearbox algorithm is once again present, allowing hundreds of thousands of combinations to be generated randomly, although this time they are better differentiated according to the manufacturer: Jakobs, for example, are powerful and look like they're taken from a far-west movie, while my favorites, the Tediore, are disposable guns that turn into throwing explosives once the magazine has been emptied. What's really important is that truly notes that change quite a bit from each other, and with a total of eight different manufacturers and a greater emphasis on using the right ammunition (corrosive, incendiary, etc.) with certain types of enemy, Borderlands 2 becomes little less than an NRA affiliate's wet dream.

But despite the many obvious improvements implemented in the campaign (automatic collection of cash and ammunition!), Borderlands 2 remains a specially designed experience with cooperative mode in mind. They are given out by very specific elements, such as some enemies (the Nomads, without going any further) designed so that while a player attracts fire another attack from the flank, or even more subtle details, such as the fantastic results obtained by intelligently combining the abilities of different classes. Think, for example, of how Maya can lift an enemy off the ground leaving him helpless while Salvador empties one charger after another on top of him, or how Zer0 can surprise a group of enemies behind his back trying to protect themselves from a turret unfolded by Axton.

This well-calculated spirit of collaboration, on the other hand, is incomprehensibly neglected in the mechanics of looting. Instead of handing out the objects that the enemies drop when they die to all the players independently (something that Diablo III did in a very successful way), Gearbox forces you to go in a hurry and compete with your three teammates to collect the spoils as soon as possible. It's not a problem when you play with friends and you know what to expect, but it can be a bit annoying with strangers who have the habit of kneading everything that comes before them.

In any case, either alone or accompanied, Borderlands 2 is a rare sight within the general tonic of this generation: Not only is it tremendously long and deep (ignoring much of the secondary missions - and missing much of what makes it so appealing - your departure will easily approach thirty hours), but it encourages you to take things relatively easy, exploring the immense scenery, searching for Pandora's best and rarest objects and discovering her almost endless secrets. It helps, and much, that when you finish the story for the first time you unlock the Vault Hunter mode, where you start again keeping the experience level (whose maximum is back to 50) and your objects.

As a sequel, Gearbox's work is little less than impeccable: it takes up everything that made the original stand out in an over-saturated genre and adds lots of improvements that refine a formula that was already promising at the time. In that sense, we must applaud the sincerity of his proposal: if the first Borderlands did not convince you, it is complicated (although not impossible) that the second one does so, because it is a very clear example of "more and better". But if, as a server, three years ago you fell in love with that effective and charismatic mix of shooter and RPG, Borderlands 2 is undoubtedly one of the indispensable titles.