Title: Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!
Developers: 2K Australia, Gearbox Software
Genre: RPG, Shooter, Role-Playing Shooter, co-op shooter
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Reviewed On: Xbox 360
Well, the addiction kicked back in, that same addiction that kicked in when I first started playing the original Borderlands, and the one that came right back when I started Borderlands 2. For those of you worried about the The Pre-Sequel, about whether the new developer, 2K Australia, could make Borderlands properly, you can put most of those worries to rest. Despite a fair few flaws in the game, this is Borderlands, through and through.
The game is set on Elpis, the moon of Pandora, the one that was all cracked, and had a Hyperion moonbase on it that shot robots at you, and on that moonbase itself. The storyline, as the name suggests, is a prequel to Borderlands 2, showing just how Handsome Jack became the hilarious sociopath he is in Borderlands 2, and just how he came into control of Hyperion, and the moon base, Helios. This creates several interesting gameplay changes, and map changes, that 2K Australia have put to use, both for good and bad.
If you have played Borderlands 2, you know almost exactly what you are in for. For those of you who haven't played Borderlands, here's the rundown. The game plays as a shooter version of Diablo. You create a character, choosing from 1 of 4 preset characters, along with 3 other friends, if you like, each with their own abilities and skill trees that are all interesting in their own right, with different abilities to help you fight, or help the team fight. As you level up, you get stronger and stronger, building the skill tree of your character. All of this, is in service of the loot system at the heart of the game. This game, is about guns. Guns here, guns there, guns EVERYWHERE. There are millions of guns in the game, and each gun chest is randomized for which it gives you. No two players will ever have the same loadout of guns, shields, and class mods.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel has not changed the base gameplay. The great looting and tight shooting are here, unchanged. 2K Australia did add several elements, that fit great into the moon setting of the game. Due to the low gravity, players can now jump much higher than in the previous games. This adds a great element of verticality to the gunfights, and provides more options for the player when their shields run low, rather than just ducking behind cover. Being on the moon, there is also the fact that there is no oxygen on the moon, which means that an O2 helmet is required, and adds oxygen as a resource, which slowly drains when outside on the moon's surface. The extra oxygen also allows for an extra boost in mid-jump, which makes it easier to reach taller or farther ledges, and allows for the self-titled "butt slam", a slam which, when done high enough, creates an area-of-effect shockwave. This is great for dealing with groups of lower level enemies, instead of wasting bullets on them.
The team also added new weapon types to the already stupid amount of weapons in the game. One is a new elemental type for all weapon types in the game, and that would be Cryo weapons. Cryo weapons do exactly what they sound like, they freeze enemies. This can be extremely useful for both crowd control, as you can freeze various enemies in a fight to stop them in their tracks, and for damage, as you do extra damage to frozen enemies, and shatter them when they are killed. The other weapon addition is an entirely new subset of weapons for use, lasers. Lasers have existed before in Borderlands 2, as E-Tech weapons, but they were extremely rare and powerful. Lasers have been bumped up to a regular use weapon. There are a variety of different ones for use, everything from shotgun lasers to rifle lasers to a Ghostbusters style laser, which is dependent on the manufacturer of the weapon. Laser weapons can also have elemental damage attached to them. If you looked at me and told me you wouldn't enjoy a Ghostbusters laser gun that freezes people, I'd call you a damn liar.
I'm sure you're also curious about the classes available for you to choose from. Like the past two games, there are four classes to choose from. Unlike Borderlands 1 and 2, that had some common classes between them, the characters present in The Pre-Sequel have totally unique skills between them all. First is Wilhelm the Enforcer, a character that was present as a large robotic boss in Borderlands 2. Wilhelm's special skill is Wolf and Saint, this allows Wilhelm to throw out two robots for combat. One robot, Wolf, is the combat bot, and assists in combat, while his other robot, Saint, acts as a support for the players. The second character, Athena, who made a cameo in the General Knoxx DLC from the first game, uses the skill Kinetic Aspis, which allows her to pull out a kinetic shield which charges from gunfire, and can be thrown. The third character is Nisha, a boss from Borderlands 2, uses the Showdown skill, which lets Nisha lock on to enemies when firing. The final character, Claptrap, a character present through both games, has arguably the most interesting skill, VaultHunter.exe. This skill reads the battlefield, choosing several variables, and gives the player a skill based on the variables. Claptrap has a large variety of different skills available, and the developers made sure to make each one useful to the situation, including causing the team to be uncontrollably bouncy. The only issue I have with the characters, is that Claptrap is the most interesting, while the others are rather ho-hum. This means you'll probably see a lot of Claptraps when playing online.
It's not all bouncing and butt-slams though, as the oxygen resources leads into one of the games biggest problems, namely, the environments. There are large expanses of the moon that, while pretty to look at, are empty. While the new Moon Buggy and Stinger do help somewhat with this, there a a fair few areas that do not allow vehicles, and the areas that do allow them are full of death pits. These lead to a lot of frustration and time spent driving around the pits, or dying in them. There are also geysers littered around the moon that can fill up your Oxygen, and while the dev team tried to make these geysers plentiful, there can still be times that you will need to backtrack again and again, just to fill your oxygen. At least until the second half of the game, the map design is the weakest part of The Pre-Sequel. Its a shame, since the maps can be quite fun to jump around in and admire, when they are not killing you.
This leads to another flaw of the game, the storyline and characters. There are many new characters introduced in The Pre-Sequel, most of which have an Australian accent and use Australian slang. This may get a laugh or two, but many of the new main characters are fairly hit-or-miss, leaning more to the miss category for me personally. The quests are fairly creative and fun to play through, but the characters are a mixed bag. There are many returning characters however, and their writing is as fun and creative as ever. This really shows in the later half of the game, when the dialog leans more towards the returning characters, rather than the new ones.
All in all, I really liked Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. It's still damn fun to grab a few buddies, a few beers, and play split-screen/system link through the game, despite the fairly large flaws in the gameplay. That said, this one is for the Borderlands fans, as this game carries the same gameplay from Borderlands 2, flaws and all. For those of you that enjoyed Borderlands 1 and 2, feel free to pick up The Pre-Sequel, you'll enjoy it. As for the rest of you that don't enjoy Borderlands, don't bother, The Pre-Sequel won't change your mind.
Final Score: 7 out of 10
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