Bordering on Greatness

I hope you’re excited as fuck to get bored as fuck in Borderlands 2, because I know I am! Are you ready for… wait. Wait. Are you meaning to tell me it’s not boring, Mr. Contemplative State of Mind? It’s actually… kind of good? Well, whatever you say. I guess I can give this boring-ass game a good review.

First I have to admit that going into this game, I was a bit skeptical. Well, not so much “a bit” as much as “holy fuck, this game is going to put me to sleep again”, because that’s what the first Borderlands did. It put me the fuck to sleep, letting me dream of playing better games. I bought the game twice. TWICE. And both times I stopped playing at level 25, and both times I stopped because my eyes stopped functioning at a basic level. The game was an ugly, repetitive shit fest by any stretch of the imagination, yet it struck such a resounding chord with millions of people, including my roommate who managed to clock in over 200 hours.

Needless to say he was psyched as fuck to get his hands on the sequels.

Me?

Not so much.

Anyways, I got the game for free on PC for butt fucking my ex-roommate’s cat for a few days (which, by the way, is a far more entertaining activity than playing the first Borderlands). I agreed to participate in a four-pack on Steam as payment. And why would I agree to that you ask, especially after just letting lose my severe disdain for the first game? People go ape shit over getting free shitty games ALL THE TIME, so I figured I can join the masses for once and let my intense love for that cat remain as the true payment.

Needless to say, once release day came, I was a little more than impressed.

Borderlands 2 is FUCKING AWESOME. Well, at least compared to the first. It still put me to sleep at times, but it put me to sleep DREAMING ABOUT IT. In case you don’t want to read any further, go out and BUY THIS GAME not because you’re a fucking loot fanatic, but because you should support developer’s like Gearbox nurturing their shrunken balls and going out of their fucking way to address every single fucking concern about their broken ass games. It’s astonishing, really. Every single complaint I had against the first game is fixed. In a way, I’m really disappointed I can’t knock the sequel for the same faults, but who gives a shit. A good game is a good game, and Borderlands 2 is certainly that.

The biggest pancake nipple I had against the first game was the fact that there was no fucking story to drive along to. There was nothing gripping, nothing to pull me along the tired and boring fetch quests. The characters, while humorous at times, were as flat as Paris Hilton. The missions themselves were driven by motives as empty as Mel Gibson’s Texas mickey after a Bar Mitzvah. And the setting. Christ, the setting… it has as much variety as some other meaningless pop culture metaphor that I’m too tired to think of right now. It was just painful to see that little to no effort had been put into the game’s actual story and plot. Mind you, the actual mythology was okay: it was clear in the first game that the guys at Gearbox wanted to do something more with their designs, but it was also clear they had no idea what to do with it. Luckily, they knew what to do for the sequel. Right off the bat, BOOM, THERE’S A FUCKING VILLAIN WITH A CLEAR MOTIVE: TO KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER, before you reach “The Vault. That’s at least 1500% more story than the first game, and already that’s pretty impressive. Then second, BOOM, AN ENVIRONMENT THAT’S NOT A FUCKING DESERT. The snow levels were a great tit feast for the eyes. And surprisingly enough, it wasn’t just a desert with a palette swap. What was really impressive was that there was actual fucking detail in this world—from the vast harbor filled with glistening ice floes, to the fire-spewing MOTHERFUCKING VIKING SHIP MOUNTED ON TOP OF A PENILE SHAPED MOUTAIN to Claptrap’s oily masturbation chambers, I really felt that this was something I could believe in and being genuinely humored by.

That’s another thing. The humor. Gearbox realized they had something here with the first game’s characters. Especially Claptrap. GOD BLESS THAT LITTLE ROBOT. He’s a clear example of the superb writing in this game. Granted, the script is a little ho-hum at times in terms of balancing the humorous with the not-so-humorous—evidenced by all the weighty serious shit that goes down once the story starts moving along—but Claptrap more than makes up for that. He finally becomes the pop culture icon that he always strived to be in the first game, making an impression on me as much as GLaDOS or Master Chief had in the past, in terms of recent video game characters. It’s as simple as this: CLAP TRAP IS A FUCKING FUNNY LITTLE RASCAL that completely justifies playing this game, if not then combined with the vast swath of sardonic, well-played, well-acted, and well-written minor characters in the game. The vast swath of little moments in this game continuously put a shit-eating grin on my face.

That isn’t to say the game’s writing is completely satisfactory. So let’s get back to the ho-hum stuff. The Warrior? Boring. Fighting a giant alien god at the end of a video game is so overdone, and the game doesn’t even do anything special with it. In fact, the fight is even dragged out, and only results in a little humorous tipoff to an infamous internet meme. At least there’s fucking loot after you beat it, or so I’m told. And then there are the characters from the last game. The actual process of meeting up with the previous Vault Hunters is interesting enough… but their actual usage in the game is incredibly dull and melodramatic: adjectives that really have no place in an adventure that’s extremely proud of flaunting its illogical and exciting characters. The old Vault Hunters are merely excuses for emotional drama, and emotional drama has no place in a game about infinite guns, masturbating robots, and women with breasts the size of Kimdotcom.

But whatever. All of the above doesn’t mean diddly-shit if it doesn’t have good gameplay. And with this game, the gameplay is in the gunplay. The first Borderlands prided itself in having over 17 million guns. Apparently, and the dubstep-infused hipster marketing and I could be wrong, there’s approximately 87 bazillion guns in the sequel. Now, that’s a lot of fucking guns, and I may have had only access to maybe… three hundred or so, at least. But already there’s a great sense of weight and variety to them, which was an acute problem in the first game because every fucking gun looked the same. At least some of them look cool now, with all them fancy lights and scopes and shit. And they also operate differently from one another, thanks to differential elemental properties, firing modes, AND EVEN THROWING THEM AS GRENADES OR ROCKETS WHEN YOU RELOAD (LIKE HOLY SHIT THAT IS AWESOME except when you’re behind cover). There’s almost a strategic value to the game because of this, and it makes me masturbate furiously. Slag is the best option you have at any given time, however, allowing increased damage to your foes. A little overpowered, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the balance of the game gets thrown off, since slag is a bit hard to find compared to the other elements. It’s also worthy to note that the critical hits have much more of a satisfying feel to them as well, and—although not nearly enough heads explode as they used to—the gore level is still appropriately hilarious as chunks of cel-shaded meat often litter the ground after a chaotic bout with flaming midgets.

That said, the game is STILL UGLY AS SIN technologically, despite a monumental visual upgrade on PC. The game still runs on DirectX9, believe it or not. Granted, the stylized visuals make up for this short coming, as well as the fact that this game is OPTIMIZED AS FUCK and runs on my setup at >60fps with everything on high, including Physx, at 1080p. It really is just an Xbox game running at high resolutions with amazing particle effects, but damn does it ever do it with sass. It’s like Jabba the Hutt with make up on in the sense that hey!—it’s at least better than Jabba the Hutt without make up on. Regardless, they improved the art style a great deal. Everything looks like it belongs in the same universe rather than just looking like chunks of corn and carrot in a toilet full of yellow piss. And that’s all that really remains important. I’m not going to knock an ugly game because it doesn’t use all of the technological advances of the time. I’m going to knock it if it has a really fucking horrendous art style, which this game DOES NOT HAVE.

Considering these things, Borderlands 2 is a significant improvement over its piece of shit predecessor. It has variety, attitude, charm, and solid gameplay, making one hell of an experience for veterans and noobs alike. ESPECIALLY NOOBS LIKE ME who thought the last game was too similar to choking on flaming piss fumes and grandma shit. And the best part of the sequel? I ONLY FELL ASLEEP ONCE, THANK FUCK. No, no really, that is one of my actual praises of the game.

Just shut up and play it already.