Borderlands 2: Game of the Year Edition

2013

shooter
role-playing (rpg)
adventure
action
science fiction
comedy
sandbox
single player
multiplayer
co-operative

The story

Borderlands 2 furthers the distinct blending of First Person Shooter and Role Playing genres to create the true evolution of the Role Playing Shooter. Team up with up to three other players for four-player online goodness or go old-school with two-player split-screen couch sharing mayhem as you spend hours leveling up your character and equipping them with one of the millions of badass weapons. Borderlands 2 features a new visually stunning array of procedurally generated guns, shields, grenades, artifacts, enemies and more. Choose one of the four new character classes to be taken through a carefully crafted and connected story to all new and surprising environments across the living planet of Pandora. Make new friends, arm them to the teeth and fight alongside them on your relentless quest for revenge and redemption.

What it’s like

Bright, saturated cel-shaded chaos: Borderlands 2 wears its comic-book look openly, with thick black ink outlines, halftone shading, and a sun-bleached desert palette of rust oranges, dusty teals and hot pinks that flare under alien skies and neon-lit bandit towns. The camera stays close over the shoulder and the screen constantly fizzes with pop-ups, damage numbers and loot glints, while the soundtrack swings between twangy frontier guitar and loud, gleeful rock. Its vibe is raucous, sardonic and cheerfully overstuffed, a good fit for a loud weekend session with friends, a couch co-op night, or something to keep on while doing other things. Pacing is brisk and looping: fights, side quests and loot hunts arrive in steady bursts, and the banter between characters keeps the mood light even when the story turns toward grief and vengeance. Violence is constant and stylised, with a lot of gunfire, explosions and gore-tinged enemy deaths that land as cartoonish spectacle rather than dread, and there is coarse language and crude humour throughout. It suits players who want a hectic, funny, gear-obsessed shooter they can dip into or share with others, rather than anything quiet or gentle.

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