Magic: 2014 Review

Like many fully-gestated nerds, I spent some of my formative teenage years collecting shockingly expensive pieces of plastic-coated cardboard with printed pictures on them. Some played Yu-Gi-Oh, others played with Pokemon cards, but for myself, nothing beat the dark, mature setting and themes of Magic: The Gathering. As I got older though, I realized that paying $12 for a rare card I needed for my squirrel deck (yes, I had a squirrel deck) was a little ridiculous. For a brief time, my friends and I focused more on the deck building, and just used “cards” printed off of the internet on standard printer paper, but that seemed to make it a little too easy to get all the cards you wanted, and before long, we had all moved on to expensive pieces of painted plastic instead (ie. Warhammer).

Wizards of the Coast has been releasing Magic: The Gathering based games for a variety of systems for a while now. Of course, the games are laden with heavy-handed sales pitches trying to get people to pick up the card game (profit margins, anyone?), but have overall been fun experiences in their own right. I recently purchased and began playing the latest release, Magic: 2014 on my PC.

Previous entries have all had the same format: you have access to a couple of starter decks, and you unlock others by playing through the campaign. Every time you win a match, you unlock a new card you can use (or not use) in the winning deck. It could never truly be called “deck building” though; it was more like “deck tweaking”. The fundamental aspects of the deck were fixed, you couldn’t change the amount of land, and you usually ended up with a total of 30 extra cards unlocked (giving you a total of 65 or so to arrange how you want, usually in a 60 card deck). Wizards would occasionally come out with new “deck packs” in the form of DLC, which gave you access to entirely new decks to play with and unlock, usually at $2 a piece or so. The campaign mode looks much the same in the new game, but you can now adjust the number of lands in your deck, which is a massive improvement for those of us who like a deck with less than 40% land. One other interesting change to the campaign mode is that there’s a bit of a story now, and even some voiced dialogue. I didn’t really pay close attention, but it has something to do with Chandra wanting to kill some guy, but to find him you have to go kill some other guys, and blah blah blah… just let me start playing lands and casting spells.

The decks in the new game are good entries overall for the most part, with a couple of exceptions. The most well known characters make a return, but many of their decks have seen serious overhauls. Regrettably though, a few of them, such as Masks of the Dimir, Enter the Dracomancer, and even poster-child Chandra’s burn deck all seem a little underwhelming compared to some of the other options. Nevertheless, the styles and colours are varied and interesting enough to keep things fresh for quite a while.

The new star on the scene in 2014 is the addictive “sealed deck mode”, which is all about deck building through its very core. Much like a real sealed deck tournament, you receive a number of booster packs and use them to create a 40 card deck from scratch. You can even play against other players online to see how your decks stack up, though unfortunately you can’t play 2 vs 2 in this mode (which is my favourite mode, darn it).

The only limiting factor when making decks is the cards you manage to unlock, which depending on individual luck, could leave your deck ranging from stellar to a total flop. This is where the catch comes in… one might think “well… I got pretty unlucky with this draft, so I’ll just delete my deck and start over.” Nope, ‘fraid not! There is no way to delete a deck once it’s created. “Oh but I’m a crafty one, Uni… I’ll just go into the guts of the game and delete the saved decks, then unlock all my boosters again! I’ve outsmarted you, game! Muhahaha!!” Nice try Captain Kirk, but this Kobayashi Maru can’t be reprogrammed; all of your unlocked cards were determined the moment you bought the game. They’re all locked to your personal copy, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. “But… all of my cards were terrible! What am I supposed to do? This isn’t fair to me as a player!” Nope, it’s not, but don’t worry, Wizards will save you unlucky players! You can have up to 20 sealed decks! You just have to shell out $2 per deck. “Wait… I have to pay you more for the game because I’m not very lucky?” No no no… of course not! You just have to pay more for the game if you want to be competitive because you’re not very lucky. It was a crafty marketing ploy, and I’ll admit, it worked on me; so far I’ve bought another $10 worth of decks, and I considered getting more. The process of building a new deck from scratch and trying to combine your cards in interesting ways was one of the major draws of the card game, and for the first time since Microprose’s Magic the Gathering (which is still a great game and very worth playing by the way), you can actually do that in a video game (yeah, yeah, there’s Magic the Gathering: Online, but if I wasn’t going to pay for pieces of cardboard, I’m certainly not going to pay for scraps of code).

Whether unlocking cards for the core decks or experimenting with sealed decks, Magic 2014 has a quite a bit to offer a fan of the card game or the video game series. With a price tag of $9.99 on Steam (without any DLC), it’s a bargain for the volume of entertainment you could derive from it. That’s probably why I’m not so bothered about giving them money to gain access to more sealed decks, which feels like a blatant cash grab. If you’re not ready to dive into the fairly complex rules system and strategy of the Magic: The Gathering game though, this may be one to pass on; it could be an exercise in frustration for the uninitiated, particularly sealed deck mode.

Go gather some magic, fellow planeswalkers.

Uni

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition Review

Baldur’s Gate was one of the iconic RPGs of my generation. The world was open to exploration however you pleased, the combat was fun, tactical and dynamic, and the story was solid. Of course, to me it’s only the faintest shadow (reference intended) of the glory of its successor, Baldur’s Gate II, but it is still an excellent game nevertheless. When I heard that developer Overhaul Games took it upon themselves to create Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition, I waited anxiously to see the results.

Unfortunately, I was to be somewhat disappointed. That is not to say that Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition is not worth playing, but the original itself was well worth playing, so that’s not exactly high praise. The biggest problem with Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Editon (or B’gee as I’ve taken to calling it), is that it doesn’t quite live up to its name. The “enhancements” are there, and they do make a difference, but a $19.99 difference? I’m not so sure. All of the kits, classes and subraces from Baldur’s Gate II have been carried over to B’GEE, the resolution has been improved, the AI is a touch better, and a few new characters and kits were added, as well as a completely new game mode called The Black Pits.

All of this sounds like a lot, but the problem is that the modding community has already addressed a lot of these issues. Additional characters? Take your pick; there are dozens of character mods, many of them fully voiced and with romances to boot. Added quests? Yep, lots of those too. Baldur’s Gate II kits and races? A particularly dedicated modder managed that. Bug fixes? Yeah, there are plenty of unofficial bug fixes out there courtesy of modders as well.

Which begs the question… what exactly is it that’s so enhanced in this so-called enhanced edition? The multiplayer functionality and stability are definitely better; I’ve had a notoriously difficult time getting BG 1 and BG 2 multiplayer to work, even over a LAN connection. The game runs a lot better on PCs running modern operating systems, which is definitely nice. The three characters they added in are somewhat interesting, but nothing to write home about. Which brings us to the last of the main added features… The Black Pits.

The Black Pits is a sort of fighting pit wherein you engage in a string of battles to win the freedom of you and your fellows. Your party starts off at level 1 and levels very quickly, making this an interesting way to test out new character builds and party configurations. The combats range from laughably easy to somewhat tricky, though they’re never an exercise in frustration, even on the hardest difficulty setting. The story is minimal, but there is still voiced dialogue, and it does a fairly good job of creating a reasonable context for your gladiatorial murder-spree. it doesn’t take more than a few hours to complete, but it was still a fun distraction.

So, the bottom line… should you buy it? Well… in a word, maybe. For me, a die-hard superfan of the Baldur’s Gate series, it was great to have a new excuse to play one of my old favourites, even if it didn’t have all that many more bells and whistles than I remembered. For a stranger to the series addicted to graphical extravaganzas and crystal clear game mechanics, this might be one to take a pass on. Second Edition Dungeons and Dragons mechanics are bafflingly opaque at times, and that aspect of the game has most certainly NOT been enhanced.

Whether you’re playing the enhanced edition or not, Baldur’s Gate is a great game, and great games are worth a bit of money. So if you’re inclined, check it out! And if you’re not… well… don’t. But if you don’t, you’d better be installing the original right now. Unless you’ve already played it, then I’ll forgive you. Maybe.

May your THAC0 be negative, my friends.

Unithralith

Legend of Grimrock Review

Legend of Grimrock is a game that hearkens back to my RPG gaming roots. The first RPG I ever played was Warriors of the Eternal Sun for Sega Genesis. I still remember spending hours rolling stats for my favourite character (the elf, of course) trying to get optimal scores as a socially-awkward twelve year old. The nostalgia I felt tramping about dungeons in first-person perspective, mashing my attack buttons in Legend of Grimrock warmed my otherwise icy and jaded soul.

The premise of Legend of Grimrock is fairly simple; your party of characters were (perhaps unjustly) convicted of some great crime, and rather than have you contribute to the prison overpopulation problem, they chuck you into some massive, diabolical dungeon to die. Of course, their pretense is that you can prove your worth and fight your way out… but nobody ever does. So, hey, easy disposal of criminals. No muss, no fuss. Your team however, is not cut from the same cloth as all those other prisoners; after all, they’re PCs. And so your epic journey begins… crawling through dank dungeon corridors, otherwise naked and scrounging rotting carcasses for their leather pants and feasting on raw snail meat to survive. From these humble beginnings however, your characters slowly take shape and develop their abilities, becoming a powerful force in their own right; plucky and resourceful survivors.

You have four characters in your party; two in the front rank, and two in the back. Melee weapons (with few exceptions) are only usable in the front rank, meaning that having more than two fighters (a melee-only class) in a group is generally a bad idea. Other than that, you’re free to design your party however you want to. You could have your front line consist of dodge-tanking rogues, or heavily armored warriors. You could even have a party entirely of mages, if you felt confident you could keep them out of harm’s way. Combat for classes other than mage is relatively simple; you equip a weapon (or weapons) in a character’s hands, right click it, and they’ll attack with it. Every attack has a cooldown based on the weight of the weapon wielded (a dagger attacks faster than a stone club, for example). Any abilities your weapon-wielders have activate on their own without any input from you. Mages however, are a different story; when mages attack, they bring up a grid of runes which must be selected in the correct combination to fire off a spell. While simple spells can be cast with just a single rune, other more powerful spells require three or more runes to be combined. The spells you can cast are determined by the number of skill ranks you put into different trees, such as fire, ice, or poison. If you don’t have a bunch of ranks in fire, you won’t be hurling fireballs any time soon.

Combat is handled with a grid-based movement system; you can exploit turning corners and kiting enemies around to keep the damage your team takes to a minimum. Rather than try to fight this consequence of grid-based combat however, Legend of Grimrock embraces it, forcing you to use these tactics to keep your team alive. Some combats and enemies can be quite difficult; even a single bite from a spider could prove disastrous if you lack what you need to make an antivenom potion. Combat can end up feeling surprisingly tense, despite it’s relative simplicity. Some enemies are craftier than others, sidestepping in front of you when you expect them to walk forward, or stepping around a corner rather than charging in your direction. Once you’ve gotten used to kiting your enemies around, the sudden emergence of these more advanced enemies can be quite jarring, but in a good way.

At the forefront of Legend of Grimrock are the puzzles. Some require little more than a few moments of consideration, where others require quick reflexes or careful attention to detail. None are so difficult as to make the experience frustrating; even when I didn’t immediately understand how to solve a puzzle, I managed to buckle down and reason my way through it without too much headache. The puzzles were still challenging enough to give a sense of satisfaction at their completion, and the game often rewards your efforts with new equipment or resources. Diligent explorers will receive a vast plethora of rewards for finding secret rooms and hidden switches, or boldly taking the plunge into an ever-tempting pitfall (falling damage never felt so good).

Legend of Grimrock, also offers an “old school mode”, wherein you lose access to the auto-filling map from the default game mode. The game provides a few items to help you, such as a compass, but other than that, navigation and mapping are your responsibility, so break out the graph paper and pencils. Some may find this mode a little bit tedious, but for some players, this is the sort of dungeon-crawling experience that has been missing from modern games.

As old-school dungeon crawlers go, Legend of Grimrock delivers, and is definitely worth a look if you were looking for a new RPG to slake your gaming thirst.

LoG-ging out,

Uni

Torchlight 2 Review

Torchlight 2 has been a much anticipated sequel to a rather unsuspecting game that found enormous popularity among ARPG aficionados. Thankfully, Torchlight 2 has lived up to it’s hype (unlike certain other mainstream ARPGs I could mention). Torchlight 2 is a difficult game to summarize in just a few words, but here goes…

Remember all those stupid little things that annoyed you about ARPGs? Cut all of those out. That’s Torchlight 2.

Your awesome, awesome pet is one of the defining features of Torchlight 2. It has it’s own inventory, just as large as your own. With a simple shift-click, your pet will pick up any item you have highlighted on the ground. Eventually, you’ll get into the habit of doing this with all the items you don’t want to keep for yourself. With a single button click, you can send your pet off to town with its sack of loot, selling it to the town merchants, so you don’t have to. This is nothing new to someone who’s played the original Torchlight, but a nice new feature of Torchlight 2 is that now you can give your pet a shopping list too. Need some more identify scrolls or mana potions? Send your haggling wonderdog back to town to grab them for you while you continue to slaughter your way to glory! Your pet is also quite capable in combat, and comes in a wide range of varieties, all of which are combat effective. It takes a bit of suspension of disbelief that some guy’s ferret can rip as big a hole in the baddies as a panther, but hey… if you took the ferret, you probably think that’s hilarious anyways (I know I did).

One of the things that Torchlight 2 does so well is make all of your skills a joy to use. Whenever I put a point in a new skill and tested it on some unfortunate critters, I found myself saying “wow, that’s really cool”. I found skills that I loved, and invested heavily in them. Yet, when I had a point or two to spare on something new, I found myself nearly equally impressed with my new acquisitions. Deciding which skills to develop and which ones would lag behind became a difficult, nail-biting trial. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that you can only recover the last three skill points you’ve assigned, meaning that afterwards, they’re a permanent investment. Though it sounds kind of stressful, this is exactly the kind of problem you want to be having when playing an ARPG. I’m sure we all remember those gateway skills you’d slap a point into to unlock the thing you actually want. That’s not going to happen in Torchlight 2; you don’t need to take certain skills to unlock later ones, you just need to hit the level requirement. That means all your points are going where you actually want them.

One of my favourite things about Torchlight 2 is that I feel powerful. But not just powerful… REALLY powerful. My Embermage would wade into vast throngs of enemies, his hands crackling with electricity. In moments, they’ve all exploded in a shower of gore. Their mage allies begin firing bolts of energy at him, but he calls down a pulsing orb that discharges bolts of lightning into them, killing them in a flash. The few remaining (and no doubt terrified) denizens of evil are quickly dispatched with a few wand flourishes and the relentless, gnashing teeth of Pogo the ferret. I can’t help cackling (very sexy, masculine cackling of course) with delight as I demolish a room full of enemies with reckless abandon. This is a double-edged sword, however (more on this later). Whatever the difficulty though, I felt devastatingly strong, and the combat was satisfying in the extreme.

The permanency of character choices in Torchlight 2 adds a lot of replayability to the game. One Engineer might specialize in two-handed weapons and bash the living daylights out of everything he can find with ground pounding AoE attacks. Another might be a defensive bastion, wielding a one-handed weapon and shield, powering up his armor with magic and conjuring healing robots. They’re all vastly different characters, and the game never tells you how to play. You could play a Berserker who focuses on his magical attributes, and dual-wields wands. You could play an Embermage who wades into melee and swings a massive greataxe. Certain builds are generally more viable for some classes than others, but impossible? Nothing is impossible. If the permanency of skill point allocation curdles your milk a little, never fear, the modding community is here! Respec potions were one of the first (and most popular) mods available on the Steam Workshop.

A few other small but notable things I appreciated about Torchlight 2 were the fast movement speed of the characters, the very well made randomly generated maps, the ability to remove gems from sockets or recover gems by destroying items, and a variety of other small conveniences. Steam Workshop support has given new life to the game as well, and certain mods can really change the experience. I highly recommend the Synergies mod, for example.

How does it compare to Diablo 3? There really are too many differences to count. There are all the obvious differences like skill point and attribute customization, pets, the way weapons work, the permanency of character builds, and the use of potions, but also the subtle differences, like the feeling of power in Torchlight 2 vs the feeling of “which monster type is going to murder me this time?” in Diablo 3. In short, overall, for me at least, Torchlight 2 is the clear winner, and with a price tag of $20, it’s hardly even a contest. Part of the fun in playing an RPG is getting to play YOUR character, YOUR way. This is something I found lacking in Diablo 3; I was playing “the Wizard” or “the Monk”, not Kensington the fiery-haired, dexterous Outlander, specializing in two pistols and followed closely by his pet Papillon, Penelope.

Torchlight 2 has one of the opposite problems Diablo 3 had, however; Torchlight 2 is a little too forgiving of it’s adventurers. Penalties for dying are laughably minimal, and even the boss fights are less challenging than they should be. Cranking up the difficulty helped to an extent, but experienced players using ranged attacks could easily keep out of reach of the few things that were a threat, even on the hardest difficulty. This is an issue the modding community has addressed to an extent, but this really isn’t an issue that should have existed in the first place.

Another issue I’ve experienced is the occasional burst of lag, even on my competent gaming PC. When a multitude of enemies are exploding in showers of gore or shards of ice, the usual smoothness Torchlight 2 demonstrates is replaced by painful chugging. It doesn’t destroy the experience, but it does hurt it a bit.

There is one more significant and pressing issue with the game, however; the devil’s in the details, as they say, and if that’s the case, there is a distinct lack of devils in Torchlight 2. Veteran ARGP players like to know exactly how all the mechanics in a system interact. What determines my fumble chance? How does dual wielding affect my DPS when using skills? What do my defenses actually do for me? Does increasing my focus increase the amount of elemental damage done by skills that list a set amount of damage? Does having a higher chance to execute increase your DPS when using skills? Does my bonus to damage when dual wielding spell increase my DPS for skills? I found myself asking all these questions and more as I played, and the only ways to answer them are to experiment, or search the internet. It is frustrating that these answers are not readily available, when no doubt the developers know exactly how all the mechanics work already; they’d HAVE to. They MADE them. Despite these small annoyances, Torchlight still stole my attention, and kept it as well.

Torchlight 2 is a great game for ARPG aficionados, but only if you can get past the forgiving difficulty and the opacity of the mechanics. That feeling of power, the smooth gameplay, the pets, and the old school character advancement model all lend the game a strong adamantine backbone of awesome. Go forth, and enjoy.

Stay gaming, my friends.

Unithralith

Bioshock Infinite Review

Bioshock was one of the greatest shooters in recent memory. Not just because throwing around fire and lightning while blasting people with guns was a satisfying mechanic (and it certainly was), but because it presented a beautiful, mesmerizing, horrifying, alien and at the same time familiar world that asked poignant questions about the direction our society is moving. Rapture was one of the most compelling video game settings ever created. After the debacle that was Bioshock 2, it was a relief to see Irrational Games and their talented crew take up the reins of the series again for Bioshock Infinite. At the same time, it was troubling, however; can this new Bioshock measure up to the masterful opus that was the original?

The answer is yes, indeed it can. Choosing to leave Rapture dead and floating and moving on to a new, different fantastical city was the best choice Irrational Games could have made. The setting of Infinite is the flying city of Columbia circa 1912, once again a city isolated from the rest of the world, but in a very different way. The change was far beyond aesthetic; Columbia is alive and healthy, where Rapture was barely holding together. People teem through the streets, sometimes extending amiable greetings while lounging on a park bench or enjoying carnival games. Shops and restaurants are open. Parades and organized public events go on around you. My first impression of Columbia was that it was… nice. I didn’t feel like a scavenger picking at rotting bones. I felt like an unwelcome stranger who was going to cause trouble for these otherwise peaceful people. Before too long though, Columbia reveals its ugly side; blatant and appalling racism, blind religious fervor, exploitation of the working class, and a totalitarian, fascist government.

Columbia has the same “steampunk” vibe that Rapture had, with robotic foes, high-tech talking vending machines, and death-defying modes of transportation awaiting you. The weapons are fairly standard fare for shooters; pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, sniper rifles, semi-auto carbines, RPGs, revolvers and a few other weapons make appearances. I was a little disheartened at first since the pistol (your first gun) was such a lackluster weapon, but the fare quickly improves. The semi-auto carbine (looking and functioning much like an M-1 Garand) ended up being a staple of mine for much of the game. The new version of Plasmids, referred to as “Vigors”, were much more satisfying to use right away. The incinerate ability from Bioshock has been replaced by a launched projectile that explodes like a grenade when it strikes an enemy. That it fires a projectile instead of instantly setting an enemy on fire means tactical placement of your attacks is now very important, and beyond certain ranges you would be hard pressed to hit anything but air. In fact, most offensive abilities fire projectiles you need to aim well to experience any degree of success with them. Vigors also often have a “trap” form that gives you a greater degree of versatility and stronger battlefield control.

Combat is quick and snappy in Bioshock Infinite, and you usually have a wide range of ways to deal with enemies. Combat environments are more dynamic than in the original Bioshock, allowing you to decide on the fly whether to engage from a distance, up close, in between, or even from the air. You can only carry two guns at a time in Bioshock Infinite, so your choice of weapons becomes an important one that defines your play style. That rifle is versatile, but it lacks the accuracy and punch of my sniper rifle. The shotgun is great in close combat though, so do I really want to give that up for it instead? I found myself asking these questions frequently, and while some might chafe at this minimal loadout, I found it much more satisfying than juggling an armful of guns I hardly ever use. Upgrades for your Vigors can be purchased with money instead of with the blood of mutant children, and most have more unique and varied effects than the upgrades from the original. One complaint I do have is that the frequency with which you acquire Vigors seems slower than that of Plasmids in Bioshock. Some Vigors that could have drastically changed my play style weren’t made available until fairly late, which made it difficult to enjoy them to their fullest.

The story in Bioshock Infinite is engaging and well written, and most of the characters are believable and relatable. I found the player character Booker’s bitter cynicism and cold self interest consistent with the actions I saw occurring in game; here was a man comfortable with violence, and considering the things he does, he’d have to be. In the manner I played him, Booker struck me as someone who wished he could be a better man, but who knew he was too far gone to ever come back. Elizabeth, arguably the true “protagonist” of the story, I found immediately charming and likable. She is intelligent (far more so than Booker, as she proves more than once), resourceful and independent, with just the right mix of naivete and youthful exuberance. While she does (sometimes quite literally) throw a wrench in Booker’s plans, I was never really annoyed by that. In fact, on some level I approved of her unwillingness to cooperate; she was right not to trust Booker.

Elizabeth also helps you in a variety of ways in combat, and never gets in your way or requires babysitting. She sticks to cover and stays close to you, tossing you salts (fuel for your Vigor powers), ammunition or medkits as you need them. She can also “summon” larger, more dramatic items that can completely change the course of a battle, from friendly turrets to guns to large objects you can use for cover. While some may call her a sidekick, I had a different perspective on Elizabeth; she was often my rescuer, throwing me a new clip for my favourite gun just before a deadly Handyman charged me, passing me salts when I was desperately in need of a Vigor ability, or best of all, a medkit as I teetered at the precipice of death. During the parts of the story in which I was separated from her, I felt the worse for her absence, both because of her well-timed equipment tosses in combat and for her company outside of it.

While some reviewers chafed at the ending, I found it both gripping and prodigious. As the credits rolled by, I sat in dumbfounded silence, running through everything I had just experienced in my head, trying to piece everything together from memory. It is testament to the quality of the game that I immediately started a new playthrough in an attempt to puzzle out the mystery. And I am confident I can do it… I just need a little more time and reflection to figure it out. Plus a flowchart. I think I need a flowchart.

All told, Bioshock Infinite is a worthy successor to the original. Stellar voice acting, exciting combat, a captivating story, and a unique and breathtakingly realized setting all come together to create the best game of 2013 thus far, and like its predecessor, one of the best shooters of all time. Whether you are a fan of story-driven gameplay or shooters in general, this one is a must have.

Get it immediately. I’m serious, go. Right now.

Unithralith

Borderlands 2 Review

By now, many gamers are familiar with Gearbox’s lighthearted-yet-murderous Borderlands title and its raunchy, low-brow humour. It was a fairly well received (if flawed) game. The original Borderlands appealed to the darker part of humanity; taking joy in the deaths of others, stealing their things, proving your superiority in visceral sprays of… viscera. Those of us who are addicted to the endless hunt for ‘phat lewts’ (and let’s be honest; that’s a LOT of us) got tons of mileage out of Borderlands. Being able to customize the skills and abilities of your character was the icing on a quite tasty cake that was not at all a lie, providing the engaging dynamic of an RPG-like character progression.

Borderlands 2 is… well, more of the same. I would be lying to you if I said that Borderlands 2 pushed the boundaries of it’s predecessor much. Before you get the wrong impression though, that is the adjective that I think best describes Borderlands 2 in general; “more”. More character customization, more vehicles, more weapons, more powerful and satisfying action skills, more polished skill trees, more dynamic and exciting combat, more story content, and more hilarity. The game is of an impressive length, too; on my first playthrough, I was pushing 35 hours and I still hadn’t completed the main quest. That’s no small feat for a shooter.

I was both surprised and impressed by the quality of the voice acting and the narrative itself. Unlike the original Borderlands, I actually felt like I was a part of a story, and not just wantonly killing things and taking their shiny things (though I still did lots of that too).

Your antagonist, Handsome Jack, is one of my favourite video game villains of all time; blatantly homicidal but with delusions of both grandeur and moral superiority, Jack wavers between middle school-esque childishness, brilliant supervillainy, self-righteous fury, and even pitiable vulnerability. It surprised me that several times throughout my journey I actually felt bad for some of the people around me; even Jack himself. It was a great element to add to a game that lent itself to the dehumanization of everyone around you. Returning characters (even the more shallow ones ‘cough cough’ Scooter ‘cough’) were more dynamic, better rounded and felt more relatable. By the time I made my way through the majority of the game, I actually wanted to save Pandora; for the first time, it actually seemed worth saving.

  

The environments are far more dynamic than the original Borderlands, including glacial polar regions, nature preserves teeming with (mostly hostile) life, rocky highlands with plentiful waterfalls, and of course, the traditional Borderlands deserts. I actually found myself pausing for a few moments to take in my surroundings, and was surprised by the beauty of Pandora. It’s a far cry from the same-y, bleak, and tediously boring expanses of desert of the original Borderlands.

To say the humour of Borderlands is intact would give the wrong impression, as I found the humour of the original more miss than hit. In Borderlands 2 however, I often found myself laughing out loud (LOLing, if you will) at a good portion of the dialogue. There is definitely still some of the original raunch-factor, especially from returning characters like Scooter and Moxxi, but most of the new characters are far more amusing and engaging in the sequel. One particular character that stands out for me is an insane, thirteen year old explosives expert. One of her quests, involving helping her set up for (and be a server at) her tea party, was my favourite in the game. Had the voice acting not been so on-the-mark, the character’s potential might have been completely lost, but thankfully, this was another strong point of the game.

If there’s one thing Borderlands 2 does really, really well, it’s randomly generated weapons. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as scooping up a promising new weapon and finding out it’s even more awesome than you had imagined. Every weapon type from the original makes a reappearance, with the exception of revolvers, which have been bundled in with the other pistols. I did find that certain elemental weapon types were far more effective than others though, which may have been a missed opportunity. I found shock weapons rarely made it into my arsenal, whereas I always wanted to be carrying at least one corrosive weapon. Sniper rifles seem to be a little bit overpowered; picking off your enemies from a huge distance can make otherwise challenging fights quite trivial. Small issues aside, the sheer variety of weapons helps stave off tedium.

Another of the big changes is the addition of a far wider range of enemies. Now you’ll fight slow moving bandits with a pile of health called nomads (some of whom carry tower shields to foil your direct gunfire), massive goliaths that go berserk when you shoot off their helmets, cloaking infiltrators, rat men who can fry you with eye lasers, flame-throwing robots, and huge, mobile robot factories with on-board missile batteries (Jack does love his robots). The variety of enemies is quite impressive, and more are introduced as you progress, forcing you to stay on your toes and adjust your strategy on the fly.

Action skills are a much more important part of Borderlands 2. Whichever class you play, you can viably focus on improving your action skill, and most trees will unlock specific improvements related to them. Usually, there’s at least one tree that focuses more on your action skill than others, and thankfully, most of them are just as effective as more weapon-based builds. In fact, action skill-based characters have a very satisfying play style, and feel truly powerful, often without firing a gun at all (Gunzerking excepted).

Cooperative multiplayer was a big draw of Borderlands, and Borderlands 2 has improved upon it quite well. It’s easy to jump into another player’s game, or invite them to jump into yours. Some enemies, like those carrying physical shields, seem specifically designed to reward clever teamwork. Throw in some excellent team-based skills and class mods, and you’ve got everything you need to tear the denizens of Pandora a new one with your buddies in tow.

Borderlands 2 is a great improvement on a decent game, feeling much tighter in all the right places, and much meatier in all the rest. With all those classes and weapons, the game has a ton of replayability. It’s time to open Pandora’s box again, fellow vault-hunters.

Good hunting,

Unithralith