I have been looking forward to Borderlands 2 since Gearbox Software announced it was in development. To say that I love Borderlands would be a colossal understatement. I first bought the game for PC off of Steam and then later purchased it for my PS3. I think Borderlands was brilliant at melding a hardcore RPG with an open world first person shooter. It felt as good as any first person shooter of the tim, the upgrade tree was deep and the world of Pandora was a blast to explore, especially with friends.
It is pretty safe to say that my expectations for Borderlands 2 is pretty high. I had my first hands on experience with Borderlands 2 at PAX East and I was quite impressed. I played with the Siren, my favorite class from the first game. The new phase lock ability works like a stasis field. Second time around I decided to switch it up and play as the new soldier. Let me tell you that the new sentry turret is bad ass! Spec’d correctly, the soldier can wreak havoc on the battlefield. The longbow ability allows him to deploy the turret much further away and with the added bad ass’ry you can create two fronts for your enemies to defend.
The graphics are much improved, but Borderlands 2 manages to keep the iconic look of the original Borderlands. The guns, (the stars of the show), have been revamped and re-imagined to be even more unique. Borderland’s weapons have always been stylish and Borderlands 2 ratchets up the style. Guns from each manufacturer have their own look and feel to differentiate them more than ever. Tediore guns look and feel cheap and are literally thrown away (at the enemy) when used up. Torque have taken up the BFG mantle and the Bandit weapons are all new and feature high capacity magazines.
The level I played at PAX Prime was quite different than the cavernous and rocky level they showed off at PAX East. It was an arena type level where after collecting a mission from a busted robot, I went down an elevator into a pit of death. Enemies spawned from all sides. Robots and goons attacked with various weapons and tactics. There was a nice mix of robots that had various attacks. Some of them looked liked the love twisted love children of a robot and a bulldozer while others had fan like appendages that spun to deflect bullets and inflict damage. There was also a hands off portion of the demo that featured one of the raid bosses. He was huge and killed the devs…a lot. Borderlands 2 looks to be a lot of fun and I look forward to playing online with you very soon!
As a bonus, we actually got to spend some time with Kevin Duc, one of the concept artists that worked on Borderlands 2. He was nice enough to take some time out of his busy day to talk to us about the game. Check out the interview embedded below.
[podcast]http://levelsave.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Borderlands-2-Interview-revised,mp3[/podcast]