Borderlands 2: Back and better than ever!

     Borderlands is back with a second installment and the creative people over at Gearbox have taken everything good about the first game, and then added more awesomeness to it. The story of Borderlands 2 takes place after the events of the first (of course). If you haven't played the first Borderlands you don't really have to in order to enjoy the story of Borderlands 2. You play as a vault hunter who arrives in town. Things have not fared too well for the people of Pandora (insert Avatar joke here). A tyrant known as Handsome Jack, along with the Hyperion Corporation, has terrorized the people and it's your job to stop him.

     You'll get to play as one of four new characters, although you will meet up and fight with the four characters from the original game too. The characters are Axton (commando), Salvador (gunzerker), Maya (siren), and Zero (assassin). Each character has their own set of three skill trees that you will be able to unlock different abilities by leveling up. The four characters are very unique in play style so there's a fit for everyone. Also, the ability to have more than one character is nice. There are some pretty sweet abilities you can unlock for your characters, and you can mix different skill trees together for a wide arrange of abilities. You can also respec your skills if you ever want to try something new.

     If you know anything about Borderlands is that there is a lot of loot. Loot being in the form of guns...and lots of them! There are also different shields, relics, grenades, and class mods for you to find. Something that I really like is you aren't limited to the kinds of weapons you can use based on the character you play. Now, certain characters will have different mods or abilities that can boost certain weapons, but each character can use any weapon. The guns range from assault/sniper rifles, sub machine guns, pistols, rocket launchers, and shotguns. Much like other rpgs the loot is color coded to show the rarity of the item. If you're a person who likes loot in a game you will feel like you're in heaven. There's always more to find and better versions of what you already have.

     Something new to the game is the Badass ranking system. Basically how this works is you get points for completing certain challenges with weapons, enemies, and other things throughout the game. Once you get enough points you earn tokens to spend on upgrading your character's abilities. These upgrades range from health boost, gun damage, shield recharge rate, and many more. What's even better is that the upgrades you unlock carry across for all the characters you create.

     Borderlands 2 can be very enjoyable to play solo, but the real fun comes in playing the game in four player co-op. You and three friends can team up and play every side mission and main story mission together. This is where the true enjoyment of this game comes in. Enemies will scale up with you and your party and loot drops will become better too. There can be a "problem" with the loot system when you're playing co-op. Everyone can grab from the same loot pile but there isn't a duplicate of an item for everyone. So depending on who you're playing with you can get into the problem of a loot ninja stealing everything. Of course if you're playing with buddies this shouldn't be a problem. Also the trading system is much better as you can open up a trade menu instead of having to drop items all over the ground.

     Graphically the game maintains the signature cell shaded, cartoon-ish, comic book look that made the first Borderlands a hit. There were a few times when textures loaded in slowly but it wasn't a major problem. There's so much to do in this game. Even after completing the main story missions there are tons of side missions to complete. The nice thing is when you do finish the story you can continue the game and still work on all the side missions. If that wasn't enough, there is a season pass available that will get you access to the next four pieces of dlc. In fact, the first dlc called Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty will be available on October 16th. Do yourself a favor and get this game. You will be left with hours of humorous entertainment and a game that leaves you satisfied. Go now and loot vault hunter!

Final Verdict: 10/10

Written by: Alter Ego 83