Borderlands 2

I never played the first Borderland, however the second game drew my attention, in large part because of the anticipation of the fan of the first game.

My initial first impressions were good, I liked the cartoonish look, the environments, the crazy characters and the fun writing, which are the trademarks of the game and what also helped building a loyal fan base for the game.

Clearly, Borderlands is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, which is refreshing, furthermore, the gameplay is smooth and all component are well integrated with each other.

The game's approach of a shooter RPG is innovative, and is definitely a genre that we don’t see enough of, working through the first quests was a breeze and although the game requires you to jump back and forth into your inventory and in-game menus, the UI design is clever and quick enough to be used easily and quickly, even to new comers such as myself.

Unfortunately, once the joys of discovery are wearing off and the true grinding fully comes to bare, the game is really painfully boring and the excessive amount of weapons to be collected throughout the game is simply crushing and very soon, I was spending more time comparing weapons and once I had picked a more efficient one, not 4 shot were fired before I was back into the menu to compare new finds, this went on for a while before I stopped and actually wandered, why do I care ?

The game also includes vehicles that are used to travel from one destination to the next, apart from the fact that those vehicles are handling miserably, they simply don’t bring enough values to the games and it’s environment and traveling, which you have to do a lot of, is downright painful.

Story wise, Borderlands simply doesn’t deliver and while the occasional characters such as the crazy robots and fancy English-man are well characterized and beyond the fact that the main bad guy is repeatedly giving hilarious wise cracks in your ears, it isn’t enough to create a world for which you care, your actions are feeling devoided of meaning and consequences and the fact that the game doesn’t let you handle more than one quest at the same time, will force you to numerous back and forth, painstaking trips to the same areas again and again.

At first glance, Borderlands is an attractive and fun game, which is already a lot more than most games delivered in those past months, on the long term however, the game doesn’t create enough interest or variety to keep you immerse enough to look past the game’s shortcomings.