Back to the Borderlands

I guess I’ve been too busy to blog. My day job has hit a busy period, and it’s been using up most of my mental energy. And when I do have time to goof off, I’ve been filling it by playing Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

The original Borderlands was kind of a half-assed project build around a neat system of randomly generated weapons and power-ups. It was fun to play, but a little rough around the edges and not well focused. For example, every character gets a special action skill, but in a game dominated by guns, two of the characters had abilities — Brick’s hand-to-hand Berserker rage and Lilith’s secretive Siren phase walk — that discouraged them from shooting anything. And the ending of the main campaign plot was infamously disappointing.

Still, Borderlands was a surprise success, and when Borderlands 2 came out, it was Borderlands done right. It introduced four new characters who were pretty much one-for-one replacements for the characters from the first game, but with better and more varied skills. The Berserker became a Gunzerker and the new Siren’s ability made shooting more effective rather than discouraging it. The plot was unified around fighting a tyrant named Handsome Jack, and the ending paid off.

In terms of hours played, Borderlands 2 is one of my all-time favorite games, but only in co-op play with someone else. Personally, I find the single-player mode less interesting. That’s because I don’t really like open-world games very much. Figuring out where to go and what to do next, and what the right order is for the side missions, and what items I’ll want to get before the next mission…that just isn’t fun for me. I spend my whole work day solving complicated problems, so when I want to escape in a video game, I want something simple and linear. Kill the bad guys, get the loot, move on to the next battle.

My sometimes co-blogger Ken likes all that complexity, so when I play Borderlands 2 with him, I let him lead the way, and I just follow along and shoot anything that bothers us. He gets the complex mission-oriented, open world style game he wants, and I get a linear first-person shooter I don’t have to think too hard about.

We’re about halfway through Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and I’m enjoying it. As every reviewer has tiresomely pointed out, it’s not quite the amazing game that Borderlands 2 was, but that’s praising it with faint damnation. In some ways, it’s not much more than a really big content expansion pack for Borderlands 2, but that’s not exactly a bad thing. The Borderlands 2 DLC’s were a lot of fun.

The main difference is that B1 and B2 both took place on the planet Pandora, but Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel takes place on Pandora’s moon, Elpis, which has lower gravity and no air. So you can execute giant floating leaps all over the place, and then suddenly plunge downward to stomp on your enemies. You do have to watch your oxygen supply whenever you’re outside or you’ll run out, but you don’t die right away, and there’s oxygen everywhere, so it’s not too annoying.

There are also different types of weapons, different equipment you can carry to buff your skills, different vehicles, and lots of different bad guys. But basically, it’s just Borderlands in Space. The game designers are well aware of this, even relabeling the ubiquitous “Guns” vending machines “Guns In Space.”

And I’m okay with that.

This plot takes place between Borderlands and Borderlands 2, and we’re working for Handsome Jack, who’s acting like he’s a good guy. But I’ve played Borderlands 2, so I know how he turns out. This is all going to end in tears. And bullets.

(And fire, electrical arcs, and explosions. Also some acid.)

Now excuse me, but I’ve got to exterminate some alien bad guys. We’ve got a moon to save.