By: Ryan Seiler
Posted: October 4, 2012
Video games
– the art of interactivity. Since the days of olde they’ve tested our wits and
reflexes, teaching us through experience lessons we could never have hoped to
live. Titles like Missile Command
taught previous generations of gamers the duality in nations control of nuclear
armaments, allowing players to experience the losing battle most Americans
believed was inevitable during the Cold War. In more recent times, Limbo placed players in the shoes of a
child trying to survive a dark world of death and despair, asking those who
play what they would do in similar situations, evoking a sense of loss and
desperation.
But every
now and then games like Borderlands 2
come along to give those games a swirly; allowing players to shoot at creatures
called ‘bonerfarts’ and indiscriminately blow up just about everybody in sight.
Borderlands 2 brings the most basic
of game mechanics, that 30-second feeling of total ‘bad-assedness’, to the
surface, parodying modern videogames and lovingly mocking any attempt they make
at masking what they really are: games.
The original
Borderlands hit the scene in 2009 and
became a sort of insta-cult-classic due to its first-person shoot-kill-loot
style of gameplay lifted from PC dungeon crawlers like Diablo and Torchlight. Set
on the danger-ridden planet of Pandora, the game followed four ‘Vaulthunters’
on a mission to find and plunder ‘the Vault’, an alien ruin of untold riches.
The menial storyline only served to set-up gameplay, largely being passed over
in lieu of constant shootin’ . Although it received high praise and positive
reviews from critics, most agreed Gearbox’s shooter could use plenty of
improvement, primarily stemming from its visually and mechanically repetitive
nature, and having an identity crisis to
whether it was a serious or comedic game overall. With a successor promising
everything the original fell short on, does Borderlands
2 pay up? Or does it get left in the Pandoran dust?
