Late Monday night (Technically Tuesday morning) I, like many, returned to Pandora.
Nope. Wrong Pandora. I returned to THIS Pandora
Borderlands was an odd game for me. It was somewhat of a sleeper hit when it was first released. I had heard a bit about it, and bought it for my brother as a birthday gift, because it sounded like his kind of game. Lo and behold, it was. He was really enjoying it, while I mostly dismissed it. Then came the fateful day when I decided to see what all the fuss was about and watch him play.
After watching him brutally murder a few Psychos and Bandits with an incredibly diverse set of weapons, only to discover two red loot chests containing even MORE diverse weapons, I was hooked. I NEEDED that game. I went out later that day and bought it, without having played a second of it. All I wanted to do was get home, pop in the game, and start killing things and finding badass guns. Oops. Turns out that Borderlands isn’t that exciting from the get-go. In fact, I quit playing after a while because it was TOO boring. I was bored through most of the Arid Badlands, and just quit. Eventually I went back to it and found that the story picks up pretty rapidly after that. Plus, you start finding the really fun weapons. Eventually, I put enough hours into Borderlands to max out a character, finish both playthroughs, and raise a few more characters to respectable levels.
Fast forward to Monday night. I got to Best Buy around 11:45 for the midnight release of Borderlands 2. Other than a brief hands-on at the Gearbox booth during PAX East, I hadn’t followed much about the game at this point other than the fact that its more Borderlands. Sure, I’ve seen a few trailers, and I know the character classes, but I purposely avoided any story information because I wanted it to be fresh. Shortly after they opened the doors, I bought my copy and headed home.
Since I’d already promised my Gunzerker skills to the crack team of ChurchsWife (Siren), KnucklesDawson (Commando), and evilcrash9 (Assassin), and since we weren’t going to be playing for another 2 hours (Midnight PST), I decided to go ahead and start the game as a Commando and play until they were ready to go. Cue more colors than all of Borderlands 1 (Blue! And green! And still some brown, but that’s cool!), lots and lots of guns, and a much better start than the first game. Maybe its because I already know and love Borderlands, but this game seemed to start a lot faster than the original. Looking back, they both have the same premise (Do a few basic quests in an empty town), but they felt very different.
When it finally came time to join my aforementioned teammates, I switched over to my Gunzerker, and we went to work. Borderlands is infinitely more fun when experienced in a group. We laughed, we swore, we killed, we killed some more, we argued over loot, we shared loot… we had a blast! We played for about 3 hours, then called it quits until the next day when we played for another 4 or so. So far this is one of my favorite experiences in my long history of gaming. Co-op gameplay at its finest!
If a Borderlands 3 is ever made, I’d like to see them expand the co-op a bit. I imagine they playtested this at some point and it just didn’t work, but I’d like to see more players at once. Perhaps 6? To me, “the more the merrier” applies. I think the Borderlands universe is also ripe for an MMO with a persistent world and TONS of players. Not sure if Gearbox would go that route, but the IP seems suited for it.
If you don’t see me for the next few days/weeks/months, you’ll probably want to check my Xbox LIVE status. Odds are, I’ll be exploring Pandora to find that gun that’s just right. And if you know anything about Borderlands, you know that could take a VERY long time
