Borderlands 2 review

We didn’t think the difficulty climb was too steep during our first play through, with only the later levels proving a real challenge, but it definitely jumps up the second time around – you’re able to carry your levelled-up character over to a new game, where the enemies are much more powerful and the rewards are even greater. It’s here that you’ll spend most of your play time, working with friends to defeat some ultra-difficult bosses and finding the best loot. It can be nearly impossible at times, but luckily death isn’t the end – you respawn at the last checkpoint, minus a percentage of your overall cash.

We admittedly died more times than usual simply because we were taking in the view – the developers have really come into their own with the graphics, pushing the Unreal engine with huge draw distances and the number of objects on screen, especially if you have an Nvidia graphics card and PhysX enabled. Even on AMD hardware, the cartoon styling looks gorgeous and is much more vibrant than the average first person shooter.

As with the original game, Borderlands 2 is best played with friends – the more players in a game, up to a maximum of four, the more powerful the enemies and the greater the loot. It’s still enjoyable played solo, but with Steam integration it just takes a click to jump into someone’s game in progress.

The original Borderlands was a breakout hit, and despite the promises of more action, more exploration and even more guns had us a little nervous as to whether a sequel could capture the same magic. Thankfully we had nothing to fear, as Borderlands 2 is superior in almost every way. The combination of first person shooting and RPG number crunching should appeal to fans of both genres, and although the constant grind can feel a little hollow, there’s plenty here to like beyond the instant gratification of finding a better gun or more effective shield. The humour is dark, the action is intense and the character progression system is deceptively deep. If you like your games loud, explosive and challenging, you should definitely give it a try.