Multiplayer

Borderlands 2 eschews competitive multiplayer for 4-way co-op play, allowing you to progress through the game with three other players whilst tuning up the difficultly accordingly. A great addition to be sure – almost every game is better with friends involved – but competition for loot drops may mean that you stick to your circle of friends rather than rely on pick-up groups.

A criticism for co-op which will come up time and again is the lack of class synergy – class skills tend not to complement each other as much as you might think. When coupled with a pretty steep scaling curve for enemy hit-points : number of players, gameplay can drag on somewhat, leading to progression being considerably slower in co-op over solo.

Co-op synergy is mainly dictated by Class Mods – items which can change not just individual but whole team stats such as class skill cooldowns and elemental damage. A Siren’s Phaselock ability may not add much to Team DPS, but picking off enemies with a Slag Assault Rifle will improve the damage of every team member using an elemental weapon without needing to hot-swap weapons mid-combat.

Badass Tokens



Achievements in Borderlands 2 break from the norm by having tangible in-game value. These Badass Tokens, acquired when you complete in-game challenges such as a certain number of head-shots or looting rare/epic weapons, can be used to purchase incremental character improvements for all your characters. The improvements themselves are strictly minor, +1% Health/Damage etc., but it does mean that achievements are significantly more meaningful than many ‘serious’ RPGs.

Claptrap’s Minion Stash

Every RPG gamer will enjoy the ability to ‘twink’ out gear between characters, and Borderlands 2 allows you to do just that. Unlocked for each character once you reach the central quest hub of Sanctuary, the shared stash allows items not ideal for the character who found it to be accessible to another character on the same Steam account. Only the two currencies cannot be moved between characters, which in of itself is no great hardship.

Vehicles



Plodding around Pandora is made more lively by the inclusion of 'Catch-A-Ride' to ferry you and your allies between points of action, and of course are yet another outlet for character customisation as and when you fancy a new paint job. Controlling vehicles will take some getting used to thanks to mouse rather than keyboard steering, but precision driving is never a requirement. Some sections with vehicle combat are included and tend to be short-lived so as not to outstay their welcome.

Rewarding Exploration

A closed world Pandora may be, but the insatiable search for loot takes another turn with hidden areas and jumping puzzles leading to large loot chests. Loot chests respawn every time you re-load, so there’s nothing stopping you from farming the large ‘hidden’ chests for more random high-quality loot. If anything we would like to have seen Gearbox go further with this feature, adding ever more complex puzzles to decipher – something for later DLC no-doubt.