Guns, shoot ‘em. Pow, pow. Bang, Bang. Over, and over, over again. This is the life of a Vault Hunter in publisher 2K Games’ “Borderlands 2.” It’s raucous and over the top and the amount of midgets and mutants you will be slaughtering in the quest for loot like guns, grenades, and armor approaches levels of absurdity that only belong in the most ardent of video game worlds.
 

Pandora is a planet that inhabits the edges of the known universe. But due to circumstances from the end of the first game, a whole world of money-making opportunities have opened up with the Vault’s reveal and the ancient alien technology within. Eridium, money, and weapons are the currency that are scattered throughout the wastelands of Pandora.

The game has the normal expectations of a sequel. It’s worth addressing that for the first game I was employed by 2K Games as a tester and worked on Borderlands. I never actually played the full retail release so it’s not fair to compare my experience with the first game with the final product of the sequel.

As far as the quality of the sequel itself, it is a wonderfully fun experience with slight hiccups that can detract but should in no way deter prospective buyers.

The game has two main components. A single-player campaign with a wide variety of missions and areas to explore. Also available for friends and random other online gamers is a drop in-and-out multiplayer co-operative experience. While starting out the single-player campaign is a healthy way to grasp the basics of the game, the sooner you can dive into the multiplayer, the better time you will have.

“Borderlands 2” has a hard difficulty curve and enemies are thrown at you fast and furious from the start so being overwhelmed is an almost immediate proposition. Once you start to get that feeling your best bet is to jump into the multiplayer component.

The game will match you up with other players who are around your same level and involved in your same current mission. Multiplayer is where the game excels. The amount of fun that can be derived just tearing around the world in vehicles with three other players is unrivaled on console gaming. It’s a festival of explosions, and fire, and acid bullets with bodies exploding in bloody bits and robots self-destructing.

The game costs $60 on consoles and really, anybody should be able to squeeze the copious amount of content dry and make that investment back in spades with the fun time to be had.

With the glut of games that is about to descend upon us this gaming season, “Borderlands 2” is a wonderful opening salvo and shouldn’t be missed.