I could tell Borderlands 2 was both treading down the well-worn path of the first game and carving out its own new road from the opening movie. Like the first Borderlands, the game opens with a narration from bus-driving arms merchant Marcus, followed by a short movie set to a song that frames the game. Marcus explains that it's been five years since the original vault hunters from the first game discovered the mysterious alien Vault. Since then, the Hyperion Corporation has assumed most of the control of the game world, taking whatever vault technology it could and making its leader, Handsome Jack, the most powerful man on Pandora. It's also made him the most violent and sociopathic denizen, and on a world where almost everyone is killing and looting each other, that says something.
In the first game, Cage the Elephant's "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" played while a bus plowed through a skag (lizard-dog creatures that serve as the series' annoying bats/medusa heads/cliff racers/irritating and repetitive enemy of choice) and the different vault hunters you can play posed conveniently with a short summary of their attributes. If you took screenshots, you got a stylish wallpaper of your preferred character.
A Familiar Beginning
In Gearbox Software's Borderlands 2, due out Tuesday and published by 2K Games for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3SEE IT, and Xbox 360See it at Amazon UK, the game starts in much the same way. A tired skag is being dragged by bandits in a bus very similar to the one in the first game while The Heavy's "Short Change Hero" plays. The bus gets hit by a train carrying the new vault hunters. The train was sent by Handsome Jack, who hired the vault hunters to find other vaults.
Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Handsome Jack hired the vault hunters to die. The train was a trap to kill vault hunters as murderous robots suddenly appear and the four playable characters are forced to dispatch them with their respective skills. Salvador, the stout Gunzerker and Brick the Berzerker's replacement, double-fists his weapons to blast enemies away. Axton, the Commando and Roland the Commando's replacement, uses his deployable turret and an assault rifle. Maya, the Siren and Lilith the Siren's replacement, uses her mysterious powers to trap a robot in a force field. Finally, Zero, the Assassin and Mordecai the Hunter's replacement, uses stealth and his sword to hack his enemies apart.
The song and style of the opening movie made me feel that the game was on the right track. Where "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" revved up players with a sense of frontier adventure, "Short Change Hero" sets the tone of corruption, lawlessness, and melancholy that define Pandora five years after the Vault was discovered. Despite the claims of Hyperion taming the wild of Pandora, it's every bit as violent and dangerous as before, except with an even bigger shadow of oppression looming over it like a giant H casting a shadow on the moon. That's a literal example; Handsome Jack put a space station in synchronous orbit with Pandora's moon to cast a giant H on it, and I could see it whenever I looked up in the sky.
I chose to play Salvador, who specializes in weapons fire and lots of it. He's the damage-dealing tank of the four, and once unlocked his Gunzerking skill lets him use two guns at the same time while regenerating his health and ammunition. I took advantage of the new character customization options to give Salvador a new color scheme and a new head, replacing his mohawk and dwarf beard with a clean chin and a hat.
KEEP READING: With tutorials like this, who needs difficulty settings?