Game: Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2Finished Borderlands 2 – Well sorta.

Borderlands 2 basically Borderlands (which I reviewed here) plus with more weapons, bigger landscape, more characters, more vehicles, bigger …, more …, bigger … and it’s awesome great!

Interestingly there’s no real new game change. It’s all the same. But it still remains a fantastic deal of fun. Yet, I needed 160+ hours to finish the main quest and all (at the time of writing available) DLCs. BTW: the Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep is by far the most brilliant DLC ever made for a computer game. The integration into the game, the humor, the sidekicks to other beloved franchises (like Dark Souls) are just … fantastic.

Though, even after 160+ hours, I have not completed all quests. From the 1001 quests (well there are not that much, but it feels like that) I still have some (~10-15) open which turned out to be basically grinding at its best.

And besides the somehow awkward interface (I more than once sold a weapon by mistake to Marcus, since the interface jumps up and down, when selling stuff – why? Or why is this somehow shaped 3D view of the interface? When selecting a weapon to compare to the inventory I sometimes found myself in a clicking orgy jumping back and forth between equipment slots and the backpack.) there’s this somehow “trend” in the AAA game industry: provide some quests to keep your players at the game for tons of hours by giving them mere senseless tasks. This is work. As a plea: please stop this. 20h – 30h hours of a game can be enough if it is well written and want to tell a story. 100h and more is not a sign of quality but if quantity. Even 200h of bad game doesn’t make it any better. And, for me, that’s not what I’m particularly looking for. Ok, Borderlands 2 is a brilliant game, but even here this tendency to go for 150+ hours turned into actual hard work.

Still: besides this last grinding stuff and the weird interface, I still highly recommend Borderlands 2 as one of the best loot shooter available.

9/10.
9 out of 10