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OFFICIAL Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (Review)

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Introduction


Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was developed by 2K Australia & Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games. Using the Unreal Engine 3, the game is largely similar in terms of assets and performance as Borderlands 2. It incorporates the typical FPS dungeon crawler scheme of loot drops, only in an open world sandbox experience, unlocking new areas along with the general storyline. Many have considered it to simply be an expansion pack in terms of content, as it adds an extra piece of the story, largely within the same basic container.

Storyline

Set before the original Borderlands game, you take on the role of one of 3 heroes, or, a CL4P TP. The game instantly makes you aware that CL4P TP is not a hero, and is not an obvious choice. Trust me, I played him. Within the first few minutes, you find the Helios station under attack by the Dahl commander Zarpedon (who has her name mocked most of the way through the first few hours of the game), during which you save Handsome Jack and escape the station. You end up being shot out of a giant cannon, onto the Hyperion Moon. As its Borderlands, the story is absolutely mad, and packed full of humour. One thing I did note was that this game is actually quite funny. I found the humour in the previous game of the series reasonably funny, but quite forced throughout the story and side missions. Most of comical areas in this one were much more intelligently though out, such as honouring a dying soldier’s last wish, and telling one of his friends “you’re a dick”. I can’t go into much detail about the storyline pas the first few missions, as that’s largely part of the plot, of how Jack turns into the crazed Handsome Jack we know so well from Borderlands 2. Let’s just say I thought it was strange how nice he was when I saved him.



Gameplay

Largely identical to the gameplay in the original Borderlands and Borderlands 2, the Pre-Sequel adds a couple of features and weapons not seen in the originals. One such feature is the oxygen mechanic, which doesn’t deal damage to CL4P TP when it reaches zero (as he’s a machine), but does periodically damage the other classes when it hits zero. Oxygen can be used to further increase jumping distance, as gravity on the Hyperion Moon is far lower than that seen on Pandora. It’s adds a reasonably interesting element when engaging multiple enemies in combat, and allows a slam feature when above an enemy to deal damage. In the case of CL4P trap, this enables perks to increase the slam damage.

The game features the same style of skill tree, only within marginally different classes to the original. It does however add a “Badass” medal system, whereupon you can a medal every time you complete an action multiple times, for example, one of the medals is to double jump up to 250 times, which can be abused heavily below:


These “Badass” medals are then used to unlock a permanent percentage increase in a stat, such as Shield Recharge Delay, Weapon Recoil, and Gun Damage.



In terms of elemental damage, you can now have the cryogenic mod on weapons, which causes freezing to enemies, and there is also a new projectile type, laser. One thing I noted instantly was that the laser gun mounted on the back of the moon buggies was immensely inferior to the swarm rocket launcher mount. I’m not entirely sure why that was the case, but during a multiplayer sessions it was immediately picked up on. Another element of change is that the rare resource is now Moon Stone, which is the resource you spend on the black market to obtain upgrades to ammo capacity and bank storage space. Most of the NPCs remain the same in terms of purchasing, with the exception of the rather devious nurse, whose odd conversation you hear while on one of the very first missions with regards to her identity.

There are still similarities in terms of drops; you can still blow all your cash on the slot machines like I did in Borderlands 2 to obtain Moon Stone and new weapons, or even new character skins. There’s also a new type of chest that requires a certain number of the rare resource to open, which tend to contain better and rarer weapons. One thing I remember from the originals was that the dwarf character actually had a lower sense of view and the same remains for CL4P TP. The best details are ones like those, particularly that crouching provides less of a benefit, when his little wheel retracts a bit. As for CL4P TP in general, he is the worst and yet my most favourite class. His one skill is entirely random, and while it provides a clear benefit, it also causes mayhem and a general pain to you in some shape or form. It certainly adds to the fun element of the game, and makes it even more enjoyable to use during hectic moments of intense shooting, especially when you’re lucky (or unlucky) enough to get the dual wielding “can’t stop shooting” subroutine of VAULTHUNTER.EXE. He can also summon mini bots to cause pain and spread havoc amongst the enemies, and most importantly, play funky disco tunes while you break some face.


Most of the enemies are theoretically the same, merely with different skins. The outdoor animals are slightly more limited in terms of variety than Borderlands 2, but the bandits remain the same, only with “Oz masks” instead of the typical hockey mask in the originals. Most of the combat is identical, including the various midgets, melee enemies, Badass Scabs, and bosses with certain mechanics. If you enjoyed the gameplay of the previous two games, and are happy with a similar sort of setup, then the Pre-Sequel certainly won’t disappoint.

Controls

Controls are identical to those of the original games, although one thing I expected them to change was the vehicle steering. As it was before, you accelerate and the vehicle turned to wherever you point the mouse. I remember this being a bit of a pain to get used to in the originals, and after having not played them for so long, it was the same in this case. While I got used to it, I still don’t quite understand why Gearbox didn’t simply make the change to a more standard WASD steering option. It’s not necessarily a negative point, but I’d have liked to see the option for those of us that do mind it. Another thing was that the boost function on vehicles was never covered in the tutorial. Return players will remember it as the “F” key, but newer players, or “forgetful” players like me, won’t immediately figure that one out.


Video Settings

There are two areas for video settings, the main general video settings are features on the splash screen, and can be tinkered to your hearts content. Once you launch the game, and are in game in general, there are further video options, which are particularly nice to see for FPS games. One of the most important things being mouse acceleration (turn the damn thing off!) and Field of View. I noted that for some reason the sensitivity was defaultly extremely high, and had to turn that down a might. The game obviously features PhysX as the others previously have, although arguably the particle effects are not quite as obviously or intrusive, and I didn’t see much cloth physics either. Regardless, I saw that there was very little performance hit on the GPU with PhysX enabled, and it was available to turn off anyway. Despite there being a huge amount of video options, I did note that due to the art style, the game wasn’t particularly very intensive on much, but at the same time I saw that the graphics themselves weren’t that amazing anyway. Then again, these kinds of games can’t entirely be judged on that sort of thing, so it wasn’t an issue.

The one thing I did note was that the pre-rendered cut scenes were 720p@30FPS, and looked rather poor quality on a 1080p monitor, and even worse on a 1440p one. I was a little dismayed at why they would have done this, as a pre-rendered cut scene wouldn’t have been an issue on a console anyway. It’s also worth noting that the game files themselves didn’t take up much space at all, as if very little in terms of Video or Audio quality had gone into the game.





System Performance

CPU: i5 4670 (Stock)
GPU: MSI GTX 970 (Stock)
RAM: 16GB 2133mhz
Storage: WD 1TB 7200RPM
Display: 2560 x 1440

The game ran beautifully on my system, which is understandable as UE3 has been out for quite some time, and has been on the receiving end of a great many optimisations. The game saw very high minimum frame rates, and my system was relatively relaxed processing all the information. One odd thing I did note was that for some odd reason, my average CPU load was hitting 50% when sat in town (Concordia), whereas during the open area environments, it was just below 40% - Which is odd, considering there are more enemies and things to load in the various instances. You can also tell that the textures don’t really have any better fidelity to them than the previous games, as the VRAM barely went above 1GB even on 1440p.

1440p



1080p




Conclusion

The game is a great addition to the series, the storyline is fun and reasonably interesting. The humour they’ve injected into this one is in much better taste, got me laughing quite a bit, and didn’t irritate me quite as much as in the previous games. One of my issues in Borderlands 2 was that CL4P TP simply wasn’t funny past the first few jokes, and was genuinely annoying. In this one he has a similar personality (as you the player are playing him), but it just felt a lot better to listen to - Particularly when you call a soldier a dick for his dead friend. The game adds a few extra features, but at the same time I can’t really let it slide by that they’ve used the exact same engine, not improved on any textures or enemies, and simply used previous assets. The game is fun, no doubt, but I certainly don’t feel this game is worth full standalone prices. This is by all intent and purpose an expandalone, continuing on the story (or rather filling in the backstory), and adding a couple of extra gimmicks. While it is fun, the gameplay is largely similar, and with the blatant ripoff of old assets, the game feels a little bit same-y when comparing to the old ones.

If you’re looking for something fresh to the Borderlands franchise, by all means, this is a fantastic game with some great characters and humour, but I would wait until a sale, as this is simply Borderlands 2 within some minor reskins and an extra piece of story. If you enjoy the baseline of Borderlands 2, and are looking for that same vault hunter hack and slash (or rather shoot and explode) experience, with funny dialogue and an absolute tonne of randomised ridiculous guns to loot, then I’d highly recommend you play this one for the dialogue, but again, don’t pay full price for it.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is available on Steam for £29.99

See the previous review of Starpoint Gemini II


 
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FordGT90Concept

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It does however add a “Badass” medal system, whereupon you can a medal every time you complete an action multiple times, for example, one of the medals is to double jump up to 250 times, which can be abused heavily below:
That was introduced in Borderlands 2.

One thing I noted instantly was that the laser gun mounted on the back of the moon buggies was immensely inferior to the swarm rocket launcher mount.
True of the machine gun on Borderlands and Borderlands 2 as well. They're under balanced and always have been.
 

Tallencor

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Available for 59.99 cdn on steam for those wondering.
You are doing a fantastic job RCoon!
 
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Good review. I may wait to get this one until after the prices fall a little.
 

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Why do i keep hearing from people on the interwebs that this was a terrible game. I dont own it nor have i played it but people keep saying its shit an i have no idea why.
 
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Why do i keep hearing from people on the interwebs that this was a terrible game. I dont own it nor have i played it but people keep saying its shit an i have no idea why.

It's just the same as Borderlands 2 IMO, which is not a bad game. Repetitive yes, but not bad. No worse than any other hack'n'slash dungeon crawler if you ask me, just has guns instead.
 

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Why do i keep hearing from people on the interwebs that this was a terrible game. I dont own it nor have i played it but people keep saying its shit an i have no idea why.

Well I will say, being someone who played the heck out of BL and BL2 and have no interest at all in this one. Is that it's just more of the same but at a premium price.
 
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Well I will say, being someone who played the heck out of BL and BL2 and have no interest at all in this one. Is that it's just more of the same but at a premium price.

That's pretty much it. It doesn't offer anything to anyone who played the previous versions besides a different storyline. Everything else is much the same, which is why I don't agree on the price. It's more of a DLC/Expandalone than a fully fledged, developed from the ground up kind of game.
 

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That's pretty much it. It doesn't offer anything to anyone who played the previous versions besides a different storyline. Everything else is much the same, which is why I don't agree on the price. It's more of a DLC/Expandalone than a fully fledged, developed from the ground up kind of game.

That is my take on it too. Heck I have almost 200hrs into BL2 and had had my fill before even getting thru all the Season Pass Content. I am not paying full game price for more of what could have just been more Season Pass Content or extra DLC. If it had been DLC/Season Pass I would have probably gladly payed for it and played some more.
 
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One thing that might help with the readability: If you could somehow force a maximum sentence length this would probably be even more readable for people reading this full screen on a bigger monitor.
Apart from that, I think this is excellent, with a neutral tone and a touch of personal opinion striking just the right balance.
 
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One thing that might help with the readability: If you somehow force a maximum sentence length this would probably be even more readable for people reading this full screen on a bigger monitor.
Apart from that, I think this is excellent, with a neutral tone and a touch of personal opinion striking just the right balance.

I've noted a similar problem to W1z about sentences going too far across the screen. Unfortunately I can't limit the width of the sentences due to the forum structure without forcibly pressing enter on every word past 800pixels :laugh:
My only solution was to take the browser out of full screen and resize it to my own reading size preference.
 
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Nice job RCoon, thanks for the honest opinion that it's mainly just an expansion pack. I'll wait till it's on sale like you recommended.
 
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I think that once it's on sale, it will be another 'should buy', just for the shoot 'em up pleasure involved.

I love shooters and I buy them if it's not too expensive.
 
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