Borderlands The Pre-Sequel flies to the moon

The Borderlands franchise skyrocketed to fame ever since the first game came out in 2009. The 2012 sequel was even more successful. Before making a direct third entry to the series, Borderlands The Pre-Sequel comes out to tell us a different story allowing you to play as new characters.

Borderlands The Pre-Sequel is literally both a prequel and a sequel. This is because the game takes place after the events of the first game, although before what happens in the second game. The story mainly revolves around Handsome Jack who is the main villain for Borderlands 2.

In this game, we get to see how Handsome Jack becomes a bad guy as you play as a group of Vault Hunters trying to help him out. Instead of the game taking place on the actual planet of Pandora, this game is mostly set on its orbiting moon named Elpis. Because the game takes place on a moon, the gameplay is very different to other FPS video games.

I would just like to point out first that Borderlands The Pre-Sequel doesn't do a great job of introducing new players to the franchise. The game's tutorials aren't helpful and the story and characters aren't explained to you properly from the start.

This is the first Borderlands game I have ever played and things moved pretty quickly without me knowing what was going on. If you want to play Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, I highly suggest you go back and play Borderlands and Borderlands 2 first. The storytelling and game itself caters more to series veterans.

Speaking of the moon of Elpis, many gamers will notice that most of its inhabitants are Australian. You will hear the Australian accent a lot in this game. This is understandable since Gearbox Software only developed some portions of the game. Most of the development for the game was relegated to 2K Australia.

Borderlands The Pre-Sequel is not your average FPS video game either. It's actually more "realistic" compared to Destiny when we're talking about physics. When you visited the moon in Destiny, the game didn't simulate that the player was walking on a surface with low gravity. Here in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, you can jump high and float just like you were actually on the moon.

It takes a while to get used to the controls and gameplay of this game simply because you are playing in low gravity. Not to mention you also run out of oxygen too from time-to-time. This prompts you to find oxygen vents or buildings a lot as you will die pretty quickly if you stay out in the open for too long.

One important thing to note about Borderlands The Pre-Sequel is that it's a game designed for co-op gameplay in mind. At first I tried to play the game by myself, but it's quite difficult. Enemies come in large numbers and you will often find yourself low on ammo because of this. Not to mention boss fights are hard doing too on a solo quest.

Thankfully you can join and co-operate with other players both online or offline. The game is more fun in numbers and much easier to play too. It's also great to see that they still implemented split-screen co-op multiplayer to the game as well. There are far too many games that forget that some players prefer couch co-op over online multiplayer...

Arguably the best thing about Borderlands The Pre-Sequel are its 2D cel-shaded graphics. The level design is excellent and the open-world location of Elpis fully explorable. The game's humour is also a big plus especially with the number of Australian characters being added.

Overall, Borderlands The Pre-Sequel is a nice game to play if you are a fan of the series. The only minor gripe is the fact that the game does a poor job of introducing new players to the franchise. Other than that, you will have a blast playing this game with friends.

Verdict: 8.0/10