Borderlands The Pre Sequel Torrent is an action shooter game developed by 2K Australia and published by 2K. This is a game set prior to Borderlands 2, yet narrated in flashbacks after the occurrences of that game. This time, the quartet of playable characters is drawn from the ranks of former adversary bosses. There’s Athena, from The Secret Armory of General Knoxx expansion, who utilizes a shield in much the same way as Captain America. There’s Nisha, the sheriff of Lynchtown, whose abilities are centered around gunplay.
There’s Wilhelm, whose capabilities revolve around cyborg implants and a pair of remote drones that assail enemies and heal the player. Finally, there’s the comedic robot Claptrap, whose VaultHunter.EXE ability induces random effects based on the situation. Occasionally, they involve dancing or meat unicycles.
The novel element is cryo, a rather underwhelming addition that feels so evident and foreseeable that I had to double-check it wasn’t present in the preceding games. Certainly, the capability to freeze enemies and shatter them is nothing novel in any video game, let alone shooters, and while it’s well executed, it doesn’t deliver the kind of gameplay jolt you’d anticipate from a game with a whimsical exclamation mark in its title.
Gravity and atmosphere prove more influential in the alterations they bring to the game. In outdoor areas, you’ll commence losing oxygen. This is stored in a new default character item, which like everything else can be swapped out for enhanced models. Your “Oz” dispenser not only maintains your breathing in the vacuum but allows for heightened jumps – aided by low gravity – and ground slams.
2K Australia has done a commendable job of imitating Gearbox and has even included an antipodean flavor, with Aussie accents and slang throughout the game. The flavor doesn’t endure, however, and as the hours pass, it’s hard to evade the sensation that The Pre-Sequel is sorely lacking in terms of memorable new characters. Too many are mundane quest-givers, and the few bright spots of humor tend to be tucked away in side missions.
There’s also a lot of filler, with the kind of mission design where no door opens, and no machine works the first time, sending you from one waypoint to another in thinly veiled busywork. That was arguably true of the preceding games as well, but there’s a slight lack of spark here that underscores the scarcity of standout moments.
The low gravity and new weapons offer a refreshing deviation from the traditional Borderlands combat formula. Combat doesn’t decelerate in the absence of gravity; in fact, it only intensifies. Vaulting high into the air enables you to crash back down to the ground in a potent air stomp, which is a fantastic new method to harm multiple enemies simultaneously.
This combat maneuver is almost exhilarating: you feel like an action hero, soaring through the air in slow motion while showering hellfire onto your adversaries on the ground before butt-stomping the life out of wounded stragglers. Oz kits can also provide slight status boosts, such as elemental resistance or increased accuracy, as well as charging the shock wave with fire or corruption damage.
Borderlands The Pre Sequel Torrent System Requirements
- OS: Windows XP SP3
- Processor: 2.4 GHz Dual Core Processor
- Memory: 2048 MB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8500
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 13 GB available space
