Borderlands 2 is Out – But You Already Knew That

It’s been a painful wait, but the much-anticipated Borderlands 2 has finally launched, and so far, without much of a hitch. Though I’m waiting until Friday to truly begin the adventure with friends, I checked it out for about 20 minutes not long ago to get a feel for the game. If you’ve played the original Borderlands, you’ll feel very comfortable here. And as promised, Gearbox has given PC gamers some extra goodies they’ll appreciate.

With Vsync enabled, the game is silky smooth, and in my very limited time with the game, I didn’t notice texture pop-up occurring – a seriously abundant issue with the original. But mechanics-wise, the game feels like the original, which is a good thing. It’s still very fluid and feels like the perfect sort of PC FPS. I am not sure if it’s just my eyes playing with me or not, but animations do seem to have been improved. If you jump, for example, you can see your hands flutter in a realistic fashion as you hit the ground.

One of the best things about the original was the humor, and thankfully that’s back here. In the first 20 minutes I found myself grinning on multiple occasions. This is definitely a game you want to hear the dialog for – a challenge when playing with friends, I know.

Interestingly, Gearbox decided to introduce a launcher with this game (seen above). The benefit is that you’ll be able to customize all of your graphics settings before entering the game, which is kind of nice since many games like to let you enter for the first time and suffer with an introduction at 800×600.

So far, I’m stoked by the game. It seems to be everything I hoped it to be so far, and I am going to jump to conclusions that others will agree. Friday cannot come quick enough…