Regular readers will have consumed our previous coverage of The Pre-Sequel – a game set between the timelines of Borderlands 1 and 2 and attempting to tell the story of how the latter’s antagonist, Handsome Jack, became the ultimate bad dude in town. So, in the interest of the getting to the juicy new stuff in quick time, here’s a recap of we’ve seen and written about thus far…
It’s set on the moon of Pandora, the location that has played host to both previous games. The lower gravity of the moon enables you to jump higher, float across gaps and put the new jetpack ‘vehicle’ to good use. On the flip side, the moon has no atmosphere and so you must make sure that your oxygen kit is fully stocked whenever you step outside a building. Enemies also adhere to these rules, though, flinging themselves across chasms with their jetpacks and worrying about their oxygen. Hint: you can kill enemies much more easily if you manage to shoot holes in their oxygen tanks.
Our latest demo saw us take up the role of Nisha The Lawbringer – a Stetson-wearing gunslinger packing revolvers and, for when things get intimate, a whip. She joins the previously revealed characters, Wilhelm (all-powerful cyborg) and Athena (shield-touting gladiator), upon which our previous Pre-Sequel previews have been based. The fourth playable character is the ever popular Claptrap, although 2K is keeping him very much under wraps for now.
At the risk of insulting Wilhelm and Athena, Nisha is the most engaging and fun character we’ve played as. As with all other Borderlands characters her abilities are upgraded across a set of three isolated skill trees, giving you the option of specialising in one or diversifying across them all (at the risk of mastering none).
The fi rst of these trees is Law & Order, designed to give Nisha the kinds of health and buffs to be able to sustain damage and then deal it back twofold to the aggressor. For example, the Wanted skill adds a star above the head of any enemy that lands a shot on her – up to a maximum of five stars. When Nisha finally decides to shoot that opponent, bonus damage is inflicted upon them based on the number of stars they’ve attracted.
Essentially it’s a risk versus reward tree and will likely appeal both to players comfortable in their Borderlands ability and those that won’t panic under the pressure of purposely taking damage in order to improve their own fi repower. We’ll admit it: we died a few times trying to build up Wanted stars simply because of the novelty of doing massive and needless damage.
Fan the Hammer is the second skill tree and it’s focused on mobility and dealing damage at close range. It’s here that Nisha can make use of dualwielding pistols, explosive bullets and stealing ammo from enemies when you hit them with your whip. Again the majority of skills here require you to get close to enemies, making intelligent positioning vital.
If you’re not keen on the idea of constantly putting yourself in danger then you can go for the Riflewoman tree, designed to improve Nisha’s handling of sniper rifles, assault rifles and other middle to long-distance weapons. However, in keeping with her lone ranger image, many of her skills here are centred around her being able to shoot from the hip without any loss of accuracy – even when using a sniper rifle. So, yes, you can run ’n’ gun as a sniper if that’s your style.
Perhaps what’s so charming about Nisha’s playing style is that it’s so in keeping with Borderlands’ existing sensibilities. On the surface she’s a close-range character with expanded melee options, but in reality you can subvert such limitations and play in any number of ways. This is a franchise that has forever revelled in the subversion of stereotypical gaming rules, which is exactly why Nisha stands out as being so quintessentially of the familiar Borderlands mould.
Even her Showdown Action skill (read: super move) embodies this, giving her a limited time auto-aim as well as greatly heightened fire rates, damage and reload speeds. Basically she turns into an unstoppable killing machine for a few moments, turning on its head the idea that things need to be fair in order to be fun and satisfying. It’s the provision of crazy that has built Borderlands such a lofty reputation and loyal fanbase, so it’s great to see a character continuing that wonderful tradition.
+ Great sense of humour
+ Huge variety within skill trees
+ Moon setting adds fresh elements
- Still don’t know how Claptrap plays
- Can Moon setting stay fresh?
- Not on next-gen
FORMAT: PS3, X360, PC
PUBLISHER: 2K Games
DEVELOPER: 2K Australia / Gearbox Software
RELEASED: 17 October 2014
ONLINE: Yes