Borderlands 2 Preview

Gaming Angels is one of the many publications that had the chance to check Borderlands 2’s hands-off demo at PAX Prime and come back with a preview for Gearbox’s loot-heavy FPS/RPG.

The demo starts about a third of the way into the game and we see a Gunzerker, Salvador, ready to battle an arctic Bullymong. Gunzerkers are a modification of the original Berserker class capable of dual wielding. The Bullymong, which I can’t really describe, but sort of seems like a gorilla mated with a skag and then sprouted two extra arms, just for kicks, or punches in this case.

The Bullymong has its own AI and thus there is no pattern to its behavior. He will throw snow, rocks, stalagmites, or even your own car at you, all at a rapid pace with his many arms, to which you have to be ready to dodge. Salvador hurts the Bullymong and for the first time we see that the enemies show a different behavior when they are wounded than when they are at full health. Once the Bullymong was defeated, the loot left behind was a completely redesigned Tediore firearm. This particular Tediore was (The Wal-Mart of Guns) because it is disposable. Instead of reloading your gun, you just throw it at the enemy. A level of strategy needs to happen with this particular weapon, as you can either shoot until your clip is empty, or you can toss it at the enemy to cause damage. The more bullets you have in the gun, the greater the damage. As the gun exploded on the Bullymong, it showed a ridiculous amount of blood and gore, as expected from Borderlands. The next gun we got to see was the Bandit brand. Clearly, you could tell that it came from a group of bandits as it was put together with (nuts, bolts and used condoms) and hand painted or perhaps that was old blood. who knows. I particularly enjoyed the sight on the gun as it was a screw, mounted upside down with a nut turned on its edge as a reticule. Not the most accurate gun in the game, but with a magazine of seventy two bullets, no one complains and it is a fairly low level gun.