Developed by 2K Australia in cooperation with Gearbox, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! fills the gap between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 by taking the player to Pandora's moon Elpis and telling the story of Handsome Jack's rise from lowly software developer to CEO of Hyperion and his transformation from being a somewhat likeable jerk trying to save Pandora's moon into a complete jerkwad.

Players of Borderlands 2 will feel right at home as the Pre-Sequel uses the same engine and interface as Borderlands 2. This can give an impression that the game is more of the same and those impressions would not be entirely incorrect. The Pre-Sequel does a lot of things safely and does not attempt to stray too far from the traditional Borderlands formula of rediculous humor, face-shooting action and lots of loot. Along with a shortened experience, this makes the impression of a very long expansion pack for Borderlands 2.

Even with the similarities, the game does offer quite a bit of new content and features to the Borderlands experience:

We get a new story which details the events between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and get to see Jack transform from a fairly likeable guy to a complete jerk by the end. The story plays on moral ambiguity and veterans of the franchise may find themselves actually having a liking of the "villains" and a despising of the "heroes" from the other games. The story definitely plays on matters of morality and perspective that can have the players questioning who are the true heroes of the series. Voicing for many of the moon's inhabitants is done from an Australian perspective which makes the environment feel like a "Land Up Over" Pandora. There is a lot of Australian humor embedded in the game, especially in the various side-quests which can be a plus or minus depending on whether one "gets" the jokes. The ending of the main story was a tad perplexing but was a clear setup for the events coming in Borderlands 3.

There are 4 new vault hunters in the Pre-Sequel and they are all characters which fans of the franchise will recognize. Claptrap is finally a playable character and his skill tree is very unpredictable and fun in a Claptrap sort of way! Wilhelm the Enforcer has a pair of drones named Wolf and Saint which provide a balance of offensive and defensive capabilities. Wilhelm also has a cybernetic tree which actually changes the character's appearance and voice based on the selected abilities. Athena the Gladiator is a bit of a tankish class with a shield that can absorb attacks and be thrown at enemies. Nisha the Lawbringer has a gunslinging capability that works much like an aimbot and grants a lot of weapon buffs. In addition, the player characters are now fully voiced and have a part in regular conversation with NPCs outside of combat which is a very nice change.

New weapon types have also made it into the game. Cryo weapons replace slag from Borderlands 2 and you can now freeze (and shatter) your opponents. Laser weapons are also included and are a replacement for e-tech weapons from Borderlands 2. Lasers come in different elements and varieties like bolts, beams and continuous beams. I found the continuous beams to be especially powerful effects and favored those weapons. Lasers generally come with an incidiary elemental type, but could also less-frequently take the form of other elements. In addition to the new weapon types, an upgrade system in the form of a grinder permits the player to discard 3 weapons in an effort to get a single weapon of better quality or attributes. This grinder requires some experimentation to determine which recipe of discarded weapons are required for a desired outcome and will probably appeal to those who like to experiment and tinker in-game.

The low-gravity environment on the moon is perhaps the biggest feature change to make it into the game. The low-gravity environment extends jumping greatly and gives the game a more vertical combat mechanic. Artifacts are now replaced with O2 kits which supply the characters with oxygen on the moon's surface. This adds an O2 management feature to the game where the player needs to be mindful of O2 levels to avoid suffocation, but some of that O2 can be sacrificed to allow for extended double-jumps and the ability to do a ground slam attack which will damage enemies in a radius. Overall this feature felt pretty good and oxygen management was not too much of a burden as there were plenty of places to refresh the player's oxygen supplies before they ran out. Players who do not want to worry about suffocation can play as Claptrap, who does not need to breath, but can still equip an O2 kit for the advantages of double-jumps and ground slam attacks.

There are some interesting changes that appear to have made it into the game at the requests of fans. The enemies appear to scale more gradually than they did in Borderlands 2 which helps with difficulty spikes between playthroughs of the game. Another benefit is that vending machines now finally scale to the player's level! More frequent legendary drops and legendary gear in the vendors should be a welcome change for many. Also, the appearance of more legendary gear in the vendors has a side benefit of actually making money important again. Many of these changes harks back to the days of the original borderlands and reverts back some of the less popular changes that made it into Borderlands 2.

There are a few annoying items that I experienced while playing the game:

Veterans of Borderlands 2 will notice the lack of a couple of features in the Pre-Sequel, most notably the ability to do a reset of mission progress as well as the ability to reset challenge progress. I personally find these omissions confusing since they were already part of Borderlands 2 and the inclusion of those features do much to extend replayability of the game. I only hope that these features will be added into the game via a future patch.

Another annoyance is that the raid boss is an upscaled version of the same boss that was encountered at the end of the main story. This feels like a pretty lazy raid encounter and I am hoping that more creative raid content will be included with future updates.

I did find a few bugs during my first playthrough of the game. I had a crash to desktop at character creation of all things, though I could not reproduce that crash and did not experience any others during the course of the game. There are some small graphical issues like clipping and some of the laser effects remaining on the screen when they should have long dissapeared. There was a door to the first boss that would not open for me since it was waiting for other players, but I was running solo at that time. I was able to get the door to open by simply backing away and reapproaching the door, so there appears to be a slight glitch with that as well. Other than the single crash I did not experience
anything completely game-breaking.

Overall the game is a competent, although brief, entry in the Borderlands franchise. Fans of the series may have a feeling that the Pre-Sequel is much-of-the-same and does not offer enough to warrant the $60 price of entry. DLC and content patches may help fill in the gaps where the game is lacking, but I am not one that approves of the practice of using post-release DLC to fix issues with the release version of a game. The game is definitely worth a look for existing fans of the franchise, though I would recommend getting it during a sale if possible.

Developed by 2K Australia in cooperation with Gearbox, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! fills the gap between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 by taking the player to Pandora's moon Elpis and telling the story of Handsome Jack's rise from lowly software developer to CEO of Hyperion and his transformation from being a somewhat likeable jerk trying to save Pandora's moon into a complete jerkwad. Players of Borderlands 2 will feel right at home as the Pre-Sequel uses the same engine and interface as Borderlands 2. This can give an impression that the game is more of the same and those impressions would not be entirely incorrect. The Pre-Sequel does a lot of things safely and does not attempt to stray too far from the traditional Borderlands formula of rediculous humor, face-shooting action and lots of loot. Along with a shortened experience, this makes the impression of a very long expansion pack for Borderlands 2. Even with the similarities, the game does offer quite a bit of new content and features to the Borderlands experience: We get a new story which details the events between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and get to see Jack transform from a fairly likeable guy to a complete jerk by the end. The story plays on moral ambiguity and veterans of the franchise may find themselves actually having a liking of the "villains" and a despising of the "heroes" from the other games. The story definitely plays on matters of morality and perspective that can have the players questioning who are the true heroes of the series. Voicing for many of the moon's inhabitants is done from an Australian perspective which makes the environment feel like a "Land Up Over" Pandora. There is a lot of Australian humor embedded in the game, especially in the various side-quests which can be a plus or minus depending on whether one "gets" the jokes. The ending of the main story was a tad perplexing but was a clear setup for the events coming in Borderlands 3. There are 4 new vault hunters in the Pre-Sequel and they are all characters which fans of the franchise will recognize. Claptrap is finally a playable character and his skill tree is very unpredictable and fun in a Claptrap sort of way! Wilhelm the Enforcer has a pair of drones named Wolf and Saint which provide a balance of offensive and defensive capabilities. Wilhelm also has a cybernetic tree which actually changes the character's appearance and voice based on the selected abilities. Athena the Gladiator is a bit of a tankish class with a shield that can absorb attacks and be thrown at enemies. Nisha the Lawbringer has a gunslinging capability that works much like an aimbot and grants a lot of weapon buffs. In addition, the player characters are now fully voiced and have a part in regular conversation with NPCs outside of combat which is a very nice change. New weapon types have also made it into the game. Cryo weapons replace slag from Borderlands 2 and you can now freeze (and shatter) your opponents. Laser weapons are also included and are a replacement for e-tech weapons from Borderlands 2. Lasers come in different elements and varieties like bolts, beams and continuous beams. I found the continuous beams to be especially powerful effects and favored those weapons. Lasers generally come with an incidiary elemental type, but could also less-frequently take the form of other elements. In addition to the new weapon types, an upgrade system in the form of a grinder permits the player to discard 3 weapons in an effort to get a single weapon of better quality or attributes. This grinder requires some experimentation to determine which recipe of discarded weapons are required for a desired outcome and will probably appeal to those who like to experiment and tinker in-game. The low-gravity environment on the moon is perhaps the biggest feature change to make it into the game. The low-gravity environment extends jumping greatly and gives the game a more vertical combat mechanic. Artifacts are now replaced with O2 kits which supply the characters with oxygen on the moon's surface. This adds an O2 management feature to the game where the player needs to be mindful of O2 levels to avoid suffocation, but some of that O2 can be sacrificed to allow for extended double-jumps and the ability to do a ground slam attack which will damage enemies in a radius. Overall this feature felt pretty good and oxygen management was not too much of a burden as there were plenty of places to refresh the player's oxygen supplies before they ran out. Players who do not want to worry about suffocation can play as Claptrap, who does not need to breath, but can still equip an O2 kit for the advantages of double-jumps and ground slam attacks. There are some interesting changes that appear to have made it into the game at the requests of fans. The enemies appear to scale more gradually than they did in Borderlands 2 which helps with difficulty spikes between playthroughs of the game. Another benefit is that vending machines now finally scale to the player's level! More frequent legendary drops and legendary gear in the vendors should be a welcome change for many. Also, the appearance of more legendary gear in the vendors has a side benefit of actually making money important again. Many of these changes harks back to the days of the original borderlands and reverts back some of the less popular changes that made it into Borderlands 2. There are a few annoying items that I experienced while playing the game: Veterans of Borderlands 2 will notice the lack of a couple of features in the Pre-Sequel, most notably the ability to do a reset of mission progress as well as the ability to reset challenge progress. I personally find these omissions confusing since they were already part of Borderlands 2 and the inclusion of those features do much to extend replayability of the game. I only hope that these features will be added into the game via a future patch. Another annoyance is that the raid boss is an upscaled version of the same boss that was encountered at the end of the main story. This feels like a pretty lazy raid encounter and I am hoping that more creative raid content will be included with future updates. I did find a few bugs during my first playthrough of the game. I had a crash to desktop at character creation of all things, though I could not reproduce that crash and did not experience any others during the course of the game. There are some small graphical issues like clipping and some of the laser effects remaining on the screen when they should have long dissapeared. There was a door to the first boss that would not open for me since it was waiting for other players, but I was running solo at that time. I was able to get the door to open by simply backing away and reapproaching the door, so there appears to be a slight glitch with that as well. Other than the single crash I did not experience anything completely game-breaking. Overall the game is a competent, although brief, entry in the Borderlands franchise. Fans of the series may have a feeling that the Pre-Sequel is much-of-the-same and does not offer enough to warrant the $60 price of entry. DLC and content patches may help fill in the gaps where the game is lacking, but I am not one that approves of the practice of using post-release DLC to fix issues with the release version of a game. The game is definitely worth a look for existing fans of the franchise, though I would recommend getting it during a sale if possible.