The original Borderlands game is one of my personal favourite games of all time. Released back in 2009, Borderlands was a game where style and substance could coexist with some of the most unique and interesting graphics on console at the time paired with an immense campaign filled to the brim with content in terms of quests, side missions and the bloody weapons (of which there were millions). The game itself was packed with charm and by never taking itself too seriously, you would experience some absolute comic gold in the narrative and from the characters. The game itself was a wonder and easily one of the biggest surprises of 2009 in terms of how good it actually was, after all, the studio that made Borderlands also made my least favourite game Brothers in Arms also. As I’m sure many people may have had the pleasure to hear, Gearbox (the studio in question) has decided that the game deserves a sequel much to my approval but in order to make me a happy little bunny, here are a few things Gearbox must do or solve in order to really wow the hyped up fans.

1. Make the guns different for gods sake.

Borderlands was a game which was advertised to have over 6 billion guns or something stupid along those lines. In reality  though, I really don’t think this was the case. The variations between some  weapons could have been something as minor as a diffferent magazine meaning it could hold 6 bullets instead of 5. THIS IS NOT A DIFFERENT WEAPON GEARBOX. In order to really get a sense of variation into the mix, what needs to be done is add a tonne of new base models fir weapons for the various attachments to be allocated to.

Another problem with the weapon system is that you would often find the same weapon that you found ten seconds earlier being dropped by yet another enemy when you turn a corner. This in the first game really spoiled the illusion of a vast armoury of weapons and instead made you feel like you’ve in a way been cheated. To resolve this, I think that Gearbox should place one of each item/weapon into the mix and once they have been found, they can no longer be recovered again. After all, with 6 billion guns, you won’t be running out of available weapons any time soon.

2. Weapon customisation.

For me, this is one of the things that has to be included to seal the deal for me. The ability to switch around parts of your gun to fit your needs on the fly would be invaluable when out in the wastelands of Pandora. Imagine being able to swap your Combat rifle from a close range killing machine into a long range nightmare by adding your favorite scope to it. Another nice feature would be the ability to add elemental abilities to your gun at will and be able to switch them around by removing and adding certain parts. In a world where enemies all have their own individual weaknesses and strengths, this would be a really nice feature which would mean you could tailor your weapons to be able to best suite them to the enemy you’re facing.

3. A more open world.

In the first game, the play area was not a pure open world. Pandora was divided up into areas where you could travel to one you had unlocked it. You would often travel through multiple areas in order to reach your objective which after a while (and without the ability to fast travel earlier on in the game) became really tiresome. Therefore, what I want is just one huge area without the loading times to open up different areas and without the annoying travelling system. The game should let players scour the world before any quest says they should and just be able to see what there is on Pandora before they have to go there to complete a particular quest.

4. Make vehicles fun.

In Borderlands, vehicles were really about travelling around the map. They were never really a part of the whole experience and the use of them was purely out of convenience rather than for fun. For one, they are horrible to control and secondly in combat they were utterly useless apart from ramming the damn thing into whatever you’re trying to kill. In the sequel, what should be included in the sequel is adding usefulness to the vehicles in some form another be it making them a more useful means of combat or including a side quest option to involve the vehicles such as a racing venture.

5. Make the environment look nice.

If you’re stumbling around a barren wasteland with the same art scheme for a 30 hour long game, boredom tends to set in very quickly and that was the case with the original game. The quite bold landscaping you see at the start of the game tends to wear thin after a while and seeing sand will eventually really grate on you. What Gearbox should do is try to vary up the landscape, try a bit of grass for instance. The whole of Pandora can’t be the same so let’s see what the developers can conjure up.

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