Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel preview: less gravity, more loot

Want to know if you should purchase Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel when it comes out this October? Answer this question: did you enjoy previous games in the Borderlands series? If you answered yes, then start getting your wallet ready, because The Pre-Sequel is another heaping helping of the loot-gatherin’ RPG/shooter you know and love.

(See: Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel comes to Asia with guns blazing in October)

I got a chance to go hands-on with Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel at PAX Prime in Seattle, and had quite a bit of fun. The game obviously isn’t quite done yet—the demo level actually crashed once as I played and the entire game had to be restarted—but when it was working, it was glorious.

The demo dropped me into a mission that seemed fairly far into the game; I had a lot o free skill points to assign, and I started with some pretty boss weapons. Being a run-and-gunner in games like this, I put virtually all of my points into offensive skills and buffs, and then started blasting my way through the interior of a spaceship.

Quite quickly I got a chance to experience one of the cool new elements of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel‘s bazillion-gun arsenal: the freeze-ray. OK, so my gun actually wasn’t a freeze ray, it was an automatic weapon of some kind, but my ammunition would sometimes freeze enemies, and blasting them with subsequent rounds would eventually shatter them into pieces. Awesome.

Fairly quickly, my path took me outside where I could experience another of The Pre-Sequel‘s changes in its full glory: low gravity. Thanks to green boost pads and ramps, I was quickly flying around the large outdoor environment, wreaking havoc on enemies with a variety of weapons including my freeze-gun, a slag-shooting machine gun, and a sniper rifle of sorts. As is typical of Borderlands, the enemies were varied and numerous, and they all dropped guns and other forms of loot. And though it felt like a shooting gallery at times, the game is challenging enough that I did actually die once.

Visually, if you’ve played any Borderlands game, you know what The Pre-Sequel looks like already. The game’s signature cartoony aesthetic remains, and that’s a good thing, because its trademark humor is obviously still present as well. Being dropped into the middle of the story for the demo, I couldn’t really explain what was going on during my demo, but I still caught a few choice quips in the voiceover dialog as I slaughtering enemies left and right.

Honestly, it feels like this is all that really needs to be said: if you like Borderlands, The Pre-Sequel needs to be on your radar. It looks, feels, and plays like the Borderlands you know and love with a few new tricks up its sleeve.

Disclaimer: Strife developer S2 Games paid for GiA’s travel and accommodations in Seattle. We accepted because we maintain full editorial control (we can still write whatever we want), and because we think our audience is genuinely interested in Strife and a bunch of the other games at PAX. For more information about our ethics policy, click here.