BORDERLANDS : THE PRE-SEQUEL

      Like a robot wearing a m an’s face,Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel neither one thing nor another.It iterates and improves on the series like all good sequels should, but story wise it slots into the gap between the first two games, charting the descent of a more humanized Handsome Jack. He’s kind of like the Star Wars prequels’ Anakin Skywalker, if he were intentionally rather than accidentally funny.
      Like the story, the Pre-Sequel’s world size is also a halfway house, bigger than Borderlands but a touch smaller than Borderlands 2. I start on Pandora’s moon, a location you could see in the last game but never get to, and it’s the perfect place to test The Pre-Sequel’s various new features.
      The area I spawn in is called Outlands Spur, an expanse of jagged rock cut by deep blue chasms. While they’d pose obstacles on Pandora, here I can jump them with the help of glowing green boost pads. Before that, though, I need oxygen. I am, after all, in space, and frequent trips to O2 terminals are a necessity. They serve as waypoints rather than burdens though, lining the path to my mission – which is to freeze a lake by redirecting a flow of methane so that I can cross into Drakensburg.
      That’s easier said than done with the moon’s native population of Kraggons pounding about, though. They’re like crystalline space stegosauruses, and they attack in packs. At least they offer a chance to test my weapons. One criticism of the Borderlands series is that, despite the roughly 87 bazillion guns, you’d see the same types crop up repeatedly in the course of a game. The Pre-Sequel aims to keep things fresh with two new families of firearm: laser and ice. The first are more precision weapons, able to target an exploding fuel barrel at 500 paces, while the latter specialize in crowd control, immobilizing one target so you can concentrate on others.
      The character you pick also greatly affects how you play. I start with celestial gladiator Athena, whose action skill, Kinetic Aspis, is a Captain America-type boomerang shield that absorbs all frontal damage and directs it back at the enemy when thrown. Robotically augmented engineer Wilhelm’s action skill summons two drones called Wolf and Saint: Wolf roams the level attacking enemies while Saint sticks close and regenerates health. Finally there’s the lawbringer Nisha, whose action skill, Showdown, consists of pressing LB to automatically aim at enemies and receive increased gun damage, fire rates, reload speed, bullet speed accuracy, and recoil reduction. The fourth, Claptrap, isn’t available in my demo.
      Like before, all characters have three separate skill trees. Athena, the tanky healer of the group, has the Phalanx tree, which is all about teammate buffs and health regeneration. The Wrath of the Goddess tree contains Kinetic Aspis, which cause your shield to ricochet off multiple enemies. Xiphos is more for damage-dealing solo players and includes moves like Epicenter (butt-slam to create black holes). Ceraunic Storm ups elemental damage through moves such as Flash Freeze.
      Each character also carries four pieces of equipment, including shields and skill mods. I chuck a Longbow Flamin’ Merv grenade at a group of soldiers and watch as it splits into eight smaller grenades and burns away their air masks.
      The game swells with this brand of slightly off-colour humour. The series was always driven more by its personality than its weapons, and The Pre-Sequel looks to be packing its share of Internet-dominating gags. Along with a very vocal Handsome Jack, a cockney called Pickle looks set to become this year’s Tiny Tina.
      The third Borderlands game has no number for a reason: Gearbox evidently feel it hasn’t earned sequel status. They’ve clearly got unfinished business here, however, and when that includes laser-rifle shoot-outs with ice dragons on the moon, there’s no doubting its pedigree.