Tediore have changed a little since Borderlands, they look far more futuristic now and explode like a grenade when reloaded. The bullets you have left in your clip determine the kind of boom you get.

These are just a few of the Borderlands manufacturers that we talk about, the rest you’ll have to discover for yourself.

The new system really works well and getting fresh loot is an amazing rush in the new game because of it.

I’m a Badass now?

Another part of Borderlands 2 that has been overhauled is the challenge system, no longer are you rewarded with XP for the character if you complete the challenges (and there are a lot to do, all up to level 5), you’re rewarded with Badass Rank points. Once you earn enough, you get a token and token’s can be redeemed to grant you stat bonuses to your character, rather like the original weapon proficiencies in Borderlands for using the various guns.

However these stat bonuses are ones you choose from a list each time you get a token. What’s more (this is the cool bit), they transfer onto every character you play with that profile. So you can get infinite Badass Ranks since there’s no limit. As long as you play Borderlands 2 with new characters and use that profile, you’ll stack up those points and redeem tokens for bonuses like:

Shield Recharge Rate

Shield Recharge Delay

Gun Damage

Gun Accuracy and more…

Imagine getting Gun Damage +100% at some point, yeah, that’s what we’re talking about!

There are more things we could talk about, but we’re pretty much going to let you discover those for yourself.

The game saves with save points and of course you can quit/save at mostly any time to save your character progress.

Finally there is the True Vault Hunter game mode that’s unlocked after you beat the game, aka, playthrough #2 which ups the ante significantly. However Borderlands 2 offers a lot of exploration, side-quests and levelling before you complete it…so it’s value for money right there!

Graphics

Pandora has changed…a lot; there are new areas, frozen areas, other areas we won’t say yet and basically the game looks much nicer than Borderlands with an expanded colour palette, a refined graphic novel/comic-book art style and aesthetic. There’s a lot more detail here and it shows, there are a few issues at the moment with some textures not loading as quickly as they could, or in some cases there have been a few texture glitches (mostly from the frozen piles of Bullymong crud) – nothing that spoilt our enjoyment of the game from a shooting-looting perspective though.

Animations

There’s a lot more love here in terms of animation quality too, including the individual character animations for the Vault Hunters and how they fire/reload weapons (this are likely procedural and based on the weapons themselves). We’ve seen characters fanning the hammer on some revolvers, loading them with their right, or left hand, pulling back a bolt on a sniper rifle or slamming a clip into a fully automatic gun. Enemies have brand new animations and it ties into their AI too, kind of taking a leaf out of Rage’s book in that regard – it works beautifully too.

AI

Tied into the animations for the characters is the game’s AI. New monsters have new attack patterns, new AI mechanics that drive them to back off if they become too injured and Bullymongs vary based on the kind of creature that’s been generated, yeah, and even the monsters/humanoid bad guys in Borderlands 2 are procedurally generated and armed. Bullymongs live up to their name, they like to bully you and will launch into the air with a massive leap, or hurl rocks.

Humanoid enemies will use cover a lot more now and work on their tactics, using pack tactics, lone wolf tactics and a variety of flanking tricks to get the drop on you. It makes the game far more fun. Badasses up the ante even more…