Game review: Borderlands 2 for PS Vita

I’ve already done a review for Borderlands 2 on the PC, and the short summary of that review is “Two stars, what a crock of shit.” I have since then amassed a whopping 182 hours on the PC version, which might require some explanation. Borderlands 2 has become much like Diablo II for me in that I’m not playing for the story. I’m playing for the looting and character leveling options. I can play both games for hours on end to get some new combination of powers and weapons, the whole time loathing the story and wishing game makers gave half a shit about plot the way they do about graphics and sound.

Of course, Borderlands 2 is still a buggy mess with many sections that just aren’t fun to play. So you might think I’d pass on the PS Vita version. And you’d be wrong, because I’ve been desperate to have a semi-decent shooter on the Vita for those days when I can’t sit up to play on my PC. My options for shooters on Vita are extremely limited, so much so that the idea of getting this game ported made me excited. Yeah, that’s the very definition of desperation, y’all.

Obviously, my feelings for the story hasn’t changed, so what really matters is, how does the game play on the Vita? Well, I’ve got a major problem with the game, but it’s not the controls, so I’ll get to that in a moment. First, I should say, the controls are pretty good. There is an option to use the accelerometer to aim, but I shut that off because the game has a built-in mechanic for simulating accuracy with gun swaying, and trying to wrestle the Vita around with some guns was a huge pain in the ass. However, once I shut that off, the rest of the controls were good. The back and front touch panel functions can be customized, and once I got used to using the sticks to shoot instead of a mouse and keyboard, the setup was comfortable even with long playing sessions.

BUT, this games is a buggy, crash happy motherfucker. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’d just completed a quest and would be on my way back to a checkpoint when a crash would force me to restart the game and do the quest over again. The most frustrating of these was after I did the Minecraft side mission and found a great rifle after facing the Badass Creeper. I was just equipping the gun when the game crashed, and when I had to do the mission over, the same boss didn’t drop the gun. (Or ANY gun, for that matter.) But more than this, there’s a kind of freeze that requires shutting off the Vita after the OS locks. There’s another glitch that turns the text and button prompts into unreadable glitchy rainbow block barf, again requiring a reset to fix.

And of course there’s all the glitches in the game that can be found in the PC version, like guns randomly disappearing from the inventory, even if you were currently using them in one of your four active slots. You can still get stuck on the smallest bumps or on the corner of doorways. Missions might glitch, requiring you to start the game to redo certain sections over.

But then there’s bugs specific to this port. I can’t get certain trophies to work, even though I’ve done what’s required to be rewarded them. Like for instance, I’ve let a Goliath level up four times before killing them. No dice. The sound cuts out a lot. There’s lag in some areas bad enough to make you stutter step for a few minutes. There’s texture pop in, and sometimes textures take a long time to render, making everything a muddy blurred mess for upwards of a minute. There’s really nasty screen tearing at times. What I’m saying is, this is not the most optimal version of the game available.

But, having said that, I’ve already run through the game once, and that includes most of the side missions. I can see putting more hours into this version to level up all the characters, and I’ve still got the DLC packs to play with. So for the price, I don’t think it was a bad game. (Okay, yes, it still is.) You however may choose to hold off on playing until a few more patches come out to fix some of the stability issues.

“But Zoe,” you say, “if you’ve played the game all this time, AND you bought the Vita version, aren’t you at least willing to go back and revise that two star score?” Well, that’s a fair point, so I’m raising the score to three stars. I still have a long, LONG list of complaints about the games. The story stinks. The vast majority of the cast are unlikable and make me wish I could shoot NPCs in the face. I’m really only in this game for the gun porn and the moving targets. But on the mention of gun porn, let me bring up something that’s really bugging the shit out of me. One of the missions Dr. Zed gives is to locate a special “E-tech” gun that shouts laser bolts. Dr. Zed say that there are all kinds of E-tch guns from all the manufacturers, and I should look for them. Well fuck Dr. Zed, and fuck Gearbox, because in all this time, I’ve never seen a single other E-tech gun in the game, not even while playing co-op with my hubby. Yeah, okay, guns are procedurally generated, but were talking about well over 200 hours across two platforms and four player classes, and I’ve still never seen another e-tech gun outside of that one mission. EVER. Oh, my God, that pisses me off so, so bad.

So, yeah, I’m still playing the game, but I also still have a pretty low opinion about it. Which may say something about how sad I am that I’ve put this much time into a game I don’t really like all that much. Anyway, that’s my review of the Vita version. Your mileage may vary.