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Hands on with Borderlands 2’s co-op

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We’re all huge fans of the original Borderlands title and the thought of a new Borderlands coming out this month fills me with dread as I just can’t see who is going to be posting articles for the days just after the release. So imagine my excitement when we were given a hands on with Borderlands 2’s co-op at Gamescom

However before we could get our hands on the controller the nice people from Gearbox wanted to tell us a bit about the new title and showcase some very exciting additions.

First and foremost was the new ability to customise your characters which is pretty much as straightforward as it sounds, you get to choose new skins and heads for your characters so that you can stand out in co-op with your friends and enemies.

Next up we were given a demonstration of how the Gunzerker can dual wield weapons as his special ability, how Maya (The Siren) can lock enemies in a bubble or even create a bubble that pulls enemies towards it.

Zero the ninja is all about the stealth kills and one of his special abilities is to sequence kill where he has a certain amount of time to kill someone then everything is pulled into slow motion and as long as he keeps the sequence up he can decapitate multiple enemies in a chain of blood and guts.

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The soldier has also been upgraded as has his turret, now you can choose to add missiles to your turret, deploy it by throwing it and even have two separate less powerful turrets.

And lastly we are show the Mechromancer which is a pre-order bonus character that you will be allowed to purchase after it’s release. This character has already caused an Internet storm due to the developers ill advised comment of her having a “Girlfriend” skill tree which makes it easier for non-shooter fans. Idiotic Internet mob aside the tree is actually quite useful for all players and includes a helper claptrap robot called Deathtrap who will wreck havoc amongst the enemy and a new skill called “close enough is good enough” which gives your bullets a chance of ricocheting off walls and rocks and still doing some damage to your opponents.

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The Mechromancer looks like a great addition to the line up and during our post play interview we asked if more characters are going to be made available via DLC and while no confirmation was forthcoming the writer did state that if that is what fans want then the ability is there to do that.

And that’s the end of the discussion so we’re lead into a different room and Geoff and I sit down to lay waste to Pandoria. Obviously the Asian needed to be the ninja and I the dumb grunt so we chose Zero and the Soldier and entered into a small section of Pandoria to take on the robot army.

Now there isn’t much to say about this part oddly enough because we were so engrossed in the game that I forgot to write down my notes… so yeah that’s a bad on me. But what I can tell you is that the mechanics and co-op factor is just as good, if not better, than we had in Borderlands 1. The range of enemies is awesome.

Trying to destroy a robot while another one heals it and a third turns itself into a rocket turret is quite the challenge. Thankfully they haven’t added in health regeneration, besides the health pick ups, and the range of weapons is now bigger and better which is quite the accomplishment as the last game had over a bajillion guns already.

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All too soon we were told our time was up and we had to leave, only then did I realise that Geoff had been hiding in the rafters sniping for half the game while I got destroyed on the ground… sneaky ninja.

Oh there is one big thing we did see for the first time as well that you are going to love. Raid bosses.

Borderlands 2 will ship with one post-game raid boss and while the writer claims they are not thinking about more I can pretty much guarantee you that more bosses will arrive via DLC.

The way it works is that you need to team up with 3 other players and enter a special boss arena but be aware you are not going to want to try this with anything under level 50 and with a full arsenal.

The boss is called Terra Morpheus the Invincible who is a huge worm like creature that comes up through the ground and starts firing at you from pretty much everywhere. We watched 4 level 50 characters try to take it down and after about 5 minutes he was hardly harmed and the attacking team had all been killed at least 4 times each.

This boss is designed to be a serious challenge to hardened players and it’s going to take a lot of practice and strategy to take him down. Hopefully Gearbox have left in an easter egg to reward the first team to take down Terra Morpheus.

Last Updated: September 3, 2012

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