If there is any game that’s going to blur the line between a tie-in/sequel between two incredibly wacky and successful games, it is going to be Borderlands.

The Pre-Sequel sets itself between Borderlands 1 & 2 and tells the story of how Handsome Jack became Handsome Jack and captures once again the craziness that the first two games provide. You negotiate the many bad guys around the moon of Pandora, Elpis, which adds a nice new dynamic of low gravity and oxygen starved environments. Firstly, fire. Fire will not work in space. There is no oxygen. So unless there is an oxygen zone you’ve set up or that you’ve entered then there will be no fire, explosions, etc. But you can still fire guns and that will give you the added option of shooting off oxygen helmets and giving the bad guys something else to think about.

The story itself adds a few new characters that you may have seen dotted around the Borderlands universe before in DLC’s, etc. But the main thing you guys all want to know about is Claptrap. Yes he is playable, yes he is funny. But there are now reasons for that. At this point, Jack is busy reprogramming Claptrap and isn’t getting it quite right. So this makes for a crazy cacophony of mixed up thought processes and hilarious speech whilst your playing. Unstable and zany, Claptrap will really steal this game.

When playing co-op, he is so much fun with random buffs that sometimes work. If he gives you a thumbs up and you return it, buffs for all. If not, he’ll get selfish and give more buffs for himself. There’s lots of these random events with funny animations around them to show the horrible clash of poor programming that prevents him from doing some things and allows for hilarious mistakes. All of these are available on the three skill tress that every character has. Claptraps though really are much funnier than everyone else’s.

Of course the game itself has other playable characters such as Wilhelm who later becomes Handsome Jack’s bodyguard in Borderlands 2 and Nisha the Lawbringer who is the Sherrif of Lynchwood and later girlfriend of Handsome jack. You’ll also have Athena the Gladiator from the Borderlands 1 DLC ‘The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.’ The effort in Pre-Sequel to establish a lot of more the story canon to fans of the franchise and to really make this  a big arc that resolves any queries and links between the first two games.

There are lots of cool new enemies as well and the environment in the levels also gives a PvE trickiness at times, especially with the low gravity jumping. But you cannot help but realise you are playing a last generation game. Sure, we understand that the development in this game is something that Gearbox want to do, not to just cash in on Borderlands. They do care about the franchise and want to add this nice tie-in between the games. And I suppose that there is an element of that it isn’t broken then you don’t fix it with this game. The graphics and the smoothness of the cel shading has really been perfected in the engine and in the consoles that they are currently making the game for (along with the PC port).

However when we played the hands-on at Gamescom, it felt a little bit weird given how many next generation titles are coming out soon that this wasn’t one of them. It does show as a testament that the game really does stand up to those new games though given how much Gearbox have perfected this game after years of developing it. Yes we were all disappointed that we aren’t getting a PS4/Xbox One instalment anytime soon. But given that we aren’t ready to trade in our other consoles yet, then this will do nicely. Unless you are playing on a PC and are annoyed that you’re getting a last gen port again. Sorry about that.

The thing is with Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is that this is totally for the fans. There isn’t going to be anything incredibly new and breath taking. Yes there are little things and new bits shoehorned in but the idea is that the story of these characters is told. If you are coming in to Borderlands fresh with this game then don’t. Go to Steam and get the first two (normally discounted) or even in the sales on the consoles. Otherwise you will be completely lost as to what’s happening whilst still admiring a nice smooth exciting shooter with cel shading graphics. But you’ve got time to get the other games done before this comes out on October 17th. Then you may well appreciate Claptrap’s eccentricities.

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