Borderlands 2 VR is a game that is nearly perfectly translated into virtual reality. It contains everything you want from your Borderlands 2 experience, plus a bit more to make you feel like you’re a part of the game. Gearbox and 2K didn’t simply offer up a small piece of the pie, they offered up the whole pie. Just remember, too much of a good thing can make you sick.
Cel-shaded happiness right the hell in your face. What more could you want from 2K’s precious gem of a series? There’s not much more, to be honest.
Let’s get right into this bad boy.
Unless you’ve lived underneath a rock or have been purposely avoiding the Borderland series, you probably are aware of its existence. It’s one of the best-written pieces of video games in the entire industry today, as well as one of the more beautifully designed co-op experiences. It’s got a bit of everything and more, plus it’s deep and memorable.
The story is a mixture of the bleak world of Mad Max Fury Road with a healthy dose of humor to balance it out. If this were a movie, I would see that movie in a heartbeat. The plot surrounds the purging of a planet and its resources, where total domination and power is owned by a man named Handsome Jack. He controls the world, he controls most of the nasty occupants of the world, and he doesn’t ask anyone for permission when it comes to making decisions about the world, including when he double-crosses individuals, which is what he does at the beginning of the game to start things out (such a good intro). Jack is a fun guy, to say the least.
After the double-crossing, you play as a newly recovered vault hunter named (fill in the blanks — you customize characters in this world), who is retrieved by a robotic unit named Claptrap after surviving Jack’s wrath. After being retrieved, and gaining some traction back to your life of adventuring, Jack starts to throw the kitchen sink at you, as you attempt to get the band back together in hopes of overthrowing Handsome Jack and his kingdom.
The game is a first-person MMO that has quite a bit of RPG action inside of it. You have a lot of different weapons to gain, upgrades to have, as well as a character to upgrade along the journey. The world that you reside in is absolutely sprawling, and the environments tend to offer up a bevy of different challenges along the way. You will find this game to be deep, entertaining, and addictive as hell, especially if you haven’t played it before.
If you have played this game before, then I don’t need to regurgitate what epicness you should be expecting. You know how it’s one of the best selling titles for 2K, and what type of fanbase follows this title, so there isn’t much to be judged about the second game in the series.
What you don’t know is how well this game translates into virtual reality. Gearbox and 2K did a superb job with getting this game to VR. They did their homework and brought in some innovation to make it worth your time and money, even if you own the game. The rest of this review will be how well Borderlands 2 worked in VR.
Borderlands 2 in Virtual Reality
The gimmick with VR these days is putting a player in virtual reality in short stints, which means there isn’t a helluva lot of solid effort given to make a VR experience memorable. So far, VR has been just poked lightly by the developers of the world because of certain risks the medium offers, which does include money. It doesn’t help that VR is still slowly growing, which means the adoption rate isn’t huge, which also translate back to that whole ‘money is risked’ thingy previously mentioned in this paragraph. Beyond money, one of the biggest risks for VR games, probably one of the biggest, is you don’t want to make your audience sick, which can be a huge problem (see Detached for details).
With Borderlands 2, Gearbox didn’t make any compromises because of money, nor did they worry about the audience too much when it came to the sick factor. They seemed to focus on delivering the exact type of gaming experience that you would find with the non-VR version of Borderlands 2, and translate all that goodness into the VR world. And they did a pretty darn good job at it.
The first thing, and probably the biggest thing, is how they improved the aiming in the game. The best way to describe it is to compare it with the Tobii EyeX eye-tracking controller. If you’re not familiar with Tobii’s product, they sell a tiny bar that tracks the movement of your eyes, which allow your eyes to act as a gun aiming device. Now, you don’t know how much you use your eyes in video games, we reviewed Deus Ex when it came out until you have them tracked. It was an absolute nightmare to aim a gun in the game because your eyes want to look at every bit of movement and not stay focused, though the concept is damn cool. Tobii has more money coming from research eye-tracking than gaming, so it’s not like they needed to perfect this item, but, again, the concept is damn cool.
Anyway, Gearbox has taken that idea of looking/shooting and implemented the crosshairs of the game into your actual PSVR head movement. This means you essentially move your head to move the crosshairs in the game, which means you literally stare at your enemies to kill them. It’s a lot of work, but I found, after a few minutes with it, that aiming is very much improved. I’m wishing other games could use this method, as it works freaking brilliantly. You simply move your head, place the crosshairs on your target, and shoot. I think I was far more accurate with this method than using my right thumbstick to do the aiming for me. There are far fewer mistakes and less nervousness, and less nervous movements, with this method. It’s surprisingly easy and it makes sense. I’m not sure I’ll be satisfied by another first-person game because of this method. You can’t see it, but I’m now wishing DICE would make a VR version of Battlefield V with this control. Wishful thinking, I’m sure.
The rest of the movement, how you use weapons, and how you interact is still very much the same. I think there is a bit more effort that has to be given when it comes to opening up items and searching, as it requires a bit more head movement, but mostly it’s the same. The only other tweak to the VR experience of Borderlands 2 is that you do some jumping around, much like you would find in other VR titles, and some quick/precise turns that are not as smooth as the regular version of the game — you want that to avoid getting sick. If you have played an extended amount of VR, then you understand why this is important to have in the game. Doing a full-blown first-person shooter movement experience is going to get someone sick or hurt.
The VR version of the game makes the world of Borderlands 2 seem a lot bigger than it usually does. If you have never experienced the VR medium, then understand that you reside in the world when you climb into it. You’re not just a voyeur looking through a lens — you are in the world. This makes the experience a whole lot deeper. When you see mountains to climb, then you climb them, and your brain is convinced that you’re there. If you have large creatures running towards you, then you will see them in all their height and glory. Everything is bigger, everything seems rich with details, and everything just feels bigger in the game because of the VR medium. There’s a lot to love, and a lot to be terrified of because Gearbox moved it into virtual reality. There’s also quite a bit to explore in the game, so you’ll be in that world for a large amount of time.
Having said that, you can get fatigued quickly in Borderlands 2 VR. That is something that comes with the VR territory, so it’s nothing new. What is new is how rich those cel-shaded characters and the world become when you’re starring at them face-to-face. For me personally, I felt motion sickness because of the textures and movements. Much like how I get when I play Mario 64/Mario Kart/Name a 64 game, the textures are just so rich and the movement of the VR headset blurs just a bit, which makes for a woozy experience after an hour or so. That’s not to say everyone is going to get sick, but it certainly is an experience to be done in short stints. Again, that’s VR right now, and it’s probably going to remain that way for a little bit.
Anyway, let’s wrap this sucker up, as there isn’t much more to say.
Overall, Borderlands 2 VR is a game that is nearly perfectly translated into virtual reality. It contains everything you want from your Borderlands 2 experience, plus a bit more to make you feel like you’re a part of the game. Gearbox and 2K didn’t simply offer up a small piece of the pie, they offered up the whole pie. Just remember, too much of a good thing can make you sick.
