E3 2012 Borderlands 2 Demo hands on with Axton and Zero

By BatRastered — June 11, 2012
Tags: 2k-games blog e3-2012 gearbox-software

Goukijones, FnJimmy, and BatRastered played the media only demo of Borderlands 2 at E3 2012 for the first time featuring Axton and Zero as playable characters.

2K had a playable version of Borderlands 2 on the show floor. It was the same demo from PAX East featuring Maya and Salvador (the siren and gunzerker classes) at level 20. The line for this got incredibly long very early in the day. Luckily we had an appointment to play, even better, the invitation-only press demo featured all four characters. For the first time, we were allowed to play as Axton (the commando class) and Zero (the infiltrator class). Additionally, this demo was set five levels higher (at 25, giving us 20 skill points to spend) and in a different area.

Goukijones and I teamed up on one set of screens, where I picked Zero and he picked Axton. Axton's skill is very similar to Roland, the soldier class in the first game, where he can drop a turret on the map that will take care of any nearby enemies. Goukijones leveled it up to include extra guns and the new turret works in 360 degrees unlike the original which only worked in 180. I leveled up Zero's skill to last longer and give bonus critical hit damage. Zero turns invisible, puts out some decoys for the baddies to shoot at and highlights the critical hit areas on enemies you are looking at. This gives you a great chance to do some serious sniper damage or creep up and deliver a killer melee blow. Zero's skill actually reminded me more of the original siren, Lilith's skill in the original Borderlands as it gives you the ability to sneak around unseen to your objective, whereas the new siren, Maya has a straight-up offensive technique with the phaselock.

The mission we were given was a bit of an escort mission (oh how I hate those) , we had to hijack an enemy robot to knock down some statues of the main antagonist, Handsome Jack. As the robot thing was knocking down statues, Hyperion soldiers and robots were coming out of the woodwork to stop it and it was our job to protect the robot we had reprogrammed. We actually ran out of time in our 30-minute demo before we could complete the mission, leading both Goukijones and I to check the clock to see if that was really 30 minutes because it only felt like 10. We were totally engrossed in the game and having a good time.

The menu system looks incredible and was easy to navigate even given the short time we had to work with it, and the gun cards had extra info on them (like the elemental effect chance as a percentage and such). The grenades, while they had some interesting variations in the original game, get an incredible makeover in the sequel with each type looking completely different. I ended up with a mod that would throw out, settle down and turn into a spinning, flaming top of death. I didn't see any interesting shields or class mods during my demo, the one I started with only had one effect on it.

The animation was very smooth and in addition to the normal hit points and "critical" text flying off the enemies as you hit them, you may also notice the word "resist" popping off if you hit a flame resistant baddie with a fire weapon, a nice addition. There's a ton of dialog in Borderlands 2 as well, as both Claptrap and Handsome Jack were constantly talking to us during our mission.

Finally, we were given an interview with Jeramy Cooke (art director on BL2)... That video is coming soon, but we can confirm max level will be 60 (to start, without any DLC) and we will be seeing 3 playthroughs and multiple raid bosses. Sweet! Oh yeah, and that Ultimate Loot Chest Edition we told you about a few weeks ago... that's sold out now.

Borderlands 2