E3 2012: Borderlands 2: Playing the Assassin

Borderlands has never made a lot of sense, and that’s ok. It doesn’t give you time to think about why you’re killing everything in sight because it’s never long before you’re dumped right into the action, and nothing really happens in the game unless you pull the trigger. After eliminating all enemies in sight, you then scour the battlefield for money, new guns and health power ups, then charge into the next area to kick start your next killing spree. It’s gleeful, joyous, nearly nonstop guiltless slaughter.The Assassin class is particularly skilled at obliterating enemies. Instead of excelling at area of effect damage, the Assassin can be specialized to do insanely high burst damage on targets. By building out specific skills with points awarded as you level up it’s possible to gain huge bonuses to a critical hit’s impact. This works well with the Assassin’s action skill, which highlights targets’ critical hit points, making it easy to score kills against single foes.

Like the other three class’ action skills, this ability is on a cooldown, so you can’t use it repeatedly. When triggered, the skill sends out a hologram of the Assassin, which distracts nearby enemies so they don’t notice you. Giant targets then pop up over whatever enemy you have highlighted, showing exactly where to shoot if you want to nail a critical hit. If you brought a sniper rifle to the fight, which naturally does big one-time damage anyway, the skill-boosted crit will be especially devastating.The catch is you only have a limited amount of time to pull this off. After the timer runs out enemies will refocus their fire on you, meaning if you maneuvered into the middle of a hostile pack for a critical hit but didn’t manage to land one, you’re not going to be in a good situation. However, if you manage to swoop in behind a humanoid enemy unnoticed and land a close range critical with a shotgun, chances are the enemy will keel over and spill loot all across the ground.From the brief hands-on session offered at E3, the Assassin felt like the most skill-based of Borderlands 2’s classes, because precision shooting had such a dramatic impact. By comparison, the Gunzerker, who can dual-wield weapons, and the Commando, who can drop down automated turrets, were more about widespread damage output and support. Accuracy still matters for them, but not on the same level. It seems like the difference between a skilled Assassin and an average one could have a very significant difference on how successful a co-op group is at clearing content.

As previously noted, Borderlands is a superfast shooter that throws waves and waves of enemies at you. Many types of enemies exhibit varied behavior, preventing you from falling into a dull rhythm of combat, forcing you to move around and stay alert. Loader robots come in a number of forms. Some spin propellers in front of their chests to reflect bullets, some charge at high speed, some wander around at a distance firing rockets, and by hitting them in the joints, you’re able to sever their limbs. This doesn’t kill them, but knocks out their weapons and severely impairs their ability to move around the battlefield, adding a little bit of depth to the encounters.Quest structures are varied too, forcing you to take on more powerful Badass versions of enemies, as well as occasionally escort friendly units from enemy swarms, like a constructor bot as it move across the battlefield. You’re kept entertained during these sequences by regular chatter between the game’s characters, which has an Archer-like sense of absurd humor. For example, at the end of the constructor bot escort, the machine you’ve been protecting is for some reason given a command to dance. It dances, and then it explodes and dies. Oh well, no time to worry about that. Just move on, kill, level and loot.Borderlands 2 is scheduled to ship on September 18, 2012 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

GOOD TO BE BACK!!!