LO1 Game Analysis of Borderlands 2

(PS3)

'Borderlands 2' is a 1st person shooter sci-fi with role playing aspects, it shows this by including some of the conventions including; Skill trees, perks, buffs and weapons. It is unique to most other titles with the same genre as it introduces ranks as well as levels, the ranks give you tokens which you can use to unlock permanent stats for all the characters you make and unlike most RPG's its 1st person instead of the typical 3rd person.

The story being told through the game is that you're a vault hunter and the antagonist (Handsome Jack) wants you and all the bandits on the planet "Pandora" dead so he can start it anew, to do this he wants to unlock and control "The Warrior", a mysterious guardian of one of the vaults (A main part in the game series), so that he can rid the planet of bandits. The antagonist "Handsome Jack" is represented as a bad guy through out the game, even though his intentions are good and that he believes that he's the hero of the game's story, but soon enough you begin to hate him after he kills your friends and leads to you to killing his own daughter.

The game was developed by Gearbox Software, it was tested and ran on "Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3", it was created using he development tool and integrated with many middleware technologies through the engines partner program which could create realistic animations, inventive audio and amazing terrains. The game was released in September 2012.

The characters in the game are relevant to the target audience by how they play, if they like to get up close and personal to the enemies, they'd most likely pick the assassin class in the game, but if they like to use guns, then they'd go for the gunzerker class. The characterisation fits the convention of the genre because of the different skills the classes can have and the perks given to you by weapons and armour (Known as shields in the game). You don't have a strong feeling towards your character but definitely more towards the other main characters, for example you don't talk much, but when you see and hear Handsome Jack he talks a lot, especially throughout the game, he becomes more annoyed by you and you can hear him get angrier, which is character development.

There are many challenges presented in the game, the main challenges are the enemies, whilst there being many other kind of challenges like races. The enemies are varied across different  levels and difficulties, with many different weapons they use, like tomahawks, pistols, shotguns, rocket launchers, snipers and grenades. They also have unique weapons known as "Elemental weapons" which cause extra damage to you or your enemy, depending on type (Fire, Corrosive, Shock, Slag) and can be very effective on certain enemies. As you go through the different levels the story changes and  the enemies get harder to defeat. The gameplay engages the player with humour, the ability of multiplayer and an infinite amount of weapons with different stats to the rest, they also range from Common to Rare. Finally, you have skill trees which as you level up can unlock perks for your character, at the top of each one there are 3 main skills which make the gameplay more fun as they let you do stuff instead of slightly increasing your stats.

The target audience for Borderlands 2 is 18+ and for the male gender, I think this is because it features some adult humour and cussing which would be unsuitable for people under 18 and the reason it may be unsuitable for the female gender is because of gore featured in the game which girls may find gruesome. Games with the same target audience do not compare much with this game as Borderlands 2 features more humour and is more action-packed than most RPGs  because they may take themselves more seriously. On the other hand, FPSs are more action packed than this game but are still less humorous than Borderlands 2.

Finally, Borderlands 2 was sold for PlayStation 3,Xboc 360 and PC. In early 2015, the remastered and improved frame rate versions were released in the Handsome Jack Collection for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game is probably more suited for the consoles because the controllers are designed for people to play FPS games as well as other types of games.