If you’re anything like me, right about now you’re wishing you had a Futurama-style cryogenic tube so you could freeze-sleep away the remaining three weeks and change until Borderlands 2 hits the shelves.
Of course you could pop in that archaic, dusty relic of a game you call your copy of Borderlands the First*, or you could try this shiny new, super-retro style Borderlands 2 Demake created in the style of Smash TV, but with a variety of weapons and trademark Borderlands enemies like Skags, Psychos, and Bruisers. Their gimmick here is calling this “the 1989 16-bit original,” which is cute but doesn’t go beyond that.
*Kidding, of course. Pretty sure my copy of Borderlands has been in regular rotation longer than any other game I’ve ever owned.
Okay, so it won’t bring the real Borderlands 2 any closer to your disc slot—which is positively quivering with anticipation… what? yours doesn’t do that?—but it might take your mind off it for a few seconds.
It’s a ton of fun, and definitely one of the better marketing games I’ve played. You can plan on this sucking away a lot of time as you first get the hang of it and try all the different characters and weapons and firing patterns. Maybe you’ll have a different playstyle than I tend toward, but I found myself narrowing my gun choices down to a very small selection pretty quickly. Eventually I simply refused to pick up anything that wasn’t a (spoiler-free white text incoming, highlight to read) Railgun with 2-way firing pattern because it was just so damn useful. Obviously it’s a free, tiny, in-browser marketing gimmick so it’s not a polished work of retro-gaming art, but it’s pretty damn good. I especially appreciate the enemy death sounds, they are appropriately Streets of Rage-y. It would have been really nice if they found a way to support X360 controllers but you can’t really complain.
Read on past the link for some tips and tricks I picked up along the way, or just head straight there and explore the game for yourself.
The Border Lands (Borderlands 2 Demake)
Some tips and tricks for not having a bad time:
The first thing you’ll want to know is this, and I’ve gone ahead and meme-ified it for you.
Seriously, be careful which weapons you pick up. There are some terrible guns in this game, and a single mistaken press of the right or left arrow can ruin your game. Train yourself to look at the firing-pattern stat first and avoid “random” like the plague. Because much like the plague, it will kill you. (Caveat, if you’re going with Salvador, or maybe Axton and you like getting surrounded and swarmed, random might possibly be a viable firing pattern for “Flame” and “Shotgun” weapon types.) With weapons, utility trumps stats, so find one that works and get comfortable.
Eventually you’ll find a handful of weapon-types and associated firing patterns that work for you, so once you pick up a gun that’s doing an admirable job, don’t be in any big hurry to replace it. While we’re on the topic of not hurrying, never rush a new-weapon pick. Pressing “down” to cancel weapon pickup should always be your default move. Watch out for accidentally running into chests, and don’t approach a chest unless you’ve got some hit points to spare.
Again, spoiler-free white text, highlight to read: You can absolutely school the early stage of every level with just a decent 2-way Railgun, just keep alternating between shooting horizontally and vertically and the enemy spawners will be choked with loot chests in no time. But don’t worry about those, later on in the levels you’ll always face a bruiser wave. Since bruisers always drop a loot chest, you’ll have plenty of time to hunt for a new 2-way Railgun when the level is nearly empty.
Enjoy.