Not all franchises are created equal, and neither are all HD ports from the old hardware to the new. Lucky for you, this is a very handsome collection, Borderlands: The Handsome Collection. Including Borderlands 2 and Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, and all their downloadable content (DLC), The Handsome Collection is a whole lot of Gearbox’s brand of wise cracking, loot centric, colorful first-person shooter in one place.
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games
Release Date: March 24, 2015
Genre: First-person shooter
Rating: M
My, what a big collection you have
For sheer content alone, Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is a monster. From Pandora to its moon, this collection is named for Handsome Jack, the egomaniacal leader of the Hyperion corporation and hunter of Vault Hunters. Major character and antagonist, with his winning smile and casual disregard for the players life, Jack was brilliantly written, frustratingly arrogant and yet simultaneously hilarious. I don’t think I have ever loved and hated a villain so much as Handsome Jack. From his rise to his fall, The Handsome Collection gathers Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, telling the tale of his hostile takeover of Hyperion, and Borderlands 2, when he finally crossed the wrong Vault hunters, along with two games worth of DLC in one HD, next generation bundle.
The Borderlands series first landed back in 2009, reaching critical and commercial success as soon as it’s feet touched the ground. First-person shooters were very ‘serious’ games at the time, military, sci-fi, whatever the genre there were lots of muted color palettes, tense scenes, and all the characters used their ‘serious voices’. In dropped this hyper colored, loot driven shooter with bold characters, and a sense of humor, boasting about ‘Bazillions of guns’. Well written, self aware, and with promises of endless loot, it certainly grabbed my attention, a lot of others as well. Spawning three major titles, and a couple of spin offs (including Tales from the Borderlands, by Telltale Games) not to mention a mountain of DLC, the Borderlands franchise has sold over 23 million copies of its games to date. With numbers like that, it makes the series one of the biggest on the last generation of hardware, but that was the Xbox and PS3, this is the Xbox One and PS4.
With some 17 significant pieces of downloadable content, this next generation, HD remastered collection gives players access to a total of 12 playable characters each with their own skill tree options and unique personalities. Which means even across the same campaign there’s something new to experience and all at 1080p and 60 frames per second (FPS). Not to mention the multiple campaign add-ons, new areas, level cap upgrades, battle arenas and character customizations. Combined for hundreds of hours of gameplay, there’s about a hundred dollars worth of extra content alone.
If you dumped a signifigant time into a campaign of either included game, I did too. Saved data can be transferred from old gen to new in the same console family (Xbox 360 – Xbox One, PS3 – PS4) so you can jump right back in where you left. And taking it back to the LAN party days (not to mention Mario Kart 64 sessions) this port to the Xbox One and PS4 includes a four player split screen feature, making full party ‘everybody on the couch’ co-op an option once again.
The Handsome Collection gathers 2/3rds of the Vault hunting, loot happy, self aware shooter series Borderlands and a huge amount of content. Even if you’ve played Borderlands 2 and or the Pre-Sequel, with all this DLC, there’s definately something new for you here, and with the ability to transfer saves of old games, you can pick right back up where you left off. All that, now with all the shiny HD goodness the new hardware is capable of, a handsome collection indeed!
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is available now for the Xbox One, and PS4
