Have you ever been unable to get yourself out of an abusive relationship? Borderlands 2 kicked my ass, lit me on fire, took all my money and I still keep coming back for more.

Three years ago Gearbox made a game called Borderlands. It was a colorful, cel-shaded first-person shooter with a few RPG-like qualities that let you build one of four characters in a way you wanted.

(They were all great, but my particular favorites included the sniper with a pet bird who he could send on attacks and a magically-inclined redhead who I built to blast through enemies with fire.)

Now Borderlands is back, sporting the same cel-shaded style and boasting even more loot and even more enemies. Gearbox practically invented a new number (it's in the bazillions) just to account for all the guns you can find on the planet Pandora. Fire-pistols, corrosive-SMGs, slag (a smokey purple effect) shotguns, shocking-sniper rifles. You use whatever your trigger-happy heart desires against enemies big and midget. Some of said enemies attack you with their own elemental effects. A muscular goliath will vomit up corrosive acid on you. Or a spiderant will attack with slag. Feisty robots will burn you with flamethrowers. The combinations are wild. And damn dangerous.

Forget the bandits, bugs and mechanical things trying to kill you as you walk through the open world of Pandora. The main threat in Borderlands 2 is a handsome man named Jack. Handsome Jack, if you will. The unjustly rich Hyperion corporation president is also a complete asshole. Though he's had statues of himself built in cities and propaganda posters glued on the walls, there's no denying his tyranny. The citizens of hub city Sanctuary—hiding in the one safe haven they have left—certainly don't deny it. They've been ripped off and taken advantage of by Hyperion more times than a rakk has eaten a skag. His greed is limitless, and now Handsome Jack is after dark, alien power hidden in a Vault. That's where you come in, filling the role of a vault hunter and mercenary yet again.

The ending of the first Borderlands was...anti-climatic, let's just say. It left a confusing hole in the long journey you spent to get there. Beautifully, Borderlands 2's story not only compensates directly for that emptiness—smartly tying up loose ends—but it's also a lot more complex than the first game's story.

I laughed a lot in Borderlands 1. I giggled at the names of bosses and my eyes sparkled at shiny new weapons. I enjoyed listening to dialogue from all the personalities of non-player characters, showing off their paranoia or charismatic banter.

But my heart never dropped in Borderlands 1. I was never shocked or appalled by something I just witnessed in the progression of the story. I felt all those things on my second run through Pandora. It caught me completely off guard in the best way, even if I'm still upset by the things that happened. The story in Borderlands 2 occasionally gets serious, dark even, and it was something I felt and believed rather than just listened to. I have never been so invested in Pandora and its citizens until this sequel.

Non-player characters still have that twisted humor edge that you'll recognize from the first title. All your favorites—Claptrap, Scooter, Patricia Tannis, Mad Moxxi—and some new ones—Tiny Tina, Ellie—and even the four vault hunters we played as in the first Borderlands add to the character of the sequel. They all have personal vendettas and agendas they need your help to carry out. They'll all leave their mark on Pandora in some way. And they'll all be fundamental to your mission in taking down Handsome Jack.

Enemies are just as awkwardly lovable as the NPCs. Bandits will cry out things like "I almost paid off my mortgage!" when you kill them. How often do you find a game that makes you chuckle mid-battle? In the midst of being circled by threshers who can warp you into their range or crystalisks who can spit out explosive crystals at you, there's always something to appreciate or be impressed by.

Some decisions about combat confused me, though. While pursuing certain quest lines imperative to the main story, you'll begin a long sequence through the one zone it's contained in. These range from snowy battlegrounds filled with mechs to bandit camps filled with tattooed psychos. These treks last for awhile. Typically they'll start off with a health and ammo vending machine so you can load up before you run into enemies.

But Borderlands 2 is a difficult game with fickle enemies. They're hell-bent on living. One ammo vendor just won't cut it, especially when enemies tend to drop more money than they do ammunition. And if you're playing with friends, you can count those random loot boxes to be split at least 50/50 if not by up to a quarter. Unless you're *that* person who runs up to loot every box before anyone else can get to it.

I found myself without ammunition all too often while working my way through Borderlands 2's long quest lines. Enemies are tough; they require a lot of bullets shoved into their faces before they'll go down. And they go down fighting. Robots will charge at you to explode with EMP power, which often took down my shields and dropped me close to death. Or they drag their half damaged bodies across the platform to you, even throwing grenades with their good arm. Survival is tough on Pandora since Handsome Jack took charge. His Hyperion-powered mechs and bounty-hunting bandits won't make it easy for you.

I figured out that playing as the new siren, Maya, was not the best choice to power-solo through Borderlands 2. Granted, the new skill trees—separated into three main trees—are so varied from one another that my Maya may be completely different than another player's Maya. I chose to be a more destructive Maya, dealing heavier damage and adding elemental effects to her strikes, but only after I tried her as more of a healing character. She still never felt too equipped to defend herself against the large waves of enemies Borderlands 2 constantly throws at you. Waves even mix with each other, sometimes to your detriment, but luckily sometimes to your benefit as you watch bandits kill off bullymongs.

But even when I played co-op, with fellow game journalists who chose the more independent commando or gunzerker, they found conserving ammunition to be just as much of an issue. It was next to impossible.

So I tried making the run all the way back to the start of the level to use all the cash I picked up on some direly needed ammunition. Some levels were so long, though, that enemies would start to respawn as I made my way back. It felt a little bit like torture. You could say it's part of the challenge, that respawning enemies test your ability to complete missions under a timed pressure. If you feel that way, all the better. Because Borderlands 2 will have that pressure looming over your head. Take too long to finish off a wave of enemies, and they'll be spawning behind you before you know it.

This kind of brutality on the player makes one thing crystal clear about Borderlands 2: it's very much meant to be a co-op game. Especially when considering the siren, whose action ability is to suspend enemies in the air, it's obvious that a lot of the game was made with the cooperative experience in mind.

The commando's turrets make that class probably the most ideal for a solo experience, but power in numbers is heavily emphasized here. You'll certainly be facing off against an overwhelming swarm of enemies at once, so you might as well come packing. The swarms sometimes feel endless. Having a friend or three at your back can mean the difference between getting through a quest in an hour or getting through the same quest in 20 minutes. Even with skill points spent towards increased critical hit percentage, deadeye aim and some wildass smartbomb talent, it's still preferable to play with friends to get through it all.

Playing Borderlands 2 at its most ideal setting—namely, with friends—is still a challenge. Especially in later levels, you'll often find yourself pressed up against a wall with so much chaos in front of you that your head will spin. And that's a good thing, when you know you have friends to hold the fort while you run back from the last checkpoint.

Borderlands 2 is best played at the slowest pace possible. Explore. Try out all the mission board quests. Look around for yellow exclamation points as you drive through the map to pick up even more quests. Do each one. The variety in quests is refreshing, especially thinking back to side quests in Borderlands that often felt stale and monotonous. In Borderlands 2 side quests will take you to meet new quirky characters, learn more about Handsome Jack and his reign of terror, or learn more about the vault and Pandora and the original four vault hunters. There's a lot to learn out there in your second pass through Pandora. There's a lot of fun, funny new story arcs to experience, too.

The only downside to having a ton of fun side quests is that there's no way to easily track them. There's the standard method of organization that groups quests that are a part of the same area together on a list, but you can't toggle through them easily on the map. You'll have to manually cycle through them, clicking on new ones and then switching back to the map to see where you need to go. An indicator of a nearby quest on your way to your intended one seems like an easy addition. But really it's just a minor nuisance. Just ask that one friend you always make drive to keep you on track with quests. I'm sure they'll oblige (I always do, and I always like driving, too).

There's so much more I should tell you about Borderlands 2. I want you to know about the enemies that will evolve into more dangerous, badass versions of themselves if you don't kill them off in time.

I want to tell you about the new weapons. Weapons whose reticles will focus—and thereby increasing your accuracy with it—the more you shoot. Weapons you throw at enemies for extra damage instead of just reloading the proper (read: boring) way. Weapons that have fire, corrosive, shock, and slag damage that you'll use against enemies that can wield that same damage against you. In fact, the game practically necessitates that you seek out those weapons with extra elemental effects, either for splash or continuation damage, or because they work well against an enemy's armor type.

I want to tell you about how stylish the game is, and about how much personality it has. Every time you die and Hyperion resurrects you, you'll get a snide, wiseass remark from the machine in question. Whoever you choose to play as will make comments about their fighting prowess mid-battle or mumble about what weapon to choose when you find new loot. Characters have funky costumes and flair like they did in Borderlands 1, but you see a lot more of that in the sequel. You can even make your own character look absolutely fabulous.

But there's really only one thing that you need to know about Borderlands 2. It's a tough, stylish, emotional ride through everything that made Borderlands 1 such a great game. Pick three friends, span the character classes, and get to killing. You won't be disappointed.

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Meet The Very Colorful Cast of Borderlands 2

Video contains some spoilers.
If you're up for getting a sneak peek at some of the first few NPCs and low-level bosses you'll meet in Borderlands 2, hit the video above. More »

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As they should.

This launch trailer tells me a few things. For instance, Handsome Jack is an asshole, but we already knew that. The siren Maya is a damn good option for cooperative play, but I already knew that. Oh, and there are a ton of bandits and mechs to fight through. A ton. To be met by lots of explosions and fire. That'll be your doing.

I'm also loving the siren love exchanged between Lilith and Maya. They're my favorite.

Look for my review tonight, and look for the game when it releases tomorrow.

We've seen some swell Borderlands cosplay leading up to Tuesday's release of Borderlands 2, but those were in still photos. Here's a video tribute to the original characters from Gearbox Software's smash hit from three years ago.

Don't go looking for much of a big story, surprise or sight gag—though I do like the post-production attention paid to the loot drops and Lilith's Phase Walk (and the shitheaded AI of the bandits at the beginning. Seriously). It's just a love letter to Borderlands from some skilled cosplayers and filmmakers.

As we sit here waiting for the launch of Borderlands 2, it's easy to forget that a lot of people thought that the first game was going to be a huge flop. It was a new idea amid a flood of sequels, and a totally untested quantity—did we really need another first-person shooter? Why would anyone buy it? Analyst Michael Pachter famously said that the game was being "sent to die" amid other big fall releases like Modern Warfare 2. It made sense at the time!

And yet the game sold a ton of copies, and the sequel is one of the most hyped games of the fall. A lot of that was because Borderlands was a fun game, but I truly think that the above song, "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" by Cage The Elephant, embodies Borderlands' come-from-behind success.

When most of us first heard about Borderlands, it didn't have its distinct attitude, or that cel-shaded style, or any of that—it was kind of this grey, post-apocalyptic shooter. If that game had come out in fall of 2009, it would have been sent to die. But Borderlands was revamped, given an attitude and an art-style to set it apart, and an ad campaign to match. And the whole thing was fueled by kick-ass music.

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This trailer, which was the first to use the Cage The Elephant song, was also the first time I sat up and said, "Okay, I'm interested."

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The song was modified a bit and used in the game's actual introduction, which also worked really well. The whole cheeky vibe, the "Brick as himself" thing and all that, it's really cool. And it's the way it's all cut to fit with the song that really sets it off. It's got that Guy Ritchie feel, hip-ass self-aware schlock cinema. It just worked.

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And actually, this second ad, featuring "No Heaven" by DJ Champion, was almost as cool. Gearbox (or 2K) certainly has a thing for picking good music for Borderlands ads.

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It goes to show that a well-chosen song can go a long way toward making an impression for an untested game. It should've been impossible to launch a brand new shooter right up against Modern Warfare 2. Thanks at least in part to some great musical selections, Borderlands broke through. Now the franchise is so big that the sequel could have been scored by Justin Bieber and we'd still all play it.

Well okay, maybe no game is that big.

I've seen my fair share of Borderlands cosplay over the years. Some great, some awful, most somewhere in between.

I've never seen any this good, though.

German cosplayer MadameSpontaneous stars as Lilith, though her pals look just as good. Some of the pics are supplied by the cosplayers, others are from Trochly Photographers.

While getting the costumes right is most of the battle, the real triumph here is the cel-shading effect they're applied to not only their faces, but their clothes as well. Really helps sell the in-game effect!

MadameSpontaneous [DeviantArt, via TDW]

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It's always "Mechromancer this" or "Nerchromancer" that. Why does no one call the robot-riding downloadable character for Borderlands 2 by her real name? Oh, we didn't know it. Now we do. Hello, Gaige. Nice death machine you've got there.

Borderlands 2 hits store shelves on September 18. That gives you eight days to build the perfect Assassin, Gunzerker, Commando or Siren in the official Skill Tree Calculator.

The 50 skill points one can gain in Borderlands 2 won't be enough to fill the entire skill tree — it'll get you one whole branch and change — so you've got some serious decision-making to do before next week's release. I've been trying to build the perfect Siren for about an hour now, and I'm still not sure I'm maximizing my mayhem-causing potential.

Of course, once we're actually in game the choices we make today might wind up being worthless, but it's something to keep us occupied until next Tuesday. I'll take it.

Borderlands 2 Skill Calculator [Borderlands 2]

The Mechromancer class DLC will be released on October 16, Gearbox revealed at their PAX Prime panel today. It will be free with pre-order, but $10 to those who do not.

Gearbox also dove into the Mechromancer's skill trees, distinguishing two contrasting modes: one that lets skilled players stack abilities in combination with her robot companion, and the other that helps less-skilled players with automated assists.

The Best Friends Forever skill tree—a "noobish-friendly" skill tree as described to me by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford—lets players who aren't great at first-person shooters be of some assistance in cooperative play. The BFF tree essentially sacrifices damage for aim assists. So a missed shot can reflect and hit an enemy 50% of the time. Deathtrap, the Mechromancer's robot, will be more automated, seeking out enemies to deal area of effect damage as well as status effect damage on enemies. On the BFF mode, Borderlands 2 handles the prioritizing of targets rather than asking you to do so.

But if you want to push the Mechromancer to her most dangerous form, you can invest in the Ordered Chaos tree that lets you stack abilities—using a skill called anarchy—for ultimate damage. This skill lets you calculate and plan hits based on your own strategizing. Stacking the Mechromancer's abilities can even involve imbuing Deathtrap with fire damage if you've got the right elemental weapon equipped and decide to include him in your stacked hits. You can invest in skill points in this tree to specify that a certain sequence of hits will give you bonus damage on a certain numbered hit. If you're airborn when you strike with a critical hit, the Mechromancer gets additional stacks of anarchy for more potential damage.

Gearbox was careful to mention that while the model of the Mechromancer herself is finished, they're still working on polishing her skills.

The Mechromancer class DLC will be released on October 16, Gearbox revealed at their PAX Prime panel today. It will be free with pre-order, but $10 to those who do not.

Gearbox also dove into the Mechromancer's skill trees, distinguishing two contrasting modes: one that lets skilled players stack abilities in combination with her robot companion, and the other that helps less-skilled players with automated assists.

The Best Friends Forever skill tree—a "noobish-friendly" skill tree as described to me by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford—lets players who aren't great at first-person shooters be of some assistance in cooperative play. The BFF tree essentially sacrifices damage for aim assists. So a missed shot can reflect and hit an enemy 50% of the time. Deathtrap, the Mechromancer's robot, will be more automated, seeking out enemies to deal area of effect damage as well as status effect damage on enemies. On the BFF mode, Borderlands 2 handles the prioritizing of targets rather than asking you to do so.

But if you want to push the Mechromancer to her most dangerous form, you can invest in the Ordered Chaos tree that lets you stack abilities—using a skill called anarchy—for ultimate damage. This skill lets you calculate and plan hits based on your own strategizing. Stacking the Mechromancer's abilities can even involve imbuing Deathtrap with fire damage if you've got the right elemental weapon equipped and decide to include him in your stacked hits. You can invest in skill points in this tree to specify that a certain sequence of hits will give you bonus damage on a certain numbered hit. If you're airborn when you strike with a critical hit, the Mechromancer gets additional stacks of anarchy for more potential damage.

Gearbox was careful to mention that while the model of the Mechromancer herself is finished, they're still working on polishing her skills.

Four pieces of campaign DLC will add to your Borderlands 2 experience after the game's release on September 18.

Gearbox revealed their committment to releasing the extra content at their PAX Prime panel today. CEO Randy Pitchford noted to me that they'll be on par with the scope of something like Borderlands 1's General Knoxx DLC. Each one will run you $10. No other details were revealed, though Pitchford stated that the four DLCs will be self-contained experiences for either players looking to continue leveling after completing the main game, or to experiment with new alternate characters.

Fans can get all four DLCs with the $30 Season Pass. Gearbox also announced that they would have more details by the release of the Mechromancer DLC, which arrives October 16.