Has the 3 month wait been worth it?
The first episode of Tales from the Borderlands hit just before Christmas, so it’s been quite a while since then for the second episode to land…a point that the narrator jokes about at the beginning of this one. Essentially the story picks up immediately after the end of Zer0 Sum as Rhys, Vaughn, Sasha and Fiona stumbling across the Gortys Project, which is designed to locate a Vault Key but it left on another cliffhanger as a hologram of Handsome Jack seemed to appear and tap Rhys on the shoulder…
As we know, Handsome Jack died in Borderlands 2 so how he’s back as a hologram that only Rhys can see is intriguing, especially since Jack doesn’t believe he’s dead which provides hilarious results, sharp one-liners and priceless moments during confrontations with Vasquez who tracks you down on Pandora. The episode has this great action scene where you are avoiding moon shots from Helios while driving Felix’s caravan and being chased by an enormous creature, it’s brilliantly done and better yet, is just the opening of the episode.
Scooter “Catch a Ride” makes an appearance to help fix the caravan, while also redesigning it depending on how much money you’ve picked up between the episodes so far. Loader Bot also returns, which is handy for the group. The episode does seem over far too soon, but I think that’s down to the long wait from the first and actually, it’s a decent enough length.
Voice-acting is superb here, Patrick Warburton appears a lot more in this episode as the bad guy Vasquez, delivering lines in the way you’d imagine, especially when he’s angry. Nolan North’s August character is less involved in this episode but does deliver some hilarious moments, as do the rest of the cast. The sense of humour is incredibly strong with quick one-liners and solid writing throughout.
Visually, the game still looks incredible on PS4 and I only saw the framerate drop a few times during the episode. The locations are well varied and the character models are still great to look at, overall it’s a well done episode and I personally can’t wait to get my hands on the third.
The Verdict
Atlas Mugged carries the story along well, while still maintaining a high level of humour from beginning to end. It’ll be interesting to see how the Handsome Jack story pans out, as well as seeing if Rhys and Fiona can escape their captor. Fingers crossed it won’t be another 3 months for it though…
