Portable Problems | Borderlands 2 Vita Review

When I first got my Vita, I immediately found that grinding levels in RPGs was incredibly convenient, and it’s become my go-to for any game with significant grinding. If I ever had time on the go, I could quick pull out my Vita, fight a handful of battles, and then put the system in standby to continue my adventures later. Although Borderlands 2 has arguably come out too little, too late, it still is a great game that’s only held back by the Vita’s hardware and controls.

For those who still haven’t traversed through the barren wasteland that is Pandora, the premise is fairly simple: you’re one of four different vault hunters that are sent out to save the world from the evil ruler known as Handsome Jack. You’ll shoot, kill, and loot all of your enemies to level up, get better gear, and become more powerful.

Welcome back, Vault Hunter.

First and foremost, controlling Borderlands 2 on Vita is a pain, and sometimes that’s in the literal sense. As soon as I first started playing on the Vita, I Immediety started punching the air over and over again. This was because the melee button was mapped to the Vita’s right half of the back touch screen. My finger had been hitting it on accident, and to avoid this, I ended up playing with an awkward claw-hand that gave me hand cramps. You can actually remap most of the controls as you see fit, but regardless of how you allocate your inputs, some functions get the short stick.

Borderlands 2′s visuals on Vita have been scaled back, but it’s actually still a really pretty game to look at. While textures pop in, and overall texture quality is comparable to running on low PC settings, the smaller screen of the Vita muffles some of the texture loss that you’d likely see on a bigger screen. The cell shaded style of the game also allows some give and take since it isn’t going for any sort of realistic look. I found myself actually quite impressed with the scale and looks of Borderlands 2 on Vita, and it was much better than I had anticipated.

That being said, the Achilles’ heel of Borderlands 2 on Vita is its absolutely miserable framerate issues. From the start, you’ll notice dip after dip in frames per second – even in calm moments that seem like they wouldn’t drop the frames per second at all. It all seems so random, and there are moments where firefights would run fairly well, but just walking around a small environment with no enemies would suddenly seem like a stop motion film instead of a fluid interactive experience.

Borderlands 2 is a fast paced game by nature, and the game running poorly handicaps the player immensely, and in key situations where every shot counts and it could mean the difference between life and death, the game does its best (and by best, I mean worst) to run poorly and make enemies seemingly appear out of thin air in front of your face.

Whenever I found myself enjoying plundering loot or running around Pandora completing missions and getting immersed in Borderlands 2, again; either the forced controls or poor performance would interrupt most moments where I was having genuine fun. And that’s the biggest issue with the entire game, it works so well in some regards, but ultimately shoots itself in the foot with other botched elements.

At the end of they day, Borderlands 2 on Vita is still Borderlands 2 - a great game. Getting past the concessions Iron Galaxy Studios had to make to get the addictive shooter working on the Vita may be hard for some to overlook, and trust me, they are hard to overlook, but leveling up your vault hunter, exploring the world of Pandora, and killing psychos and Hyperion robots on the go may be enough reason to overlook some of its shortcomings, just don’t expect to remember Pandora as fondly as you did on your home console or PC.

It’s impressive that Iron Galaxy Studios even got Borderlands 2 running on Vita – especially with how much content and DLC is packed in – but quantity doesn’t help the quality. It’s great that Sony is making a push to get huge third party titles on Vita, but having to sacrifice so much that made these games great just to fit them on the Vita takes away what made them worthwhile in the first place. The Vita seems to still be in an identity crisis, and Borderlands 2 seems to be lost in translation here, too.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation Vita version of the game Borderlands 2 by Iron Galaxy Studios and distributed by Sony Computer Entertainment.