Tales From The Borderlands Episode 2 Atlus Mugged - Maxi-Geek Review

When Telltale Games announced an episodic story driven series set in the Borderlands universe, I was really sceptical, how could a game series that is known for its insane amount of guns and enemies be interesting in a slower paced story, well my reservations for it where obliterated when I played the first Episode of the series and now that Episode 2 is here, we get to see if it was a lucky shot.

The story picks up from the very end point that the first left off, with our heroes discovering a map to unknown treasures and Handsome Jack popping up in Rhys head. From here, Rhys, Fiona, Sasha and Vaughn are thrown into a much larger adventure that they could have ever thought off, with some returning characters and some new ones. From the returning group we have Vasquez in a larger role, August as well and from the main series Scooter, who now that he moves is actually pretty fun to interact with. From the new side of things we get introduced to a few bounty hunters and a very mean looking Athena, a character who we have seen over the course of the games, but never with such ferocity.

Depending on the actions you took in the first episode, characters will treat you differently here, but for the most part the story is pretty good. We get to see more of the history with Fiona and Sasha as well as what Vasquez is willing to do, in order to keep his comfy job. We get to see more of Vaughn, literally and Rhys’ interactions with Handsome Jack are truly entertaining, it would be funny to see Rhys talking to himself, but when the ‘person’ he is speaking to is a megalomaniacal AI, you can’t help but laugh. While the interactions between the casts of characters is nice, the story is driven forward by the stranger, who still has Rhys and Fiona held captive in the desert, still for unknown reasons. We get to see a little more of them this time in that situation and more of the humour that comes with them arguing, even when death is close by.

 The game still has issues when it comes to controls, when you are given free rein to explore a space, the camera will fix itself to a point and the controls are based off that point, while they are not broken per say, they are just out of touch with what they need to be. Interacting with the world still uses the tried and true multi click overlay, which works well, the quick time events a little less so though. At certain points, you will need to follow on screen prompts to move forward, but sadly this times require an exhausting amount of button presses or a quick tap to achieve something that should have been harder, they don’t break the game, they just feel unbalanced.

One are the game really gets mixed results in, is the presentation, the voice work and sounds of Pandora are perfect, each of the characters feels alive, thanks to the actors behind them. The Skags, Rakks and other creatures of Pandora are as you would expect them to be, which for our helpless foursome, is actually quite frightening as well. The visuals are still in line with what we know from Borderlands, but it is here I found many blemishes that were quite noticeable. At one point, there was a scene where Rhys and Vaughn were flying off on Loader Bot to a destination, but there was a large, rock like thing just there, right in front. The characters would also get these weird outlines around them from a distance that would stand out like a sore thumb and the other visual oddities were also an issue. Nothing is game breaking of course, but it does distract from the rest of the presentation.

For fans of the Borderlands world, getting to interact with more of the characters from the main games is a plus, but the grand adventure we are undertaking alongside Rhys and Fiona is so far, way to interesting to avoid. Some control and visual issues aside, Episode 2: Atlus Mugged is a great second chapter to this intriguing tale.

Thanks to Telltale Games for supplying the game to review.