I've got a confession to make. Towards the end of Borderlands' cycle of downloadable content, I feared for the future of the franchise. My enthusiasm toward Gearbox's wildly successful role playing shooter has been extensively documented, but the formula started to feel a bit stale by the time we reached Claptrap's New Robot Revolution. While it's definitely true that Borderlands 2 is an iterative installment, it is equally true that Gearbox has refined the game's best elements, while adding enough great content to keep players satisfied for months to come.

With Borderlands 2, Gearbox flexes their creative and artistic muscles, resulting in a game full of wild sights and diverse environments. While Borderlands certainly didn't lack the former, the latter didn't really apply. Roland, Mordecai, Lilith, and Brick spent most of their Vault Hunting days traipsing across garbage-strewn wastelands. Assorted detritus and animal puke was just everywhere, and almost everything looked decrepit. Borderlands 2 changes that, sending you into a handful of new locales to fight a new supply of increasingly interesting baddies. The character design is, once again, superb. While the main characters aren't at all a stretch from the heroes of 2009 (soldier, siren, big guy, lanky sniper), several of the new enemies are wonderfully unique. And, of course, it wouldn't be Borderlands without midgets, psychos, skags, and spiderants.

Borderlands 2 features a flawless audio package. The cast of batty characters is far more talkative this time around; since this is the funniest game since Portal 2, that is a very good thing. The voice acting is excellent, the music is more varied and exciting, and the sound effects pack a real punch. Most guns sound different from each other, and the elemental side effects that many of them come with sound just right.

Five years have passed since Borderlands. The opening of the Eridian Vault not only unleashed The Destroyer, but allowed a mysterious and powerful substance called Eridium to surface. This has drawn the attention of Handsome Jack, who has taken over the Hyperion Corporation. So he races his giant H-shaped ship to Pandora, pronounces himself dictator, and begins raping and pillaging the planet in the name of the Hyperion Corporation. Suffice it to say, Jack is a four-star douche nozzle: he's what you get when you cross Hitler with Troy from The Goonies. His reign of terror includes activities that cross just about every possible moral and ethical line. He lures Vault Hunters into traps only to take them out and claim the spoils as his own. Handsome Jack is a memorable villain in all the right ways; his blacker than black sense of humor and his unbelievable audaciousness have you wondering just what kind of f***ed up stuff he'll do next.

Enter our new heroes: Axton the Commando, Maya the Siren, Zer0 the Assassin, and Salvador the Gunzerker. They are fortunate enough to survive Jack's trap, and eventually find their way to Sanctuary, a town safe from Jack's presence. They also meet up with Roland, Lilith, Mordecai, and Brick while they're at it. Turns out, they are the leaders of the Crimson Raiders, a rebel faction dead set against getting rid of Handsome Jack. The story isn't going to win any awards, but the writing is hysterically funny and the voice acting is spot on.

If you played Borderlands, you're not going to notice anything terribly unique this time around. Borderlands 2 is short on surprises, but heavy on refinement. The shooting simply feels better this time around, and there's more method to the madness this time around. The rochambo-esque elemental damage system returns with an extra dimension, and the loot is phatter than ever. And while the missions rarely amount to more than fetch/kill quests, the context is more than enough to make it feel like something more.

Borderlands 2 is more challenging than Borderlands. There is a bit more to keep in mind this time around, and some enemies simply hit really hard. Knowing which fights to pick and which strategies to employ is a must if you want to survive on Pandora. Careful inventory management is also a must. You never know when you'll stumble upon a great loot drop, but you never want to be faced with the dilemma of having to drop something you wanted to keep or sell. It's also a great idea to keep your weapon quick slots diversified. Different elemental attacks are a must, and it's a good idea to carry different weapon types into uncharted territory.

As with the first game, Borderlands 2's difficulty scales to the number of people in your party. If you're working solo, you'll have an appropriate challenge scaled to your level. Lower-level enemies will yield little to no experience, even if the level difference itself is negligible.

There are lots of ways to chase down a challenge in Borderlands 2, and the new enemy types are prone to accommodate you. Take the Goliath, a lumbering beast with a giant metal mask on its head. Shoot that off, and he becomes enraged. He attacks everything in his sight and levels up once he lands the right number of hits. He can do this four times, and getting him completely powered up yields great experience and loot. However, you must make sure he doesn't die by the hands of your other enemies and keep him from hitting you at the same time. It's really fun stuff.

All of the elements that made Borderlands so great are present this time around. The shooting and the looting have been improved and streamlined, respectively. Gunplay is tighter, faster, and more varied. Some weapons explode like grenades when you reload them and regenerate in your hands (just go with it) and others fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. On the looting side of things, the game does its best to automatically pick up ammunition and money when you walk over them. It doesn't always work, but it's better than having to collect every single thing yourself.

Character growth and abilities are handled much like they were in the original Borderlands. Axton is the standard Roland-type soldier. He can deploy customizable turrets. Maya, as a Siren, has supernatural powers that allow her to perform Phase Locks, which suspend enemies in the air for a brief period of time. Zer0 can deploy a holographic decoy and become invisible for a short period of time; the more you let the timer run out before performing your sneak attack, the more powerful the attack itself will be. Finally, there's Salvador, who can dual wield literally anything. Each of these characters has his/her own skill tree to upgrade, and you can respec at any time if you want a different skill set. Inventory upgrades can be purchased with Eridium at the Black Market, and Badass Points can be spent on permanent statistical upgrades.

All of the elements that made Borderlands so great are present this time around. The shooting and the looting have been improved and streamlined, respectively. Gunplay is tighter and faster, and the game does its best to automatically pick up ammunition and money when you walk over them.

Driving is perhaps the only element that is worse this time around. Vehicle control is absolutely awful; the steering is stiff and delayed beyond reason, and some of the surfaces act as invisible walls, even when the laws of physics dictate that the vehicle should be able to pass with no problem. On wide open surfaces, the vehicular combat is entertaining enough without being too distracting.

Enemies have different resistances to elemental attacks. Most of them are carried over from the first game; organics are vulnerable to fire, machines to corrosion, shields to electricity. However, everything changes when slag is involved. This noxious byproduct of Eridium processing makes anyone affected by it extremely vulnerable to just about everything. So if a Fire Skag is slagged, it won't be able to resist your fire attacks. Of course, you can be slagged too, so be careful.

I'm ecstatic that Borderlands has been received so well on the commercial end. Gearbox really has something special on their hands, and fans are just eating it up. Not every shooter has to be dour and humorless, and not every shooter has to follow the same tired template. If you don't have any friends and hate having a good time, this game is not for you. But for everyone else, Borderlands 2 is a must-own.