About five minutes after I posted that, Steam came back at full strength and installation began (and took another 20 minutes to install yet another version of .NET and VBC and stuff).

Still, a pleasant evening...



It's very much a return to, and expansion and refinement of the original. The interface is a bit nicer (though even on PC there's too much scrolling up and down in lists of very large icons of things) but also needs more practice - I NEVER needed the 'buy back' option at a vending machine in the original, but accidentally sold several weapons here while thinking I had to click on them to view their stats while on the SELL page. Nope, you mouse over them to see, click to actually sell.

As before, 99% of the guns you find are completely hopeless, and often you find two extremely similar variants of the same theme, sometimes with the same name. There's no option yet to 'break down' guns but the first area is a fairly large tutorial so that might be still to come. I've only just seen my first car drive past, so I haven't tried any of the new vehicles yet either.

The initial setting is beautiful. Towering canyons of snow and ice, snowflakes melting unobtrusively on the edges of your visor. Get down to the frozen inlet and you are walking on ice... look down at the ice and you can see down through it and faintly make out the water on the other side of the sheet. It's a hard effect to describe but it's amazing. Everything is bright and sharp and colourful like so many games today aren't.

The new enemies thus far are mostly marauders and 'bullymongs' which are strange gorillas with multiple sets of arms. Some charge while others tear up chunks of ice to hurl at you. These chunks can be shot but that leaves you with nothing to engage the bullymong with. Encounter several of these, the 'slinger' variety and you have an interesting approach, dodging past the flying chunks, especially if one of the melee types is pursuing you as well. As for marauders, shotgun Gaywoods are back along with axe-throwers, grenade throwers and (sigh) suicide psychos who run at you and explode.

The writing this time around is better, in my opinion. Amusing dialogue, item descriptions, quips from your own character and the enemies... it comes a lot thicker and faster than before. I shot a 'killer marauder' in the head and he remarked "Ah, I've been shot in the face loads of times before!" Handsome Jack is like a more malevolent General Knoxx in his frequent communiques: while Knoxx was weary and resigned, Jack is outrageously cocky and has become bored in his overconfidence. He has just the right dose of asshole to make him an amusing villain as opposed to a subject of outright hate.

Besides, Claptrap is back. And features extremely heavily. Throughout the entire opening section so far. Indeed, he declares that you're his 'minion' (and address you as such) and that as your leader you will escort him to the nearest city from the starting location. You're given numerous opportunities to harm him or through inaction allow him to come to harm (DYSWIDT) but it doesn't change the fact that he's your travelling companion and that he'll nag you to work on HIS objectives before another questgiver's. I don't know how long this goes on for but having played for four hours and defeated the first proper boss, I'm still not at the city nor am I rid of Claptrap. I can honestly see this being a dealbreaker for some people. On the flip side, he hasn't danced yet.

So far, I'm enjoying it. I'm building a healer-type Siren but it'll be about level ten before I'll have genuinely useful abilities in that respect - I'm level 8 now and have done every single quest and sidequest.