Borderlands 2 has a nifty mechanic called Fight For Your Life. Basically, when you run out of health, you’re not dead yet; instead, you have a little bit of time where you can crawl around and shoot while waiting for a revive. So far, not particularly different from some other games: Apex Legends lets a downed player move, open doors, and mark enemies until their timer runs out, and I know there’s at least one Call of Duty that lets you fight while bleeding out and waiting for a teammate’s revive. It’s a cool feature of competitive shooters: if you down an enemy do you wait it out and risk them being revived, or do you rush in and get the execution for more points (and bragging rights)? It forces the player to make a quick decision about what’s more tactically sound, and hey, more interesting choices are always welcome in a game.
The spin Borderlands 2 puts on it is that it takes the idea of fighting for your life literally. If you’re able to kill an enemy before your timer runs out, you’re instantly revived and back in the fight. It adds an interesting dimension to single player, where running out of health doesn’t mean a game over or having to return to your last checkpoint. Thus the player is now encouraged to be a little more reckless because of the chance for a self-revive. Combat priorities are also slightly shifted, when faced with a large group of enemies it’s not quite tactically sound to take out all the weaker enemies first before dealing with the more powerful one since you want an easy kill in case you have to fight for your life. But you don’t want to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. It creates more choices and tactical options for the player in a firefight; options beyond shoot all that moves. Of course, end up in Fight For Your Life to often in an encounter and you’ll see that timer get shorter and shorter: don’t be too reckless else you’ll have to respawn anyway.
Multiplayer in Borderlands 2 offers yet another space for the strategic interestingness of Fight For Your Life shine. If a teammate goes down during a raid in Destiny it’s in your best interest to revive them quickly since you need their support and if that timer runs out you run the risk of wiping as a team and having to restart. In Borderlands 2, there’s a strategic boon to not reviving your teammate, since they may be able to revive themselves via Fight For Your Life. Risky strategies that involve splitting up become viable. Snap judgements become required, as a downed player can make the call whether or not they’ll be able to kill an enemy to get back in the fight, or if they need a revive. A player a distance away can soften up a foe to give a downed player an assist, but stealing a kill from a downed player can also rob them of their revive and lead to you reviving them as penance.
As my brother and I make our way through our third playthrough of Borderlands 2 (Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode for the win!), I’m noticing a lot of the little details and features of the game that set it apart from contemporary first-person shooters. Much of it is certainly its tone and integration of RPG features that add a nice dose of zaniness into it all. Fight For Your Life, though, is something I haven’t really seen replicated elsewhere, and it’s certainly a nifty addition that I really do enjoy.
Also, yelling “yoink!” into the mic as I steal my brother’s revive kill and before remorsefully reviving him myself will never not be funny.
Essays, Not Rants! 