Can I run Borderlands 2?

Now we're getting into the nitty-gritty of new games. The insatiably ridiculous FPS of 2012, Borderlands 2 written by Anthony Burch (Hey Ash Watcha Playin, Anthony Saves the World), developed by Gearbox (Borderlands, Brothers in Arms) and distributed by 2K Games (Bioshock, XCOM) . A Triple-A title that has you playing a vault hunter and kicking some serious cel-shaded arse.

I personally loved the first game and played it with a few friends of mine on 360. When they announced a sequel I got excited, when they announced a writer, I got excited, when they posted that first dubstep trailer, I was more than excited. I practically was a hairy annoying equivalent of a 12 year old girl for a good portion of late 2011 and 2012. Finally, the game came out in September of this year, I put my money down without any hesitation to get it on PC and then, only then did I think....

Can I run this on my Intel Graphics Laptop?




The day Borderlands 2 was allowed to be pre-loaded on Steam, I stayed up til midnight, turned on Steam and let the game download while I slept. If you're asking why midnight, it's a long story about Australia and our internet and download limits, it's boring and annoying and let's not think about it right now. So when I woke up at seven in the morning, the game was downloaded in it's entirety. I double clicked on the game and then I held my breath.

And it ran from hour one, mainly because it took a while to get things going. I had to do the usual thing of waiting for the extra loading time of first-time installation. The game finally started up and that smooth track from The Heavy and before I knew it I was in the menu screen. Things looked a bit choppy, some textures were loading in slowly. I had a look at the settings and by George, they'd created a setting specifically for my crappy laptop.

It was essentially a FPS adjuster, and that means Frames Per Second to you lot. I turned the textures to low or medium, adjusted the Frames down to the lowest setting and was rarely choppy as the game went on. The big landscapes took maybe half a minute in loading time, but having played Skyrim on PS3 and owning a Smartphone, things were never too boring between splash screens.


I should also mention here that if your laptop has an insta-turn off feature when it reaches a certain temperature, make sure you either have a cooling fan beneath your laptop or if you're like me and are playing all your vidya in bed, try and balance the laptop on one knee, with the fan uncovered. The key is to keep that free air flowing. Either that or move to Finland or the Arctic Circle; somewhere cold, is the joke I'm making here.

So yes, with a few adjustments, you can play Borderlands 2 on an Intel graphics laptop. You can purchase Borderlands 2 in stores now for PS3 and 360, but you can just grab it on Steam here.

If you want me to do some stress tests, such as high or medium textures or other frame caps, just email me or simply leave a comment. Also don't forget to Like Totes Vidya on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter: @TotesVidya


Now listen to this sweet track from The Heavy: