An insane robot just demanded, “YOU SHALL DANCE FOR MY ENJOYMENT!” Then he sent me on a quest for a stash of goodies that turned out to be five feet behind me.

Sanctuary is the hub town you'll return to in order to fulfill many needs and desires.

It looks like a...puma.

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Tiny Tina makes Batman's Harley Quinn look like Martha Stewart.

I missed you too, Claptrap. You little bastard.Yes, the little tinny-voiced bot has never shied away from kookiness, and his extra time spent roasting in the Pandora wasteland sun for Borderlands 2 Borderlands 2 inches even closer to Blizzard’s dungeon-crawler in ways that make a ton of sense for its role-playing shooter format. First, you’ve got a Stash that lets you drop items into a shared Dumpster that any character on your profile can access. So if you stumble upon an amazing sniper rifle that’s useless for your Gunzerker but would be a godsend to your Assassin, just deposit it in the Stash, quit to the main menu, load up stealthy hero Zero, and it’ll be there waiting for you.This cross-character sharing also applies to your challenges on the Badass Rank screen. Perform certain global tasks –say, killing 500 Goliaths, as a fictional example – and you’ll earn Badass Tokens you can redeem for profile-wide character bonuses, such as a permanently increased fire rate. (If you’d like to keep your heroes “pure” and enhance your challenge, however, a quick tap of the Y button will disable the effects for your other wasteland warriors so that they only apply to the character you earned them on.) Another subtle but appreciated new feature is the Bank, which lets you hang onto items you want to keep but aren’t actively using. Leave them in here for easy retrieval later.Also like Diablo, Relics are passive inventory items that give you amulet/ring-like stat boosts. And of course, you’ve got skill tree in which to dump your points (which can be reallocated at Quick Change vending machines). Here, each class has three trees, and I opted to go for massive damage with Salvador, my hulking Gunzerker hero. The Gun Lust branch offers Quick Draw, which increases weapon swapping speed and critical-hit damage, while the complementary Auto-Loader instantly reloads all your guns that aren’t currently in your hands, allowing you to get into an unstoppable combat rhythm that won’t be interrupted by the annoyance of an empty clip.It’s amazing how well Diablo’s twitchy point-and-click combat works as a twitchy first-person shooter. Heading to the Tundra Express, I at first felt overwhelmed by the swarm of mini-pterodactyl-esque Varkid creatures that surrounded me…until I realized that my beefy level-25 Gunzerker could extend a melee fist into their faces and they’d each fall with one hit. Then the experience points started ringing up like a hot slot machine.After wading through their winged corpses, I wandered around the side of a mountain to a Batcave-like enclave that was home to a woman named Tiny Tina who, fittingly enough, is eerily reminiscent of – and just as crazy as – longtime Joker henchwoman Harley Quinn. Speaking quickly and in slang terminology that could barely be classified as English, she wanted to throw a tea party, but needed guests. So she requested that you bring Madam von Bartlesby’s “son” (she’s a giant Varkid, and he’s a tiny young Varkid stuffed in a jar with a top hat, monocle, and moustache affixed to it), Princess Fluffybutt (also not a real person, as you might’ve guessed), and Flesh-Stick, who, fortunately, was an actual person and not a sex toy.Getting all of these “guests” to the party involved a massive battle on a mountaintop. First, we shot down upwards of a dozen Buzzard aircraft.Then we fended off waves of Goliath warriors who go into a frenzy as you chip away at their armor. Finally, we beat back scores of invading Mauraders (basically, bald nutcases with guns) as they streamed in to try and break up the get-together. Did our two-hour tour of Pandora sometimes feel a bit fetch-questy? Yes, but the weapon variety and, more so, the co-op potential easily trump any mild monotony that might set in.Still reaching for one more Diablo comp? How about this: Pandora’s main hub, dubbed Sanctuary, even shares a name with Diablo’s homeworld. No matter, though. Despite the obvious influence from Blizzard’s immortal series, this second trip to Pandora makes it clear that Borderlands has found its own distinct voice. This is a much more focused experience than its experiment of a predecessor – a franchise now knows exactly what it is and how best to present that to the world. Still, even if Borderlands 2 keeps taking cues from Diablo, my interest level will keep rising. Provided I’m able to play Gearbox’s self-proclaimed “shoot-and-loot” game without an Internet connection, that is…

Ryan McCaffrey is the Executive Editor at IGN Xbox. He used to own a DeLorean, which is weird. Follow him on Twitter , on IGN , catch him on Podcast Unlocked , and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.