BORDERLANDS - like Fallout 3 but with cars and MAXIMUM PWNAGE OMGWTFLOLNEWB FPS combat

ok i havent actually played the game yet, its still sitting in the plasticwrap so i have no idea how much of the above is true, but i wanted a title that wasnt boring.

anybody else bought/gonna buy this? i succumbed to the review hype last night despite the fact that i have no time at all to play this right now.

sorry half life 2 episode 2 - and we were getting along so well!

It looks really cool, but I'm hesitant to pick it up right now. No time to play, and my fav co-op partner is recovering from surgery and unable to play anything for a long time.

i would play it this weekend but the gf has taken to asking me terrible soul-searching questions like "how many of these games have you actually finished?" whenever she sees another one piled on the stacks.

she is smarter than me.

anyway, tuesday off should afford the opportunity, if not sooner.

you must finish the games to complete your gfs soul

Huh... I didn't know this had cars. That makes it seems more interesting (I thought it was just wandering through a wasteland shooting stuff endlessly). Are there races? Does it have competitive multiplayer or just co-op?

I've heard the car portion is not really a focus of the game, but I'll let you know when I know more. Also I think there is limited pvp, but nothing super in depth yet (although if the bones are there, maybe future expansions are in store, idk)

i'm tempted but it looks a little grindy to me, also not crazy about just 4 players at a time.

playing 1 player, and it looks GREAT, weapon variety is v cool. good quick learning curve, def a loot finders paradise. doesn't feel grindy at all really, although that may change. really digging the presentation so far as well, and the character variety seems like replayability is going to be cool as well.

Probably picking it up soon with a friend on PC. I'm buying a retail copy, , but if it lets me register on Steam I'll definitely do it. My username is Merzbau, feel free to look me up in 2-3 weeks or so.

ok so around level 9 this game actually starts getting pretty hard! which is a nice change, as much as i loved fallout 3 it was def easy - if you go in guns a blazing on some of the quests im working on right now u gonna get pwned

is it fun without multiplayer?

you must finish the games to complete your gfs soul

― What the hell is hamster love (CaptainLorax), Saturday, October 24, 2009 7:57 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

actual lol

im digging it without multiplayer, but i think split screen would be pretty dope. online scares me - esp since given the way the loot works, i could see peeps grabbing madly for shit post battle. there is a duel mode (!) to make up for this, and also some arena i haven't unlocked yet that would prob have some decent pvp in it.

re: the driving jeff asked about - no sign of it yet

is this more fps-y or more rpg-y

more fps than rpg but there is lots of menu-use to satisfy the rpg gamer in u

ha i got mad sick of that crap near the halfway point of f3, started going run and gun for the h of it.

the pitch is basically 'fallout 3 w/better gunplay' so if tht sounds good to you

a couple of folx on my fl have been caning this and the word of mouth on forums seems to be v.positive

ok!

i think all rpgs should start with a rock-solid fps core, if they're going to bother with any real time shooty business at all. otherwise, NEIN. that was my big problem w/ fallout, both real time and 'vats' were equally half-assed.

Theres not much to this game but Im obsessed with it. The bosses can be pretty ridiculously easy tho. I killed this dude named spike without moving really. Just dropped my sentry gun and unloaded on him.

goole if you want to try it out w/split screen coop you are welcome anytime. cool thing is that lower level characters can drop in/out at any point w/the main quest, and the progression counts (none of that fable "buddy in my world" bullshit).

been watching clips of this game, and i can't see much rpg going on. it's all very similar to TF2 as well and not just the gfx

Only thing really RPG about it is character classes, fetch quests, experience points, damage shown in numeric form and a progression tree for your skills.

That sounds grate!

as soon as someone typed "skill tree" antexit's siren went off

ok the driving is not going to please racing fans, very halo warthog style.

i bought this. im sure it will remain wrapped for a while.

Help I'm dying to play this game but I have the two GTA episodes to get through before MW2 comes out and my life is destroyed

don't expect I'll buy another game for a few months once MW2 drops

I know! But the online for this looks so good and I'm sure it'll be dead by the time I get done with MW2, or start to have space to play other things

Yeah, this looks good, but there's just way too many new, good looking games out right now - it's yet another one I had to skip. May pick it up later in the new year after a price drop if I'm not overwhelmed by new games coming out in mid-2010.

Great, at least I can online with Jeff after everyone else is off it

panned (although the review reads basically the same as all the positive ones): http://www.avclub.com/articles/borderlands,34808/

yeah avclub is sort of notorious there days for their game reviews... too bad, because of the rest of the site is fine

me and a friend are gonna pick this up and play thru together. i need recommendations for what character classes we should choose.

Ive messed around with the Berserker (lvl 13) and Soldier (lvl 32). Soldier is pretty fun because of the sentry gun and punching the shit out of everyone with the Berserker is not bad either. My friend plays as the Siren but her powers dont seem too amazing to me.

I never bothered with Mordecai because I heard sniping wasnt easy to do because the enemy AI is basically 75% bum rushing but I find myself sniping ALOT. Might be worth a run.

a friend and I are playing co-op together on PC, and our strategy is basically: I try to tank with the Berserker while he snipes them with Mordecai. When we actually get a chance to play together, I'll let you know how it goes!

thanks guys. this is useful info. my friend likes to snipe so i will recommend that. i feel like soldier would be more fun than tank dude because of the variety of guns?

berserker only specializes in melee and rocket launchers. you dont get rocket launchers until later in the game and the explosion physics/splash damage can be frustrating. soldier is good tho. Im a fan of the combat rifle.

playing as the siren and digging it, although i have not been using her phase dash whatever at all, just boosting all the crit hit/shield power/environmental damage stats. anyone know how much difference there is in the skill trees outside of the obvious special power related stuff?

so is the PC version as borked as people say?

this game is HARD in spots, jesus

I've been playing the PC and it's fine for the most part. I had some real frustration with the network code when my friend and I started. He had to set up a bunch of port forwarding shit on his router, and it uses GameSpy for matchmaking (ugh).

I haven't seen any bugs or had a single crash so far.

Also, I don't know if this is the case on the other platforms, but it's pretty stupid that you can't complete quests if the person hosting has already done them. Really stupid game design. My friend and I both created secondary characters to play when we aren't on at the same time, since our quests have to be totally in sync.

Played this on PS3 last night for a few hours - damn good fun - Siren actually a cool character with useful abilities - too bad this game will take a back seat to MW2 for a few months. Batman and Drake are not going to finish themselves either ...

Im pretty close to the end. Was going to plan another run through with another character but probably wont get around to it. =\

not wasting any time putting some DLC out there:

http://www.examiner.com/x-22161-Berkeley-Xbox-Live-Examiner~y2009m11d10-Borderlands-Zombie-Island-of-Dr-Ned-DLC-gets-release-date

So guys, I got Borderlands today. Now I need some people to play it with.

I want this too. Buy me a copy and I will play it with you all the time.

mordy are you ps3 or xbox

xbox

oh hey add me if you havent already - nnnnnggggghhhhh

jjjusten, is nnnnnggggghhhhh your xbox name?

yep, the result of getting frustrated trying to come up with an unused name and not wanting to be some amalgo generated random like purplefacemaster

So how well does co-op work with characters of different levels? Is it worth just playing solo until my friends get the game and then co-oping with them at that point? Or should I wait?

i havent actually had a chance to try it yet so idk? ive heard good things though, plus its kind of a guaranteed loot/xp boon for the lower level character.

seems like a very replayable game tho, so restarting with one of the other character classes might actually not be that much of a bummer when you start co-op play. my main solo character has been the banshee or whatever, but when i was showing the game to another dude, i did the sniper character and it was pretty fun and def a different experience.

yep, the result of getting frustrated trying to come up with an unused name and not wanting to be some amalgo generated random like purplefacemaster

― .81818181818181818181818181 changed everything (jjjusten), Wednesday, December 16, 2009 7:08 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when i signed up on antexit's xbox it gave me "RoundedBird" and I was duly mocked by hayseeds online everywhere for it

krangor elicits respect from all

hey, jjjustin, up for some borderlands?

I should be around for a bit tonight, so post here if you get available.

krangor elicits respect from all

― crazy shituations (cutty), Thursday, December 17, 2009 10:12 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

truth bomb

finished w/my netflixing, but you appear to be offline on xbox ;_;

Yeah, gonna go to sleep soon. I ended up splitscreening with a friend for a bit.

next time then! thinking that you might want to host, because i am @ level 20 and won't really need any of the loot, but it will prob come in pretty handy if you are lower level (maybe you arent, idk)

oh also btw, when you get an artifact, despite the fact that the game never actually tells you this, you need to "use" it, not only to get the effect, but also because otherwise it will take up an inventory slot. this confused me because there is no artifact slot per se (unlike shields and grenade mods etc.) but it is the case. the designers maybe probably should have uh mentioned that at some point when you get the first one from whatever quest that was. jerks.

i didn't realize til i had been playing for a while that you could swap out artifacts. once you use them you never lose them. later on you get higher level ones.

yeah i like this game a lot but one of its real weaknesses is that it kind of leaves all the info about the mechanics out, which has led to some confusion - there are still guns ive found that seem to be valuable, but i'll be damned if i can figure out exactly why.

not looking to be spoonfed this stuff, and happy to have a game bereft of tutorial sections, but theres def some room for improvement here - i just figured out how to use the compare command when at a weapons kiosk last night, after trying over and over and getting that ever so frustrating boop sound of failure.

oh hey mordy i am online if u want to partner up

haha ok i have accept your game invite and now NOTHING IS HAPPENING

love this game but uh some rough edges - a game built on co-op should maybe make it clear uh how to do it?

hahaa ok sorry dude, could not get my headset to work. bugs should be worked out on my end next time - also, that particular challenge was hard as hell, and i died 3 more times after you left. but i beat it so uh yay?

lol, yeah. Also, we should play at closer levels I think. That game is brutal.

Been playing this constantly for the past ten days or so, and I keep finding awesome little things. Yesterday my Siren found a revolver that has obscenely high damage and accuracy, but no scope and a cylinder that only holds two giant-ass bullets. Hardly ideal, but great fun as an emergency backup in some of the nastier fights like Badass Spiderants.

hahaha did all of ILG end up picking the Siren?

oof - I play Siren too - I'm up for playing others as I have not yet even tried playing the multiplayer - lovin' the campaign on this actually - playstation 3 version by the way ...

I played the Siren as a Firefly. Found an insane SMG that does x4 ignite dmg and the game was easy mode from then on. The gun is level 25 and I'm still using it at level 45 and it seems as deadly as ever. Seems like a broken mechanic, really.

I'm the sniper.

I've got a Hunter too, but he isn't seeing much action. My Siren is currently a Tempest after finding a great epic class mod with a huge shock damage boost and an epic Maliwan electric shotgun within minutes of each other.

Zombie Island of Dr. Ned: SUCH FUN. "Oh, come on, don't act like you've never had to wait on a hand-cranked elevator during a zombie outbreak before."

just started playing this today, seems good. the way it looks reminds me of that XIII game from a few years back, which i loved. the gameplay is kinda like STALKER but not as plot heavy (or awesome) and sorta like Fallout3 but way better - you can RUN for a start! and it doesn't have that awful VATS crap, i like how it needs the player to have actual skillz.

is there anything i should be aware of before i get too far into it? im at level 4 but haven't a clue how to level up. i also chose hunter as im a sucker for a sniper rifle, was this a wise choice?

anyone else playing this using mouse and keys? i find it much more accurate - my 360 controller was all over the place, i find it works better to play it like FEAR

can't work out the save function on this. is there anyway of redoing a section without having to pay out $400?

Not sure what you mean- it's like Diablo (and most console games) in that you don't control when your game is saved. It happens whenever you approach certain areas (outposts, those glowy pole things, some vendors and NPCs I think)- your character data, quest status, inventory/cash and so on is saved, and the next time you load the game you respawn at the last New-U station you got close enough to activate.

You can redo pretty much anything except for quest-specific stuff and some of the bosses, though most minor bosses will respawn.

but when i die in a battle it respawns me to the most recent checkpoint and then charges me $412 for the privilege! all the enemies i've been fighting maintain the level of damage so it's generally easier to go back and kill them, but i think i'd rather do it all from scratch and not have to spend that $412

(was a bit meh about this game to start with but i'm slowly starting to love it)

I'm now rocking this game on ps3 if anyone wants to 2p

I just got it yesterday and I chose the big guy, Brick. It looks like I'm going to have a tank/rocket launcher build.
I'm pretty satisfied with my choice of character. Am I the first guy to choose that guy among the ilxors posting here?

Who did you pick antexit?

I'm Mordechai. Enjoying it but really feeling the lack of the heavier weapons. I was cruising around kinda loving this game until I guess I went on a mission that I haven't levelled up enough for and now I'm stuck at a savepoint getting completely smoked and out of money and ammo, trying to tank guys who are five levels above me with my skinny sniper build. Not good.

Mordecai. I'm Mordechai. :P

Great! Now my savegame is corrupted. Well that solves that fucking problem.

oh my god brains quest you can eat a million dicks

Anyone playing or planning to play the Zombie Island expansion: go to the southwest corner of Hallow's End, find the shack with the big Fyrestone sign on it, pick up the Brains quest IMMEDIATELY. All those zombie brains you've been picking up? Yeah, they don't count. They've been vanishing into a tiny black hole in your pocket as soon as you pick them up. And the game won't point you towards the quest, oh no, it's a "secret." Never mind that it's been tossing quest items at you for hours, IT IS A SECRET GOD DAMMIT.

Other than that, though, pretty fun. Some great lines for Dr. Ned, especially during the home stretch. Boss fights still kind of suck and consist entirely (at least for my current Siren/Mercenary build) of pouring a jillion SMG bullets into the big bad's face and hoping he goes down before I do.

how long is this game?

Depends on your level of anal retentive completionism, really- I haven't taken a look at my time played, but I've put quite a lot of time into it to complete all the quests from the main game and Zombie Island except for the Brains grindfest and what I think is the final mission of the regular game (the one that starts with "go into the Vault and find the big obvious villain"; feels like it's the leadup to the end). And that's without getting into the Diablo-like multiple playthroughs, trying out multiplayer or the other characters, etc. Not sure if it's worth full price (or if any game is), but it's a nice solid chunk of entertainment.

Brick is great in multiplayer. There's nothing more satisfying than the noise of him hulking up before he punches people in the head.

I really enjoy this game. I have a lot of trouble settling on what weapons to carry, though. Who wants to MP with me on PS3 sometime? (he said pathetically)

loving this game more and more. im playing the hunter as i can't imagine playing without a sniper rifle. my guy has a bloodwing bird that flies off and hits people, what do the other characters have instead?

i was worried that this game would suffer from a bad case of the fallout3s in that it starts off pretty difficult and incredibly gripping but as soon as you progress a few levels it becomes a boring easy slog through the same old stuff. however ive just done the kromor caverns quests and that was fairly tough (though not quite as hard as the first few quests) so glad to see i'm not likely to get bored too soon.

are the DLCs worth playing at this point or shall i finish the main game? i'm playing through every last little mission (can't imagine anyone not doing) and im noticing that every new quest i find is one or two levels, sometimes more, below my own so i'm only ever getting 'trivial' or 'normal' quests, haven't seen a 'hard' or 'tough' one in ages. any other advice on how to get the best out of this game?

Island of Dr Ned. is amazing to play at any time. I'm pretty sure the level of the zombies are linked to yr character level or story progression so it should always roughly be at your level whenever you go in. You will level up multiple times while playing it though, i did it when i hit level 15 and the entirety of the first region was just a joke when i came out so it might be a good idea to wait until you do start getting non-trivial quests again (there's always been a pretty large level spike for me when i move to a new region).

I don't have the other DLC but i've read abt it and it's arena based and apparently v. difficult to solo so probably skip that unless yr multiplayering.

My favourite specials are Brick's who screams and turns massive and punches people about the head really hard and the soldier who sticks down a big turret that can be specced to heal yr party or just used as cover while you regen shields and peep out and snipe folks. I love bloodwing but i think his pathfinding can be pretty awful sometimes which annoys the hell out of me.

I'm finding this game really hard! Are people grinding up their levels to take on the missions that are classed slightly harder? Because I'm not-- level 16 now playing level 17-18 missions and I'm just finding them incredibly punishing.

I'm the soldier these days, though I regret it a bit because I use sniper rifles most, and SMG/assault rifles/shotguns I just use to dump ammo into bigger guys and then go run behind cover. The little shield thing I'm not finding incredibly useful since I'm playing solo and don't need the party-healing functions, and as a cover it doesn't work great because most of the smarter enemies just charge right through it and bop you on the snoot. Its turret function is OK.

im up to level 29 now and it's kinda levelling out in that it's not insanely hard like it was in the very beginning and that im getting a few fairly challenging missions at around the same level or one or 2 below. not sure how far into the game i am, or how many levels i can progress through. antexit, you should just choose to do the all the trivial/normal missions until you build up a good shield and a set of weapons you're happy with. maybe the soldier character is different though, his special skills don't sound very useful to me

thanks toastmodernist, i'll check out that ned island dlc when i've finished the main game. i had the same problem as you with fallout3 - i played the hillbilly hick island DLC fairly early on into my game and it was incredibly difficult to play through (but mad satisfying at the same time) and when i got back to the main game proper it was just a breeze, a boring much-too-easy breeze. think i'll avoid the arena DLC - i don't much like them in the main game. i don't much like the one-on-one boss battles either, where you're stuck facing a massive enemy, all i can do is run around panicking and jumping and firing off the odd shot.

I use Brick and I still like to Snipe. Except I use the sniping gun with explosive damage and boy it's fun watching guys explode

Playing the rest of the way through this, and holy fuck, what a great game!

Been playing this on PC, definitely liking the atmosphere and tone of the game. Had fun so far taking Brick to lvl 10 - the punching skill is really amusing. Tried a Soldier character for online, and while the game is admittedly more fun with more people (simply because you're constantly in the thick of action with more monsters per player, vs the single player experience we're you're often training monsters and running away a lot) playing with randoms kinda sucks because a)the mic support is kinda crap - no push to talk, no real options to set, so my mic doesn't work and b) people basically treat it as an MMO and everybody just rushes ahead and does missions without even pausing, not to mention the looting issues. Also, for an FPS on PC, the mouse/keyboard controls aren't great, but using a 360 pad emulator made the game feel more natural, even the weird click-in-left-thumbstick to run. Still, enjoying this overall. Anyone who wants to play, hit me up on Steam!

hey, this is great!

My game is all wacky after playing the zombie expansion. I am too high level to do anything, but I am still locked out of a bunch of stuff. Lame.

Really enjoying this still; put in a 14 hour play session yesterday. Somewhere in the sweet spot between bioshock and fallout.

yeah this is a pretty great game as long as you are really unconcerned with character/plot centricity. which is not a criticism really, its much more of the old school FPS vibe where yeah sure yer fighting demons from hell but its just an excuse to shoot the hell out of some stuff. also i fucking LOVE the way it looks. coulda left the car stuff completely out tho, its a pretty huge waste of time and drives like a brick.

yeah, i just hoof it from place to place rather than fucking with the car. Yet to play multiplayer though. Is it fun?

ha my only attempts to play multiplayer were such EPIC FAIL (hey mordy whats up) that i never bothered to try again. I think the problem is that it only really works well with similarly leveled players - if yer like 10 levels apart low level dude gets mercilessly pwned.

The enemy leveling on the single player however is really impressive - only gets brutal every so often, but never gets to be a cakewalke either. also if you go on a quest above yer paygrade u are in for a world of hurt, which is kinda how it should be.

It feels different though. Not only are there WAY more enemies around when you add more players, but the whole mechanic that you can be healed/revived by other players when your health goes to zero makes the action a lot faster and more exciting. Not that I don't already really like the single player, but everything feels like an even crazier meatgrinder online, like there isn't even time to stand around and look at your new gun stats because GO GO GOOOOOO which kinda sucks

the level separation thing is a bit of a problem though. I played a game a little while ago with two others, all three of us were the same level since we started a fresh game from level 0. Then a guy joins who is a single level above us, and the game got so much harder - hate to imagine how bad it is on later levels

I bought this for $25 a few days ago (pretty much solely on the basis of this thread, I didn't read any reviews) and DAAAAAMN thanking u for this recommendation. Soooo addictive. I'm playing as Mordecai and digging the sniping and hawkin' people to death.

my multiplayer concerns are actually a lot less now, especially since i beat the game in single player, now i'm one of the jerks trying to grind out the missions as fast as possible online. also i realized the enemy levels and quests are completely determined by the host, regardless of the other player levels, so it's not as big an issue as i thought.

really burned out on this, maybe it's time to play online.

Any idea why Level 61 players, who have theoretically gone through the expansions and leveled to the cap, keep joining Playthrough 1 games? Do they get anything out of it besides sleepwalking through the game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-40GeUd3hGY

http://themacgamer.com/2010/11/18/borderlands-game-of-the-year-edition-to-mac-on-december-3/

Huh. It's cool that it's getting a port, but considering the iffy mic/pad support it had out of the box, and the probable lack of 360 pad support (not to mention it'll likely be really cheap on Steam sometime this season) I'll stick to the Windows version.

Really would be great if my existing Steam version gets upgraded to a Win/Mac version, but I'm probably out of luck.

Yeah, unfortunately that usually happens when the same publisher/developer is doing the Mac version that did the Windows version, usually indies. The one exception I can think of is Civ 4 (Take Two/Aspyr). Don't think Feral Interactive has put any Mac titles up on Steam.

Trying this out now.

Okay, I got the online component to work. Anybody wanna play a game?

what are you playing on?

Steam/gamespy?

nice, hit me up on steam sometime
http://steamcommunity.com/id/nhex/

ok, on there

friended, though i can't play tonight

uh.... ?

gg kingfish - let's play again next weekend

Not sure when we were cut off before, but to finish my thought - I think the other characters are definitely worth playing as (well, maybe not Soldier, he's pretty boring), I'm not sure about doing extra runthroughs with them unless you really want to get the better gear. But after beating the game in SP, it's only really worth it to still play the game in MP, it's a lot more exciting with the multiplied spawn rates, reviving, better drops, etc. The single player content is nice but pretty much exhausts itself after one playthrough.

u guys are playing on steam, right? i'm always up for a game over the 360. i never beat it (and don't remember what level i was at) but i'd be willing to start from the beginning with someone. and i recently got a sweet microphone for the 360 so we could chill!

NG+ in general is so much better than the first go thru, mostly because it's insanely hard. i didn't finish it again in SP or MP but got a good chunk of the way thru on both and it was a ton of fun.

i never tried NG+, maybe after i get the DLC (go on sale already!)

up for another game tomorrow kingfish?

Maybe.

oops. wound up food-shopping/cooking/reading/exercising tonight. damned real life, it always intrudes.

no prob

ok. i got all the DLC now - as a gentleman samurai might say, i'm loaded for bear

anyone here getting the sequel? I'm not sure if i'm gonna go in at launch with this or wait until the inevitable GOTY edition next year. also, I think I'll go 360 this time, as my computer could juuust run the first one.

Yeah, I'll get the sequel I reckon. I never did much of the DLC for the first one; just downloaded the last DLC so that I could raise the level cap to the max before playing through all of the main story line. Loved it, and would have loved to play multiplayer co-op as I've been told that's awesome, but didn't really get a chance to.

I'm sure the 2nd, like the 1st, will make me annoyed that I don't have the kind of time to devote to multiple play-throughs to try out all of the different classes.

damn, that's right, i never even played the DLC after getting it *smacks self*

I'll pick it up eventually

i'll get it if we can get a group of ilxors to play thru it together. i could never find anyone to play the first one w/ me

yeah i am all over this, one of few games i'm really looking forward too

First one is Free-to-play all weekend on Steam, if anyone hasn't played it, and isn't sure they'll dig it.

got this.

srsly missed opportunity to call it Morederlands imo

god that was terrible

go sit in a corner.

conned the dude at gamestop into giving me the preorder codes so i guess i have a bunch of shit plus a fifth character class that will roll out later called the mechawizard or some shit? w/e it will prob cost money so hey free stuff for me

yeah, it'll be $10 when it comes out in a month

Just had the depressing realization that is the first non-downloadable game I have purchased from 2012

how does one con a gamestop dude?

i wonder if we should set up co-op times for this for folks when they finally get it

Just had the depressing realization that is the first non-downloadable game I have purchased from 2012

missing the point i know but it is in fact available for download

been playing OG Borderlands for the first time via PS+. its ok? the menu system is a bit crappy. i like the rpgish numbers popping up when you shoot stuff. is there more to it than "go there and shoot dude" for the whole game? cos i get bored of that kind of game pretty quickly.

uhoh.

put in a few hours last night and i uh im not sure i like B2 very much? i remember thinking it was kind of lame that the first one didnt have any voiced npcs, but now that i have heard the script and the actors they have chosen, i rescind that criticism, because this first dude with the robot arm and leg is the worst shit ever.

Haha no never mind this is the best shut ever, just needed to bang my way through some dumb early quests

jjj if you see me on there please feel free to jump in my game ... if you don't mind watching me miss everyone I shoot at.

Will do! Note: I do not have a headset because I ended up yelling at 12 year old bigots to often in multiplayer.

yeah i don't do headsets either.

you don't headset with randos!

My headset doesn't work right, so it doesn't really matter either way.

headsetting is half the charm of xbl

i assume it's more charming when they aren't killing you over and over again

ok let me share a big huge flashing pay attention warning here - this game only supports a single simultaneous playthrough. so if like me you get drunk and think, hey maybe i should check out one of the other characters, you start back at square one with no way to revert to your original game. fucking infuriating.

oh never mind, there is a select character option on the front page, i am an idiot, carry on.

lol

even though this is exactly the same game over again, there are a host of small tweaks and touches throughout that aggregate to make it a really worthwhile sequel and i am very much enjoying it so far

Hahahaha hilarious insulting dubstep joke, god I love this game.

Starting a new play through with new free mechromancer character download I got thx to getting hooked up with fraudulent GameStop preorder.

taking advantage of the "girlfriend" skill tree??

i have the siren character for mp - the special ability works out a treat but i am not too hot on the skill tree so far - and the commando for sp, cos the turret is super helpful on your own.

the quest from a npc named 'loggins' that was all about top gun and involved burning down a volleyball court and shooting 3 'shirtless dudes' was pretty lol

haw that went totally over my head

like a f-15

yeah the loggins thing was great

do you have to be able to aim in this game

kinda sorta but not really? i think that a lot of the shooting is still under the hood dice roll stuff - maybe not the sniper rifles as much, but i think if you are pointing the gun at something, that mostly does it - basically target recognition.

I may stop playing Tokyo Jungle long enough to try this

Or I may switch back to Pinball Arcade, it's all a little bit of a tossup

(basically I am looking for something, anything, to keep me from downloading and installing the new WoW expansion in a fit of boredom, even though I'd be playing it on a Mac)

BULLETSTORM

this is longer than bulletstorm, but bulletstorm prob sells for about $4 at this point hence my suggestion. and it was the best game of last year.

^^ currently downloading this via PS+, even tho it looks like the polar opposite of something i'd enjoy. but it's "free"!

weird thing abt bulletstorm is that it looks like a shooter, but when you get the whip arm deal it turns into some other crazed score attack melee hybrid thing full of environmental hazards and weirdo actually fun stage change ups. one of the few games that never ever let up on the innovation or wore out its welcome during the entire single player campaign.

but it looks like Michael Bay made it! will try it out tho. anyway finished Borderlands earlier today, it was ok as a Fallout clone but not as fun. DJP do you know WOW has pokemons now.

yes I know

I already had collected 40+ pets, including a battle truck that you could fill with Mountain Dew and sic onto other battle trucks, so the idea of turning them into a stable of fighting machines is kind of alluring (although I don't know how the sheep that eventually gets eaten by a suddenly materializing wolf is going to fare)

Ok mechromancer class is officially the shit, bailing on my gunzerker single player play through and doing this one, despite being like level 18 or whatevr

bought the season pass for this, i want to play it forever.

Pirate DLC is great btw, could have easily gone with reskinned enemies (and there's a little of that) but mostly its new feeling content, some great variations on the theme - much like the zombie island of dr ned from the first one, its a totally worthwhile download and looks like it might clock in at 10 hours or so if you do all the side missions. do not attempt before level fifteen or u will get mercilessly pwned.

one HUGE improvement in this over the original is everything involved with vehicles and vehicular combat

just got an xbox and this game kind of turned me around on the whole FPS phenom

the first one or #2?

#2

I've played FPS games before but never could get too into them, borderlands was on some 5am MUST DEFEAT GIANT SPACE CATERPILLAR tip

yeah, it def raises the bar for FPS stuff, but mostly by grabbing good ideas from outside the genre (in particular RPG stuff). the whole loot management and character path stuff really saves it - also i know the bagazillions of guns tagline seems stupid on the surface, but it works brilliantly.

playthrough seems well designed in that it's a good mix of challenging but not too challenging - if you're good and want to be aggressive you can go buck wild, if you need to puss out and lick yr wounds for a while it doesn't penalize that approach.

played dishonored for a while and there were some scraps I got into that there was no way out of.

i pretty much wrote off dishonored because stealth is not my thing, mainly because it frustrates me and i am terrible at it.

and tho I haven't played all the way through there's been nothing gross about it, the cartoonish style combined w/ real physics is a treat

idk there could be 30 games on the market just like this but I get the sense that's not true

I'm ok with stealth but I got in situations where I stopped being stealthy in error and then couldn't revert back to a stealth style and slip away, like the game was punishing me for my audacity

borderlands was on some 5am MUST DEFEAT GIANT SPACE CATERPILLAR tip

― space dokken (Edward III), Wednesday, October 31, 2012 1:03 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sooooo B2 just came out for mac, and i bought it, and i was up until 4am last night. like, first time in a really really really long time that i checked the time and was like "omg what the fuck happened" i thought it was maaaaaaybe 1am

it is gaming season

I bought this like two months ago for PS3 specifically so I could co-op it with a friend and then we never got around to playing until this weekend. Wish I hadn't waited so long - it is a HELL of a lot of fun. I'm playing as a gunzerker, my buddy is an assassin and the balance between the two character classes seems perfect.

didn't really like the 1st one on ps3 but playing through 2 on pc is really fun. anyone else on pc want to co op? my steam thing is hexenduction

I havent been able to pick this back up because playing solo as the assassin is soooooooooooo boring

i havent tried the assassin on SP, but i can see where it might be a little eh. gunzerker is pretty good, and mechromancer is awesome, but that might be DLC iirc

I'm enjoying gunzerking, progressing pretty slowly though, these checkpoints are bloody unreliable. I've had a couple of occasions where I've started a new session and found the last hour of play's been undone. Would be much happier if it'd just let me save when I want to.

I've had a couple of occasions where I've started a new session and found the last hour of play's been undone. Would be much happier if it'd just let me save when I want to.

this has been happening to me too, and it is infuriating. makes me want to over-level the story quests and just stomp through where i get hung up

This confuses me, there seem to be shitloads of auto save spots everywhere?

That's the thing, there are loads. And if I just die and respawn then fair enough, it always seems to bring me back at the most recent. But if I exit and save then comeback later, I think it's bringing me back at the spawn point nearest to the start of whatever quest I'm on at the time, rather than the spawn point I triggered most recently. And some of the quests cover a lot of ground, geographically. So eg that early mission "best minion ever", I'd played right up to the bit where I was about to fight that Flynt guy, had to shut down, so triggered a save point right before that boss fight. Then when I came back later I got birthed right back at Hammerlock's cabin, which meant it'd undone maybe an hour of play for me.

oh man, thats weird, i have not experienced that

i only played this through the first couple of levels, but i also ran into that bullshit. wasn't sure if i was quitting the game incorrectly or something.

I feel like the same was true of Bordelands 1, no? There were save points and checkpoints. Save points you continue from if you quit the game, checkpoints you only continue from during that play? Perhaps it's more pronounced in Borderlands 2 with bigger missions or whatever? Fwiw Mario 3D Land caught me with the same bullshit when fighting Bowser on a lunch break.

yeah, it's definitely a save v. spawn point thing---but there's really no good way to know which is which aside from context ("I'm in the middle of a mission"). generally speaking, fast-travel points seem to indicate a hard save point, a save-machine (or w/e) encountered as you go around the corner or something is likely just to be a spawn point

it is possible that i have not noticed this because most of my BL2 sessions tend to be the sort where i endlessly play until horrible late night hours until i am nodding off with the controller in my hand

Anyway having not progressed all that far (just met some low cut siren lady and had a long drawn out fight with a load of overpowered psychos) I think I'm fed up with it. I don't know how much randomness there is in the weapon drops, I'd imagine quite a bit. And maybe I've just been unlucky. But I can't find anything I enjoy using, they're all either too weak or too slow or too short/long range, I dunno, I'm just finding it frustrating - while I'm levelling, and the bad guys are levelling, it just feels like my weapons aren't, so it's getting tough in a way that's not much fun. Plus gunzerking gets a lot less enjoyable once you have three weapon slots and have to do tricky micromanaging to make sure the two of those three you actually want are the ones you get when you activate your power up.

I played Borderlands 2 basically nonstop all weekend.

How was it? I'm holding out picking up either this or Skyrim on the last day of the steam sale.

Will probably go for Skyrim as I want to wait for all the Borderlands dlc to be released.

only had the xbox for a couple months but skyrim and B2 are my #1 and #2 faves. skyrim's engrossing and elaborate, B2's just berserk addictive nonsense... but you knew that already.

i like borderlands 2 a lot, but man, it's fucking hard! i guess i don't play a lot of FPS' so maybe i'm just terrible.

I found it really hard at first until I figured out that gun switching was key. get the right weapon and you can blow through a lot of stuff, but you've got to pick up and drop guns to figure out what works best for you. some parts you have to research online - never would've gotten past boom bewm without looking it up. aiming with the left trigger is important too, as is getting your special power. can't remember exactly when I got it but it was early on (hammerlocks?), as axon I can throw out a mini-howitzer that fires itself at enemies, it's almost like having a second player on yr side in a firefight.

The multiplayer matchmaking is a bit broken. You'll often find people just using the game as a chatroom, or playing slots or dueling or whatever, and the more people in your session the harder it is, so without the help of those guys you might as well just find another session if you're trying to progress within the story. But I find the game a bit boring on 1p so it's a necessary evil for me.

i'm playing as a siren, and i have the feeling i'm in a weird purgatory in terms of difficulty. i have the superpower, which lifts a single enemy up in the air and freezes them for a few seconds. it's really useful in some situations, but if there are multiple enemies and the shit's hitting the fan, it can leave you exposed because you end up ignoring the battle around you for a few seconds to concentrate on the floating target. later on, i see that skill upgrades can be unlocked that allow the superpower to impact multiple enemies. but right now...

The most important thing to know, in my opinion:

Each skill tree has two five point choices in the first row, two five point choices in the second row, and three choices in the third row. The skill in the middle of the third row is the key skill in that tree. Since there are three trees I recommend that you put all your points into whichever of those three skills interests you the most. It's worth mentioning that reassigning your skill points is relatively cheap in the quick change machine. Also I recommend putting all five points into one skill rather than splitting them 3/2 or whatever.

As far as the siren is concerned I have the third-tier skill that makes her power like a black hole, sucking in nearby enemies and taking some power from them. It's nice. I haven't tried the other two third tier skills for her though.

So here's a dumb question: where do the DLC missions fit in story-wise, and what levels are they appropriate for? It seems like I can access them whenever...

The DLC missions have level numbers just like the main game. I think that if you play through the game and start a new game plus, they will level up the mission difficulty/bonuses just like they do for the regular missions, so if you think you're going to level up to 50 then it's a good idea to save them so you can get the best possible guns (if that appeals to you).

B2 is worth twenty bucks right? I think i'm going in.

where is it 20 bucks?

PS+

i wish this game kept stats (kills, dmg done) during co-op so u can brag

psn was down and i'm a bit ill so i picked back up the first one and puttered out right around the same place: when car combat becomes a thing and all the fetch quests begin to grate. is the second one that much better?

i haven't gotten bored of the second one yet

I put a ton of time into the second one, never bought the original.

The game is much better with multiplayer. The world is pretty open, so combining powers and flanking and etc. is very fun. A little boring by comparison as a 1p experience.

okay, i got hooked on doing the original in multi hour runs and just beat it... a little disappointing? I think I'll wait on the second one for awhile and instead transition to backlog. Still got to play arkham city for instance!

yeah, the ending is pretty anticlimatic for Borderlands

the storyline's wafer thin anyway, don't think I'll be disappointed cuz this game is all about finding hueg guns and marching into battles. this is the first FPS I really got into, there's something weirdly fun about it. more to do with art + physics + gameplay than story arc, in a way its pleasures are very in-the-monent old school, like smash TV on steroids.

i've only tried B2 with multiplayer once and the other ppl were so stupid and bad that i assumed it sucked, and went back to soloing. maybe i should reconsider?

the dlc made up for the ending of the first, i felt

except for the battle arena one, that sucked

okay, i got hooked on doing the original in multi hour runs and just beat it... a little disappointing?

Same here. I've got all the DLC as I got the GOTY edition but I think I'm a little burned out on it so I'll leave it for now.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-BL2/borderlands-2

TEN BUCKS

anyone for 360 multiplayer? No headset. Polyphonique

still waiting on GOTY

Not bad, not bad. Will probably be up for playing some multiplayer/co-op when I get home later this week.

i do not understand how saves work in this game.

That's the thing, there are loads. And if I just die and respawn then fair enough, it always seems to bring me back at the most recent. But if I exit and save then comeback later, I think it's bringing me back at the spawn point nearest to the start of whatever quest I'm on at the time, rather than the spawn point I triggered most recently. And some of the quests cover a lot of ground, geographically. So eg that early mission "best minion ever", I'd played right up to the bit where I was about to fight that Flynt guy, had to shut down, so triggered a save point right before that boss fight. Then when I came back later I got birthed right back at Hammerlock's cabin, which meant it'd undone maybe an hour of play for me.

― JimD, Wednesday, December 5, 2012 2:05 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is basically what i'm dealing with and it's frustrating because i don't really have time to sit down and play for an hour and half straight to get to the next real "save" point.

If you're on a story mission, you can't save and quit and pick up your progress later. For other missions, like those where you're killing 10 bullymongs or whatever, your progress will be saved if you save and quit. I think the idea is so that if you're playing multiplayer it increases the likelihood that you're starting from the same place so it's easier to play through the game with randoms. There are checkpoints but they only work within a session.

Also, if you play through a second time on the harder difficulty, the checkpoints are fewer in number and much farther apart.

took me forever to figure out the whole janky saving thing, definitely had some moments of nerd rage when i realized that i'd lost what seemed like hours of my life after making the mistake (several times! w/o figuring it out!) in the middle of Where Angels Fear To Tread.

eventually, though, this just spurred me to play in a more aggressive style. less creeping around trying to snipe, more kamikaze. made it more fun, in a way, though i was bummed to learn that the game doesn't really do a good job of encouraging true thief/assassin style game-play. maybe it does if you max the bloodshed tree, but that only seems feasible as a multiplayer role---it'd be impossible to take down, say, BNK3R as a pure melee character

urgh that's annoying. basically means i can't play it unless i have a big chunk of time available.

You can always play side missions! :-)

i have neglected this game so much because i have it on 360 and my ps3 is too much of a shiny new toy to ignore. this tiny tina dragon quest thing looks appropriately BATSHIT

Yeah I don't have any of the other DLC but I want this one.

Yeah I don't have any of the other DLC but I want this one.

Ditto

I'm up to the Hammerlock DLC on my main character and it's a huge dud so far; it's like a big chunk of the first Borderlands as far as level design is concerned, with incredibly irritating healing enemies. The closest thing to a bright spot is the villain, which is basically some dude doing a James Urbaniak/Dr. Venture impression.

HOWEVER.

I started a second playthrough with the downloadable Psycho character (super cheap as part of the Steam sale), and it is just stupid fun. Everything's geared toward encouraging you to just rush headlong into melee range (I don't think a single one of his skills gives is oriented toward shooting, except for one that give melee and shotgun damage bonuses simultaneously) and soaking up damage. I'm dying constantly, but the very first skill point I got at level six went toward a hilariously dickish Suicide Psycho grenade-drop that almost always gets me back up on my feet immediately. So much fun!

have you done the Dark Souls DLC? Any good?

maybe ask in the dark souls thread?

there's a Dark Souls mission in the Borderlands 2 DLC: http://kotaku.com/borderlands-2-gives-a-pretty-elaborate-shout-out-to-dar-591952962

Waiting for next massive DLC sale on steam to stock up

Oh that's pretty cool! Didn't know that.

that was an xpost

yeah looks good dunnit

so it seems that the tiny tina dlc is hard as balls huh? i think the first dudes you run into are level 30 or some shit

so it seems that the tiny tina dlc is hard as balls huh? i think the first dudes you run into are level 30 or some shit

Yup. And there's def some situations that require (as a single player) total avoidance. Which is alluded to by at least one place name (something like The Village of Quick Passing Through).

It's more fun than the main game imo.

so it seems that the tiny tina dlc is hard as balls huh? i think the first dudes you run into are level 30 or some shit

The 3rd and 4th DLCs (Sir Hammerlock, Tiny Tina) are meant to be played after the main game, I think. I can't say one way or the other about Tiny Tina but Hammerlock certainly takes place after the end of the main game and starts out with enemies in the 30+ range.

yeah tiny tina would make zero sense if you hadn't finished the main story

I just finished Hammerlock and started Tiny Tina over the weekend and the difference in quality is just embarrassing. The first two were nice, Hammerlock was unbelievably half-assed, and Tiny Tina may be the best post-release DLC I've played for anything.

I started Tiny Tina last night. It's pretty cool I guess but I think I'm a little burned out on this game.

i'm having some n00b trouble w/ borderlands 1. when i pick up guns they don't equip. is there something special i have to do to use the guns i pick up?

yeah you have to HOLD the pick up button, tapping it just picks it up. otherwise you can manually equip it in your inventory screen

90% of the time you'll be stashing the guns anyway to sell later

wait, there's an inventory screen?!

i think it's select/back button on the xbox pad? you may have to use the trigger buttons to scroll to the right page

thanking u

So I finally decided to try out the DLC in the original Borderlands on PC. Despite already being having Steam DRM, I have to manually activate the first two DLCs using their separate Securom authorization program... but of course, when Steam tries to contact the key server, I can't actually obtain the DLC keys. Awesome. Thank goodness they dropped this crap for the other DLCs and the sequel.

I remember enjoying the zombie adventure for its deliberate whiplash change of tone

I'm all excited for the Pre-Sequel, but the first trailer for Battleborn is some Dynasty Warriors of Amular bullshit. A first person MOBA RPG? DO NOT WANT.

this game (borderlands 1) is kinda hard!

Surprisingly so. It has weird spikes and then long plateaus of difficulty.

yup, that's what I remember

yeah. like one minute i am just mowing through skags and bandits like crazy, and then i level up, and all of a sudden GLOWING EYES BADASS SKAG or BADASS MUTANT PSYCHO shows up

and then dead, over and over again

So what's the difficulty level of Borderlands compared to, say, Demon's Souls? Because I just started playing this (the first one) and, yeah, it's kinda brutal at points (spent like an hour and change last night plowing about halfway through a cave full of enormous monsters before almost running out of ammo and ultimately having to sprint back past a horde of respawned beasties in an effort to GTFO without dying). A lot of fun but I don't know if I have the fortitude for anything more punishing than this thing. But it's an addictive and benign kind of hard (as opposed to something like Mirror's Edge's "oh so I'm just going to keep falling off of this stupid ledge 300 times in a row, well maybe instead you should go fuck yourself" brand of deeply irritating difficulty).

I've played limited amounts of Borderlands, but Borderlands 2 is insanely fun, at the right difficulty level to challenge me without making me want to quit the game, and I am a person who generally abhors FPSs.

iirc correctly there is some talk itt about the spikiness of difficulty, which i agree with. there are definitely long stretches where you tear through it and then hit sudden roadblocks. i actually thought that worked out as a positive and there was a pretty good balance struck. the important point tho is that it is not a constant hard grind. i don't think most ppl should be put off from the BL games because of difficulty.

Sorry if I was unclear (work wreaks havoc on my writing abilities). I'm playing the first Borderlands currently but wondering if something like Demon's Souls would even be worth wasting my time on if I'm finding this tough. Prrrrobably should've posited the question in the Demon's Souls thread. But, yes, Borderlands has been a ton of fun nonetheless (except on the occasions when, despite full health and shields, I have been quickly and inexplicably killed by something I didn't even see).

I can't speak for Borderlands 1, but Borderlands 2 was really hard for me when I wasn't playing co-op, as someone who doesn't play many shooters. If you can do co-op I recommend it. But also, that game is set up so that if something is difficult you can put it off and do it a little bit later after you level up a bit on side missions. After that you'll probably not have as many issues. Do some side missions and come back.

Demon's Souls is really different in that the difficulty is more about recognizing patterns in a parry/move/thrust/judo-ish sorta way, whereas Borderlands is more about finding the enemy's critical spot and putting a million bullets in it.

Well the whole point of Demon's Souls is that dying is an integral part of the gameplay, so it seems like the games have completely different aims in mind with regards to what "difficulty" and dying mean to the player, so it's hard to compare. I never got far in Demon's Souls but that wasn't because I didn't love the game; I just ran out of free time to play it and never went back to it when I did get time.

Also I found it very helpful when I was playing single-player to be using a class that makes up for my lack of shooting skill. In Borderlands 2 there is the Commando class, which gives you a turret that can help give you some cover (akin to the Soldier class in B1), and the Siren class allowed me to freeze a particularly tough enemy so I could take a breath and focus on whatever side issue was distracting me or whatever. The Assassin and Berzerker classes were much harder for me to make progress with. I think those are better suited for more veteran shooters.

my only problem w/ the borderlands games is that they're clearly so much more fun multiplayer but the lives of myself + my friends are not conducive to regular mp gameplay.

I still haven't gotten around to B2, but I definitely remember B1 having stretches were you had to grind for a bit, killing enemies and doing side missions to get your character up to par with the regular story.

the lives of myself + my friends are not conducive to regular mp gameplay.

80% of the time I was playing with randoms and it wasn't too problematic for me. Sometimes they'd just be in a room or something shooting the shit with each other on mic instead of playing, but usually I was able to find some motivated players at my relative class level.

I think, because my gameplay is usually restricted to an hour or so after work and an hour or so before bed, the actual most frustrating part of the game thus far has been the autosaving. Which has been less than ideal. I sometimes can't get quite far enough to feel like I've made much progress before I have to go do something else. And then I come back and the save point seems almost arbitrary, except that it often entails a respawn of everything I thought I'd killed and the exact same depleted ammo I had previously. I've been playing as the sniper, though, so that's probably made for slower going.

I still have yet to do multiplayer on any PS3 game. Someday. Still a little bitter that the Bulletstorm server shutdown announcement was issued the day I got the game in the mail.

i got bored of this (BL1) right when car driving became a huge part of the story (dahl headlands)

my bud just got BL2 so I'm stoked to actually do multiplayer

I tried like twice and hated playing with randoms

I only know BL2 via multiplayer (hi dere jjj, EZSnappin) and it is just the best

i wish i had got into BL2 multiplayer with the ilx krew :/

same. i got lazy though

I eventually went beyond ps3 multiplayer with my pc character, just due to how every DLC got massively discounted thru a Steam sale.

I did not know they actually hired a cosplayer to portray an onscreen character, tho. That's an interesting twist.

Preordered the pre-sequel. I know I can save all the money if I wait a year for GOTY and I don't expect it to knock my socks off but I got more than my 20 bucks worth for BL2 GOTY so what the heck, take my money guys.

speaking of, if anyone on Mac/PC wants to go raiding in BL2 let's do it. I don't FPS without mouse and keyboard.

I'm the opposite. Won't play anything but Civ type games without a controller.

Really looking forward to the Pre-Sequel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnyeCZrRBt4

just means I'm old and cut my teeth on UT and Counter-Strike.

When Halo came out I messed with it a little and was like I guess this is okay for a console shooter. I understand the world has changed a bit since then...

I hear ya. Being a long time Apple guy I gave up on shooters after Marathon. Not that I really had a choice. But by the time I went back a few years ago I was past readjusting.

This is the first shooter I've liked/played extensively since Goldeneye

Heh. The reason I was late enough to grab BL2 GOTY for 20 bucks was I finally replaced my old laptop and the new one can handle it.

Still nothing like a mouse for sniping imo

hey roger, friend me on steam. i'll get around to BL2 on my Mac.. someday
http://steamcommunity.com/id/nhex

strong avatar

i'll play bl2 w/ anyone! i have a char and i've been wanting to get back.
my steam name is mshinefi

ok ok i'll make an effort this week to start it up and get my settings working, make sure my pad works

i am grbchv

presequel is super fun so far. my expectations were low and i am pleasantly surprised.

Forgot how lonely this game can get by yourself. Pretty funny so far though! Msg me if you see me playing

out of town for a few days but back on next week

is it up there with the first two? can't work out if it's a proper full BL game or just a pumped-up dlc

imo this would be best addressed in a separate, heavily-traffiAsk Imago for Relationship Advice thread

is it up there with the first two? can't work out if it's a proper full BL game or just a pumped-up dlc

not sure where the line is after Tiny Tina tbh

Rather than rush to the finish I've solo'd the first act a few times with different characters so I don't know yet how big the world will get.

The new game mechanics, associated focus on 3D map design, plus new weapon classes and grinder addition make it a bit more than a pumped-up DLC imo but I reserve the right to change my mind if it turns out I've already seen most of the environments.

Also the customization of character dialogue and interactions turns out to be a double-edged sword. e.g. Wilhelm is the best-balanced for solo play but a colossal bore to be around.

looool zing touch

oh man that has bitten me multiple times

Wilhelm btw is a fantastic character, I look forward to buffing the shit out of his drones

I look forward to gaining robot legs so I can strafe while sprinting but I wince every time he speaks.

I get around that by not paying any attention to the music and/or dialogue while I'm playing, so he hasn't gotten on my nerves yet

Claptrap is also great, I love that the game makes you confirm three times before letting you play him

I play on mute. Problem solved.

finally have hit my groove with whatshername the lawbringer, first 6 levels were a chore, but once you figure out how to use her special (and break my eternal urge to just be a shotgun nightmare) shes great. def going to go through several runs with the different characters on this one - i think they finally figured out how to nail non traditional multibuilds on the presequel. in the last one, the interesting playstyle characters were the add-ons (mechromancer and psycho), both of which forced you into playing the game very differently. this time around it feels like that was applied to all 4 of the main character options. there really isnt a tank/sniper/support healer/soldiermerc split, which is awesome.

not totally convinced wrt the oz kit thing. obv its just a relic replacement mainly, but i dont think the need for airvents really is doing anything significant other than being sometimes annoying and forcing backtracking or limiting exploration.

That's why Claptrap rules. Fuck oxygen.

I haven't felt limited yet, largely because they space air vents and bubbles out really well. About 80% of the times I've backtracked, it's because I didn't bother to look on the map and see the vent 50 yards ahead to the right or I forgot I was standing next to an oxygenated room. I also like that the butt slam and double-jump mechanics are limited by how much air you have left, making you think a little more about when you use them.

Wilhelm's drones are kind of the best things in the world btw

I'm not sold on Athena. Mainly because she doesn't fit my standard "hang back and snipe and never change guns" play style. I think once I get the right elemental SMG/shotgun combo and a good shield I'll like her more.

athena's pretty close to a trad tank style. damage soaking and can be built up w/BLOODSHED as a melee monster.

def not naturally suited to sniping, but very good fit when JJJ wants to go full shotgun.

i should probably solo athena for the first 5 levels and see what i think. after bashing through BL2 as the psycho i don't think any other melee based character will satisfy me at this point though.

Wilhelm's drones are kind of the best things in the world btw

I've totally come around on Wilhelm btw. Finding his dialogue hilarious now and will finish with him first.

I've never been enamored with tank builds or FPS melee, so she's an awkward fit. I'm going to see how the elemental effects tree works.

thing is my play style really isn't quite tanky? like i def end up charging in like a maniac, but i feel like the shield thing is so far from my approach that i cant quite wrap my head around it. im more bad decision aggro than well thought out bullet sponge.

But whether I love the character or not the game is fun. Though the maps sometimes seem way too big.

Check out her Xiphos skill path. Tailor-made for for fools rush in style.

borderlandsthegame.com/skilltrees/Athena.html

clarity of purpose>omega-senshu>rend>bloodlust>you've got red on you>blood rush

i was thinking about the map size, and im wondering if thats a result of the low gravity sprint mechanic - you can move over distance so much faster in this one that i think it almost needs to be on a bigger scale.

xpost I'd do it but I'm more a walk down the hill and headshot all the cows kinda guy

But if it feels big to me even with that mechanic than I think something might be off. Maybe it's the pacing and design; there are big levels on B2 - like where you meet Tiny Tina - but each part of the map feels self-contained when you are in the mission space. The base in Triton Flats was immense and poorly differentiated.

I'm really digging the Oz mechanic tbh. I do jump-sprint almost continuously when on foot (at L13 I'm still using the high-capacity tank from Janey that converts Oz canisters to health.

tbrr I just enjoy the floaty motion and the gentle whoosh noise. keeps things chill in the middle of a raging firefight. feels all blue danube in 2001.

Note: I will change my opinion on a dime if I run into any nightmare level puzzles.

I do agree none of the environments so far have the kind of personality they did in BL2

ohhhhhhhh shit i forgot about the convert cans to health thing, i should definitely switch back to that

a propos of nothing, cryo-ing scavs out of the sky really does not get old

Flailed around for an hour trying to get my third party Xbox 360 controller working for Mac in BL2. Plugged in a PS3 controller and it worked fine :/

Finally beat the first game this weekend (which was ultimately intensely fun for long stretches between the "ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW" moments of frustration) and started Zombie Island of Dr. Ned last night. Which I didn't realize was so emphatically Halloween-themed, so that was a happy coincidence.

Just binged my way through BL2 despite a lot of groans and/or outright discomfort at some of the content/themes. But man, does it look good. I plunked down twelve bucks for this thing mainly because I liked the idea of blowing stuff up in a cool comic book looking world instead of a gray gritty hideous world, and it basically delivered on that even if certain things started to get same-y by the end.

Was kinda stoked to put it behind me, but now I'm hooked and have found myself starting to poke around in True Vault Hunter mode, which is crazy since I just played through all this crap. OTOH, the gameplay itself is satisfying, and for the first time in ages the difficulty curve seems not completely out of gear. I found in the main game that pursuing the side quests, which seems like an obvious thing to do, tended to make me so powerful that the main quest was pointlessly easy, especially right around the time that you have to go meet the Slabs, and again at the end, with the big final assault/confrontation being trivial rather than satisfying.

Oh, but: I'm kinda thinking about checking out the DLC. Never done this kinda thing before so my main worry is making sure I'm logged in as myself so my roommate's XBox account doesn't get charged or something - but, my character is under his ...login? ID? ...so will it work? i realize this is probably like a Yahoo Answers level of dumb question from a newb. Also it seems like you can really only get the $30 'season pass' with all the DLC missions, or no? From discussion upthread it seems like they range in quality a bit. Since it's more than twice what I paid for the thing, and it's already taken up a ridiculous amount of my time, maybe I should take a long hard look and walk away.

the only really necessary DLC is Tiny Tina but it's worth thirty bucks all by itself

The Tiny Tina DLC is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.

agreed

Damn! Those are some strong endorsements, all right, maybe I'll cave. Looked at just a little bit of material about it online (trying to avoid spoilers) and I liked what I saw - seems like a totally different flavor than the rest of the game, rather than just being more of it.

in fairness the torque DLC is pretty good too but Tiny Tina is next level

Torgue goddam autocorrect

flailed around the first several hours about a month ago, keep meaning to go back...

It got a lot better for me once I got out of the first few areas, into the main plot, and comfortable with the interface. The super bare bones manual slowed this down a bit - it was ages before I realized you could lightly tap to just pick something up, rather than it swapping for your currently equipped weapon. In the end the only thing I was really hurting for was a way to pick something up while marking it 'for resale,' would have saved a lot of shuffling and re-testing of gear at the shops.

They fixed that in the presequel, kind of; you can mark things as favorites and then do a "sell all but favorites" at vendors

ok, that would help A LOT

one of the weak points of the game (esp. multiplayer) is all the halting to unload inventory. it's not really fun, not sure why they keep it in

I must admit I was playing BL2 on PS3, which I didn't quite finish, but I binged through the Pre Sequel over the holidays and it was lots of fun. Somehow I didn't do the side quest to get the talking shotgun, but I was helping a friend yesterday and she was using it and... wow, that bogan shotgun yells a lot

Also, for anyone playing the Pre Sequel, that stupid SHiFT code thing is worthwhile. I'm assuming it's Gearbox making you create another account so that they can market to you later, but the gear is prob worth it.

Basically on twitter, facebook, and around the web they've been giving out keys (they look like the registration codes of old) and you punch them into that terminal in Concordia. That gives you gold keys, which unlock the weapon chest in the same town, and each time you open it, it gives you gear that is at your current level (!) and it's almost all purples.

I think after entering codes I had about 80 keys.

You can mark favorites and trash in BL2, but it'd be great to be able to do it on pickup. Not enough buttons, I guess. The other thing I didn't realize until I was just dozens of hours into the thing is that there's a run button, which, yeah. Woulda been cool to weave that into the rather brisk tutorial phase ("Okay, minion! Let's make sure those legs aren't frozen! Try running!"). Oh well.

discovering the 'mark for sale' feature made inventory management (which is a huge part of the game imo) so much more efficient, i think i was fully half-way through before i figured it out

rolling through alts in the presequel these days when we can't line up DJP/EZ/JJJ late night murderfests. The Jack Doppleganger is pretty overpowered but holy crap does the game go lifeless if you play him as a single player, it kind of feels like they just didn't do most of the individualized character stuff with him. Fragtrap is awesome for the exploration/SP side, but multiple fragtraps is just all chaos all the time and not really in a fun way.

I have been playing as Wilhelm, who should I go for next?

do Wilhelm again

(I'm playing Wilhelm, he rules)

Claptrap is hilariously goofy in single player and his specials range from fantastic to SUPER SUPER ANNOYING (yes I'm looking at the Psycho melee one, hate when that pops up)

Nisha seems fun, most interested in trying her next (after Claptrap and Jack)

ive been doing the main collabo runthrough with the gunslinger lady. Paige? once you get used to spamming her special, she's great. not kidding about the special though, shes designed for that (super fast cooldown, autotargeting bullet storm, rinse repeat). Haven't used her solo. If you like the fallout wacky wasteland sorta vibe, i think a solo play with fragtrap would be pretty damn fun.

jack is probably the closest to the wilhelm vibe thanks to the two digijacks or whatever. if we want to get super nerdy we can talk about skill trees

also i just discovered that certain claptrap .exes only seem to spawn in singleplayer, and holy crap, the rubber ducky one is worth the price of admission alone

singleplayer as claptrap is like the main reason i am interested in the pre sequel, i do kinda love the wacky wasteland vibe

biggest thing in favor of SP claptrap is that he's a robot so he doesn't need oxygen, so you get to meander wherever w/o having to run back to air bubbles or internal structures. he also seems to jump further/higher than any of the other characters.

EZ and I found a genuinely AMAZING easter egg last night, but are sworn to secrecy until we can get DJP there

hints plz!

i've found two very elaborate easter eggs involving classic movies and games, but this sounds different?

Wilhelm's ability to explode when he's about to die is sooo much fun

ha we might have found the same easter eggs. obelisk and tubes ring some bells?

tubular bells

just gonna assume there's an Exorcist/2001 crossover zone where grunting scavs through bones at you then vomit corrosive gore at you and hump crucifixes

ugh THROW long meetings suck

I don't remember who was chiming in during the narration on the first time through, but is it just me or is it now Tiny Tina hearing the story instead? With all her commentary!

omg, so somewhere in the process of purchasing the 'season pass' on xbox live, i managed to log out of the default sign-in account on this xbox, in such a way that it no longer default signs-in when you turn on the console, and that's the account that has my level 42 commando save, and nobody in the house actually knows the password for that account

down to just hoping it magically comes back of its own volition, soon. it has in the past.

Does X-Box Live not have a website from which you can manage yr account/reset yr password?

I think we'd need access to the email associated with the account, and nobody has that either, if the email address really exists. Kind of a mess.

I found it very easy to over-write or just lose characters I had spent time developing in Borderlands 2, the character management system is flaky in the extreme.

I may have found a way back in here, disconnecting the Xbox from the network, logging into the profile, and resetting it to be the default sign-in. We can't get it back to Xbox Live in that profile, but I'm not sure it ever was on there. Downloading the add-ons in my other profile as we speak, hope this works, o boy o boy!

I found and picked up Excalibastard (the gun in the stone, as it is) at level 29 not realizing it never respawns, even in harder difficulties :/

Yeah, I would scratch my comments above and say that the biggest things the game should make clear to newbies are: 1) the value of unique items from quests - work with them even if their stats initially seem low, and know that their level is pinned to the level of the quest when you start it, and 2) that the level of a mission is set when you ACCEPT the mission. So if you, say, show up in Sanctuary and get excited about all the exclamation marks and accept six missions at once (which the game seems to invite you to do) you're actually screwing yourself out of the chance to manage difficulty as well as rewards. No wonder the story missions always seemed like a breeze once I got back to them, they were the first thing I accepted and the last thing I'd do in a given "chapter." I'm being choosier on second playthrough and the difficulty and rewards curves feel much more natural.

I began True Vault Hunter mode probably a bit early (be level 30!) but you can go to the Select Character screen and go back to normal mode as the same character. I did so to help a friend through part of the game and it helped.

Also, I ended up getting the DLC pass and thought I'd go peek at the Holodome and everything there was level 46 minimum so it was INSTADEATH

OMG, ten minutes into the Hammerlock add-on and you're fighting ooga-booga savages. Nooooooooooooooooooooo thank you.

"ooga-booga savages" is a true ongoing mainstay of so much of gaming; lack of direct representation as "African" or "South American" but simple quasi-racial caricatures makes it hard to mobilize a thoughtful response beyond simply being icky i guess?

Well, also just gamers unable to talk about anything intelligently or nonoffensively #GamerGate, I read a refreshingly negative review at Destructoid before posting the above, and then the comments are just bleeeeeeeargh, ''they stereotype everybody, that's their humor!'' at BEST. The main game also had some real tone-wrecking unpleasant bits (and really lousy gender/racial diversity stats) but nothing THAT bad.

at least the Pre-Sequel is Australians doing Australian humor

there was a reasonable conversation with the writer on twitter about whether Tiny Tina's dialogue is sometimes problematic

Would be interested to read that. I found her not particularly funny, but also went "well, this is basically how eleven-year-old white kids who think they're clever talk, i think," so combine that with references to explosions and ehh. Feel like it would have been funnier and less chancey to load her up with, like, l33tspeak and stuff, especially given as I understand the DLC takes her more into a gamernerd direction.

So long as I'm complaining, let me say that the whole "feuding clans" side quest had me wanting to post to Real ethics in unreal worlds: what will you not do in a game? . Just uncomfortable and un-fun, and seemed completely unaware that it was pushing far past the point where you, as hero of the game, are committing the exact sorts of atrocities that are periodically tossed out to define the villain. I get that it's a cynical, dark-humor kinda world, and they were likely going for a Fistful of Dollars deal, but couldn't I have like, rescued someone's dog or herded some chickens around instead? Or do one of those deals where you discover the person who's been stirring up the clans against each other, rather than be that person? It was just weird and gross, kind of like the jokes at the expense of Ellie.

Don't forget that Gearbox is the studio that finished off Duke Nukem Forever, it shouldn't really be surprising that they're terrible at stuff like this.

I think that's selling them short in some ways, they have a really scattered record as far as contract development goes but they bought that property a year before release after it'd been in "development" for what, a decade?

I never played the Hammerlock DLC because EZSnappin and jjjusten told me it was terrible. Now I see why.

I have no recollection of anything "problematic" coming from Tiny Tina. Psychotic, funny, and ultimately sad, yes.

I also had to look up exactly which quest line the feuding clans alluded to because I didn't remember it; after looking it up I remember it but nothing about it stood out as a memorable (positive or negative) moment or anything disconnected tonally from the rest of the game.

Keep in mind this is all coming from the viewpoint of someone who has read the description of every GTA game released thus far and said "nope, can't justify ever playing that".

yeah, I love Tiny Tina as far as it goes

Feuding clans thing - well, basically, at two points you advance the quest by 1) shooting up a whole bar of people who seem to be pleasantly minding their own business and then 2) setting fire to a bunch of mobile homes while people are peacefully sleeping inside. It's like you're suddenly playing as Handsome Jack (which I gather you do in the next game) and just really baffling. It's optional, of course, but that's weak sauce (see: GG'ers insisting that Sarkeesian's videos are full of 'distortions' because she includes optional content), and plus when you first start the quest it doesn't seem like it's going to be that kind of thing at all.

also terrible irish stereotypes

Working through the Torgue DLC. Pretty fun in places, wish it had mixed things up a little more with enemy types and the environments and stuff like that... most things just seem like reskinnings of the familiar bandits and robots...could've stretched things more. Just about tore my hair out today with this "kill all these helicopters in x minutes" deal, the helicopters just DO NOT lend themselves to be killed quickly in this game ("guess I'll fly off into the distance and hover behind a hilltop for a while"). Torgue has a few good jokes though.

turret is your friend helicopterwise

oh no question, that was ESSENTIAL.

B2 and the Pre-Sequel coming to next gen. And if you stay within the same brand you can port your characters over. Also, comes with all the DLC for both games.

probably will grab that on PS4 at some point

trying to use the cursed Base Bane gun in BL2 and can't play for laughing

I could never figure out with the "gag" guns whether there was some crazy-like-a-fox way to use them really effectively, or if they were just gags. I guess the internet could have cleared this up, but I tossed the bane almost immediately.

It's very effective vs robots but moving at a snail's pace invariably gets you killed.

the bogan gun in the pre-sequel usually is pretty good if you get it at the right time

I was browsing upcoming games and apparently the xbone/ps4 ultimate Borderlands collection thingy has an edition that comes with a remote control Claptrap that talks

It's also like $400 or something.

lol, not surprised

they're gonna make a crapload of money off that. if i were a bigger Borderlands fan I'd probably pony up

Will it have an auto mode where it just kinda wanders around the building singing/rapping to itself? Can that be hacked in?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjWAWcx4xdE

any progress on Gearbox fixing the framerate issues in the Handsome Collection?

Recently began playing the first game. Boy, it's hard*. Currently stuck on both the mission where you pick up the dude's seeds in the valley (keep getting eaten by those lizard-dogs) and the mission where you have to take out the bad guy just outside the safe zone.

* Also, I suck.

kill more lizard dogs to level up and suddenly hard missions become medium missions

yeah, I try hard to just grind straight through but the Borderlands franchise is really set up so that some side quests and killing random stuff is essential

I've been playing through true vault hunter mode on the pre-sequel and ended up using the matchmaking to make it past a quest, which may have been a bad idea since everything is now overpowered.

thanks for the hints dudes. i wish it were a little more like fallout and i could talk my way out of trouble sometimes, or be devious.

btw in the pre-sequel, if anyone hasn't done the SHiFT codes, do them! basically you sign up for gearbox's account system, then can just paste in codes they've dropped on social media and that chest in Concordia just spits out purples

SHiFT codes are ESSENTIAL

even if it gives you total crap you can grind them a bunch

I need to get better at this grinding formula thing

worst case scenario all the stuff from the chest sells at like $10k

haha I gave up on the grinder, really couldn't be bothered to figure it out

I have no idea how to use it but it gave me a sweet orange weapon. I think I am on my way to the "get five orange weapons" thing now

yeah the difficulty curve in borderlands 1 is something else ... i do all of the side quests religiously and am always clearing areas out, so i was up to level 19 by the time i got to sledge and it took me like an hour to beat him.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/04/borderlands-the-handsome-collection-reviewchasing.html

^^ brutal review!

so OTM :(

I think that review is fair/accurate for the presequel but undersells the appeal of BL2

the core dynamic of opening a zillion containers in every room really could use a change-up

Yeah, as addictive as I found this, the satisfaction of not playing it anymore is pretty compelling. Some of the core mechanics are good and have great "feel" but I think I diverge a lot from the standard review that's like "there's guns! lots of guns! BAJILLIONS of guns!" Like, maybe less guns would be better. Less boxes, less guns, and focus on how the combat difficulty could scale better so you're always facing a challenge.

The sad thing is I burned out right before I was gonna start the Tiny Tina DLC, which everyone here was repping for and which I'd figured "ooh, I'll save the best one for last!" The Torgue one had some fun bits and cool environments but somewhere partway through the pirate one I just really started to regret my choices in life (though the watery grotto was lovely).

the only thrill I get from seeing new guns is the possibility of finding a ridiculous special one

It's always such a drag when you find a gun that you really like the feel of, and then it's rapidly rendered obsolete by better stats on something else. Maybe they should consider more of an upgrade-your-gun model, where you could swap in a better scope or whatever, but keep the same satisfying ka-chunk noise. Sort of chasing their own tail at a certain point and I guess it's innate to the whole mechanic... after all, DOOM doesn't have to worry about the shotgun becoming obsolete.

I think it's the pre-sequel that has the Excalibastard and I was so sad when I realized you can only ever pick it up once and it's locked to the level you grabbed it at

It's always such a drag when you find a gun that you really like the feel of, and then it's rapidly rendered obsolete by better stats on something else.

this.

until i cottoned to the idea that Stats Matter, I definitely played with certain guns i had a fondness for much longer than I "should" have

That review is stupid

also, with the guns, it really works against one of the other recurring hype tropes for these games, which is the whole "oh man but wait til you're shooting a gun that fires rockets that split into other guns that shoot lasers!" or whatever. So there are these badass, fun-as-hell high-concept guns...and you use them for maybe an hour or two of play or something because they're level 38 and your more boring but effect level 41 gun just leaves it in the dust. It's hard to really have both, unless there's some way the guns can "level up" with you or get upgraded. Maybe the main damage stat should actually be based on ammo, and you're an alien who secretes ammo that gets better as you level up. (?)

Also the economy is just really silly - I basically never bought anything from the machines because the stuff you have is almost always way better. But meanwhile when you finally do hit a challenging part and die repeatedly, you see all your savings disappear very rapidly. Where I come from, dying over and over is supposed to happen in games! Oddly one of the parts I enjoyed most were the little "survive against wave after wave of guys" arenas, specifically because I died, a lot, and so it was DAMNED satisfying to finally make it through.

yeah i loved the arena battles, so much more satisfying that opening things

also i'd kinda like to run the numbers on how much more money a person makes in the course of the game by opening all the chests vs never opening any. like it FEELS like it should all add up over the course of the game, and that you're DEFINITELY going to MISS OUT on a SWEET RARE ITEM but, like, all the really good shit gets dropped by enemies it seems, and all the mission-related payouts seem to dwarf whatever you pick up.

basically, there's a perverse FOMO that the game seems to require and yet i bet is not actually necessary for fun/advancement. just don't open anything and kill guys and i bet you'd be fine

- opening all the crates gets you a constant stream of cash/things you can sell for cash that supplements the income from killing enemies that you were going to kill anyway; doing so removes cash as a limiting factor from the game unless you decide to make it a limiting factor by buying a ton of shit for a specific reason
- the "shifting goalposts for story conclusion" complaint is really complaining about the quality of the story, as every single narrative game does this exact same thing until you get to the end of the main storyline, otherwise what is your incentive to continue playing? the reason why the complaint seems overblown for BL2 and accurate for the presequel is because the storytelling in BL2 is much, much, MUCH better
- arena battles are terrible and people's enjoyment of them pushed them to make most of the presequel add-on content into arena battles, which meant that I hated most of the add-ons I prepaid for because I didn't know the presequel season pass would just be characters and arena battles, so thanks a lot you big jerks

haha

I wouldn't want the whole game to be arena battles, by any means, and in terms of environment or story they were definitely less engaging (speaking of BL2 here) than anything else the game had me doing. But they involved challenge and the possibility of failure, which so often seemed absent in the main game.

The Farmville comparison works I think because difficulty is streamlined out of the gameplay process. It's like, you feed it a coin and it gives you a peanut and two coins; with two coins you can buy gum and three coins, etc. At its best BL2 disguises this by making the story and environments interesting, and making the act of shooting and blowing stuff up just fun in itself. The story, to be fair, basically had me engaged, barring some bits that I just didn't give a shit about. Certainly the NPCs could have been better actors, visually, but that's secondary.

So hey, that's not bad! But I think the best games do involve something more, like a set of skills that you gradually master so that more and more complex challenges can be attempted, and you feel satisfied at having developed these (arbitrary and IRL useless) skills. This isn't impossible in such games: the skill set could be shooting precisely (in space or in time), dodging behind things, marshalling a limited inventory of powerups or ammo, some forms of platforming, etc., and the nature of enemies and environments could gradually shape encounters that test these abilities more and more. It's just not that kind of game. Maybe it's less Farmville, and more the difficulty track of a JRPG: you eventually will become a god and it'll be awesome that you can do 9999 damage, but the steady grind of getting there would be transparently hand-holding except for difficult battles/dungeons along the way, and a story/characters that you really get into.

i really like the second wind mechanic

aka the AAARRRGGHHHH FUCKING DIE YOU BASTARD AAAAARRRGGGHHHH FUCKING RELOAD FASTER AAARRRRGGGGHHH SHIT SHOULD HAVE SWITCHED WEAPONS SHIT SHIT SHIT AHHH FUCK mechanic

omino OTM

also this is one reason why Wilhelm is so fun in the presequel; the skill that turns him into a nuke during Second Wind has saved my ass so many times

yeah, I have been taking advantage of that but if you are playing and the enemies are a level or two higher than you it doesn't really take them out!

also, some of them are jerks and know what you're doing and move away

Wilhelm's overcharge ability that charges up your whole party when you deploy his drones is fuuuun

the moving away thing is why I started trying to shoot things in the legs

yes overcharge RULES

I guess I should adjust tactics from my "always shoot in the head" strategy

aka the "always use one slot for a rocket launcher to avoid the scenario above" strategy

the optimal one would be that duke nukem homage one, jacked up to level 70

This is reminding me that I need to finish the last of the DLC packs for the first game so I can move on to the second already and then hopefully get to the pre-sequel by the time you guys are talking about the fifth or sixth game in the franchise.

Good to know the DLC packs for the pre-sequel are mostly arenas. Those things have pushed me as close to Hulk smashing a DualShock as few things outside of God Of War have.

aka the "always use one slot for a rocket launcher to avoid the scenario above" strategy

otm

The worst is when you find yourself crippled behind that handy cover you thought would keep you alive and you have a rocket launcher in your hand and a screen full of rock to aim at.

Some strategy guides talk about deliberately using the second wind as a quick and easy way of replenishing your shield in a busy fire fight. Such talk is from people better at dealing with the panic of impending death than I am.

so when leveling up a mordecai rogue: fast hands or out for blood?

also is gun crazy any good?

I can't remember, all the games let you respec for $$, right? I would recommend trying whatever fits your playing style.

just got B2, played through to the first real boss (?) flynt and then failed miserably, dying like ten times before giving up for the time being. maybe going to try again with a different class?

or maybe just resign myself to being terrible at shooters and not playing them.

can't say whether it's shooters or RPGS that's your problem there. maybe just need to level up once before fighting him again?

^ this. did you do all the side quests? you need those to level up and get some decent weapons.

i kind of stopped around the first boss too, got kind of bored. maybe i need to jump back into multiplayer

it's a failing in the games that you've got to find a balance in levelling to prevent it being too difficult or too easy - if you do all the side missions and spend a load of time killing weird beasties in the wilderness you level too high and the boss fights are a breeze.

if you do all the side missions and spend a load of time killing weird beasties in the wilderness you level too high and the boss fights are a breeze.

I feel like that is a bonus, not a failing

it's set up to encourage you to do the side quests that are more searching and investigating than running-and-gunning

imo if you just want to run and gun, wander back through some of the more heavily populated areas a few times and take everyone out

as i said upthread, it took me forever to realize that mission levels are set when you accept the missions, so the game screws you over by making all these exclamation points appear and you're like, sweet, new quests! and you sign up for all of them, condemning yourself to a game played in cycles: hard, less hard, way too easy. New area/plot point! Hard, less hard, way too easy. New area/plot point!...

Obviously, once you're aware of this you can control it much more, but it still does cement that "Farmville with guns" thing we were debating a while back. I loved so much about the look and feel of BL2 that I really did forgive, for longer than I otherwise would, the lack of real friction or difficulty.

yeah, I think locking them at the level they were when you accepted them is bad

so does this mean to make the game easier, you should just accept all the missions as soon as they show up? because I might do that.

no, accept side quests as you do them. story quests have a minimum level they scale to, but side quests are always (?) at your current level.

if you go around and accept everything and then do them later, you'll be level 25 and getting level 10 rewards

and just mowing down all the enemies, all the time, which just isn't that much fun. so yeah - accept one quest at a time, it's artificial but it should yield the closest thing to a 'natural' feel/flow of the game. if a quest annoys you or you want to go do something else, you totally can... you just want to avoid that thing where you get to town and there's a million new quests and you accept them all at once.

got it. yeah, that's what i normally do anyway

i think i need a new Mac anyway, it's old and slow and shuts down randomly

so i figured out how to actually enjoy this game. first off, restarted with a character that's more friendly to people bad at the game -- i'm now playing as the robot summoning mechromancer so when things get too rough i can summon that robot then run and hide for a bit. also, i figured out how to snipe effectively and how to use the scope, so i could pick off enemies without them getting so damn close i would just get destroyed. and now just only i figured out how to switch to a good shotgun at close range and take out enemies right on top of me.

in the middle of the fire cult quests and having a lot more fun. frustrating though to be building up my shock tree but keep ending up at this point with all fire elemental themed weapons. i guess i'll have more opportunities to pick up shock stuff later.

its impressive how if you have the wrong gun, its not just that you do less damage, its that you can be completely ineffective.

BL2 still taking way too much of my time. thru the main storyline and polishing off the DLC. Was overleveled for the pirate one, but somehow felt more appropriately leveled for the torgue one because I guess just way more exciting people jumping at you etc. Hammerlock isn't great, but finishing it up anyway, and really looking forward to Tina. After this, going to try hard to resist doing another whole playthough in TVHM. Also going to try to resist going through with another class like gunzerker or assassin, even though their gameplay style looks way different and fun.

tiny tina is so good it even makes up for hammerlock

Gunzerker funnest class for a second SP playthrough imo. Assassin not fun at all in SP.

Siren and Commando were by far my best character types. Assassin was rough for me. Gunzerker was basically impossible. I could never get the hang of using his powers well.

shoot everything really hard

Siren is super fun but I only really used her in multiplayer

for solo play, i go commando

ouch, i just got that.

If you have them (in a bundle, or hell, buying them on their own, this game goes on sale all the time now) the Mechromancer and Psycho characters are incredibly fun to play.

god tiny tina was so good feels like a letdown to go back to enemies that aren't all weird magic things.

"consummatum est"

http://s9.postimg.org/lm2s2npu7/Screen_Shot_2015_11_09_at_8_42_01_PM.png

respect

ty ty

sadly it has rendered "armory of general knoxx" trivially easy

mad moxxi's underdome leveled up with me ... hope the robot revolution did too

can't wait to wrap this shit up and get on to ... BL2 or the pre-sequel? which is better?

BL2 is I think universally agreed on as the high-point.

But after losing a few months to BL2 I've resisted the pre-sequel thus far. (reputedly the claptastic dlc is the best dlc of the series tho)

Nah tiny Tina dnd dlc still rules all

But yeah, bl2 is def the best, although both that and the presequel are vast improvements over the first borderlands (which, to be clear, I also love).

playing tps now, finding the story kinda meh, and the fight dynamics don't feel nearly as thrilling as bl2, although i'm still having fun. in part i think i have sorta dull guns -- have sort of weak fire and shock lasers, and a not great assault rifle, so just been leaning on heavy use of a scav freeze smg. the freeze mechanic is great tho -- love running up to frozen enemies and meleeing them.

what i think i miss are really well-constructed areas where you have to methodically proceed and clear out bases and you keep getting guys coming at you from all sides. the fighting areas tend to be too wide open without great cover dynamics, especially since all the jumping sort of ruins the point of cover.

the vehicle stuff is much more enjoyable than BL2 tho -- low grav really helps it out.

I opened the pre-sequel today when checking what games I had installed, actually! I think I was playing through the second time (which is great, you get the BL2 characters listening to the retelling) but whenever I last played, I had somehow made it to some fuck-off hard area for my character so I really need to backtrack and grind a lot more

Those keys with online codes that give you special weapons from the trunk in the floating city are pretty essential in that situation.

i was doing well but then the bosun just destroyed me until i stopped trying to hit him with my weak scav ice smg that i had gotten attached to -- he went down after like six hits from a vladof rocket launcher. but after that, i realized all my weapons suddenly were outclassed by the new enemies i was facing (it seems like unlike BL2, in PTS the enemies in already played areas sort of level up with you, at least for a while?). hit up that golden chest and a new tediore smg is just ripping through them again. i live firing like three rounds then hurling it at enemies - boop, down they go.

Picked up the game on PC yesterday from here for really cheap. Does anyone wanna do some pre-sequel co-op?

In typical me fashion, I've just gotten around to Borderlands 2 seven years after its release. I wish I'd read through this thread before I started because the goddamn assassin class sucks shit and has made me wonder if all the hype I'd heard was nonsense. Like I'm at the point where I'm getting my ass handed to me (and I mean HANDED, like two-hit kills) over and over on every mission and side mission and all the fun has been drained out of the gameplay. Oh hey cool, something I didn't even see just completely blew out my shield and 90% of my health. Wheeeee. And I finished the first game and loved it so it's not like this is unfamiliar terrain. But at this point I'm a couple dozen hours in and at level 18 and the thought of starting over with a different class is like contemplating a complete career overhaul in middle age. It's precisely like that.

do it anyway with a siren

gave B2 a go again recently, my main takeaway was how SLOW it feels compared to modern FPS games, it's almost Dark Souls levels of deliberative combat

Okay so I started over with the siren per Dan's suggestion and, yeah, I blasted through a bunch of missions and got her up to level 6 in like 90 minutes. Already enjoying it way way more. Assassin can go take a long walk off a short pier, sorry that's just how I feel.

I remember having the same frustration with the assassin until something twigged -- I think it was that at some point I got an insanely high-powered sniper rifle, so anything up close and personal was just clean up? idk it's been a very long time

Yeah, I just kept waiting for something to cohere, trying out every gahddamn weapon and shield and artifact. Just...nothin'. I didn't even understand the point of his useless power. Now I have a pistol that I can fire like a gunslinger on crack and it doesn't even matter that it's low-level and takes forever to do serious damage because it's fun and it actually feels like I'm getting things done. And I can move! Fast! Much preferable to constantly being all 'fucking RUN, YOU SLOW-ASS ASSASSIN okay nevermind you died, again'.

Please, let's talk more about this game that is the same age as a second-grader.

I just finished Borderlands 3 this weekend finally. The gameplay is pretty fun if you can get past the story, which is quite bad.

An apt description of 99.9% of the games I enjoy playing.

for solo play i just went commando

sorry everyone, that was a terrible post. but nothing says "solo players: choose me" like a turret.

I mean, they clearly designed that class around that exact joke so go with God, my friend

gravity's rainbow usernames gotta stick together (rip hstencil)

My other 'alf has been playing BL3 non stop since it came out and maxed up every character class, so Ive had to watch the fuckin cut scenes about 6 times each.

Unskippable cutscenes are a plague upon this series/videogames generally.

BP2 update: playing as a siren, I've been just tearing my way through bosses that owned my ass a half dozen times over as an assassin. And also sniping from great distances like a pro, perhaps with even greater alacrity than before. So did the developers just begrudgingly include that garbage class as a favor to a brother-in-law or to settle a debt or what.

It's a great multiplayer class

one of my great ilx regrets is that i didn't play this thing multiplayer with y'all. i knew, and know, nothing of console multiplayer gaming, we didn't have a functional xbox live account or i didn't understand anything about that system anyway, and it would have annoyed the shit out of my roommates but goddamn am i convinced that would have been a blast

jjjusten, EZSnappin, and I can confirm that yes, it was a goddamned blast

my one attempt at playing this in multiplayer was splitscreen couch co-op and was prematurely halted when my buddy and i realised we were too stoned to find our way out of a shipping crate seconds after meeting claptrap for the first time

That's the kind of multiplayer action I'm looking for tbrr.

got BL3 recently it's a fun drunk shooter imo

bummed multiplayer is platform-specific -- i'm OSX/Steam or I'd be happy to do a run w/you

Yeah, I'm still on a PS3 so the sum total of my intentional (as opposed to reluctantly going in and getting owned by mod-happy 13-year-olds) online multiplayer experience was the six-month window between when I bought GTA5 and when my brother sadly upgraded to a PS4.

So yeah, I finally just passed the point with my siren where I had gotten stuck and two-hit killed a dozen times over with my stupid useless assassin and, lo and behold, it just happened to be the point where the game opens like a flower and throws out like a dozen different side missions all at once. Turns out this shit is super fun (if, at times, still super hard and frustrating) when your wrists and ankles aren't zip-tied together.

Please subscribe to my channel to catch all the up-to-the-minute discussion when I finally get around to playing past the first hour of Arkham Asylum!

just be sure not to accept all the missions at once! this was my big mistake on first playthrough - the missions and rewards are all scaled to your level when you accept, so you wanna just take a couple at a time, otherwise you'll level up past the gear you're getting, things will get way too easy, and then be way too hard again when you hit the next big batch of missions.

that and i didn't know there were "run" and "pick up but don't equip" buttons until like twelve hours in

Oh. Huh. Thanks for the tip, Dr. C. Yeah, in my excitement I ran around like an idiot taking orders from anyone who wanted me to fetch them some shit. Whoops.

don't worry, your game's not ruined! there will be many more of these "flower" moments.

just be sure not to accept all the missions at once! this was my big mistake on first playthrough - the missions and rewards are all scaled to your level when you accept, so you wanna just take a couple at a time, otherwise you'll level up past the gear you're getting, things will get way too easy, and then be way too hard again when you hit the next big batch of missions.

I don't agree? When you finish the story, any side missions you've started are autoscaled to your current level. There's no real downside to having started them already other than avoiding visual clutter in the missions screen, but to me that's better than having to navigate deep into a level just to start a side mission you skipped.

huh maybe i never got it right then, or maybe i wasn't keeping good track of story vs side missions or sth..... i remember posting abt this at the time and it made sense to me then....

"Eli Roth is set to direct a feature take on the 2K game Borderlands for Lionsgate"

sure why not

Something about Borderlands 3 doesn't feel Borderlandsy to me. Slightly different perspectives or higher movement sensitivity or something. It wasn't as easy to just jump back in like all the previous ones.

hmm for me it feels like borderlands greatest hits. not engrossing but a fun place to visit.

Played a bit of this last night and actually enjoyed it a bit?

https://www.pcgamer.com/you-can-now-do-real-science-in-borderlands-3-of-all-places/

it's kinda fun!