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

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