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

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.