Borderlands 2

Rotaretilbo wrote:Buzzard Academy was really tough. My friends and I were kiting around a goliath (we do that a lot) to try and get him to become a Lord Pheonix-liath, and these fucking buzzards just kept spawning.

I'd was there for the main storyline mission and after burning virtually all my ammo I had virtually cleared it out, only a single marauder was left. Then Two Badass Buzzards spawned and completely blew me away. I then respawned and had to clear the entire area again.

Also doesn't help that their range seems to be huge. I was working on the side quest where you mutate those bugs and created corrosive badasses. They were pretty tough and I only just managed to kill them and finish the quest. Then out of nowhere 4 buzzards appear and screw me over, as there was no way to take cover as most of that area is just a wide open plain.

Oh God, please don't remind me of that quest. The three of us had a tough time killing one Badass Mutant Varkid. Then Hammerlock is like "hey, kill four more and collect the remains!" I manage to inject two at once, and we just barely clear it without any deaths. We run into the next area, myself and Steven each inject one pod, and then Reid runs forward and says "Don't worry guys, I got this!" and injects TWO MORE pods. He was an Assassin, so he just threw down his decoy and ran off. Steven and I lost something like $6k apiece from deaths.

Rotaretilbo wrote:Oh God, please don't remind me of that quest. The three of us had a tough time killing one Badass Mutant Varkid. Then Hammerlock is like "hey, kill four more and collect the remains!" I manage to inject two at once, and we just barely clear it without any deaths. We run into the next area, myself and Steven each inject one pod, and then Reid runs forward and says "Don't worry guys, I got this!" and injects TWO MORE pods. He was an Assassin, so he just threw down his decoy and ran off. Steven and I lost something like $6k apiece from deaths.

And I did all that stuff solo. Didn't help for some reason a vanilla badass varkid was hanging around my second mutated one, so I had to fight both of them at once. I have the AI shield, but even then it knocked it out in 1 and a half shots. I had to rely on my turret to wing it as I tried to kill the smaller ones to get a second wind.

I nearly hit a FUCK THIS GAME moment during those quests given how many cheap deaths I suffered during that area. I hope it balances out soon.

I was overleveled for that quest, so I had no problem

Anywho, I'm not really fond of Yatzee's Borderlands 2 review. A fair number of his points assumed that the game was actually trying to be serious and he didn't give it credit for the massive number of improvements it made from the first.

Ah well. Still a great game ^^

He didn't review the first favorably either

Nah, but the first had a lot of problems which were fixed in the second. The first suffered from poor environment and characterization, among many other issues.

yea well his review experiences the Problem with reviewing a Co-op game without 3 other Vitriolic best buds to play it with.

Play Diablo 2 alone you'd be Bored just as much, You need people for the style of Play borderlands emulates.

Yah, Yatzee doesn't take well to games built for multiple people.

I don't think adding people would have helped his opinion of it. Ultimately, Borderlands 2 is a mindless shooty game which is funny. The vehicles handle poorly, which I enjoy because I get to run into shit, the UI is just awful, the plot is iffy, etc. From a game design standpoint, I really don't like the game. However, the writing is really good. Like really really good. Not Portal level, perhaps, but it's quite good at making me chuckle. And that's enough for me to enjoy playing the game.

The plot is iffy, but I can easily forgive it because of its comedy and general lack of seriousness overall.

The vehicles have improved a lot from the original, but they still have plenty of problems. Technicals aren't too bad, though, and the vehicle combat isn't exactly key to the game anyway.

Also, I know the interface isn't great, but I haven't had that much of a problem with it. Even though it could be better, I don't think it's terrible.

Past that, I feel like the gun control, weapon variety, characterization, environment, class system, travel system, quest system, were done very well.

To describe the menu and user interface as anything but vomit-inducing is a crime against humanity. How something that should be so simple can be so convoluted is beyond me. I'm level 25 and a veteran gamer, and that thing still fucks with me sometimes. The trade menu is even worse. I don't know if it's buggy or just really really poorly designed, but it sucks.

I'd also note that I agree with Yahtzee about the quest system. It becomes very difficult to track your quests when you can only display one at a time. I'm trying to do one quest and accidentally complete another without doing the optional objective because I didn't realize that I'd gotten all of the echo recordings already.

The travel system is ok, the environment is decent, the gun control is ok, the class system is ok, and weapon variety like that isn't exactly rocket science these days, but I will agree that the characterization is good. Again, the game is a mindless shooty game that happens to be really funny.

I don't like the quest tracking. Seriously, in Wildlife Preservation I had to switch between quests multiple times to get everything.

Inventory is a mess. It should be organized by element.

Rotaretilbo wrote:To describe the menu and user interface as anything but vomit-inducing is a crime against humanity. How something that should be so simple can be so convoluted is beyond me. I'm level 25 and a veteran gamer, and that thing still fucks with me sometimes. The trade menu is even worse. I don't know if it's buggy or just really really poorly designed, but it sucks.

Maybe it just helps that I play the PC version. The trade screen sucks pretty hard on PC too.

Rotaretilbo wrote:I'd also note that I agree with Yahtzee about the quest system. It becomes very difficult to track your quests when you can only display one at a time. I'm trying to do one quest and accidentally complete another without doing the optional objective because I didn't realize that I'd gotten all of the echo recordings already.

I agree that it's annoying, but it's such a quick fix that I wasn't bothered much.

Rotaretilbo wrote:The travel system is ok, the environment is decent, the gun control is ok, the class system is ok, and weapon variety like that isn't exactly rocket science these days, but I will agree that the characterization is good. Again, the game is a mindless shooty game that happens to be really funny.

The core concept of the game is, imo, very enjoyable and even though Borderlands 2 doesn't have an amazing travel system, environment, class system, etc it made massive improvements from the first game.

It isn't a perfect game, but it's still a great experience - one that was sometimes there in the original, but often covered by problems in all of the elements I mentioned.

Borderlands 1 never had the greatest quest and inventory system either, as it was probably designed more a console game in mind than PC. Borderlands 2 is a slight improvement, with the ability to mark weapons and equipment as favourites/trash, but you have to manually do it yourself which makes it a bit of a chore to do.

I was fine with the quest system until I hit about level 20 and the quest log exploded with around 20 quests all at once. The original game kinda did that as well, so I'm doing exactly what I did last time: Go to the area with the most side quests and do all of them, then move until only trhe story mission is left. A little tedious but it's effective and I get more loot.

In other news I cleared Flint's Slaughterhouse last night. The last 2 rounds get pretty shitty mainly because I ran out of ammunition by then. Thank Lord Pheonix my turret can clean up a few guys for me to get some from the corpses.

Also Fuck Rats.

Rats are ghey.

And so are the bosses. They are either really difficult or really easy. There's no in-between.

Vigil wrote:I was fine with the quest system until I hit about level 20 and the quest log exploded with around 20 quests all at once. The original game kinda did that as well, so I'm doing exactly what I did last time: Go to the area with the most side quests and do all of them, then move until only trhe story mission is left

That's how I play every game.

Oh yeah, and Mechromancer is a brony.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/borderlands-2/Mechromancer_Skill_Tree

I've played around with the Mechromancer up to about level 11 with 2 friends also playing her.

Was a lot of fun. Deathtrap is really useful to keep large crowds occupied while you work on specific enemies.

Anarchy is straight-up OP. I was underleveled when i went to fight Wilhelm...wasn't even a fucking fight. He died in three clips of my Jakob's Pistol. It was ridiculous.

Tons of fun though, and its going to get pretty crazy when enemies output more serious damage--you gotta get really close to hit anything, which means you can get gibbed if you don't play smart.

TNine wrote:Anarchy is straight-up OP. I was underleveled when i went to fight Wilhelm...wasn't even a fucking fight. He died in three clips of my Jakob's Pistol. It was ridiculous.

Tons of fun though, and its going to get pretty crazy when enemies output more serious damage--you gotta get really close to hit anything, which means you can get gibbed if you don't play smart.

I really didn't like the looks of Anarchy. I use like to soften up targets from a distance with a rifle then finish them off with a shotgun or SMG. The debuff in gun accuracy would kill that style pretty quickly.

So, did anybody get the DLC?

I'm also getting ready to face Terramoprhous with a few of my friends when I hit level 50 and use my Golden Key. Anybody else fought him yet got some advice besides the obvious? (Use the Bee and Conference call for massive damage)

I've speced my commando for decent survivability with two shielded rocket turrets.

I killed him....The cheap way.

Both solo and with a friend.

Shit, both DLCs are out and I have neither. I still haven't beaten the main campaign! ARRRGGGG

Nocbl2 wrote:Shit, both DLCs are out and I have neither. I still haven't beaten the main campaign! ARRRGGGG

I only have the Mechromancer DLC. I only finished the game a week ago, and only hit level 50 last night. I probably won't get the DLC for a while.

The dlc is....piratty good. but i need to finish it though.