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

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