Borderlands 2 Catch-All

Does anyone know if GMG is still having their sale for Borderlands 2? I'm trying to get my brother to get this, but he doesn't want to pay full price.

Mr E.B. Slugworth wrote:

Does anyone know if GMG is still having their sale for Borderlands 2? I'm trying to get my brother to get this, but he doesn't want to pay full price.

The 25% deal is gone, but it was replaced with a 20% off deal. You can find the code on the bottom of their "Hot Deals" page.

I'm having a lot of fun with this game! I like that there apparently aren't any weapon proficiencies this time around. Last time I played as Mordecai and stuck almost entirely to sniper rifle and shotgun. I like that I'll be able to freely switch around between using assault rifles, SMGs, pistols and shotguns depending on what guns I find.

I also found a level four orange grenade mod which was weird because I haven't even seen any blues or purples yet.

I like Maya's phaselock but it's going to take some learning to figure out the best tactics with it. I miss my hawk I'm planning on going down the thoughtlock tree just because I think the thoughtlock ability sounds cool.

I like that the Claptrap, Handsome Jack, etc. are chattering at you while you do missions. It makes the story missions feel less like "bandit outpost, bandit outpost, bandit outpost, kill some skags, more bandits, fight boss, now more story".

Copingsaw wrote:

I'm really enjoying the game so far but I've just run into the first mission that has me wondering what the designers were thinking: Medical Mystery. I think it is a level 8 mission but it is by far the hardest and most frustrating mission I have encountered.

Spoiler:

Dr. Mercy's gun doesn't hurt so much but every so often he throws these grenades that all but one-shot you. I suffered my first death to Dr. Mercy and then died about four more times before I was able to kill him. Maybe it was just me but I couldn't dodge his grenades and he just killed me over and over with them. Then, when you get the gun and start the next mission to kill the 25 bandits, the gun chews up ammo so fast I don't think its possible to kill all 25 bandits without finding an ammo vendor at least two or three times. Unfortunately, the nearest ammo vendor has no power so you have to go back to sanctuary multiple times just to reload on ammo to kill the bandits with the new weapon. Very unfun.

Spoiler:

After you kill Doc Mercy you have to kill 25 bandits with the new gun. You don't have to kill those particular bandits with it. I just kept the gun in my inventory, and pulled it out when I ran into bandits, which was often.

Got in a solid two hours last night and had allot of fun. As others have noted the game was stingy with guns (Still no sniper). The only thing that bothered me a little was the amount of monster closets. I could be mis-remembering the first game but I thought I could clear out an area without worrying about a enemy spawning behind you. In BL2, it seems if you rush through a town too fast you will be surrounded by enemies that weren't there before. It kinda killed the whole flanking strategy for me.

The other thing that sucks is that I may not be able to play it again until Monday do to a wedding that is a 6 1/2 hour drive away.

Oh man can we get a moment of silence for Adam Najberg of the WSJ. He wrote what is quite possibly the worst video game review in the past....well....long time. If it wasn't such a prominent source it may have slipped under the radar but sadly it is the WSJ and he is being completely lambasted.

It's a funny review in that "so off base it is amusing" sort of way. The journalistic integrity of the piece is...how shall I put it....questionable. I still can't help but feel sorry for the guy. He's becoming infamous overnight.

In regards to the Monster Closets this game is notably more difficult than the first. The biggest issue is respawn. It isn't that there are monster closets everywhere so much as the respawn timer on enemies is such that if you dawdle too much in exploring/looting an area you get caught up in a respawn much like in an MMO. Based on my experience there are set enemies in an area and "reinforcements" that will arrive when you shoot the enemies. These reinforcements don't seem to be on any timer so you could have only one or two enemies respawn on you but when you shoot one they call out the entire posse to come at you again.

Once I started moving through areas at a good pace and stopped being so anal about looting everything I found the enemy camps to be much more manageable. This is just heresay based on my in game experience though so I don't know if I'm talking out of my ass or not.

I hate not being able to decide what character to play.

I've run into a few places now where it seems like the bandit AI doesn't cope well with multiple-leveled areas. Had several towns where a lounging bandit would just sit there and let me walk up to point-blank them in the noggin... or wandered around staring at the platform I had just jumped off of while I attack them from the side... or lose interest in me if I take cover behind a corner for a few seconds.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

Oh man can we get a moment of silence for Adam Najberg of the WSJ. He wrote what is quite possibly the worst video game review in the past....well....long time. If it wasn't such a prominent source it may have slipped under the radar but sadly it is the WSJ and he is being completely lambasted.

It's a funny review in that "so off base it is amusing" sort of way. The journalistic integrity of the piece is...how shall I put it....questionable. I still can't help but feel sorry for the guy. He's becoming infamous overnight.

TheArtOfNotProvidingALink

Copingsaw wrote:

I'm really enjoying the game so far but I've just run into the first mission that has me wondering what the designers were thinking: Medical Mystery. I think it is a level 8 mission but it is by far the hardest and most frustrating mission I have encountered.

Spoiler:

Dr. Mercy's gun doesn't hurt so much but every so often he throws these grenades that all but one-shot you. I suffered my first death to Dr. Mercy and then died about four more times before I was able to kill him. Maybe it was just me but I couldn't dodge his grenades and he just killed me over and over with them. Then, when you get the gun and start the next mission to kill the 25 bandits, the gun chews up ammo so fast I don't think its possible to kill all 25 bandits without finding an ammo vendor at least two or three times. Unfortunately, the nearest ammo vendor has no power so you have to go back to sanctuary multiple times just to reload on ammo to kill the bandits with the new weapon. Very unfun.

The bandits can be killed anywhere to finish that mission.

FSeven wrote:

I hate not being able to decide what character to play first.

That fix made the decision a little less difficult for me.

Respawn machine: Hyperion hopes your death was a learning experience, but wouldn't mind if you made the same mistake a few more times, just to be sure.

I did that on purpose actually because it's that bad. I feel guilty for encouraging clicks because it encourages that Kotaku mentality where they will put obvious bullsh*t articles up to stoke nerd rage interest and drive traffic. I don't think this was intentional as the level of buffoonery would make it too obvious of a troll but once WSJ see the number of hits that review is going to get they may tell him to keep butchering game reviews in the future.

But you're right...if I'm going to mention it I should have posted a link.

LtWarhound wrote:

Respawn machine: Hyperion hopes your death was a learning experience, but wouldn't mind if you made the same mistake a few more times, just to be sure.

Some of the dialog reminds me of Portal 2. Mostly the fact that you're constantly being taunted by snarky people trying to kill you, and when Claptrap is following you around it's like a more-violent Wheatley.

Shorter Adam Najberg: Why isn't this Call of Duty?!

TheArtOfScience wrote:

I did that on purpose actually because it's that bad. I feel guilty for encouraging clicks because it encourages that Kotaku mentality where they will put obvious bullsh*t articles up to stoke nerd rage interest and drive traffic. I don't think this was intentional as the level of buffoonery would make it too obvious of a troll but once WSJ see the number of hits that review is going to get they may tell him to keep butchering game reviews in the future.

But you're right...if I'm going to mention it I should have posted a link. :P

no worries, just bustin' chops

Rezzy wrote:
FSeven wrote:

I hate not being able to decide what character to play first.

That fix made the decision a little less difficult for me.

My issue is playtime. I really only have the time to play one character through the game in it's entirety, once.

FSeven wrote:
Rezzy wrote:
FSeven wrote:

I hate not being able to decide what character to play first.

That fix made the decision a little less difficult for me.

My issue is playtime. I really only have the time to play one character through the game in it's entirety, once.

I'm in the same boat. I think I'm going to play every class to 10 and see which one speaks to me the most. I played soldier in the first so Axton is a likely choice but I kind of want to switch it up this time. The Mechnomancer looks kind of cool too and that will probably be released soonish so that further muddies the waters.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

Oh man can we get a moment of silence for Adam Najberg of the WSJ. He wrote what is quite possibly the worst video game review in the past....well....long time. If it wasn't such a prominent source it may have slipped under the radar but sadly it is the WSJ and he is being completely lambasted.

It's a funny review in that "so off base it is amusing" sort of way. The journalistic integrity of the piece is...how shall I put it....questionable. I still can't help but feel sorry for the guy. He's becoming infamous overnight.

He's right. Sort of. Except, you can tell he just doesn't get the game. Comparing it to FPS games like CoD, eh, well. Yes, there is shooting, and you do it from the first person perspective most of the time, that is true. Just... Ya.

WSJ reviewer wrote:

The game isn’t manga-like enough to be super-hip, so instead, it just feels cartoonish.

*facepalm*

FSeven wrote:
Rezzy wrote:
FSeven wrote:

I hate not being able to decide what character to play first.

That fix made the decision a little less difficult for me.

My issue is playtime. I really only have the time to play one character through the game in it's entirety, once.

I hear ya. It makes it less difficult, not easy. I used the same reasoning with Skyrim and still haven't gone back to play as a full magic user. But it's there... on my queue. Someday. And hell, Torchlight 2 comes out tomorrow.
EDIT: TOO MANY GAMES WITH MULTIPLE CLASSES! /First-World-Problems

My favorite WSJ quote is:

"Borderlands 2 falls short because it's missing several key elements you need to have in a 2012 first-person shooter game - most notably, a rich multiplayer online mode."

*looks at game after game of co-op sessions on his friends list*

Yeah.

I love that Gearbox put in controller support for the game launcher. Bravo!

LtWarhound wrote:
TheArtOfScience wrote:

Oh man can we get a moment of silence for Adam Najberg of the WSJ. He wrote what is quite possibly the worst video game review in the past....well....long time. If it wasn't such a prominent source it may have slipped under the radar but sadly it is the WSJ and he is being completely lambasted.

It's a funny review in that "so off base it is amusing" sort of way. The journalistic integrity of the piece is...how shall I put it....questionable. I still can't help but feel sorry for the guy. He's becoming infamous overnight.

He's right. Sort of. Except, you can tell he just doesn't get the game. Comparing it to FPS games like CoD, eh, well. Yes, there is shooting, and you do it from the first person perspective most of the time, that is true. Just... Ya.

WSJ reviewer wrote:

The game isn’t manga-like enough to be super-hip, so instead, it just feels cartoonish.

*facepalm*

Thank you for picking out the perfect quote and encouraging me to not read it. Yikes.

Does anybody know if Gearbox has said anything about the difficulty people are having joining multiplayer games. It seems to work less than half the time.

I think the game is noticeably harder than the first. The AI does get stuck on some strange things like gates or doors. (It has happened more than a few times where a cluster of enemies try to run through an opening only to stop on a point and run in random directions going nowhere. You can just walk up point blank and shoot them) But I will take that for the dodging, ducking and weaving they do. They do not just walk into your bullets at all. (it might be nice if there were a few "dumb" bullet walking into enemies for contrast) This appears to be not solely for AI but I got stuck on a port-a-potty door last night and had to reload.

I can find nothing but pistols and assault rifles with a few shotguns on my Siren. A lot of the repeater pistols look like smgs but they aren't which can be a pain when you run out of ammo and think you can switch to an smg that happens to be a pistol! I found one smg and it was okay. So far I really prefer the assault rifles. The pistols have been nerfed quite a bit to waste a lot more ammo and have pretty horrendous load times for such small clips. In general, the assault rifles have become much easier to kill effectively and conserve ammo. I could have bought a sniper rifle but that is the only one I have seen so far.

Recoil seems to have much more of an effect and takes quite a bit longer to reset. It isn't that bad because their solution was to make scope mode more necessary. It also makes guns with better scopes more valuable. Hopefully badass points will also help that get better soon. Right now I am focusing on lessening reload time.

The inventory is still small and cluttered. I hope they include a way to increase it like in the first.

The story seems very solid and quite humorous across the board.

The phaselock ability is cool. The healing ability for killing an enemy that is phaselocked has been very useful as I have not found any healing shields yet =( Thankfully abilities have a much shorter cool down it seems.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Does anybody know if Gearbox has said anything about the difficulty people are having joining multiplayer games. It seems to work less than half the time.

They haven't released what firewall ports they use yet. I used the normal steam game ports and evilseed couldn't join my game last night. As a work around I put my pc on the DMZ and all was fine.

fangblackbone wrote:

The pistols have been nerfed quite a bit to waste a lot more ammo and have pretty horrendous load times for such small clips.

This seems like an appropriate point to present this PSA:

Rocket launchers reload in approximately 2 days.

Now y'all know.

Zero was a difficult character to play until the hologram came into play. A quite squishy character, but the melee bonus from the cloak is wicked. I lost 3 hours in a blink. I am going to pump as much as I can into building up his max health.

I feel like they have really built this team to be a co-op experience even more than the first. With the faster respawn of enemies and the open spaces, it really makes it more difficult to solo....at least early in the game.

And no, that is not a complaint in any way.

I put in a good four hours yesterday as a commando. I chose him because he seems like a good character to solo. My only problem so far is he seems like kind of a douche. I don't want to give spoilers, but his personal recording thing and his in action comments have been a big turn off. I hope they redeem his character some.

Also, claptrap is a little better in this game but still sucks and is very annoying.

Overall though I really like it. It is more challenging than I expected, but that is good. It keeps all encounters more interesting.

Was able to connect to a random match last night, but was not able to join friend's games or they mine. Tried the verify cache thing and still no luck.

LtWarhound wrote:

Respawn machine: Hyperion hopes your death was a learning experience, but wouldn't mind if you made the same mistake a few more times, just to be sure.

"If you ever meet a person who tells you that life is meaningless without death . . . you should kill that person."