Be Excellent To Each Other

Are they going to wait for the next DLC to increase the level cap? That would appear to make the most sense at this stage.

I'm hoping that for Borderlands 3 they put in a proper end game, rather than just a handful of 'Invincible' bosses.

I was blasting away through the main campaign at Level 50 last night, of course the good thing about being at the level cap is you don't outgrow your best weapons, so as I'm getting good drops more and more of my arsenal is L48-L50 blues, purples and oranges.

£14.99 on Steam for the next three days.

If you are yet to play BL2 and you have any sort of half-decent PC, you really should get this.

I'd put it in my Top Ten Games Ever list, no doubt.

Finished TVHM last night.

The Handsome Jack fight is quite a bit harder in TVHM, (loads of adds and he has a few extra tricks up his sleeve too), had about four second winds but killed him on the first attempt, helped by the fact I had 150 stacks of Anarchy when I got there.

I'd also done a three-tree hyrbrid build by then to take advantage of a really nice L50 purple mod, which had a total 11 free talent points in it across all three trees. Due to the freebies it was a very 'Deathtrap focused' build, giving him mega-damage, extra health and a very quick cooldown (both my relic and mod were reducing his cooldown time). It did however mean that when he was on cooldown I was pretty much reduced to just running away and hiding somewhere.

The Warrior fight was a different kettle of fish, I had a couple of goes at doing it properly but without any meaningful Anarchy stacks my damage was woeful and I died three times on the trot.

As such I killed him the cheaty way, pinging him from outside the arena with a variety of weapons. He dropped a load of shit unfortunately.

All that's left now is mopping up all the quests I left behind, and then waiting for the level cap increase to do Hammerlock.

SHIFT codes up on the Gearbox Twitter feed for five (count 'em!) Golden Keys - active this weekend only.

Opening the super golden chest at Level 50 will be exciting!

I am not going to use the infinite golden keys glitch 'cause it'd just break the game for me.

Under a tenner for the PC steam version via GMG

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/es/en/p ... erlands-2/

listed at £11.99 , use the code GMG20-P4DLK-FKYRS to knock it down to £9.60

Pretty regular golden key codes on the Gearbox Twitter feed at the moment.

It's nice to see that Twitter is useful for something after all.

Also note that in a recent update, the loot quality out of the Torgue vending machines was much improved. (The ones you need Torgue Tokens to buy stuff from.)

Previously it was a load of L48/49 blues, with a mega-expensive deal of the day L50 purple.

Now all the standard gear is L50 purples, with an L50 orange as the deal of the day.

If you've got a load of unspent Torgue tokens (and I did), deffo worth popping down to Moxxi's bar in the Crater of Badassitutde to check the machine out.

As for the game itself, I'm popping on most nights to knock off a few quests from my quest log in TVHM, but in the main I'm waiting for the level cap increase now so I can get the Hammerlock DLC properly underway.

I like this game. IIRC I'm at level 5 because although I pre ordered it eons ago both me and my gaming partner Ryan found love at the same time and have pretty much managed to rack up the same level of life events each

Where I live now is very remote so when the phoneline died it took nearly a month to fix.

Then Ryan has no internet so it's pretty wank atm. Should be sorted soon then I can give it the attention it deserves.

Is that shit off the front page yet? No? Oh fuck it, I quit. Hang on, no one cares? Well, fuck ya I'm staying. How'd you like them apples?

Splendid news!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... unter-mode

Will be nice to dust this game off and get the Hammerlock DLC done. I already have the fourth DLC pack through the season pass so that's something to look forward to, not sure I'll be dropping any more money on another playable class though.

Level cap increase now live. You can now level to 61 and there's a new higher tier of weapon rarity too.

Free if you've got the Season Pass otherwise you have to pay for it (!).

I'm reinstalling the game now on Steam, hopefully its cloud save is as 100% comprehensive as BF3's is.

Latest (and final I think?) DLC now live, reviewed above-averagely at Eurogamer but also by someone who appears not to have played and/or like the game very much.

AND IT'S ALL ABOUT TINY TINA!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... eep-review

'Free' if you've got the Season Pass, will cost some money otherwise.

I have to say the sheer joy of the game was starting to wane a little bit for me towards the end of the Hammerlock DLC, but then again that was by far the weakest of the three DLC packs at that time - a DLC focused entirely on Tiny Tina can only be awesome.

Need to finish the Dishonored DLC first though.

The Tiny Tina DLC is awesomely good fun, ignore the 7/10 review at Eurogamer I linked above, 'cause they called it wrong.

A wonderful last hurrah for the game. (Although I do believe there's more DLC to come, except it will cost more money 'cause it's outside the four bits of DLC the Season Pass bought.)

I also snapped up the 'Psycho' character class in the Steam eight hour quicky sale yesterday, can't go too far wrong for £2.71

Not even sure I'll play the game through again but apparently he's very well written so I'll definitely take a look.

Old Man Afterthought has this and loves it to bits, right now.

There's very little not to like about the game as a whole IMO, it's weird that two of my favourite games ever (BL2 and Dishonored) have been released so close together, after years of finding the whole FPS/RPG-esque genre pretty damn lacklustre. (I know some people wet themselves over Skyrim and Fallout 3, but I thought they were a bit rubbish.) DXHR was brilliant but I wasn't motivated to play it through again, which I have done with both BL2 and Dishonored.

I'm moving through the Tiny Tina DLC at the moment, which is hugely entertaining, although it does completely break the fourth wall so you have to be prepared to accept that.

Tiny Tina's reaction to seeing a salad for the first time (apparently she has eaten nothing but crumpets for thirteen years) - 'WHAT IS THAT? IT LOOKS LIKE THE DEVIL!'

Tiny Tina DLC finish! Hugely entertaining from start to finish but TBH I think you really need to have played WoW or at least similar MMOs to get some of the humour, it's not so much a pisstake of WoW as a homage I think.

So that's the main campaign finished in Normal Mode, in True Vault Hunter Mode, and all the four DLCs completed as well (mostly in TVHM but one was in Normal IIRC).

I purchased the Psycho class in the Steam Sale for about £1.74p (something like that) on the 50/50 chance I'd feel like playing through the game again, but on balance, probably not. Or at least not at the moment.

There is still Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode but I spent a couple of hours on that and it's just a bit too bullet-spongey and hard work for me to think there's really any fun to be had there, and similarly playing through the game again as a different class, be it the purchased Psycho DLC or anything else, would cross the line from fun into chore.

The stats don't lie though, got just shy of 160 hours out of the game which for a total cost of £40 is pretty damn good value. (Got the game in the Steam Sale for £15, £17 for the Season Pass IIRC and then £8 for the Mechro class plus under £2 for the Psycho.)

Absolutely without a doubt a top five contender for this generation (i.e. games I've played from 2006 onwards), and probably in my Top Ten Games Ever, come to think about it.

Do PCs have a generation as such? I guess it's sort of determined by the consoles.

There's definitely been a PC 'generation curve' for the 360/PS3 era. When the 360 launched a lot of their games were a step-up in technical terms from what was available on the PC, the likes of Ridge Racer 6 for example, running at a solid 720p@60FPS with fantastic graphics, there was nothing like that on the PC at the time - and I was all over that motherfucker like a cheap suit.

Even GTA4 when it was released was infinitely better on the 360 (despite being terribly shonky if you looked at it objectively), simply because the PC to run it equivalently, let alone better, simply didn't exist at the time.

Plus of course the 360 came with XBL, XBLA, friends and cheevos and all the rest of it. Yeah Steam was around in 2006 of course, but it was nothing like as good as it is now, so the 360 was a bit of a revelation there too.

For me it's all turned around in the last three or four years and I'm back on the PC, but I'm intrigued to see what the next generation of consoles will bring.

Well, the PS4 specifically, the XBoner can fuck right off.

I've never played Borderlands.

... but I've played Borderlands 2! Cor, it's funny init? The talk that comes out peoples face's is reet good. Me likey a lot.

And it's pretty! I might spend some quality time with this for a bit.






The backpack is fucking terrible though. Fucks sake.

This is ace despite being very much like ID's utterly miserable RAGE. It's fab and if you've not played it, PS Plusers, then you must play it, PS Plusers, cause it's free, PS Plusers, to PS Plusers! Yay PS Plus!

What class are you playing? The mechromancer is insanely good fun, and she has some of the best sassy lines too.

I'm a Gunzerker. I didn't realise that my character did talk until about three hours when I realised that grunting was me.

It's got a bit boring now I'm running missions for the revolution and Claptrap isn't about. He's been replaced with a host of tired army characters. Shame cause I was really enjoying it, but at least there are some moments which are still funny dotted about between gunning down endless waves of tanks and tanks with shields.

Is it worth playing single player? AE's chat about the game always made it sound really excellent, but I think people had said before that it's designed to be played multi-player and isn't worth playing offline SP.

I played it through single player and had lots of fun with it. I think it's a much better single player game than its predecessor was.

My experience of BL1 tallies fairly well with Saturnmans. But it was at least countered by co-op banter.

I may give BL2 a go tomorrow. (If anyone cares to join...)

It's a better as a single player game, lots better. Hang on I banged on about it earlier in this thread....

viewtopic.php?p=728965#p728965

viewtopic.php?p=730201#p730201

I'd rank it as one my Top Ten Games Ever, play it all pimped out (the PhysX stuff is gorgeous, runs better on an Nvidia GPU), crank up the volume, and when you're in the zone with it - by christ it's amazing.

viewtopic.php?p=735432#p735432



Do all the side quests, listen to all the dialogue, try out all the guns, enjoy the humour (this is a FUNNY game), don't just charge straight through the main campaign story missions. There's a lot of good advice earlier in this very thread if you're having trouble and/or getting a bit frustrated.

Personally I'd drop a few quid on the mechromancer class as she's awesome and the anarchy mechanic is fantastic.

what will you be playing it on?

Sorry, should've said. ps3 - free for PSN subscribers.

Each to their own of course but I would honestly advise against playing this game in co-op.

You'll miss dialogue, you'll miss story development, you'll miss quest triggers, you'll miss loot, you'll miss out on a lot of the satisfaction of the gunplay as the game just spawns more enemies and makes them irritating bullet sponges, you'll miss out on strategy because you won't be controlling the enemies and the pulls as you want to - and so on.

In essence it starts to turn into a bit of an uncoordinated mess.

On the other hand I thoroughly enjoyed co op and wouldn't have played the game for nearly as long without it. Don't have a ps3 though

Mmm, feels just like BL1, but single player. Meh.

I'm cracking along but now the city has taken off I've got a bit bored of it.

I knew it'd irritated me when I was forced to run across two maps I've visited before to do a task that involved fighting my way through what can only be described as a shit-load of baddies that I'd battled slowly through about an hour before and who had all mysteriously respawned.

The tasks are well written but executed in typical pooter game fashion which is a shame. For example, you kill some guy who leaves a hilarious note about "if you're reading this message you've just killed me" it directs you, no that was a good one, ok, Tina's tea party: consists of go three places and get three things and bring them back to her, then luring a baddie back, then suffer about 8 waves of enemies. It's funny, twisted, and yet it's only a tedious collectathon and tedious horde-mode. Ah well...

Best quest: 'Shoot this guy in the face'

If you're not getting any joy out of Tiny Tina's chunk of the game then you're probably best off leaving it alone TBH.

I'm not even sure what your complaint is, given that this is an FPS RPG loot-em-up style game which you seem to be saying yourself delivers that formula perfectly well?

It's not a format that's for everyone which is fine, but you almost seem to be criticising it for making a really good job of what it set out to do in the first place?

I'd have joined you, but I was bowling tonight.

Maybe some time in the week, then?

You have my number - let me know when you're around.

Stumbled across this - ace.

It obviously wants me to do the side quests buried can't be arsed. Now I'm nearing the end fighting level 24 robots when I'm only level 21and they've all become bullet sponges which, strangely, has made it even better as I struggle to cope with massively overwhelming odds. Fucked em up though.

The AI who wants you

That psychotic AI is fantastic, even trying to kill Moxxi's patrons with its horrible singing

I can really see myself reinstalling this and playing through the whole thing again as the Psycho class, which I purchased when it was super-cheap in a Steam sale but had pretty much maxed out on the game at that point so didn't make a start.

There's just so much about the game that's ridiculously awesome.

Reinstalled and started all over again as the Psycho class, who's as gloriously good fun as you'd expect him to be, despite being a melee character shoehorned into a gunplay game.

Great (if rather strange) dialogue from him as well.

I'm hard pushed to remember a game I've ever bummed as much as Borderlands 2.

So that Borderlands 2, aye?

I'd say it's good. Very good in fact. Superbly written in the main, lovely lovely graphics in the main, nice shooty pow pow in the main and, er, other stuff.

But y'know what surprised me most about? That it's most like everyone's favourite game of the last generation: Dark Souls.

The following reason explain:
1) It's actually quite difficult. Especially at the start when you find yourself overwhelmed and under powered, then again near the end when you're tooled up but the baddies are badder. It's reet challenging in parts.
2) Under the hood. There are stats. Loads of em. But you need not go poking around too much if you can't be arsed with that shit but it'll draw you in eventually as you go checking weapons stats against one another looking for the right kit. Dragon Sword or Pulzerizing Shotty.
3) It's about the weapons. Take your pick: short range, mid range, snipers, rockets etc. It's about the joy of experimentation and finding what's right for you. Oh course you'll be a tank because that's the Dark Souls way.
4) It's massive. Huge different-ish worlds that require trekking across. And trek you will. Lots.
5) Baddies aren't so bad. It understands that you could fight baddies all day, and you will, but if you are too under powered or just can't be arsed - do a Dark Souls: peg it past them.
6) The bonfires are just the respawn machines. Fortunately there's more of them than bonfires.

But that's where the similarities end, I think. Going back:

1) It's hard but boring in spots. Wash and repeat areas of baddies are an all too familiar occurrence as you churn through identical enemies.
2) Statistically speaking, your characters stats are siphoned down to a long bar at the bottom of the screen. Levelling up is just process of blasting hundreds upon hundreds of baddies and make for a dry experience.
3) The weapons are ace but they tend to only just be out of reach of your character's level. I never, for example, found a level 50 golden sniper rifle whilst I was level 28. I did find, however, shitloads of level 30 weapons. Same with the baddies too - as a level 10 I might stumble across a load of level 11's or 12's but no one ever out of my league. The world changed with me levelling up whereas Dark Souls' world is constant and unflinching. If you go back to an old area everyone has levelled up. It just seems a bit cheap.
4) The world is quite bland actually. And the loading times are an irritant where Dark Souls world pours out in front of you (sometimes to its detriment).
5) Pegging it is a valid Dark Souls tactic. In Borderlands I did it cause I was sick of the same old enemies or the constant barrage of baddies I'd killed before in the same area. Waves and waves and wars of them.
6) I thought I might die from a lack of funds. But you never will. Ever.

So there you go. Like Dark Souls but not Dark Souls. It's still ace though and I might even go back and do some missions I'd missed. If I can be bothered. Which I might, so it did something right.

NEXT WEEK: I compare Dark Souls to Half Life 2. And living with a family of chipmunks.

The game is never a pushover IMO. Once in a while you'll get the 'perfect' weapon which will temporarily shift the odds in your favour (an orange drop tends to have that effect), but of course you'll soon level away from it. Pretty much from start to finish if you drop your guard or get a bit overly bold, the game will hand you your arse on a plate - even more so in True Vault Hunter Mode.

I like this about it, as it's always a challenge.



Yeah you can generally just go off the colour of the arrows, and more than anything the way a gun handles is more important than the raw stats. Some look better on paper but are fucking awful to actually use. It's always worth doing a few test kills with a new gun before discarding an old one in its favour.

I'm currently playing through as the Psycho class and when you spend a few seconds on the stats screen he comes out with comments like:

(Uh-oh. Math. Hope we don't pop a blood vessel.)
Uhh... the choices are pretzeling my inner lobes!
See the numbers, taste the violence....
But who makes the prettiest noise?



It's never a bad idea to have one viable weapon in every class about your person I've found, with the elemental effects suited to the types of enemy in the zone. It also depends on which character class you're playing, the mechromancer played as anarchy for example, can get massive mileage out of shotguns up close and dirty once the anarchy stacks get going, whereas a different class might prefer mid to long range engagement with sniper and assault rifles.



Yep, but with no fall damage and generous fast travel locations along with plentiful vehicles, (plus there are shortcuts through lots of the zones), it pretty much always stays on the right side of acceptable.



Always a fair tactic (worked very well in WoW too if you didn't feel like fighting), IMO it's not accidental that the game gives you the option to basically just run straight through an area if that's what you want to do.



There is an element of that but I'd argue (as per you noted above) that generally speaking you can run/drive through an area if you don't fancy taking them on. I think BL2 is a 'mood' game, if you're not in the mood for it (and sometimes I'm not) it's a case of play something else for a bit.

On more than one occasion I've loaded the game up, got to an area and realised I've got a lot of shooting to do to get to where I want to be, found myself not in the mood, quit out and played Pinball Arcade instead. Then the next evening I'll load BL2 up at exactly the same juncture but totally be ready to get slaughtering.



That comes with the genre IMO, not sure how else they could do it? You do get quite a lot of XP from completing quests, and there are loads of side quests, so it's not all about shooting to level up. In fact you can tip the game either way at your own choosing, max out the quests if you want less of the shooty grinding for XP, or more ruthlessly follow the main storyline if you want more shooty shooty to level up.



If the drops are routinely above your character's level then that suggests you're punching a bit above your weight on the zone that you're in, but yes it will happen fairly regularly anyway. It's very much a standard of the genre TBH, just stick the item in your backpack or safe back in Sanctuary until you can use it.

Most MMOs don't level up areas you've done before as you level up, BL2 follows that convention.



Bland? Which game were you playing?

Loading times are usually 4-5 seconds on PC so that will be a limitation of the platform you're playing on. I did watch a few videos on YouTube for boss tactics and secret areas and suchlike where the person was playing on 360 and I have to say I was like, 'Fucking hell, that's some bastard loading time'.

Once you've got used to an SSD there really is no going back to traditional storage (either spooling from disc or loading from hard drive).



Well that's the whole point I think, the game generally gives you the choice of what you want to do.



The cash system is pretty sneaky, since the cost of everything just scales to how much you have. In short, just spend money any time you see an item you want, and don't worry about dying, because the cost of everything will drop back down as your cash reserves do. I'm not entirely sure why money is even in the game for the most part TBH. It's quite telling that the most important stuff is bought with eridium.



Definitely have a go with a different class, I'm well into my Psycho playthrough now and he's awesome, but getting your head around the fact that his special ability is melee and that melee is always a viable option anyway takes some getting used to, especially if your previous characters were commando and mechromancer as mine were.

I'm effectively on my third playthrough now (normal and TVHM as mechro) and now again as Psycho, and it's still a barrel load of fun.

Just building upon the Dark Souls comparisons for some reason...





Check out how Dark Souls lets you allocate your stats to attributes. They could have let you pile XP to level up skills with a shotty/sniper/assault rifles whatever. It might have made levelling up a bit more fun juggling stats, perhaps?





Again, see Dark Souls, where you might stumble across some kick ass Dragon Axe requiring you to be level 50 in POWAH, but you can't use it. I kept hold of it and completed that game twice so I could pump my XP/Souls into POWAH so I could handle that beast. It's just an incentive to keep you playing whereas, tellingly, I haven't turned on BL2 since I've completed it. I might have, had I come across something awesome that I couldn't use. Maybe?



Dark Souls doesn't have any levelling up of areas. Everything is and shall ever be as it starts (well, until New Game+ that does notch up the difficulty a bit). Same as Xenoblade Chronicles as well. You might stumble across some real badass early on that you've got little chance of beating so you make a mental note and will come back later. Again, it's all about incentivising the player to keep playing and excellent design. BL2's levelling up enemies cheapens return visits to areas (or even just turning on the game) in my eyes.





It's pretty but pretty bland. The difference between icy world, desert world, grassy world and, um, purple world are ... different coloured floors. White, brown, green and, um, purple.

The most interesting and best area, that was totally unlike any of the others, was the acid pit place below Sanctuary. It's a shame there wasn't more of that sort of thing.

Free weekend for this on Steam, and thereafter £4.99 if you want to buy it or £8.74 for the GOTY edition. (Includes all the expansions and the extra classes.)

Even if you've played a console version through to completion it might be worth a look if you've moved to a decent PC since playing it through on the 360, (or have had one all along), as you can turn the extra pretties and PhysX stuff on (and play with keyboard + mouse if you prefer, or stick to a pad if you don't).

The Mechromancer class alone gives the game a whole different vibe IMO.

This remains one of my absolute favourite videogames ever, of all time, needless to say I'm very much looking forward to the pre-sequel....

Movie time!



https://variety.com/2015/film/news/bord ... 201580303/

Wow, I wonder how bad it will be, on a scale of sub-par to monstrously horrible?

Old post but yeah, I must say I agree. My lady and I played about 60% through BL2 before she realised she really liked it. So we decided to stop, and go back to Borderlands. We're around 90% through that with the vault coming up soon, then we're going to switch back to BL2 and finish that.

However the Pre Sequel was fucking awful. I bought it at launch and attempted to play it with a mate of mine (we completed BL and BL2 together) and god, what a dire game. Such a shame really.

Having snagged the BORDERLANDS 2 PRE-SEQUEL PLUS SEASON PASS in the recent Steam sale I'm pleased to report it's very good.

I think it's easy to get a bit down on the whole 'not as good as BL2' thing (which is true), but that doesn't stop it being a great game in its own right.

Also the Pre-Sequel Season Pass is proper crap compared to the wealth of extra content that BL2 got, but again, that doesn't make this Season Pass horrible by default. (Although I'd have been narked if I'd paid full price, as there's only one DLC, one arena thingy, and two extra character classes.)

I got a little way in playing as the Jack's body double class (which was one of the DLC classes), but wasn't really feeling much love for it despite it having clear over-powered tendencies, so I started again as Lady Hammerlock (the other DLC class) and she's great, effectively a sniper class really, and I absolutely love sniping in Borderlands.

So yeah, good game and should be around on all formats for fairly cheap now - if you liked BL2, you'll like this.

I've still got B1 and B2 plus all the related DLC sitting to play, fuck knows when I'll get round to those.