Borderlands 2 [PS3/360/PC] review

[Briareos]

Impartant nugget of info from the gearbox forums about playthrough 2 and 2.5:

http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=154087

[Brad]

Impartant nugget of info from the gearbox forums about playthrough 2 and 2.5:


http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/sh...d.php?t=154087

Excellent! A new word. I like to think it can be used in place of the long winded phrase - "I'd like to impart an important"

Handy tip. Not sure I'll do a new game+ on this but if I do then now I know.

[Neon Ignition]

I didn't really bother with New Game+ on the first game. The first playthrough and the 4 DLC's were pretty much enough to reach the level cap and see everything

[BaronSqwelch]

I am flying through this now, am maining SMGs. Have fire, corrosive and electric ones equipped with a load of eridium invested in upgrading the magazine, with the top slot a sniper rifle suited to the level I am in. Everything is dying in seconds

Its quite hard to follow the story of each mission though, everytime the guy pops up on the radio or a you meet a character you are in the middle of a firefight and cant hear it! Though at the moment I am just mopping up side quests and trying to do all the level one challenges so the story I am missing is incidental!

[Golgo]

^ Agreed: the amount of verbal going on when trying to follow mission updates can be confusing (I tend to spend quite a lot of time reading the mission log). This is one case where subtitles are a must, I think. I also recommend adjusting sound balance. I did the

->Open Spoiler<-

'out of body experience' mission and turned the AI into Zed, which means I've now got this robot AI in my shield

, and now that keeps chatting to me all the time as well! Awesome game, luvs it.

[Neon Ignition]

Hoping there's a lot more side missions to come up as a quick glance at an FAQ shows I'm on Mission 8 of 19 in the Story Missions with all available side missions done. If the amount seen so far is maintained until the end this has to be a shorter game than Borderlands 1

[Golgo]

I really like the art style in this but it takes forver for textures to draw in, doesn't it? Takes about 10-15 seconds for everything to resolve when you fast travel to a new destination. Aging Unreal engine tech, I guess. It's even slower to draw in than Rage was on PS3.

[MonkeyJuggleDX]

Hoping there's a lot more side missions to come up as a quick glance at an FAQ shows I'm on Mission 8 of 19 in the Story Missions with all available side missions done. If the amount seen so far is maintained until the end this has to be a shorter game than Borderlands 1

I'm about half way through and I've done a ton of side missions, will let you know how many once my PS3 data transfer is done.

[Golgo]

Just found out you can do a PvP 'duel' in this, initiated by two coop players melee striking each other. Ooh, and I joined a public coop game earlier where one dude had a pixellated Minecraft block-head.

[mugetsu]

there is actually a minecraft area in the game, its in the caustic caverns and in the same area is a totally fantastic nod to dark souls

[eastyy]

finding this game a lot harder died so many times.....against a bad ass constructor its getting a bit frustrating

[Ouenben]

Just beat the game and played a bit of playthrough 1. Found a majority of the game easy/medium difficulty with the occasional difficulty spikes. Loved it the whole way through can't wait to play through in co-op!

GOTY!

[Kaosu]

finding this game a lot harder died so many times.....against a bad ass constructor its getting a bit frustrating

Just wait until you get to True Vault Hunter mode. That's why the real fun kicks in.

Borderlands, you provide so much, but you still can't let me enjoy what you offer because of crappy difficulty scaling.

[JohnMcL7]

I really like the art style in this but it takes forver for textures to draw in, doesn't it? Takes about 10-15 seconds for everything to resolve when you fast travel to a new destination. Aging Unreal engine tech, I guess. It's even slower to draw in than Rage was on PS3.

I can't think of any other Unreal engine game that has such a bad delay on the textures though, in fact I can't think of any games with such a bad texture delay apart from Halo 2. Even on opening chests there's a second or so delay which seems daft given how often the ammo textures is used, admittedly it's an annoyance than a problem and otherwise the game runs very well which isn't always the case with console ports.

I am about 28 hours in and not finished the story on playthrough 1 so it doesn't feel like the game is going to be shorter than the first. I don't find the game harder than the first but I do find it more random, there's been quite a few times where I've been fighting enemies with ease and then out of the blue I've taken a hit which has removed almost all my shields and health promptly followed by my death by a stray bullet. Some of the respawning is a bit quick for my liking as well, I finished one mission where I had worked through the section and died quite a few times to a boss that had a rather unfair explosive weapon which pretty much took me out in one shot from anywhere in the room. I went back to do two side missions and wasn't surprised to see the enemies back but no ammo had respawned and the boss that had nailed me a few times suddenly appeared as well. I cleared it out and was working my way back when the section ahead had been repopulated again (still no ammo) so I turned round to the empty space behind me to find all the enemies had just respawned there as well including the same boss so I was immediately killed when I retreated.

Overall though I'm absolutely love the game as they've done a fantastic job taking what made the original so far and just making it better in as many ways as possible. In the first game the variety of weapons was tremendous but they all looked much the same and you could generally go through the game with a handful of guns, however in the second game the design and animations of the guns can vary substantially and now they're not tied to any character class you can use a much wider variety of guns. The only annoyance with this is that the backpack feels very limited even when fully upgraded, in Borderlands I pretty much stuck with just three guns throughout most of the game (a superfast SMG, a superfast assault rifle and a slower, ranged assault rifle) but now I find myself switching between quite a few different weapons depending on what I'm shooting and what ammo I have, elemental effects seem to have a much more pronounced effect.

I find combat more rewarding as well, the variety of guns and enemies means choosing the right weapon and using it correctly can let you slaughter enemies very quickly. It's extremely rewarding when you can quickly take down what you thought was a very tough enemy but just needed to know what weapon they were most vulnerable to and which spot to hit them in.

John

[JohnMcL7]

I have a question on progression as I'm not sure if the game has gone wrong or I'm doing something incorrectly:

->Open Spoiler<-

I have just killed Bloodwing who went through the floor and the objective is showing as underneath me. I assumed there was a chamber underneath but I can't seem to get to it, the lift only goes up and no other doors seem to lead there? The section that opened to release Bloodwing is closed, if it's meant to be there how do you get down?