Borderlands

[Relee]

Borderlands is fantastic. My name on there is ReleeSquirrel. My name on Steam is ReleeSquirrel and my game-name is Starbreeze on Steam.

I'll say more later or you guys can, I just wanted to share my info while I was thinking of it. In the interim here's a link to a review I wrote.

http://relee.livejournal.com/667670.html

[Ashes]

Your review is very accurate!

Borderlands is a very fun game. I especially like pushing my luck with higher level encounters. If you die you respawn again nearby, slightly inconvenienced. If you win, or nearly win, the rush and excitement are incredible.

The other day a friend and I, at level 13, took on a pack of scags with TWO 15th LEVEL BAD ASS FIRE SCAGS. I just barely survived, in part thanks to leveling up halfway through the fight. But it was such an incredible rush to claw my way up from death by killing one of the BA fire scags and getting second wind. And then my friend rushed over from the respawn point and helped kill the other BA fire scag.

Level disparity sucks immensely. I wish the game would level up lowbies when you play with them. It's not like it would "cheapen the experience" of people who "earned" their level. The lowbie still wouldn't have the skill points or higher level weapons. They'd just have a chance of actually damaging the enemies you face together.

So far I've only played Lillith. I don't actually own my own 360, or a computer capable of running Borderlands. So I play at Friend's house. He made a new character, a Soldier, because otherwise the level disparity would have been too much (his other character is level 30-something).

Planet Pandora instantly reminded me of Trigun. It's definitely space western, but kind of a punkish down-and-dirty western. If Fallout is stuck in the 50's, Borderland is stuck in the 70's.

[Sinosaur]

The ultimate excitement of Borderlands is when you are able to get a group of four friends together (not just four random people). And it's not normally expected for a lower level character to enter a higher level campaign, every time I have played with lower level characters, I enter their game so that they can actually get their quests done. Sure I'm not gaining much experience, but I am having a good time with my friends and causing things to die wonderfully.

Of the three classes I have played (Hunter, Siren, Berserker), my favorites are definitely the Siren and the Berserker. The Siren's skill is very useful for escaping trouble, and while I hold little interest with her bottom tier talents, she has a number of good ones through out. The Berserker, on the other hand, has been a joy to play simply because I have absolutely no concerns over ammo and I am able to punch people so hard that they are just a torso or a pair of legs. I attempted the Hunter as a sniper, I hate it just as much as trying to snipe in any other game, but now it has the added weakness of your shot not necessarily lining with the point you're aiming at.

Weak points include the fact that there's nothing to prevent one person from being a jerk and collecting every item that drops aside from inventory limitations and the method for driving the vehicle being really terrible.

[Relee]

I actually really like the vehicle driving controls, once I got used to them they were extremely fluid, compared to the controls of driving cars on, by comparrison, Saints Row 2. Of course, I'm talking about the PC versions of both games.

Due to a bug, a friend of mine has over 150 inventory slots, so he can grab every thing that drops without limitation. Apparently it's easy to hack your locally stored character files and edit that directly, as well. It's a very hackable game.

I use Sniper Rifles, Rocket Launchers, Shotguns and Assault Rifles, in that order. I've only just started using the Assault Rifles since the latest area, which has a LOT of Rakks and Spiderants. I find it a lot easier to snipe in this game than some others, due to the enemies moving slowly and trying to hide in cover. It can be difficult to snipe alien monsters since they don't always expose their weak points. Skags do pretty often, but Spiderants are difficult. If you were fighting one Spiderant you could wait for it to roll or jump at you, and sidestep before shooting it in the butt, but usually you're fighting a dozen Spiderants who come at you from all angles. ^.^;;

[Sinosaur]

I play on the 360, and the driving controls require you to fiddle around with two different sticks, one to move back and forth and one to turn anywhere. Most games like this just use one stick and then you can look around a bit with the other stick. It's awkward, at least to those who have played other FPSes with vehicles.

Another plus of playing on the 360 is that I am far less likely to run into someone who has hacked the game, although there are certainly ways to abuse some bugs, but those are usually beneficial to everyone involved. For example: if you exit the game to the 360's dashboard after dropping weapons (and you aren't hosting), then it doesn't save that you dropped the weapons and whoever else is with you can pick them up and suddenly there are two of that weapon.

I enjoyed sniper rifles for a short while, but if I try for a headshot further out, that imperfect accuracy is going to make it so the bullet doesn't go where I aim. Now I'm quite fond of the shotgun, especially since I keep getting powerful ones. At close range, you can kill almost any basic enemy with a shot or two on a good one, especially if you manage to catch their head or other crit spot.

Spiderants are absolutely laughable to a berserking berserker, you can rush into the fray, laughing maniacally and start punching. The punches to the face do little, but seem to have a tendency to make them turn... one good fist to their backside and you've got a nasty bit of mush. I've taken out entire colonies of them with a single berserk. Shotguns work well, too.

I've actually found a good combat rifle better for attempting to snipe than a sniper rifle if it has a nice zoom on it's scope, high accuracy, and a three round burst. Might need boosted crit damage for that to work, though.

[Relee]

The long range inaccuracy is actually pretty realistic, it's not easy to shoot that far, even with a scope. Plus they have a stat that increases accuracy so there's that. I can get headshots at pretty good range, it depends on various factors. Even without headshots the sniper rifles are pretty good. A few bodyshots will take out a machinegunner or a turret that are in cover but not quite.

Berserking makes most stuff easy, though I went for shooting spec with my Brick so my 'serking doesn't last that long. I can clear out most spawns like that, though there was this one Spiderant area, good gravy. There were so many, I ran out of assault rifle bullets, and I used my berserking twice in one fight, because it lasted so long that it recharged during the fight. They just kept spawning, one after another over time. I got an orange rocket launcher from the chest afterwards though. ^.^

It's too bad the driving isn't good on consoles then. I find driving with console gamepads is usually a lot easier, so that's odd. On the PC they use a different driving system that is mouse controlled. Basically, the vehicle goes in the direction you point the camera, and the driver automatically does his thing to make it go that way. He'll turn the wheel, and if you look backwards he might go back or he might do a K turn so he's facing the other way. With some practice you can do some more complicated stuff by holding the mouse properly, and it's actually a lot easier than doing those techniques manually with a gamepad.

[Sinosaur]

If you specialize in berserking, the rapid punch becomes a weapon of doom (at least with the explosive damage addition, some of the other ones just end up leaving DoT instead of instant boost to damage) that takes out your standard enemies quite easily. Berserking also lasts forever, so that if you use it on a small group, you should be able to take them all out quite easily and just stand around shouting like a maniac for awhile. You're also able to bring the cooldown to 30 seconds, and if you get a class mod to lower that further... I think I can do it like every 15-20 seconds.

I don't play a game like Borderlands for realism, and the fact that the bullet seems to randomly decide where to fly makes attempting to hit a long range target (at least for me) an effort in futility, especially if you don't have a good for your level rifle. I had better luck sniping with a scoped revolver for awhile, but accurate, scoped combat rifles still take the cake.

That's more or less how the controls work on the console. You use the right stick to point your camera in a direction and you press forward on the left stick to drive forward in that direction and backward to drive backward. You can get used to it fairly well, but it's in contrast enough to the usual methods that I have on a number of occasions forgotten about the right stick and just rammed into something.

[Relee]

Yeah I can imagine a full-spec berserker being amazing. I love running around with my exploding punches, but the redness that comes into the screen makes it difficult to see properly. XD

I just found out that if you get a class mod and you don't have any points in the skill it increases, you don't get a benefit, and if you have full points in the skill, it increases it past maximum. This is the opposite of how I thought it worked! I was running around with a melee mod 'cause I had my skills in the other trees and figured it would be a waste to them, but it was the opposite! This super-sucks 'cause I just got a new rare purple berserker mod that would be great if it worked, and I don't even know how many blaster or tank mods I've passed up. Gosh.

[Alfador]

What I wish randomization in long-range shooting would do, is randomize where the bullet goes once when you start aiming, and keep it at that distance and direction from the center for a while (either until you zoom out for scoped guns, or after a certain period of time, or even until you make a headshot or something). That way, you'd have the accuracy randomization rolled in to the experience for game balance, but with skill you could bring a weapon to bear on a target once you've fired a few cold shots--just like a real scoped rifle. (Of course, real snipers have adjuster knobs to take wind and distance into account, but that's getting a little too complicated for a game not based entirely around it--as I found out many years ago trying to play Police Quest: SWAT.)

[Sinosaur]

Another issue with the sniper rifles in Borderlands, that I remembered when playing yesterday with a friend, is that you can get a better zoom on a scope for a sidearm than you can get for a sniper rifle. The BEST scope on a rifle I've ever seen is a 2x, and that was something special. I've gotten up to 4.5x on even just a revolver. Not exactly a sniping weapon.

[Relee]

I think the max is 6x for a sniper rifle, but it's rare to find a gun with more than 2x. 4.5x is a special long-distance you can find on the other guns.

[Relee]

I finished the story! The second playthrough is kind of insane but fun. Instead of Badass Monsters they have BadMutha Monsters. I have to shoot SO MANY ROCKETS at them. ^.^;;

The final boss was awesome. Definately a must-see.

The DLC is coming out on November 24 for console players, while PC players get the shaft. They haven't announced when the DLC will be available for PC players.

[Sinosaur]

I would have preferred a 'Congraturations' to the ending you get.

Second playthrough has been relatively simple so far, but I suppose that's because I am still able to beat everything into a bloody pulp with my bare hands. The sudden appearance of Orange grade weapons near the end of the campaign was much appreciated (as it the opportunity to light things on fire and watch them slowly burn to death). I enjoy the fact that you can do the claptrap repair quests again and occasionally get another inventory slot, not that it becomes necessary when you have more money than you can see.

EDIT: Apparently the ending is less bullshit than I thought, my game apparently glitched and I assumed it was the ending because someone had told me that they thought the ending was bullshit. I cannot comment on the ending at this time.