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Game Review: Borderlands 2
Borderlands 2: Electric Gundaloo
If you haven't played the original Borderlands, allow me to quickly catch you up. It was a first-person shooter with role-playing game elements tacked on, and randomly generated loot. What this ended up creating was a shooter with some of the feel of games like Diablo, where there's always that perfect weapon left to find. While the maps were static and not procedurally-generated, the loot wasn't, and combined with the choice of character classes and skill choices made a game that warranted multiple playthroughs. The story began on the distant planet of Pandora, an alien world with a landscape inspired by the Mad Max franchise, full of colorful characters and humorous contacts and enemies. Eventually our heroes found the vault, and its contents proved to be less than all they had dreamed for, and the quest for more experience and more guns continued on.
Borderlands 2 picks up five years after the end of the first game, and we are told via narration that a second vault is allegedly on Pandora and that the Hyperion corporation is looking for it. A man named Handsome Jack was able to steal credit for the finding of the first vault and take over the Hyperion Corporation, and now he's leading the efforts to uncover the second vault. Handsome Jack tries to kill off our new vault hunter protagonists, they somehow miraculously survive, and the stage is set for a whole new game.
The game doesn't stray far from its ancestor, keeping the same gun-hunting formula at work, while also adding new brands of guns, as well as more gun modifiers into the mix. One of the first guns I found had an effect so that when it was reloaded, it was thrown at my target and exploded like a grenade, then warped back into my hands fully loaded. Besides just letting me live out any Police Squad! fantasies I might have had, it was a pretty handy addition. In Borderlands, one of my favorite weapons was a shotgun that shot rockets, and the rockets subsequently lit my targets on fire. All of these combinations and more await vault hunters on Pandora.
Like before, there's four character classes to choose from. They are somewhat analogous to the previous game's classes, with some tweaks. The siren has a different psychic power than in Borderlands, and the gunzerker is less focused on melee combat than the berzerker was. The sniper class has been replaced with the assassin, who instead of using a pet, projects holographic duplicates to act as a distraction. The commando utilizes turrets like the solider from the original game.
The fast-travel ability is unlocked as soon as the player finds a second teleporter, instead of being dangled a few levels in the future like it was before. This makes getting around a little easier from the start. There's also new "customization stations" that contain the customization options from the New-U stations in Borderlands, plus some new options. At the customization station you can choose how to color your character, and swap heads and hats around to make your particular vault hunter unique. Added into the loot drops this time around, are character and vehicle themes that are unlocked in the customization stations when used.
PC Gamers: Claptrap Wants You Back, Baby
One of the most criticized aspects of Borderlands was that the PC version felt like a hastily made port of a console game, because it was. Back in May, Gearbox Software posted a love letter from Claptrap, the game's mascot, detailing how the PC version would be better this time around. While making good on most but not all of their promises (more on that shortly) the PC version this time around does feel like more effort was put into it. Configuration options that were previously only available by editing configuration files by hand or forcing them on via video card drivers are integrated into the game. Multiplayer uses Steam integration rather than GameSpy to find friends to play with. Performance seems to be better optimized for PC as well, with the game feeling more responsive out of the box, even when running on the same graphics card I used for the original game.
However, like any jilted lover writing a please-take-me-back letter, Claptrap is not without empty promises. While promising that no port forwarding would be required, at least at launch, that is not the case. The only folks I know who were able to enjoy multiplayer games either had to forward ports or move their PC into their firewall's DMZ, which is pretty much how Borderlands worked. Multiplayer games are really the best part of the Borderlands formula, planning attacks with your friends and reviving each other when necessary, so it's unfortunate that they're still difficult to make work out of the box.
The inventory UI is still rather clunky to use. While it has definitely gotten a nice face lift from its predecessor, it's still a pain to move guns around, and given the number of guns found and sold during the course of a game, it detracts from a good experience. The quest UI is likewise nearly similar to, and just as frustrating as it was in the original. Granted, both of these issues are related to the game's dependence on the UT3 (Unreal Tournament 3) engine, but more time spent on these interfaces would have been greatly appreciated, since so much time is spent comparing gun stats and swapping guns around.
Conclusions: Is Vault Hunting for You?
If you played the original and enjoyed it in spite of its flaws, then Borderlands 2 is definitely for you. It's also a good jumping-on point in that the events of the first game while occasionally referenced, aren't needed to have been played through. With its clunky menus and multiplayer support, however, what could have been a stellar game is bumped down to merely a good game. So unless Claptrap makes good on his previous promises, players need to enjoy playing alone, or jumping through some firewall configuration hoops to make things work. For me personally, there's still my quest for that perfect gun out there that will keep me playing.
Never could figure out how to save my game in the original. I bought it, tried to play a couple of times, but then whenever I needed to save and quit, I could never figure out how to do it, and wound up back at the beginning of the game every time. I gave up after about three hours of gameplay.
I played multiplayer with UPnP off and no ports forwarded, as did all my friends. Maybe he meant software firewall? When i first launched the game, windows 7 popped the normal firewall access dialog. I clicked allow and it all just worked.
Good-bye
had the shittiest ending ever.
Oh please, at least wait till they start censoring posts before starting this type of bullshit.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Downloaded last night (usenet ftw), played a bit. Graphics are good if you like cell shaded stuff, play seemed the same.
Seems setup on the 4 man team, which if i recall from the first game, it wasn't like that.
Seems decent if you like shooters, and if you like the first one, spend money on it.
I won't be. Not because it's a bad game, but because I spent money on Guild Wars 2 and I'm all tapped out. Plus Everquest 2 is putting out a new expansion this November, so I really have to save money for that, or quit playing EQ2.
anyways, Game is good, buy it if you have money, otherwise, do whatever, I don't care.
as for the article, it was TL;DR
Be seeing you...
I found that while it's practically a copy of Borderlands, there are a lot of small improvements that make a big difference:
- Quests flow together better and are awarded at the time of other quests for the same location, so you don't go to the same map over and over - even though you'd totally just been there - nearly as often.
- A lot more funny dialogue and interesting characters. It feels like the antagonist is always right on your ass, as well.
- More guns, with more variety.
- Smarter enemy AI, not only will they occasionally dodge (but not psychic sniper rifle dodging like in the first game), but in sustained fire they'll try to roll away.
- A lot higher difficulty than the first game, but also a few levels doesn't mean as much. I could kill level 13 guys at level 8, but it was difficult, but was not totally impossible.
- Much more enemy variety.
- Way more variety and useful abilities in skill trees. You can practically customize your skill points to your particular playstyle, much more than in the original.
- Inventory upgrades, bank upgrades, SDUs, all are chooseable by you. If you want to dump all your eridium into having a big backpack and no ammo, that's fine. If you want all ammo, that's fine too.
I didn't find the multiplayer that frustrating, but if you liked Borderlands you will definitely like Borderlands 2. I didn't find the inventory interface that clunky either.
I don't think they really care, either.
What ever gets ported to linux anyway (excepting those lovable indie studios)? Unless Steam can get things going in linux this isn't likely to change soon, at least not until Microsoft can knocked off its high horse.
On a certain video game discussion board, there's been a significant viral marketing campaign by the folks who published Borderlands 2 (much like there was for the first one). I'd take any gushing positive feedback you hear with a grain of salt. This, however, seems like a pretty reasonable review. I'm not sure why it's being reviewed here when Black Mesa hasn't been and Torchlight 2 probably won't be; probably because of all the hype, I suppose.
I'll pass on this one, just because I didn't like the first one. It felt more like 4 player World of Warcraft with guns than Diablo 2 with guns like the author here suggests.
Sierra made adventure games, not RPGs. There were plenty of 1980s and 1990s RPGs with guns in them. Some of the Wizardry games. Centauri Alliance. Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. Wasteland.
playing ME3 now after finishing 1 and 2. saw the trailer and it looks like the same kind of game. bunch of different classes. some use weapons and others powers.
Does this one have treasure at the end?
Years ago, the MUD I used to play had a simple 'keep' feature. You could then 'sell all' to a vendor, but it wouldn't sell the stuff that you had marked.
So that back up grenade pack, or alternate class mod, ... you have to keep tracking what you don't want to sell, which when some's green (or even white at the beginning) is a royal pain when you want to just drop off the crap stuff and go back out again.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Hey look! Claptrack is dancing! He's dancing! :D
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
RPG means Rocket Propelled Grenade. Deal with it.
First was 4 man team as well.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The empty clip explodes, not the gun. WTF? Why would the gun explode and then teleport back into your hand? Even by Borderlands standards that would be goofy as hell.
Comment of the year
I m gonna sue you
I liked it better when it was called Fallout. Seriously, did nobody else notice the similarities between the two when Fallout 3 and Borderlands 1 were released so close to one another?
It's "UnrealEngine 3", not "the Unreal Tournament 3 engine". The former refers to the more generic engine; the latter refers to the specific version of UE3 that was used for Unreal Tournament 3.
Yes, it's a pedantic distinction, but a significant one. Between UT3 and now, Epic has added quite a number of new features - tessellation, deferred rendering, bokeh DoF, and so on. I don't know how many of those features Borderlands 2 uses, but it's definitely a far newer UE3 than UT3 used.
Translation to /.-speak:
Calling it "the UT3 engine" is like calling Linux "the Android kernel". Technically correct, in that it is the kernel used by Android, but it completely misses the point.
EQ > EQ2
Then again if you have to save up for over 2 months to pay for a game perhaps there are better things you should be spending your money on.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
RPG stands for Role Playing Game.
Perhaps you are only familiar with Role Playing Games where no guns are involved, but that is only a small subset of the entirety of Role Playing Games.
It's like saying that websites should all have a picture of goatse because that one time you got on the internet you saw a picture of goatse.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I really like the game but the absolutely retarded vehicle control is pissing me off. Only steering via mouse. Turbo sporadically working and when it does it stays on until empty (2 deaths so far because of that), I can crank the wheels to one side and when I back up the front wheels automatically swing to the other side. Fucking annoying as hell.
Downloaded last night (usenet ftw), played a bit.
Now that's dedication to Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Eye patch-salute, sir. Eye patch-salute...
How do you loose a game?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Me and my Glitterboy beg to differ.
How do you loose a game?
Use less restricting rules?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
As much as I love old Sierra games, what does this have to do with Borderlands 2?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The PC version multiplayer may not work well, but the PS3 version sure does. I started playing a solo game, and my stepson (who has his own copy and PS3) came online and joined my single-player game with no trouble at all. I wasn't even aware that it would do that. What is lacking is some player-to-player communication options when the bluetooth headset isn't available (had some trouble with pairing mine and ended up horking the PS3's bluetooth up until the next restart).
Having played the first game all the way through, I like the UI changes so far.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
I found that a little of the artwork in Borderlands went a long way. Eventually, it just seemed really ugly to me. In fact, it was the kind of ugly that after a few hours makes me kind of queasy.
I remember when I was a kid, Speed Racer had a similar effect on me. I remember one day when I was home sick from school with a stomach ache, and Speed Racer was on one of the UHF channels and it all seemed so ugly to me. The grimacing faces, the flashing colors, I still can conjure nausea from thinking about Speed Racer. Interestingly, the movie also had that effect.
Not that Borderlands looked anything like Speed Racer, but it was a world that I did not care to inhabit. I like looking for guns'n'ammo as much as the next gamer, but the visual environment of the game has to be, in some way, appealing, or I'll just stop playing, which is what happened with Borderlands. It's not that it's like a comic book - I like comic books. It's not that I require games to have a real, photographic look to them, because I've enjoyed plenty of games that have a similar hand-drawn aesthetic.
I like games that look as though they take place in a universe that I would like to live in. Just Cause 2 and Sleeping Dogs, with the real-world look or Bioshock or Arkham City with a graphic novel look or Pixeljunk Eden with a 2-dimensional nothing-like-the-real-world look. But I require light and space and color and shape and figures that are somewhat appealing (or at least are not repulsive).
[note:I don't expect that my tastes are anything like the world's tastes, so save your "But lots of people bought Borederalands!" argument. It has no meaning for me.]
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm about ten hours in and so far I'm enjoying the game for what it is, but its got a few problems I didn't have with the first.
The enemy AI has certainly improved, as often times a bad guy will dive for cover when I start shooting at them, but nearly every time they've done that so far has resulted in them visually clipping through the barrier they are behind. It's really not very immersive combat when arms and legs are sticking out through concrete walls. I thought that technology was nailed down years ago (Gears of War?).
Melee combat is very clunky feeling. There is no visual interaction between my character and the enemy I'm attacking. There's just a generic punch animation, and if it connects, the damage number that follows it. Doom 2 comes to mind.
Framerate performance is... meh. For the hardware I'm running on (eVGA GTX 670FTW, Intel 2600k), I'd expect nothing less than a rock solid 60fps with the graphics on mid-to-high settings. Most of the time there isn't anything graphically intensive going on, but my framerate often dipped into the low 20s anyways.
Getting stuck has been a problem for me. I like to explore, but on foot, there are too many little crannies you can get to but cannot easily get out of, and the vehicle is even worse about that. With the wonky controls it'll easily wedge itself up onto walls and will have to be abandoned. It's bad enough that I just go on foot now instead. That was never an issue with the original Borderlands.
The UI is less intuitive than the original, and even that was just marginal - particularly the inventory screen. Picking a weapon from the list (that has to be scrolled through) usually takes at least two or three tries.
Overall, I'd say wait for this on a Steam special. It would've made a great DLC pack for the original, but I'm glad I didn't drop $60 on it. It simply lacks the polish I'd expect with that price tag.
One way to really dig Borderlands 2.
http://kotaku.com/5944264/heres-how-to-find-that-minecraft-easer-egg-in-borderlands-2
Just adjust the gun before firing at criminal, you dumb!
You just need to go to the gun practice room before entering your car!
We Linux gamers are too small of a demographic (except for Android, of course) for the game studios to care. If you add up all of the Linux revenue from all six Humble Indie Bundles, what's the total? $3 million? Less? That's not enough for the big gaming studios to care.
The best long term hope for games on Linux is wine (winehq.org) and newer games written in HTML5.
Is Aardwolf still around? I used to be an IMM long ago, if only a level 204. I wonder how clan .:Wolf:. is doing, or even if the MUD is still around?
The mprogs of my day were horrible though. The documentation was flat-out wrong and people wrote ridiculous things that could crash the MUD. I quietly fixed an awful lot of bad code back in the day. I wonder if anyone even noticed?
The only feature I really want in Borderlands 2 is the ability to abandon quests from your log. I hope they fixed that!
Damm good.
But they really made a fucking mess of the menus/inventory stuff. And we really didnt need that 3d look to it.
Inventory managment is a chore.
And you can't tell what kind of gun is laying on the ground. You have no idea its ammo type is unless its got an obvious name or stats. Makes it harder to fill out say you want a good repeater.. and everything looks the same until you pick them up. think you found a good one? nope its yet another pistol.
... proof that big worlds and FPS don't get along very well.
My main beef with borderlands 2 is it takes so long to get anywhere and the dead-space between enemies really sucks the actiony parts out of the game. Borderlands is basically a super casual FPS, the action is quite lite, the AI is braindead and when you die it's more to do with enemy layout and inability to see where enemies are on the map then anything else.
I'm not justifying the DRM, that's a separate discussion topic.
1. Just because there is a large pool of Linux gamers does not mean we will collectively all buy the big games released for Linux. I only play the occasional fighting game and strategy game, the great majority of adventure, MMORPG, and FPS games don't interest me. So while I technically count as a potential customer, it's only for a small fraction of game companies.
2. Linux is not the only alternative to Windows for games. There is now Android and iOS, and the number of Mac owners is also growing rapidly. So the gaming studios have to weigh the sales value of porting games to Linux against the sales value of porting them to other platforms with far more potential customers. Windows RT doesn't run games compatible with Windows 7, so that's effectively one more platform companies have to consider supporting - and even though we all expect Windows RT to fall flat in the market, "falling flat" for Microsoft still means millions will sell. That still makes it a more profitable target for game developers than Linux.
3. A lot of Linux gamers also game on other platforms - we dual boot Linux on a Mac or we dual boot Linux with Windows on a PC, or we have a gaming console in the living room. So the game company only has a net benefit when they sell a game to a Linux user that would not have bought the game on another platform. That cuts our effective numbers as a buying demographic even further.
4. pay about twice as much when offered the opportunity to self-adjudicate compared to windows gamers is not compelling, our self-adjudicate prices at HumbleBundle and Indie Royale double the Windows prices, but typically average an unimpressive $10 for five games and a charitable donation. If Bioware offered their next game at the expected retail price of $60 on Windows and then offered a port on Linux, buyers for Linux aren't going to pay $120.
Did anyone else think Borderlands is a sequel to James Cameron's Avatar?
The RDA nuked the Tree of Life from the orbit roughly 200 years before Borderlands take place,
This pretty much destroyed the ecosystem, leaving only few very vicious breeds of creatures. The natives almost completely died out, but some of their secrets remain. The mines of Unobtainium got depleted, and Pandora remains dull and gray, and worthless.
The appearance of the "ancients" (or their ghosts), the vicious remaining wildlife, the backstory about depleted mines, the cutthroat corporate morality of the powers-that-be,
There are things that are somewhat mismatched. Na'vi don't seem to be an "advanced civilization" though they had their tricks and secrets indeed. It's lacking the predominantly 6-limbed fauna typical to Cameron's Pandora. The gravity seems normal. But then, the writer of the game might have been "inspired" by Cameron, while the artists/designers were not.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This isn't a review. It's a summary of the game and a list of PC issues fixed (or not fixed) from the first one. Only the very last paragraph constitutes anything resembling a review, and it boils down to "if you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one" without expanding on why that is.
Also, I'm not sure how being on the UT3 engine justifies having a bad inventory/quest UI as you imply. I've played plenty of UT3 engine games that had good quest/inventory or similar screens. It has a bad inventory/quest UI because they were designed for a controller and a TV screen resolution, and not properly modified/replaced for PC. UT3 has nothing to do with it.
I really can't stand the new UI. Slightly isometric, wobbling, with your character covering part of your inventory? The fonts are tiny, gun pics are tiny. Even the "manual" has the tiniest fonts ever. Would it have broken the bank to have one extra page and a 10pt font?
The previous UI was better in every way and it wasn't great.
I'm also unimpressed with the Angel. She just kinda stares at you, the previous one had much more "personality" (and better looking in my opinion). And the whole "damn, I mean drat". Um... wasn't Borderlands targeted towards an older crowd? "Damn" is barely PG13 let alone mature.
Having said that, I liked the original and I'm liking this one.
And the ability to turn off radios? Love it. Granted the two I've found weren't actually playing anything. But the radios in the first game made me want to kill. Real people.
I know the whole random guns thing is pretty much the entire point of Borderlands but it's also very frustrating. In the original I remember almost giving up because the game was so hard and then I find a new gun and the game became downright easy for the next 3 levels. So what I really want is a gun system ala race-car-driving game. Get a basic gun frame, then buy/quest upgrades to it. Rescue a gunsmith, he can tune the barrel for more accuracy, something like that. Basically, make the game a bit more deterministic and less random.
But seriously, did some intern design that the UI? An intern with a lazy eye, that
drank a bottle of hot-sauce and then took a big dump of sadness all over it?
Logged in today and had no problem with the multiplayer support. Frustrating as it was yesterday (as no ports "needed" to be open according to CL4P-TP) today it was a breeze playing with steam friends.