Zero Punctuation: Borderlands 2

[Roofstone]

I like those little breaks he made. They made me giggle. <3

Oh yeah, the game.. Uhh..

It bored me so much I went for a walk.. In the rain.
...
It wasn't really worth it. The game was slightly more fun than that. So.. that is a point in its favour.. I suppose?

 

[GonzoGamer]

I'm still enjoying BL2 but he's right. Especially about the vehicles. It seems that they tried to make everything a bit more slick...except the vehicles. I guess they thought those things were okay.

Still, you know you don't have to open ALL the boxes right?

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

I want a game set in the Border Princes.
Borderlands just reeks of bland boringness. Nope, haven't tried any of them.

 

[Kross]

In regards to the driving on Xbox, I found it became much easier when I stopped trying to steer the car, and just aimed in the direction I wanted to drive. The car will auto correct to follow the direction you are pushing, and if you don't have a wide enough turn radius, going in reverse a couple times will straighten you out quickly.

Once you have a grasp of the turning radius, even high speed vehicle dogfights tend to work out fairly well, as you can hold the direction of your course while spinning around on the guns (I think the way they set up the controls was specifically to ease turret shooting while driving). It's a bit harder to do small jukes left and right as if you were on a multi-lane road (it's a bit more sluggish then actually "turning" the wheel, but didn't seem overwhelmingly so), but that's rarely something that's needed in the open fields you drive on.

Also, the vehicles are very bouncy due to the low gravity of the game, which can make for some ...interesting momentum issues.

 

[PunkRex]

No mention of the writing Yahtzee? Thats a shame you usually make a point in at least mentioning it. I find the writing in Borderlands to be like a emotional opposite to Fallout, where as Fallout is mostly grim with abit of humor every now and then to remind you the post apocalyptic worlds not such a bad place, Borderlands goes the other route with most of the writing being focused on the fun times with brief intervals of really, REALLY dark stuff, like the tapes of Tina's parents... It makes you feel bad for having laughed earlier, im abit of a masocist though so im loving it!

I definatly agree with the Wilhelm thing though...
Roland: 'OH NOES ITS WILHELM, RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!'
*5 seconds later*
Roland: 'Oh... okay then, never mind...'

 

[Psychotic]

Whilst I agree with most of his sentiments about the game, my argument is simple: That's what you get from an Action RPG, which is what Borderlands and it's sequel are.

The Borderlands series is incredibly repetitive, time-consuming and nothing more than an item hunt game with the killing of bandits with numerous guns involved. It's much the same as the Diablo or the Torchlight games except that in those you're murdering foes with swords, not guns.

Action RPGs, in my opinion, are usually a "love it" or "hate it" thing. You either love grinding mercilessly for loot doing the same combat for hundreds of hours, or you don't. I love a game with captivating gameplay and storylines but sometimes, just being able to walk up to someone and blow their brains out for hours mindlessly is a fantastic stress relief.

Keep in mind that Yahtzee has already expressed some distaste in the entire genre when he's reviewed similar games, the earliest being Diablo 3.

Whilst Borderlands 2 definitely has it's downsides, it's still great in comparison to many of it's genre (I find it far more captivating than Diablo 3, for example) and in regards to shooting it's at least better than the majority of shooting games made today. AKA, Call of Duty and Battlefield.

Is it the "best game"? Hardly. Is it "Game of the Year" material? No, probably not. Does that make it a bad game? Only if you don't like mindlessly killing enemies with no real purpose, which some people don't.

And I'm fine with that.

 

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

Maybe the problem is that I played Roland in the original and Axton in this playthrough, but the skill trees I've experienced are drastically more interesting and often game changing. Being able to drop nukes on enemies just from deploying your turret and then having it continue to fire is a pretty drastic change from Roland's rather sedated trees. Even more of a game changer is Axton being able to deploy two turrets. It completely changes how you can run the game, giving you an Axton that can distract, give support fire, and main fire all at the same time. It can essentially make Axton his own team. The skill trees are, by far, improved from my perspective.

My comments about the skill trees is based off only 4 hours of play. It's good to hear from someone about it who has played for longer. I'm encouraged by what you've said, and now I kind of want to play Axton (instead of Salvador).

Personally, I don't feel there is a need for more than one Action ability. If you want to drastically change your playstyle, just buy a respec and change where you have put your skill points. For example, if you were fully sniper tree with Zero, you use your action ability to distract enemies and get distance so you can heal and make use of your sniping skills. If you respect and select a fully bloodlust tree Zero, the whole point of his action ability is to give you a massive boost to melee damage that can then be nearly endlessly chained. Your whole combat style goes from "hang back and shoot" to "Get directly in the middle of the fray and knife guys." For me, the sheer diversity the trees create makes adding another Action ability pointless.

Adding more action abilities wouldn't be pointless to me. They'd add additional depth to every skill tree path. Most of my ranting is just wishful thinking. The game's good, I'm just whining about abilities after seeing how many freakin' cool abilities there are in Torchlight 2. That just makes me wish Borderlands could be even zanier and deeper. Just some wishful thinking. I want some theoretical nutzo game that exists in my head. You're right about the different trees significantly changing your playstyle, but I just wish the variety was more front-loaded. More abilities (that you got at level 5 with the your main one) would inject some much needed variety into the early part of the game. Despite my ranting, I do still like the game. It is disappointing (but not to a degree that really matters), but not bad. I'll convince myself to get back into it pretty soon I imagine.

This I don't understand at all. Maybe we play very differently, but there is a huge amount of strategy for me when dealing with boss fights. For example, fighting the constructor that captured roland was a hell of a task. It constantly summoned enemies that could rip into you AND it had ridiculously high health. Using the turret the options become massive. I could drop the turret near the constructor and let it provide fire against the beast while I handle the minions, I could do the exact opposite (having my turret take on the little ones while I concentrate fire), I could repeatedly strafe around the constructor throwing out heavy fire and just avoid minions and save my turret to be a distraction when I need to run away and heal up. This is all going into a boss fight with just one character. As you add more co-op companions, the strategy just keeps increasing. I'd say the only one who lacks tactics beyond SHOOT MORE BULLLETS is Salvador the gunzerker, but that is kind of the point of his class.

I guess I'm just exercising my wishful thinking again. I don't consider frantically shooting everything and using your abilities when it most makes sense to not be much of a tactic. I was just wrong in my assertion that there's little or no strategy in the game. Once again, I think I'm just imagining some magical game that I think I want.

I like the game, but it still feels like too much of a retread to me, and I wish it was even better. That's all. Thank you for your responses, it's made me want to give it another go, and yeah.. yes, I'll probably re-roll as Axton.

PS: I bolded "I was... wrong" to prove to the internetz that sometimes people do admit to spewing out crap, with little thought behind it.

 

[Xanadu84]

I definatly agree with the Wilhelm thing though...
Roland: 'OH NOES ITS WILHELM, RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!'
*5 seconds later*
Roland: 'Oh... okay then, never mind...'

It's almost like Wilhelm was intentionally easy to beat. Like beating him would actually serve some scheme on behalf of the bad guy. But if that were the case then some subversive agent secretly acting on Handsome Jack's behalf would have had to point you in the direction of the trap, beating Wilhelm would have had to give you a plausible reason to trust the trap you were walking into, it would probably have had to of been foreshadowed, and the consequences would have to be pretty dire.

...wait...

Also, I really don't see the original 4 as weakened. Lilith gets worshiped as a god, murders countless bad guys in the mission you work on with her, and she eventually teleports an entire city. Roland beats a couple of giant robots unarmed, and then doesn't get involved directly because he is leading an entire army. Mordecai...is drunk all the time. But hey, he also is the spymaster extraordinaire, and kills plenty of guys. They arn't in the thick of battle as often, but they are hardly slouches.

 

[Psychotic]

People take Yahtzee's "Zero Punctuation" far too seriously.

It's not a comprehensive resource on why you should or should not buy a video game. It's called a "review" but in reality it's an entertainment piece of a guy ranting about the bad things in games.

Whilst funny, Yahtzee deliberately misses half of a games content to make the video quicker and because he's only focusing on the hilariously bad. To use these videos as a yardstick on whether you should buy a game or not is not only bad, it's completely ignorant.

Even if 9/10 times you agree with what Yahtzee has to say (and many times even I do) then that's still not a good enough reason to then use what he says as your only basis to buy something.

You should buy something based off your own personal research and knowledge of the product, not off somebody else's. Yahtzee's view is ALWAYS biased and as said, does not explore ALL regions of a game. Even though "official" reviews like ones on IGN or GameSpot are far more comprehensive they too, are still HEAVILY biased (for obvious reasons).

If you want to know if a game is good for you then research it, check out demos or previews or what-not. Don't watch a video that is designed primarily for entertainment and shows no gameplay footage what-so-ever.

I watch Yahtzee because he's funny, but like hell would I trust his opinion so much as to buy a game based off of it. I don't trust ANY "reviewers" opinion. I buy games based on what I've found out and hell, even if someone told me it was bad I'd buy it anyway, because I don't trust someone else's opinions as much as my own. If it's a bad deal? Meh, oh well (I don't tend to buy many horrible games anyway, due to said research).

"Trust no truth but your own."

 

[Something Amyss]

It's almost like Wilhelm was intentionally easy to beat. Like beating him would actually serve some scheme on behalf of the bad guy. But if that were the case then some subversive agent secretly acting on Handsome Jack's behalf would have had to point you in the direction of the trap, beating Wilhelm would have had to give you a plausible reason to trust the trap you were walking into, it would probably have had to of been foreshadowed, and the consequences would have to be pretty dire.

...wait...

It would also mean that Gearbox made a game intended to be played by people with an attention span lasting more than five seconds. And that, my friend, would be MADNESS!

 

[Atmos Duality]

it is like a mmo with less people on the server and more stats comparing.

It's not even remotely as complicated as an MMO.

You aren't even doing arithmetic in BL2; hell, you don't even need to look at the NUMBERS.
The game gives you a very obvious Green-Up/Red-Down arrow to tell you which field is higher.

 

[yngi]

this review was offly quiet somehow but alright

 

[UnmotivatedSlacker]

Good.

Another reason not to buy it.

Stop taking ZP seriously. He's a comedian, not a critic.

Why shouldn't I? Every game I played that he reviewed I agreed wholeheartly because he, in terms of my taste, hits the nail on the head. In about every way: If he does not like a thing in a game enough to note it out in the review I'm going to hate it / hated it.

He makes it quite apparent that he doesn't play the game he 'reviews' very long. Case in point, his Monster Hunter Tri and Demon's Souls videos. Why would I use a guy like that as a source to choose what games I buy?

 

[hickwarrior]

it is like a mmo with less people on the server and more stats comparing.

It's not even remotely as complicated as an MMO.

You aren't even doing arithmetic in BL2; hell, you don't even need to look at the NUMBERS.
The game gives you a very obvious Green-Up/Red-Down arrow to tell you which field is higher.

But not by how much, from what I've seen from videos.

Still, I'm quite interested, but only because mechromancer. That and I've been on a repetitive binge lately. I guess I just have nothing else to do...

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

I pretty much agree with everything you said about this game and I don't usually do that. It wasn't fun, to say the least.

 

[MagmaMan]

Next time you retro-review may I make a suggestion? System Shock 2. There are only two games that I truly love that are over ten years old and they are Half-Life 1 and System Shock 2.

 

[antipunt]

Have really been enjoying this game over the first one. First one was 'ok' but this one is just great.

I think it's because of the story/characters. So much more atmosphere this time around. And you actually kind of want to kick Jack in the ballz

edit

*facepalm

the very awkward moment when you JUST realize Roland was from the first Borderlands..

after playing the game for over 25 hours..