Zero Punctuation: Borderlands 2

[Taunta]

Good.

Another reason not to buy it.

You take ZP seriously? ZP is all about Yahtzee's subjective view of the game and it's supposed flaws taken to an extreme for comedic value.

Welcome to the world of video game reviews. Video game reviews are subjective. Saying a review is "subjective" is not a negative point. There is no such thing as an objective video game review.

Secondly, given the amount of video games that Yahtzee analyzes on a weekly basis, I'd say his opinion has a lot of weight, considering he probably knows a lot more about video game design than I do. Is it still subjective? Obviously. Should you take it with a grain of salt? Yes. Is it okay to disagree with him? Yes. I've disagreed with his opinion several times. But at the same time, reviews are important because I can use them to gauge whether or not I want to pay 60 dollars for a game, when most of them don't have demos.

 

[mlsterben]

Anthony Burch was upset by Yahtzee's review, and Yahtzee hardly even mentioned the writing.

 

[RedDeadFred]

snip

I'm not going to try and justify his entire review because there is some stuff he got blatantly wrong, just not everything. But if I must go on about this matter...

Concerning the Wilhelm fight, there may have been justification for what happened but he was still right about it. He did kick the PCs from 1's arses and then you do defeat him in about zero seconds flat. So yeah.

And from what I can remember a fair amount of the sidequests have the whole "go here get this" quest but ever so slightly differently. Like "go here kill these". Same principle, different semantics.

I'm assuming that Wilhelm was instructed to lose the fight or at least was modified to be less powerful. Jack wants you to take the powercore so that he can power down Sanctuary's shields. He gets Wilhelm to lose it to you. Obviously he needed to put a notoriously powerful enemy in the way so that the trap would look convincing. They never address this so I can see how people could miss it but it does explain the entire situation.

It's weird because I enjoyed the side quests almost as much as the main quests. Sure there were some filler quests but a lot of them did have you doing fairly unique things (burn down the bandits' volley ball courts). Yes most of them come down to simply killing things but that's what pretty much every shooter does. You either like it or you don't.

I'm glad you agree that he did get some things wrong. I don't think he got everything wrong either and some of his points are simply opinions that you can't call right or wrong.

I think that the main thing it comes down to is that Yahtzee simply doesn't like loot driven games. For him, picking up all of the loot and opening various containers is mindless and boring. For others like me, it's like you are experiencing a mini Christmas after every fight.

 

[Taunta]

Yahtzee, ever heard of this guy?

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/09/18/game-theory-borderlands-2-fails-to-cross-ove/

Because that's exactly how your review sounded. "It's not like game X, therefore it's bad." I don't understand how you can gush about Painkiller, a game that had lots of guns, but bash the hell out of BL2, a game which had lots of guns, good writing, interesting characters and an actually cohesive plot.
The real kicker was when you defined a good sequel as "like the first one but better" and then said "Borderlands 2 is just the first one with more stuff" Really?

Looks like you misunderstood his review. I suggest you watch it again.

He doesn't enjoy Painkiller because it has lots of guns, and on the flip side he doesn't dislike BL2 because it has lots of guns. He said it has lots of guns that feel ineffective. You might want to read this Extra Punctuation of his where it explains what he means by "ineffective". [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/9015-A-Hard-Weapon-Is-Good-to-Find]

Secondly, he didn't define a good sequel as "like the first one but better". He said a good sequel takes a theme or idea from the first one and uses it as a diving board to do something new. A bad sequel wallows around in all the stuff that the original had, basically saying "Well I hope you like the first one, because the sequel is just more of the same!". And he said that BL2 fits solidly in the latter category, being that he thinks it's more of the same.

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

Yahtzee, I have always known you stretch the truth for comedic effect but it's not funny when you completely lie about it. I don't care if you liked a game or not but when you start knocking the game for things that don't exist, it comes off quite low.

I feel like I watched Mirror's Edge "review" all over again.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I like those pauses after making fun of the games' name.

I used to play Borderlands 1, I only played it on the day I bought it. It was boring as hell. I think Yahtzee said a while back (likely misquoting here); "If your single player game requires you to bring a friend to be fun, then you've made the wrong game."

It went something like that, I think.

 

[Madmanonfire]

Why is there only one active skill?

The gunzerker has at least 3, including his action skill. The bottom of the red skill tree gives the Taunt skill and another skill in the red tree (I think) gives him a stronger melee attack with a cooldown during gunzerking. I'm not 100% sure the last one qualifies, but 2 > 1.
I'm only commenting on that because I'm skimming through posts and wasting valuable Borderlands 2 time.

Anywho, it sounds like a lot of people just don't know how to drive the vehicles in this game properly. I have no problems with the vehicles and I enjoy the driving controls.

 

[FallenMessiah88]

So it's basically the same as the first Borderlands, only now it takes place in a snow/ice environment? Yeah, that was also my conclusion after watching a friend play it. Still doesn't seem like a bad game though, especially the art style. I don't know why, but if a game's art style is good, then that's a huge plus in my book.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Holy shit, that 'bored to tears' line at the end nearly had me out of the chair.

Loved borderlands 1, loved the art style, boss fights, characters, powers, everything. Only annoyances being the stupidly easy final boss, and the ending. And marketing of "a bazillion guns" as a few types of guns in each category with different elemental damage, stats, and colors. And to a lesser extent, the mission system, but if you're smart you can get around those efficiently I found.

Can't wait for this, going to do my first playthrough as a gunzerker I think.

 

[Tippy]

What the hell was with those super-long pauses after the "sarcastic" attempts at jokes?

For some reason I just keep going back to watching all of Yahtzee's old stuff which was a million times funnier and vastly more entertaining.

In his ~10-20 latest reviews he seems to have slowed down his talking a lot...I had no issues understanding him even when he went at machine-gun rampage speed in his older videos, but now he's so much slower and not as funny.

At first I thought I was just getting desensitized to his jokes, but when I re-watch his old stuff for the 10th time I still find myself laughing my ass off at the joke and/or his delivery. Reviews like Witcher 1 & 2, FF13, Halo Reach, Sonic games, etc etc are nothing short of hilarious.

Yahtzee, atleast speed things up again!

 

[MercurySteam]

Good review Yahtzee, but Borderlands came out October 2009, close enough though.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Yeah, this REALLY is a game you need to play with a friend. The first Borderlands (and I'm sure, the second) was boring when you played it by yourself, but for some reason, once you got a friend of yours playing it, the fun increased exponentially.

 

[Erttheking]

I can't be the only one that wants to see Yahtzee do an FTL review. After his DayZ review, I realized that Yahtzee is at his funniest when he's talking about his experiences with a game. Seriously, cant you hear him saying, "unfortunately my voyage was brought to a sudden halt by a random sun turning my ship into a saturday afternoon BBQ," or "then the game got bored and decided to organize an orgy between my crew and four giant mantises, and guess who was on bottom?"

Overall this review was kinda...lackluster though.

 

[Ledan]

Idk.... I found part 1 of Borderlands 1 great, then it petered out quickly. Borderlands 2 is like that beginning part that had character, extended throughout the game. BL1 felt so... dead after a while. BL2 is still alive, and they've improved on BL1. Not as much as I would like, but quite a bit anyways.
Why fix what wasn't broken? I mean, there are a few broken bits left BUT the overall gameplay mechanics should be and are the same. It is just: go to point A, kill dudes, get guns, get money, kill dudes. But it does it very well.

 

[Katya Topolkaraeva]

My boyfriend- "you can tell he liked it a little bit... you know he liked it. you can tell by his voice. he had a little too much fun with that review. he liked it"

 

[Saulkar]

Errrrrrrr. I just could not finish this review. It just felt that he was cherry picking things to hate within mechanics that are otherwise solid. The only real legitimate complaint I got from this was that you could only track one quest at a time but otherwise he does not mention anything the game gets right. The game makes genuine efforts to set itself apart from the run of the mill silent space marine or grizzled war veteran corridor shooter with bland colours by having quirky characters that try to balance style with substance, funny dialogue, interesting environments, strong art style, and greatly varying enemies with vastly different approaches to dispatching.

I can understand someone not liking it very easily but this review felt more like "I do not like this game mechanic and thus it is objectively bad".

I played and enjoyed the first Borderlands and while I feel the unflippable vehicle mechanic really needs to be euthanised alongside obvious invisible walls I FUCKING LOVE BORDERLANDS 2! It is flawed of course but it made major improvements to the mechanics of the first one without taking anything out. I feel that given a little more polish it is a strong contender for GOTY. It is funny, it has an affable asshole villian, good voice acting, solid gunplay, and relatively fun vehicles (needs more). Most importantly of all I feel a strong compulsion to explore!

 

[UnmotivatedSlacker]

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?

Unless the person in question manages to point out all the things in a game you won't like up to a point where you'll regret the purchase, no you don't have to listen to him.

But like with every reviewer and his style, you need to find someone who fits your tastes. Yahtzee might not be your fit but stop spewing that his tastes can't resonate with anyone else. There are people out there who don't need a long, detailed review, they want a short list of things that they might not like in a game.

I won't bother with a game if the first 2h are shit. I don't expect a reviewer who has the similiar taste as me to bother with it longer than that.

I expect a guy getting paid to do this to finish the games

 

[Something Amyss]

it's pretty lame that the original 4 Vault Hunters have to talk about how you're "our only hope" when they (especially Lilith) should be able to turn you inside out with minimum effort.

Lilith has been in hiding. Not to mention her extra powers come from Eridium, ostensibly the unrefined stuff. This limits her usefulness. Roland's been running a war. Mordecai is drunk off his ass. I don't think I've seen Brick yet, but these guys are not in the best position to roll Jack.

 

[Something Amyss]

I expect a guy getting paid to do this to finish the games

And that doesn't seem at all unreasonable, especially with the amount of time a game can last?

 

[djs.specs]

Will someone stop giving Yahtzee games that are supposed to be played in multiplayer? I mean, he usually plays single-player only, so he's not gonna enjoy them... we get that by now. Just let him review single player games.

Yeah... no. If a game is advertised as having a single-player mode then it should be just as interesting and fun then as it is with other people. That has been Yahtzee's gripe for a long time now and I agree with him. Some of us don't want to HAVE to play co-op in order to get the best out of a game.