Hi everybody, how are you doing? I’m doing pretty good. I came across this little game yesterday called Borderlands 2, you’ve probably never heard of it. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool, so, I thought I’d share some stuff I learned about it.
I don’t have anymore room!
There’s a lot of guns in this game, so its probably good to not get too attached to any of them. You see something that looks better then just try it already and stop holding up the group! There’s no harm in picking it up! Unless….
Dammit you stole my gun!
On the other hand when you open that shiny new chest its probably best to give everybody a chance to look the guns over first. Ask permission to grab one of them. If nobody responds then take it after a couple seconds. Hey we can all be nice and share, but if nobody is ready to make up their minds then its probably best to just “pull the trigger” so to speak.
Get out of the way!
For whatever reason Gearbox added collision detection to allies. What that means is that if you’re standing in a doorway you’ll also be blocking the rest of your team. This might be hilarious for awhile, but sooner or later you might want to step the hell away.
Guys, I can’t get in!
Borderlands 2 has unfortunately released with some difficulties in the PC client. I can’t say what the Xbox Live or PSN experience has been like, but on Steam it has been a minor nightmare at times. If you find that you just can’t connect to a friends game, have everybody take 5 and back out to Steam. Right-click on Borderlands 2 in the library, choose properties. Switch to “Local Files” and choose the option for “Verify Integrity of Game Cache”. This will quickly scan your files for any problems with the client. So far everyone I’ve had play the game up to this point has had some problem and this has usually fixed it.
DON’T OPEN THAT!!!
Every player who pre-ordered the game received access to the “Premiere Club” with Gearbox, which means they also got a special golden key. That key opens exactly one golden chest in Sanctuary and it can only be opened once. The chest does scale to your current level, so that means if you are still level 10, for the love of God and all that is holy don’t open it! Wait until you are a high level and you feel comfortable unwrapping up the tasty guns that await inside. You’ll thank me later.
Guys, help me up already!
There’s always a lot going on at any one time on the screen, so when allied players go down it might go unnoticed to the Gunzerker ripping apart anything that moves in duel wield mode. Call it out! Let everybody know you’ve been downed when you go down and calmly remind them when there is still time left to be saved. Also, since you can revive yourself simply by killing any enemy, let people know which guy you are trying to kill and hopefully they will back off or help you with the kill.
Man, I HATE my skills!
You can respec your skills for a pretty nominal fee at any town. Just find the station that lets you customize your character, its definitely the biggest station of them all with a large silhouette. This lets you try out various skill trees and spec your guy to suit your group the best.
Man, I HATE my guns!
Just keep looking. Gun shops often have a good deal of the day gun that might be worth grabbing. Maybe ask other people in your group for some help. At the end of the day this game is about finding more and more loot, so odds are that you will find something eventually, just check every nook, cranny and Porta Potty.
Why am I dying so much?!
Its because you’re not a high enough level, trust me. The mission may say you’re the right level, but if you’re dying every 20 seconds then clearly you need to go grind a little more. Come back after you’ve gained 1 or 2 more levels and a few of those badass tokens. Which reminds me….
Whoa, what are all these badass tokens?
There is a fantastic new system that encourages you to take on all the various challenges the game has. It rolls all of these up into a “Badass Rank” system. Every now and then you’ll get enough of a Badass Rank to gain a token that you can redeem for a small increase in things like gun damage, reload speed, accuracy, grenade damage or shield recharge speed. Those also carry over to every character you have, so start spending them! It’ll even help out on your new characters if you so choose to make them!
Crap, I have to do this mission over again!
Finally, playing with friends is great, but apparently it seems to also de-synchronize your experience from where the game thinks you are. Note which mission you are personally on before you take on a new group and note how far ahead they are from you. If its too far I recommend catching up solo or with another group. Otherwise you’ll need to replay some low level missions, which is never very fun.
