From 1up.com

Discuss the upcoming cel-shaded slaughter, err...goodness!

Borderlands 2 Official Website

I'm excited.

I also sincerely hope that the terrible-awful-whose-Idea-was-this-anyway Halo-style point-and-pray vehicle steering is replaced by a proper WASD+mouse setup. I HATE not having precision steering control, I HATE the behavior of steering in reverse, I HATE the fact that steering is dependent on the camera, and I HATE the fact that I can't aim one way and shoot another. How Borderlands' vehicle setup made it past QA and into a finished product is beyond me.

If only it was as tight as the Halo vehicle control. I played on the 360, I can only imagine how floaty and ambiguous it was on the PC.

I didn't really have an issue with vehicle control in Borderlands.

I'm excited about the game as well. I hope they actually come up with a decent ending this time, though.

MinisterofDOOM wrote:I'm excited.

I also sincerely hope that the terrible-awful-whose-Idea-was-this-anyway Halo-style point-and-pray vehicle steering is replaced by a proper WASD+mouse setup. I HATE not having precision steering control, I HATE the behavior of steering in reverse, I HATE the fact that steering is dependent on the camera, and I HATE the fact that I can't aim one way and shoot another. How Borderlands' vehicle setup made it past QA and into a finished product is beyond me.

I was fine with the vehicle setup in Borderlands. I never used vehicles all THAT much and I usually just ended up locking on to whatever I wanted dead and circled em til I made that so. The vehicle guns seemed far too inaccurate to be used for anything but close range anyway.

HELL YEAAAAAAA!

8 more days!

And because I LOVE youtube vids...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW7qO_wpfvk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nicvyhrmTDs[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U7nYb3ts7w[/youtube]

NVidia released a PhysX trailer of how Gearbox has implemented PhysX into the game. It makes me long for a way to make it work on an ATI card.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFkDrKvBRU[/youtube]

And if you want to start calculating some talent builds, Gearbox posted up the talent calculator the other day.

http://www.borderlands2.com/us/skilltree/

I'll be getting this on PC (hooray steamworks integration!), so I hope we can get some NICO loot and shootin' going on!

I like Borderlands but I don't think it's lack of replay value is worth $60...

It's a high level gun grinder simulator. After I beat BL1 I lost interest because the only reason to play it again was to get better guns. Wonder how you guys feel about it.

Really enjoyed BL1 but it just.....ended?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3AwQdb0 ... r_embedded[/youtube]

Launch trailer!

I've been hearing amazing things about it, single player included.

I have the first one here.... still havent really played it.

The first game was really excellent when played with friends, but not so great when played alone. I had a good rant thread on here when it came out about how close it came to greatness and where it fell on its face. Over time patches and DLC added greatness to it (and it's not often I speak positively about DLC). The game's sense of humor was great, the characters were fun, and the hybrid of FPS/RPG elements with Diablo-style loot was immensely addictive.

The problems I had with it were more mechanical...things like frequently-respawning mobs adding tedium to travel, vehicle controls following the numb point-and-follow Halo control scheme, and lack of variety of vehicles.

Despite all those things, the game was still a lot of fun when enjoyed with friends. I've always preferred co-operative multiplayer to competitive, and Borderlands was coop at its best.

As soon as I'm not living in hotels on the road for work, I will be picking this one up.

MinisterofDOOM wrote:The first game was really excellent when played with friends, but not so great when played alone. I had a good rant thread on here when it came out about how close it came to greatness and where it fell on its face. Over time patches and DLC added greatness to it (and it's not often I speak positively about DLC). The game's sense of humor was great, the characters were fun, and the hybrid of FPS/RPG elements with Diablo-style loot was immensely addictive.

The problems I had with it were more mechanical...things like frequently-respawning mobs adding tedium to travel, vehicle controls following the numb point-and-follow Halo control scheme, and lack of variety of vehicles.

Despite all those things, the game was still a lot of fun when enjoyed with friends. I've always preferred co-operative multiplayer to competitive, and Borderlands was coop at its best.

As soon as I'm not living in hotels on the road for work, I will be picking this one up.

The tedium has been cleaned up. I'm not so sure on the respawn timer as the game hasn't made me backtrack through an area like the first one used to (stupid Lost Cave) and the few times I have had to backtrack for various reasons, the enemies have stayed dead. I will say though, you can revisit a boss area and the boss will be back, which I can only think of one or two bosses in the first game that did that.

The vehicles are still the same annoying point and drive concept. Maybe on console it works better, but on the PC, it does get awkward. Randy Pitchford spoke about it in a Q&A a few days ago and his response to the vehicles was that they were really conceived more for the travel benefit than a real gameplay benefit. I can see that, especially now that they've dropped the ram damage and you can no longer splat same level monsters with ease. I do miss the rocket blast from the first game as that really added some umph to the launcher. The new one has a tiny fireball come out the back and the backblast really doesn't match the sound coming off my 5.1.

The PC's drop in co-op is awesome. It was a good choice to tie into steamworks. Here's an example of the versatility of co-op. Dee and I were playing online and steam took a crap. So we switched to LAN and continued to play, once steam came back up, I was able to switch it back to online play with only a few menu clicks and had friends dropping back into our co-op match. No port forwarding necessary. The whole online back end just feels slick and natural. I hope more co-op games go this direction as I feel it should be an industry benchmark in UI friendliness.

I'm only 6 or 7 hours into the story, so I haven't gotten into the meat of the plot, but all the reviews I've read and seen applaud Anthony Burch for writing a good story to pair up with the gunplay. What I have seen has been well written, especially Claptrap P. Claptrappington, but unfortunately I still see a lot of "kill x of Y monster" and "bring me Z of Q crap" quests that made Borderlands 1 so tedious. At least some of the kill and gather quests have been dressed up so you don't notice them as much.

All in all, I have so much positive to say about the game but if someone's not into looting and shooting, they won't enjoy the game very much. MOD, when you get it, hit me up on Steam. We'll do some ownage.

I was thinking about picking this up...which class is everyone using?

I've played everything except Zer0. Maya is my main and I have her at level 12 right now.

I bought it today. But I have not played it yet. I'm FINALLY moving this weekend, so I'm looking forward to putting in some time with this, FTL, and Torchlight 2 on Sunday.

Soo many games, not enough time.

MinisterofDOOM wrote:I bought it today. But I have not played it yet. I'm FINALLY moving this weekend, so I'm looking forward to putting in some time with this, FTL, and Torchlight 2 on Sunday.

MOD, you get it on PC? If so, hit me up on Steam. Dee and I just started playthrough 2 at around level 35. I decided to respec Maya to a Cata/Harmony hybrid to get access to healing and insta-rez. I miss having converge, but it's so nice to play a medic on this playthrough. I have a feeling that being a full on medic will be necessary for the big optional bosses.

Yep, got it on PC.

I'm starting a fresh playthrough for Gaige if you want to team up

Gaige is very much overpowered. From what I read, it's BL2 easy mode. You might want to try using BL difficulty slider to make things a bit more interesting.

http://myborderlands.com/FourPlayers.aspx

Also Pirate themed DLC announced.

I'm playing it with Zero since I found myself enjoying sniping so much in the first game. So far I'm pleased, although I do get that "generic class until you get a few skill points sunk in" feel early on. Nothing made me particularly sniper-oriented early on, including the loot.

From what I hear, you wait until lvl 6 before you unlock your special abilities. Not only that but the first non-pistol you get from a loot box is a shotgun...

A snipers dream.

But after that there is a mission to gather some sort of feathers and you can give them to either Clap or the English Guy and the English guy gives you a sniper rifle.

EDIT:
Just realized MoD was most likely talking to Hijacker.

I played a Zer0 with a sniper and with an SMG in early game (never got him to Sanctuary). I wasn't all that impressed, and nothing really strikes me as him being the sniper class like Mordecai was. But he does have a "sniper" tree of skills kind of like how he has a melee/action skill tree.

Gaige is overpowered. There's no ifs ands or buts about that. With anarchy, you can stack it pretty much infinitely, which increases a damage multiplier while decreasing accuracy. Someone on the Gearbox forums stacked it to 600 stacks and used a scattergun style of legendary and was able to 3 shot Terramorphous (15 million HP).

Hijacker wrote:I wasn't all that impressed, and nothing really strikes me as him being the sniper class like Mordecai was. But he does have a "sniper" tree of skills kind of like how he has a melee/action skill tree.

It's the Accuracy stuff that made Mordecai for me. I ended up having such high accuracy I could snipe with shotguns (albeit oddball higher-accuracy ones). So that's where I'm going with Zero: get to the point where I don't really need a sniper rifle to be a sniper, with his accuracy skills as a booster.

Mordecai's bird-thing sucked, too. The stealth/decoy/damage modifier ability for Zero is FAR more useful for a sniper. Helps you line up a shot without being a target, AND makes it count when it lands.