It’s potentially a bad sign that I’ve now just resorted to using whatever happens to be playing in foobar as a post title.
It’s been what I will laughingly refer to as a long time since my last post update, and as usual, I feel some obligation that I must update constantly. Perhaps I have to make up for the fact that my friends BIG MIKE and Adam never update theirs.
As usual, I’ve not really been up to much, nothing interesting has happened, I’ve simply been playing Borderlands a lot. I’ve now got a level 50 Roland, a level 18 Brick, and a level 6 Lilith/Mordecai. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t like one character entirely more than the others. It’s sort of tough to explain, but in many games I find that there’s one character who often caters to everything I look for in a character. In Borderlands for example, in terms of aesthetics, I think Roland looks like the best character, he also suits my playstyle (I like to play support characters) and I usually have a preference for ARs and shotguns. Thing is, occasionally I really like revolvers, and Borderlands happens to have a wide selection of awesome ones. Anyway I digress, that’s all good, but Brick is the best character personality wise, followed by Mordecai and Roland. You might think it odd, but to me, a character’s personality is oddly important. By that I mean, mostly, what they scream.
By my logic, if you’re going to be playing as a character for an extended period of time, you want them to be roaring out something cool, yes? That’s the reason I play as Hoffman in Gears too. Also compare Ryu in NG2, where I’ve previously mentioned how the japanese dub sounds like 1000x better in combat, whereas the english dub guy sounds like he’s trying to blast out the biggest turd ever. Brick has cool “taunts” and so on, Mordecai has a hilarious death cry. Roland’s aren’t bad exactly, he’s just..stereotypically black. It’s sort of bizarre, when you look at Roland’s character, he’s an “ex Crimson Lance” hardened merc type, in the intro movie he’s like get that camera out of my face fool, but then when you start playing he’s all DAYUUUM BIOOOTCH. I like Brick more, he’s got great callouts, not to mention awesome “I’M GETTING IN A CAR” noises. Oh right, you can’t forget his Berserker noises which are fucking hilarious.
As good as Borderlands is, it’s not as good as I was expecting. It seems somewhat different to the 2007 version, here’s a list of things that were either implied to be in the game, or outright stated as being in the game that, to my knowledge, are not:
- Randomly generated dungeons/instances/doglegs
- Character enhancements (aka buying upgrades for your character to increase reload speed and so on, this seems to have been worked into the game with weapon profiec)
- Character unique missions (Roland looking for the brigadier, Lilith for the other Siren etc)
At least that’s all I can remember, I would’ve honestly liked if the characters were a little more balanced and well, unique. Lilith for example is broken in terms of PvP, she has a daze effect that basically equals auto-win. Not to mention phasewalk which makes her invisible. Roland’s turret is useless as it only fires in an arc in front of it, you can just stand behind it and completely negate the point of it. I was sort of hoping that the characters would have 3-5 skills they could use, but in-fact they only have one skill each. I think the talent trees could use a bit of re-working as well, Roland has a lot of relatively pointless talents, everyone does.
You know what else I would like? Something concrete to work for. Right now I’m basically just teleporting from zone to zone, killing everything and looking through the shops and chests to find some good stuff. Specifically, I’m looking for a revolver, a bloody unforgiven legendary (I think that’s the one) with 900 damage, crit damage bonus and high accuracy, preferably with the model that looks like the dirty harry gun. It’s sort of hard trying to find something that specific when there’s so many guns. I’m not really sure what, but it would be neat if they added in “something” for me to work for over a long period of time other than increasing my weapon levels to 50. Heck I dunno, maybe add in DLC missions where you can build a gun you want over a very long quest-line? Nothing too precise of course, just like selecting what the different characteristics would be etc, I for example, like to stray away from elemental weapons, I’m not really sure why, but I prefer to use normal weapons, however I do have a corrosive atlas revolver which I employ against Crimson Lance (and it looks comical how fast it shoots thanks to my character’s buffed fire rate) as it stands, my Roland’s build and gear loadout are as follows:
(I think aid station might be a tad pointless, and I honestly swap those 5 points about constantly, but for arguments sake, I’ll put them in aid station)
- Hyperion Crimson Cobra Combat Rifle
- 271 damage.
- 97 Accuracy
- 15 Rate of Fire.
- 52~ bullets to a clip/magazine/whatever (around that, I’m not sure how many it has by default)
- Jakobs Fearsome(?) Thunder Sniper Rifle
- 960 damage
- 96 Accuracy
- 0.4 Rate of Fire
- 17 shots
- Dahl(?) Terrible Matador Shotgun
- 170×12 damage
- 35 Accuracy
- 1.2 Rate of Fire
- 36~ shots
- Tediore Bloody Equaliser Revolver
- 760 damage
- 86 Accuracy
- 1 Rate of Fire
- 5 shots (default 2)
I also occasionly use (against Crimson Lance and Eridian)
- Atlas Vitriloic Revolver
- 400 damage [x3 Corrosive]
- 90~ Accuracy
- 1.6 Rate of Fire
- 8 shots
- Maliwan Scoped Destructor
- 1700 damage [x4 Shock]
Of course, I’m going by memory for these stats, those are rough estimates. As for other gear, I’m using a level 6 corrosive artifact on the turret, from what I’ve seen from testing, that’s by far the most useful one. Corrosive in general seems to be the superior elemental damage. Melts armour, melts flesh, melts faces, spreads to others, increases the damage you do to them, has no drawback from what I’ve seen. As for shields, I’m using one with 1620~ ish capacity and no bonus effects, just a “very high capacity” one, previously throughout the game I used health regen ones, but now that I have stat and aid station, it’s pretty much obsolete and I just go for the shield with the most capacity, I’ve also been looking for a 60% health shield, but no luck as of yet. Grenades likewise, I used transfusion for most of the game before swapping to corrosive bouncing betties, which I enjoy throwing into the air like fireworks. As for class mod, I’m using something like this
- 650 Heavy Gunner Mod
- +75% Weapon magazine size
- +3 impact
- +4 metal storm
- +3 overload
- +50% Weapon fire rate
I don’t actually know what the rate of fire increase is to be honest, as I can’t see it. I just know that it certainly does increase fire rate. Supposedly they are patching it so weapons can display more than 4 lines of text, that will be really helpful, I must say. From what I’ve experimented around with, that is by far the best mod. I do keep a +20 ammo regen mod in my backpack too, but frankly I never need to use it unless I’m running around and have “low” ammo and want to recharge whilst I’m out of combat or something. Shocktrooper seems pointless, Commando also seems pointless, Rifleman seems pointless and Tactician seems like it “could” be useful. Frankly, increasing weapon magazine size and rate of fire > increasing the other stuff. I think people tend to underestimate how useful magazine size and rate of fire is.
As for weapons, I usually look for two things, raw power and high accuracy. I tend to like Hyperion weapons a lot, but as for which weapons I’ve used the most, well, I dunno, I think there’s a way to check on an xbox profile thing, but I dunno. I would guess Tediore, as I’ve found several great Tediore legendary weapons that have lasted me a very long time. I don’t really like weapons that fire more than one bullet at once. I did use a Skullmasher for a very long time, but I find that Skullmashers and Mashers tend to be pretty sucky, maybe just for Roland, maybe they rock for Mordecai. I only use shotguns for multi-projectile weapons. Speaking of which I have had shotguns far more powerful than the one I’m currently using and listed above, but they had too small a magazine size. In comparison, once I get metal storm going, my current shotgun is ridiculous, I got ambushed by 2 badass fire skags, 1 corrosive and 1 normal badass alpha skag all at the same time (not badass, but I forget what the level 51 versions are called) and well, let’s just say that my shotgun destroyed all of them. That’s my go to weapon, if something is pissing me off, I swap to the ol’ faithful and just run up to them and unload 34578 bullets into their face for maximum damage.
Overall, I really want to like Borderlands, I DO really like it, I just really hope they support it heavily with DLC. I want to see new areas, more storyline, character specific missions, more ways to make the characters unique, possibly even a new character. I know there’s the zombie DLC coming soon, however details are scarce, all we know are that there are at least 3 achievements/missions:
“House of the Ned”/”Braaaaaaains”/”Jakob’s Fodder”
I think they could increase the level cap and add a 5th tier set of talents, or just add an extra one onto the 4th tier. I’ll be frank, the guided missile and supply packs are useless. Increasing the level cap to 55 or 60 would yield some benefits methinks, it would let people stretch out a bit more, show some more diversity in builds and what not.
I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what there is planned. What with that and Dragon Age, Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2 all coming out in several months, I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied.
What’s that? No Modern Warfare 2? Shit, son, I don’t know what to think about MW2. On the one hand I want to play the single player (multiplayer doesn’t really interest me THAT much, I would not play it religiously like most MLG prozzzzzzzz) as I really enjoyed the single player in COD4, right? Sure the story telling isn’t exactly great, but I found it immersive and just, well, fun. It’s the same reason I enjoyed COD1 so much way back in the day. I never really played COD2 or COD3 however..mostly as they came out in the deadzone era of when I played no games other than WoW. (like, 2005-2006) I really don’t want to support Activision, I don’t want to give them my money. It’s a dilemma and it pisses me off, Infinity Ward are being huge dicks and whilst no, it doesn’t affect me really, I’m not playing it on PC, I’m not playing MP, only really the SP. I still don’t want to give ‘em my money. I’m contemplating renting it, but special forces looks like it could be really fun..uh, why Activision? Why you gotta be cunts? Do you enjoy angering me? Do you want me to come and strangle you?
Before I finish, I’ll quickly touch on two things. First, 9 episodes into Ergo Proxy and I’m still confused as to what the fuck is going on. Pino however, is awesome. Second, this FAGS thing with IW/MW2/Adam Sessler and so on? Laughable. IW made an un-funny joke and Sessler has a fit about it, both parties in this case are like bickering three year olds, it’s just a word, and in-case you want to bring up “hurr u woldnt like it if i called u ____”. No, I wouldn’t like it. I wouldn’t dislike it either. I would have no opinion on the matter as I wouldn’t give a flying hootananny, neither should you. Honestly it’s sad that I, of all people, am berating others for being stupid and angry.
Much like 90% of the things I can talk about on this blog, it can be summarised as such:
It pisses me off.
I’M MAD.
