Borderlands 2: Gaming is Training

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

And so we arrive in a desolate land plagued by skelemen and upon reaching the nearby town we find it filled with familiar faces. DL protects tavern owner Moxxi from some rowdy drunks, I chase down some crumpet thieves, and Jim explodes some of the town's scout blimps for Mister "Gatekeeper" Torque before we are allowed to move on to the Forest of Being Eaten Alive by Trees... THIS GAME IS GREAT!

The forest is home not only to angry ents, but also formidable orcs and scary looking spiders. Deeper in we even have to beat up some other adventurers who are camping a boss monster and save a crestfallen player from the invader "n00bkiller" before running into Roland "the White Knight" who is totally OK that Jim shot down the scouting blimp he was on.

Such a dork souls moment!

As recompense we help him retrieve a magic sword from a giant golem and as a reward each get a totally awesome SWORDSPLOSION shotgun which shoots a sword that explodes into more exploding swords! Thank you Mr. Torque! After fighting past dragons and giant skelemen kings we then enter the Mines of Avarice to forge an alliance with the dwarves who all look like Jim!

Everything goes smoothly until I "accidentally" explode the face of the dwarven king turning all the dwarves and their golems hostile. The little bastards even seal us in, but we find the wandering wizard Claptrap nearby willing to help us out... after we forge him a mighty beard taken from dead dwarves and power up his wand by inserting it into a number of magical creatures, before killing them. I DO ALL THE INSERTING!

Insight: Ents are weak to fire while knights are weak to corrosive but I like skelemen best as they're weak against melee!

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Blaugust Bonus: "Tell us about a person/s or thing/s that has greatly influenced you." -Chestnut

My very patient wife! She has me expanding my palate and perfecting another language.

Borderlands 2: Just Take It

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

While the leaders of Sanctuary plan a counter attack, we three amigos first go to distant Lynchwood in search of a "cursed gun", which Jim finds is really cursed since it prevents movement while drawn. Lynchwood is home to the bunny bandit army though, with respawning bad guys regularly -pooping- popping out from every shack. They are definitely allied with Hyperion too so we blow up their train and railroad, rob their bank and kill their female sheriff!

Turns out she was Handsome Jack's girlfriend so he's not very happy that I put a rocket in her mouth. He's even less happy when we go to the site of his nearly complete utopian city "Opportunity" and wreck the place for fun - destroying his statues, flooding build sites, exploding construction equipment and oh yeah... murder all his laborer bots and engineers!

The size of said rocket.

Since we're already in the process of destroying his hopes and dreams we then join the Sanctuary army to take the fight to their main base and assisted by Slab buzzard air support, battle through the soldiers, destroy their flying bunker and kill his evil suicidal bitch siren daughter! Just as we are about to take the artifact like taking a baby from their candy, Roland and Firehawk show up and make a mess of things, getting killed and abducted in that order. Uh, I mean, respectively! Yeah.

So Jack gets away with everything and we are left with nothing. While Slabby and Mordecai the birdless plan the next move, we kill some time hunting a giant skag, fighting in Moxxi's Ore Chasmic arena (against Hyperion), and nearly falling for Jack's traps by going to check on his grandma as well as nearly jumping off a cliff for money. He's a sly one this Jack fella. Good thing DL and Jim managed to hold me back!

Finally Slabby gives us a mission to get some supplies (and by supplies I mean bombs) from another gang called the Sawtooth. Shouldn't it be Sawteeth? Well it doesn't matter. They don't have teeth or eyes or bombs anymore. We took em. We took em ALLLLLL!

Insight: The most upstairs part of the flying bunker fight (just before the water) is a good spot to fight as the structure there provides a lot of cover.

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Blaugust Bonus: "Tell us about some of your favorite protagonist(s) and explain why. Or talk about characters in which you can recognize yourself or parts of yourself." -Endalia

John Constantine, because he gets things done often via the hard choice even at the expense of his friends. Not seen so much with the Keanu Reeves movie version but every iteration voiced or played by Matt Ryan does this. Also, Batman because even if he keeps people alive, most of his allies end up disliking/hating him since "the mission" comes first. I don't have their gear nor talent, but if it comes down to sacrificing popularity or people for my own goals - you bet!

Borderlands 2: Flipping the Bird

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

While exploring, we stumble upon Fink's Slaughterhouse which serves as an arena for the locals. Naturally we participate and thanks to the shiney gear DL has pulled and shared out using his golden keys (it gives super gear), smash through the first four rounds with only little difficulty. It's fun to make midgets bleeeed!

The fifth round is quite bad though with Jim and I both getting KO'ed but DL still manages to pull the win with his turret! Afterwards we head on to the Hyperion Wildlife Preservation Park to help Mordecai find his bird, which Hyperion had stolen from him recently. The park is like a zoo, only with monsters that are undergoing mutation testing - FOR SCIENCE!

With Mordecai providing flaccid sniper cover, we break in. Free the souls of the captive beasts and find his bird, which is now enlarged and evil! Despite our best efforts to save it by shooting it with bullets, Mordecai's bird explodes at the climax. He is left bitter and birdless.

In retaliation for this, we go back through the Wildlife Preservation Park to free all the trapped animals. It's a nice to have skags and stalkers on our side for a change! We also find a super helpful guy running an arena biome with said creatures.

He lets us free five rounds worth of the animals and even pays us to boot! The badass fire thresher in the last round manages to KO Jim, but he is freed too - just like his friends. Freed from all their suffering, freed to the great beyond! MUAHAHAHAHAHAH! *buzz saw sounds*

Roland then radios in and gets us to travel to the Thousand Cuts region to try make an alliance with the local bandits, "the Slabs", to unite against Hyperion. We diplomatically kill anyone who refuses to join. Eventually the Slab King, frenemy of Roland whom I shall dub "Slabby", officially agrees when the nearby "main" Hyperion base launches a full scale attack, sending the Slabs retreating to Sanctuary.

Yeah, nahhh... your name's Slabby mate.

Insight: Clusters of enemies are the best targets for a psychos buzz axe rampage. Each kill restores your health to full. Just remember to take cover again afterwards.

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Blaugust Bonus: "If you had a mascot to represent you, what would it be?" -Rambling Redshirt

It's a shadow that you can only occasionally glimpse for a split second from the corner of your vision and also whispers things to your mind. Perhaps you've already encountered it before?

Borderlands 2: Overlooked Help

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Only after dismantling another Hyperion facility and killing a Shai'hulud Thresher do we finally reach the Highlands that Sanctuary is floating over. Can't just warp to it though, no sir. For that we head to the village of Overlook to get the warp machine programmed properly, all while Hyperion sends more bots.

I get to really show off here, as all the enemies are clustering towards a fixed point we are meant to defend. DL and Jim get overwhelmed a lot, but rampaging through the enemy (in melee) keeps me aliiiiive! Hahaha I will kill your death! As expected the programming finishes after all the fighting, and we are free to teleport back to Sanctuary for a heroes welcome! Or... not. Actually I doubt most of these meat sacks realize the city is now airborne.

While the Crimson leadership continues to plan the next move, we're kept busy by a sudden influx of new jobs at the now flying Sanctuary, the highlights of which include finding a murderer in which we accuse the wrong suspect - letting the culprit get away, inviting people to Claptraps birthday party which no one attends, helping Ellie put an end to a gang war which we helped start, and retrieving a safe for Marcus from some big blue elemental which we abandon since it is immortal thanks to a bug.

The killer is one of those four guys...

We then return to the town of Overlook with Dr. Ned's meds to help them cure their brain disease then proceed to assemble a town encompassing shield to protect against further Hyperion attacks. Naturally this shield needs to be tested, so we raid the nearby Hyperion outpost and after breaking all the guardian mechs use their super mortar and fire it right at the town.

It goes as well as you might expect!

Insight: The only way to "fix" the blue monster was to leave the area and come back. We got him on our second visit.

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Blaugust Bonus: "What skill do you want to improve on the most?" -Stingite

Currently, anything music related. Finding time to do that is really hard though... Maybe I should change that to focus on time management skill instead? :P

Borderlands 2: Trainwreck 2 - the Wreckening

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Before going to steal the key to save the planet kinda deal, we opt to have some R&R first - delivering pizza to ungrateful lab rats, winning live grenades at the slot machines in Moxxi's bar (owie), and re-purposing a robot AI into a gun. A really cool, sentient gun.

Mmm that's some sexy pizza!

It's then off to the Tundra to hunt varkids (giant bugs) and meet with 13 year old bomb maker Tina. Varkid hunting is kinda slow thanks to local sniper Mordecai kill stealing all our shit. Anyway, Tina wants us to collect both bomb parts and tea party guests to help us steal the key, tasks that are pretty easy until an inebriated Jim murderizes the last tea party guest. Hah, and I thought I was the psycho!

Good thing Tina still makes us the rocket bombs, casually dressed as bunny dolls which we use to derail one of Jack's trains which was supposed to have his key. Of course, it's a trap. There is no key, just metal and circuits and bullets and rockets in robot shapes that we dismantle. At the same time Roland tells us that Sanctuary has come under heavy attack, and using some special gizmo Scooter rigged plus Firehawk's magic - gets the entire city airborne and teleports it of there. Our next job is simply to catch up!

Have you ever chased a flying, teleporting city before? There's a lot of ground to traverse. Ground slick with blood of the things in our way. Especially those annoying cloaking mini-dragon things. I like to hit them with corrosive bullets since the acid remains visible, even if they don't.

Insight: Letting the varkids coccoon and hatch into stronger versions is a good way to get loot.

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Blaugust Bonus: "What is a favorite Quote/s, and tell us why." -Wilhelm Arcturus

"Happy wife, happy life." because it's true! :P

Borderlands 2: Un-Netted R35CU3

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Before leaving the Dust to rescue Princess Roland, we decide to first do the very important task of burning an evil volleyball net in the base of the local bandits who also have air support. These buzzards reaaaallly suck as I can't reach them with my buzz saw!

Anyway, we finally burn that net (and the rest of the village) before returning to the Bloodshot Dam with a bandit technical. This time dum dums open the gate. I love it when the enemy is all clustered up together, muahahahaha!

Sure enough, the idiot Bloodshot leader is continually broadcasting his demands on the loud speaker - trying to sell their captive princess to the Hyperion corporation. Hyperion has a different idea though, and just as we reach his cell a robot breaks in and abducts him... again! Some "leader" this loser is turning out to be. We chase the captive screaming bitch princess up the dam, but the constructor bot W4R-D3N that holds Roland at the top is one tough cookie, creating more bots on the spot - some even of the badass variety!

Getting to W4R-D3N through them is too tough, and eventually it takes to the air and flies off like some giant, wingless stone bird with Roland in tow to the Hyperion outpost in the Dust. Obviously we give chase and end up killing the entire base to finally rescue him before he can be probed too much for information.

Terminate all the damned robots!

Back at Sanctuary he spills the beans that Hyperion's leader, Handsome Jack, is intending on opening another vault and to release "the warrior" within which is a bad thing apparently. Jack's just waiting for the key he already has to charge up. We're gonna need to steal it before that happens.

Insight: A buzzard's weak spots are the pilot and the engines. Robot weak spots are the glowy lights, or the unarmored joints which are fun to destroy as it maims them. Kill the drone planes as a priority though. Those little bastards resurrect/repair the bots.

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Blaugust Bonus: "Everyone has specific rituals that they follow, tell us about one of yours." -Everwake

Before going to bed, I always double check that unused power outlets are switched off/unplugged and all the doors and windows are locked. Common sense really.

Borderlands 2: Firehawk - Ashes and Dust

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

On a quest to save Princess Roland, we three heroes find ourselves in pyromaniac valley - home of all things spicy, hot and burninating to find "the Firehawk" who supposedly knows which closet Roland is being held in. She certainly fits the bill.

Thinking with our fun heads, we mutually save each other from a massive attack by a rival gang - the Bloodshots. She says that Roland is in their castle, no doubt experiencing whatever it is Princess Peach feels while a prisoner to Bowser. But before we go rescue him the Firehawk wants us to check up on her cultists... they are actually really fun guys who seem only focused on setting themselves on fire. This is great as we get to help them burn. Win/win! They do go a bit far when they kidnap a few villagers for roasting though so upon Firehawk's command we ice them for good.

One of the best missions ever!

Then its off to rescue Princess Roland at the Bloodshot Castle Dam but they ain't stupid enough to open the gates for a random looking car so we have to drive all the way out to the Dust where we meet Ellie in her junkyard who offers to make us a "bandit technical" vehicle if we bring her the parts - which is really easy since we destroyed like ten of these cars before reaching her.

When asked why she's all the way out here and not in Sanctuary she says its to get away from her overbearing mom, Moxxi, and her creepy ex Scooter who also happens to be her step-brother. Yikes.

Insight: While in Gunzerking mode, Jim (Gunzerker) constantly regenerates health and ammo!

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Blaugust Bonus: "What are some key sources of media (games/movies/etc) that have shaped your worldview?" -Mailvaltar

Ultima Online showed me early on both how evil some people can be as well as how awesome it is to work cooperatively. Hence I now always strongly prefer cooperative endeavors rather than competitive ones.

Borderlands 2: The Evil H

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Claptrap docks the boat at some non-snowy wasteland and after murdering and dismembering politely asking the local banditry, we activate a catch-a-ride garage that can spit out cars like bubblegum!

Naturally, DL is great at driving. Takes Jim a few goes to get the hang of it though, especially with one hand in a bag of chips and the other on his beer. Gunner ports are the best fun for me. Run over some yetis and skag dogs while collecting power cells as a welcoming gift for Sanctuary.

The gunner seat is FUN!

Jim plugs them in just in time to power the city shields as the giant, floating H commences planetary bombardment... to no effect! Take that, you evil letter! Inside, Sanctuary is full of familiar feces. I mean faces. Mad Moxxi owns the bar, the unlicensed Dr. Zed practices in the clinic, Scooter tinkers in the garage, Marcus sells guns in person, and Dr. Patricia Tannis runs the Crimson Lance Raider HQ.

The only thing missing is its leader, Roland, so obviously us new guys are sent to find him. Oh, and to kill a bunch of assassins hiding in the nearby waterworks facility first. Those assassins are tough SOBs and have many, many friends. At least they are carrying shineys. As I often say "I like my treasure like I like my baby steaks, raaaaare..." 

Insight: You can deploy two vehicles at once and one of the customization options is the main gun. Generally things that go boom are preferred as the driver can always use the forward machine gun.

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Blaugust Bonus: "What is some popular piece of content/media that seems to be universally loved that you have never been able to understand?" -Dragonray

Lock boxes and basically anything that you pay money for to get a random return - especially when the odds are highly obfuscated. I think anyone that spends money on such things are either incredibly rich and/or incredibly stupid. Also, it is definitely gambling and has no place in mediums that minors can access.

To a lesser extent, the same goes for grinding the same enemies or activities in game for a chance of an item. If I happen to be in the right spot at the right time, cool - I'll help defeat the whatever or run that instance. What I won't do is stay for hours doing the same thing all day everyday for loot. Once is enough. If I get cool gear from it, sweet. If not, too bad.

The only time I find myself repeating things these days is to practice to improve my own real life skills. Or you know, things I really, really enjoy. :P

Borderlands Pre-Sequel: Vault of Elpis

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Repairs on the Helios take some time, what with having to defend a Hyperion space supply drop from pirate space ships, getting the R&D specimens back into their cages, eliminating the plague infected worker cannibals in maintenance and dealing with a wandering alien in the trash compactor, so by the time all is back in order and I return to Concordia - Moxxi, Roland and Lilith are all long gone having stolen the coordinates for the vault I was meaning lay claim to on Elpis before the Lost Legion attacked! Fricking thieves!

I head to the location myself and make an ally in Captain Chef, some sort of space explorer claiming land for King Gril... Gilga... eh... "King Greg", but he doesn't really hang around to help fight the aliens guardians and lost legion eternals that are defending the vault. Gun loaders only help for the surface battles but deeper in it's just me and my digi-jacks that need to take care of everything - especially this four faced alien boss guy who gets HUGE for the second phase of his fight, which ironically is much easier than his first form.

The bigger they are, the easier they are to hit!

My reward for finally penetrating this vault? A silly little vault symbol that gives me flashes of future knowledge when I hold it. Of course, I only get around ten seconds with it before Lilith phasewalks in and brand-punches the symbol right into my face, promptly leaving me to get killed by the remaining aliens. Jokes on her as Captain Chef manages to pull me out and get me back to Nurse Nina at Concordia. My wounds are patched up, but I have a handsome mask made to cover the scar that Lilith bitch gave me. I am SO going to get back at her for this!

Insight: Kill eternals before they "ascend" or they will be fully healed. Also, double jump when the boss alien does a jump smash during phase 1 of his fight.

Borderlands Pre-Sequel: Not Eye to Eye

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

With robot production underway I could take some time to get a few other things done like find Pickle's lost sister who just ended up leaving again with Pickle's hard earned cash, setup a live creature smuggling operation with a Sir Hammerlock on Pandora who subsequently seems to have let loose a specimen called "Threshers", and find a suitable suitor for Nurse Nina who has a penchant for killing them with her love. All pretty cool stuff, but not as cool as finally being ready to retake the Helios with my allies!

I'm sure that smuggling rocket won't attract any attention at all!

The Lost Legion don't make it easy though with further shields setup that hinder progress which the science team, led by Dr. Gladstone, seems to take their time in disabling. That guy just seems to get more and more shifty... so I order him and most his team to be thrown out of an airlock. Can't be too careful with traitors these days! In their place I put a Dr. Nakayama who seems... a little too into me, but has an intellect only slightly higher than a claptrap so it should be fine.

With more gun loader support we finally push to the Eye of Helios, defeating the Lost Legion commander Zarpedon *giggle* what a stupid name. Roland and Lilith are a little shocked that the eye is an actual eyeball from a dead destroyer creature harvested from Pandora, and subsequently betray me by destroying it and half of the Helios along with it before running off! As much as I'd like to chase em down, I have to stay and try to repair the station - starting with the eye. Despite my best efforts, all I get it to do is explode all over again. DAMNIT!

Insight: Ugh, the maintenance space walk section of the Helios is one of the worst experiences ever. Go slow and look for jump pads.

Borderlands Pre-Sequel: Business Propositions

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Since my previous action didn't sit quite well with everyone in Concordia I had to do some odd jobs to build up some capital and support like destroy some laser weapons for Mr. Torque (who hates them since they don't explode) and ally with some scav gangs only to then betray them for their sweet, sweet loot. Gotta hand it to the Lost Legion for getting people my side though because when they started using the Helios cannon to start blasting to the core of the moon and openly declaring their intentions to destroy it and everyone on it, that almost instantly made everyone in Concordia my ally.

The new plan is to retake the station with a militarized robot army so Roland and Lilith volunteered to look for a viable production plant while I looked for a suitable AI with a young scav associate named Pickle. He knew the way to a shipwrecked war class frigate that housed a top of the line AI that was eventually dubbed "Felicity". Of course, it was also home to pirates who made it really hard to reach the vessel and required more than a little explosive diplomacy to evacuate the premises.

We then joined up with the vault hunters at a run down Titan production plant and after removing the power suit enabled scavs there could finally get to work with constructing the robots with the help of specialist Dr. Gladstone and his small team of scientists. While there were some initial hiccups in Felicity refusing to become a weapon of mass murder, she quickly came on board after we scrubbed her personality and plugged her into a prototype constructor robot to become the mother of loaders.

Only obedience is necessary. Scrub free will!

Insight: The rocket version of moon zoomies is awesome. Keep shooting those infinite, enemy tracking missile salvos!

Borderlands Pre-Sequel: In Charge

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

I was expecting a few vault hunter visitors on Helios station today but not an unprovoked invasion by an entire fleet of Lost Legion marines! As expected, the maintenance loader drones and claptrap units are worthless in combat which left the station close to defenseless. Without any other option, I simply had to escape by myself to the moon called Elpis. In the rush, I kinda forgot that there is no atmosphere there but luckily a scavenger named Springs managed to save my bacon with her re-breather Oz Kits.

"Heart of Gold" always clears anything that comes before it.

In exchange for a few favors, like eliminating some competing scavengers, she also hooked me up with one of her Moon Zoomie buggies to get me the town of Concordia where I could ask for help in retaking the station. Unfortunately, everyone from the town mayor to the two vacationing vault hunters Roland and Lilith refused so I had to ask my ex-wife Moxxi instead. She's one hot and smart curvy package, and luckily I caught her on a good day!

Using some black market tech I managed to triangulate a jamming signal that was screwing with the rest of the Helios defenses... back to the mayor of Concordia! Yeah, I had to go talk to him about that and we came to an agreement. I'd get to turn it off and he'd get... a bullet to the head! I'm sure Springs can run the town much better than that ass hat.

Insight: The dots on the map are some natural oxygen vents where you can refill your tank.