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: The Face of Killing

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Annoyed at Pyro Pete's advanced tech, I decided it was time to even the playing field and got me some GOLDEN KEYS. 226 to be exact! With a quick trip to Sanctuary we used a whole bunch to upgrade with totally gnarly weapons which we unleashed back into Pyro Pete's FACE! MUAHAHAHAAHAH! Now we are #1 on Mr. Torque's leaderboard once again!

Acid everywhere!

Since our training to fight people has climaxed (oh my!), it was time to practice on critters and what better spot than the Hunter's Grotto - a swamp that's home to mystical and sometimes very tough vampiric tribesmen, flying spores, massive scorpions and horridly tall spiders. Riding fan boats while hunting these and the giant versions there of, we stumble upon the lab of one Dr. Nakayama who is conducting evil experiments with the local wild life to resurrect Handsome Jack, who he is totally gay for.

It's not long before we find one of his creations - a Jack Scorpion - rather, a giant scorpion with Jack's face and a Hyperion turret on its back. The thing practically kills itself. This Nakayama guy is a loser! We decide the planet will be better off if we KILL HIS FACE TOO! HAHAHAHAH!

It takes a lot of murdering to reach Nakayama's crashed space ship base, but once inside his only defenders are hyperion bots and a Jackenstein monster who I easily carve up once DL and Jim snipe off his shield generators. We don't even have to touch Nakayama as he then accidentally kills himself on some stairs! BWAHAHAHA!

Unfortunately the savage chief Ngwatu who takes his place is less of a laughing matter, as his pet stalker - Voracidious the Invincible (again!?) is another tough, fast, and hard hitting cookie that forces us to withdraw. We decide to go to our trainer, Tiny Tina, for advice and she decides to make us play Dungeons and Dragons BUNKERS AND BADASSES? All right then!

Insight: Here's how I got all those Golden Keys (for FREE of course!):

Make Shift account, link to steam or whatever. Go to rewards section.
Open this link and go through codes. There are a lot - don't forget to look at "Event Codes" tab, particularly at the bottom for unexpired keys.

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Blaugust Bonus: "What are some of the things that get you excited in life?" -Heather

New cooperative board games!

Borderlands 2: Invincible Comeback

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Lucky of us, a sponsor has recently been kidnapped in the region by Pyro Pete (Rank #4). Unlucky for him I have a fire-proof shield and beat him down in under half a minute. The sponsor turns out to be Mad Moxxi who sends us to our new trainer... Tiny Tina? WUT?

After some shenanigans with cookies, Tina sends us to participate in the DEATH RACE to train for our next battle. Somehow, both Jim and DL end up letting THE PERSON WHO HATES DRIVING (me) do the driving. Well, turns out just because I don't like it doesn't mean I'm bad at it - and successfully complete the circuit three times in a slow Bandit Technical - winning the last run by a second! I am ELATED!

Tina sends us to do a few more training missions such as getting an autograph from a serial killer and walking her dog giant flaming skag, before letting us face the overweight, cannibalistic bike rider Motor Mamma (#3) in the arena. Her arsenal manages to knock Jim down, but once her bike is destroyed she's mince meat for MY AXE! Mince meat I save for tasty snacks later. Nnnhnhnhhnnyeeesss!

With Motor Mama packed away it's time to hunt for the Rank #2 dude, "Flyboy", guarded by robots and all things flying - but Piston (Rank #1) flips the script and explodes Flyboy from his blimp before our fight can start! Piston tries to bombard us too but DL's turret and sniping skills defeat his balloon and send him crashing to the arena.

There the fight continues against his next vehicle, a monster Badassasaurus truck that Jim explodes with his dual lazers. Finally on foot, I give Piston a face full of buzz axe - splitting his face into two. IT'S BEAUTIFUL!

It's a pretty cool vehicle!

Unfortunately we don't get to keep the #1 ranking for long since Pyro Pete makes a comeback, having trained up significantly to become Pyro Pete the Invincible! What is it with everyone gaining invincibility? He's now a really tough nugget to crack and while not as impossible as Master Gee, is still enough to force the three of us to retreat!

Insight: Multiplayer can probably cheese the race by having a person wait at each checkpoint, but I did it properly meaning use the boost (F key on keyboard) during the straights, and jumping the ramp to the sky bridge also saves some time.

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Blaugust Bonus: "Tell us 5 facts about yourself." -Jen Thorpe

I'm married, I like (trying to) sing, I make diaries of most games I play, I like cooperative board games, and I dislike money grabbing/gambling lock boxes in all their forms.

Borderlands 2: Eaten by a Rumor

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

After surviving the betrayal, we race to the treasure but are quickly devoured by the Leviathan, a giant sand worm who supposedly guards the lost treasure. Didn't mention it till now cause, well, it was just rumor... until it ate us.

Captain Scarlett is in here too, and after a short scuffle I take her gun and kick her pirate booty further into the monster's poop chute just before it barfs DL, Jim and I back out. Guess it didn't like the gunfire in it's belly, but having us outside meant its own doom.

In under a minute, the Leviathan was dead and right under him - the lost pirate treasure! As the Firehawk thought, this decent loot would certainly help Sanctuary... so we sold it to them for some nice moneys! CHA-CHING! As for Scarlett - not sure if she made it out, but if she did she'll certainly be shit-faced. Literally.

We hunt down her remaining crew without much trouble - until we reach her engineer Hyperius the Invincible. This heavily shielded guy comes with equally shielded loaders that need to be taken care of first. Luckily my buzz axe rampage is really good at making meatbicycles out of robots now, and despite the long fight we finally chop him up in the end! CHOP SUEY!

Gotta shoot those nuts before a third wind!

The last on the hit list is Master Gee, who truly is invincible - though there must be a secret with all the acidic worms that spawn in his arena. Having lost too much cash from "reconstruction" we decide to leave him for now and to train at the Badass Crater of Badassitude arena run by the delightful Mr. Torque. His favourite word is F*CK!

Instead of pirates, the bandits in this region are all Mad Max biker themed - complete with motorbikes and sidecars. Our first arena fight against waves of bikeys is really easy and it instantly brings us to #5 on the rankings - but to continue the climb, we need to first find a sponsor.

Insight: Undead Pirates who show up with normal mobs are far more dangerous than the Leviathan. These skeletal swashbucklers hit hard and are fricking tough due to their regenerating health. When you see one, burst it down ASAP.

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Blaugust Bonus: "What is something you have lost along the way that you would love to have back?  Can be serious or frivolous." -SDWeasel

Anonymity. Good luck getting that back. :P

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!