January update
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Borderlands 2 (Q3 2012) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆
Looter shooter55 hours playtime (base game), 37 of 75 achievements (49%)
Beaten 6 months after activation
- rewarding gameplay
- big semi-open world maps
- weapons that allow to play in the style you want
- good multiplayer implementation
Cons:
- specific humor that will not appeal to everyone (does not to me)
- particle and other graphic options can't be turned off in the menu
- inventory and menus are not designed for K+M
- crapton on DLCs that are added to /all games page on Steam
- really bad driving mechanic
- enemies AI can get stuck
- random invisible walls
Conclusion:
Good looter-shooter from the time when games were not packed with loot boxes and microtransactions. So gameplay is not "optimized" to be grindy to the point of "Ugh I will pay money to skip this grind". Humor may discourage from playing though. It's like being in the room with someone unfunny throwing "jokes" every 10 min. You either endure it or walk away and slam the doors.
Story: We need to stop Jack from opening the vault and killing everyone. Big "part" of the story is game humor, but I'm not a fan. In the end, for me, story of this game is on the level of average FPS game. Enough to justify killing others, but nothing good.
Gameplay: We kill enemies, get tons of junk weapons (with hopes for something good), do fetch quests. So nothing much. Game was clearly designed for consoles. There is simple experience system, but it takes ages to level up. Mostly because doing all the side quests will make you over leveled for the main quest, and all enemies will give whopping 1 exp per kill). Maps are big, but rather empty and filled with invisible walls. There is no fall damage which makes exploration faster. Weapons are divided into groups (shotguns, SMGs, ARs, snipers etc) and are further modified by the company that made them (explosive damage, shooting speed, accuracy etc.) So it's easy to find your preferred weapon and look for it in the drops. There is basic trading between players, but it's clunky due to console menus. Driving mechanics is the worst I ever saw in a computer game (you drive in direction you point mouse at, not where you press directional keys).
Graphic, music, bugs: Game did not date well. But fact graphic is so simple is an advantage here - it looks better than "realistic" Skyrim for example. Music is forgettable. And apart from invisible walls (and collision problems associated with it) and some weird ragdoll game is bugless.
Side note
I’m playing B2 DLCs now, so completion rate will go up
I finally moved past entry part of Pillars of Eternity, and I’m more than 50% into the story. Looks like I will finally beat this SG win :D
I also bough PC week ago, but still did not have time to tweak stuff. I will write separate update about it.
Sounds like you have some big games on your plate right now. Borderlands 2 and Pillars of Eternity are really long. I think I can understand most of the criticism towards BL2. If you don’t like the sillyness of Borderlands, then the game is much less appealing. I never thought about it, but it must be quite exhausting to play through it in this case.
Gratz on your new PC! I hope everything works well :)