Damn it. I told my roommate I would wait for him until he gets home from work tomorrow. Going to be a long day...
Got to level 7 with a commando before quitting for the night, it's an outstanding sequel, and I know I'll be dumping a ton of hours into it. Right off the bat the gun design stands out; each manufacturer feels MUCH different in how they shoot and aim, and the guns all look very different, even a few hours into the game. Like the original, ammo is pretty scarce if you're playing 3-4 players and you only have 2 hot-swap weapons; by the midgame it'll surely change when you get ammo-regen class mods and aren't constantly churning your guns over. At least they made ammo ridiculously cheap to buy. The writing is very, very sharp, with a nice mix of juvenile humor and pop-culture references. The visuals are what you'd expect, while I can't call them sharper, there is a lot more contrast and color, and it's much easier to tell where you're getting shot from. The interface is improved, but it still seems unintuitive. I don't know who decided on one-click buying/selling at vending machines, but that needs to get patched like yesterday. The original interface was one of the worst in video-game history, but at least you didn't sell your favorite gun or waste money on the item of the day constantly. Really bummed I won't have free time to play for a few days, but it's already got the hooks in deep. I highly recommend it, but only if you've got friends playing now. Otherwise, it's probably best to wait 12 months and pick up the GOTY edition for $7.50, rather than $60+$30 for the game and a season pass for DLC.
Thanks for the early thoughts. I'm getting a physical disc copy for PS3, so I won't be able to play until tomorrow afternoon. Really looking forward to it. I'll be starting off with Maya.
Anyone who has the premiere club stuff -- do you already have the special gearbox guns etc? I am level 7 and haven't gotten them yet -- it said I had the key however. Do I get them in Sanctuary?
Noticed Gearbox didn't snub PC players this time in terms of setting up the game graphically. Playing the Siren and got it to lvl 8 with my commando friend. Had a blast the couple hours I got to play, humor is still there, Definitely can't wait till I dig deeper into my skill tree and get awesome loot.
The Golden Key will unlock a chest in Sanctuary that's filled with purple-rank guns. However, the guns inside scale to your level, and you can only use the key once. So personally, I'm going to wait until level 50 to open it. But you can open it whenever you feel you want a one-time boost to your armament.
So I was going around Sanctuary looking for loot when I see a chest and opened it. Up pops 2 purple items and I just realized I f'd myself by opening the golden chest. Apparently, it's been happening to numerous other people, too. And a lot of others aren't realizing they're even opening the golden chest. Damn. Well, I'm gonna e-mail Gearbox and see if I can get another key because I wasn't planning on opening it at level 8.... Also, the one-click buy and sell is dumb, as another poster mentioned. I find the new UI harder to navigate through than the original. Lots of wasted space. I'd rather have the concise list of weapons as opposed to the large gun icons in the menus. The game is fun, don't get me wrong, but they messed a lot of things up from Borderlands 1, which didn't need any tweaking.
Looks yellow and not the normal red/orange. I was hasty and just running around Sanctuary looking for loot, like any Vault Hunter. I see a chest, my reaction is "ooh, loot!", I open it. Oops, it's the golden chest.
Dude, I just did the exact same thing. So pissed. I was assuming the game would have the decency to ask me to confirm if I wanted to use my key. Where does one email Gearbox? I may try that too. Agreed. I never had an issue with the old one, I can't fathom why they need to show the gun icons now. Was waaaaaay better to see your whole list all at once than having to scroll through.
Not to mention that having the gun icons actually makes the color-coded rarity harder to see. One wonders what they were thinking.
It's gold with skulls on it. I didn't open it, but I was also rather aware of what it looked like beforehand. I agree -- they probably should have some sort of warning.
So for everyone's reference: I did try e-mailing 2K games through the official Borderlands site about the golden key thing. They came back at me with a nice, polite, "sucks to be you, oh well." What's funny about it is that, in the return e-mail, they even acknowledged that a lot of people were having golden key issues, and even brought up a point I hadn't thought of that's a product of the shared loot system: if you're playing with people, there's nothing to stop them from grabbing the stuff from the chest you just opened. Seems kind of silly to acknowledge the widespread problems with it, and then not do anything about it. Not even "we're going to patch in a warning dialogue." It only served to make me more annoyed at them.
Where is the first chest? I'm at abandoned town in the glacier area where trapclap gets his eye fixed. Just cleared the pond and grave.
Ah, well there's only one of them, and it's in Sanctuary. It's sitting in a building in the center of town. Like I said above, I opened it sort of out of a combination of several factors: 1. impulse (chest, open!), 2. the fact that chests throughout the game already look quite different from the first game, so the fact that this chest is gold, but not overly-obvious, gaudy gold with a sign or anything didn't distinguish it enough for me, 3. no confirmation dialogue to open. So yeah, so just make sure that as soon as you step inside Sanctuary, be on the lookout for it and don't open it.
Another gripe here. 1-way Fast Travels. Seriously, wtf? There's no warning on them that it is one-way. All you see is a subtle holographic "no u-turn" sign above it that blends in really well with the rest of the holographic crap. And it's also orange. Be on the lookout for it after long dungeons. My first encounter with it was on a long mission Spoiler where I rescued Roland , spending 20 min or so clearing and looting the level. Get to the waypoint where I feel like I'm gonna encounter a boss, notice I'm low on ammo. See a fast travel and think "hey, let's go grab some ammo from Sanctuary." Travel back to Sanctuary and find out that it's a one-way ticket. So then I have to go through the whole level again clearing the respawned trash. Annoying. I wish they'd give more of a warning for the changes they made in this game. There are lots of complaints from previous Borderlands players. On the other hand, I found a pretty awesome revolver with high damage, high accuracy, high fire rate, low reload time, and a scope that beats out all my other snipers I've found so far. Pretty much the ideal weapon for a sniper, and it's not a sniper rifle. Yay loot.
