A Zero Punctuation Review Review! (BL2)

[Defenestra]

That is, a review of the Zero Punctuation episode for Borderlands 2.

Yahtzee's review for Borderlands was, while not a classic, certainly worthy of careful viewing and consideration. The game's flaws were laid bare, its strengths mentioned in passing, and several full broadsides worth of cheap shots were taken at the MMO crowd.

The sequel to his Borderlands review, his Borderlands 2 review, is sadly not a worthy followup to the original. In places, the sequel requires that the viewer draw upon information to be gleaned in the original; and in numerous others fails to touch base with the first in ways that might have strengthened it.

Where the first installment took a largely justified dig at Borderlands for having a sorely limited selection of operating environments, and a limited selection of creatures to shoot at (being Jason Voorhees and his dog, plus appearances by space lobsters and the occasional mob of asshole space marines), the sequel portrays its subject as having preciosely the same issue. This fails to mention the very significant roles played by tentacle monsters, psychotic meccano sets, bloodthirsty rock gardens and radioactive space mosquitoes; as well as the expansion of the Jason Voorhees role to include an entire flying circus worth of questionably sane assholes in hockey masks.

The much-deserved knee to the groin delivered in the original to the GUI of its subject is followed up with a half-hearted slap to that of the sequel's subject. Truly the GUI in Borderland 2 deserves a 'Most Improved*' ribbon, with the asterisk directing us to a footnote that this is like beating a dead man in the footrace, and that BL2's interface would win a lot more points if it were not twitchy, indecisive and occasionally dyslexic.

All of that said, the Zero Punctuation review of Borderlands 2 does raise some excellent points. BL2's quest management system could stand to be more helpful, determining which new piece of gear to use is often annoying (Can I get a DPS rating over here? Perhaps factoring in my character's various superpowers, trinkets, tokens and operator's licenses?), and the vehicles are still kind of awkward to drive (somewhat improved, though).

Ultimately, this is not one of Yahtzee's stronger reviews, but is recommended nonetheless to his fans, and to potential purchasers of Borderlands 2 who have seen the positive reviews of the game and want answers to the question: "Yes, but which bits might get annoying?"

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

To anyone that doesn't like Borderlands 1 or 2, first check if you are playing as a Siren, if not, try that. If still no, then they aren't for you.

Seriously the only thing that makes the games fun for me is that I genuinely enjoy my character, and sadly its only been 1 out of 4 each game that I can even stand to play as. It not just that I obviously prefer playing as a girl when ever allowed the opportunity, I just hate playing as any of the "fine" male specimens on Pandora.

I'm really looking forward to Gaige this month, as she is much more my style. Hopefully her skills and comments are decent.

The only things I think are really improved from the first game are that vehicles no longer blow you to bits when they encounter a stray bullet leaving you to get run over by trucks assuming you aren't killed instantly.

Also when in fight for your life you can now move slightly, in the previous game I often would go down and the camera would spin like mad around me because it was glitching out and I couldn't even aim. This hasn't happened so far in BL2. Grenades are 300% better this time too.

Best of all, sniper rifles are actually accurate this time. You can aim at something and you don't need to be at shotgun range to guarantee a hit. They have working scopes! No longer will you see 600 sniper rifles with a 1x zoom and 600 shotguns with a 4x zoom like before.

Too bad there are only about 50 different guns this time. They all look alike divided by manufacturer and they all essentially handle the same by manufacturer. Add to that the fact that you will definitely not bother using some manufacturers, and not all of them make all gun types anymore and you are probably gonna be hunting for a very very small portion of the potential loot out there.

Myself I only use Jackobs, Maliwan, and Vladof Pistols, SMGs, and Snipers almost respectively though there is some cross over between the three.

Hyperion sucks, except for shotguns, which as a gun type in BL2 suck with the exception of one Legendary that EVERYONE wants. While they do get more accurate as you hold the trigger down they compensate by having you swing them around like you are at sea when you HAVEN'T yet emptied half a mag into something. And they have the nerve to make sniper rifles? Lemme just waste my time overcoming my seizure-like gun sway for the first 5 rounds and then I'll hit that s.o.b. in the head on round 6..oh this gun only holds 5 rounds..

Dahl only has burst fire when aiming down sights. Great if thats your thing, it works well on pistols and assault rifles, but not that helpful with it turns your 6 mag sniper into a 2 shot mess of recoil.

Bandit has the highest mag size, but lacks in every other area by a wide margin.

Torgue weapons are awesome, but tend to eat your limited pool of ammo quick with needing 2-4 rounds bper shot usually. The ones that are 1:1 are not that great.

Tediore wastes the most ammo if you prefer not running around with a mostly empty mag, but does the most damage if you use them right. Get an smg, fire one round, toss the gun and watch things die.

I preferred them when they just meant different style sensibilities and not "hopefully you like how ALL our guns handle because otherwise you will be ignoring 90% of all the guns you find in favor of our competitors"

All I needed was something that put rounds where I aimed them, and had different looks and stats than the other guns I found. I didn't need to automatically disregard most of the things I find off hand simply because ____ made it.

They try to do right by having hybrid guns spawn on occausion, like a Torgue AR with a Vladof minigun barrel that just wrecks things. More often you get a minigun barrel on a Jacobs AR. Jacobs shouldn't even MAKE ARs as they have no automatics whatsoever, yet here is one with a minigun barrel that spins ineffectually as you fire one shot per pull.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I really don't see any problem with Borderlands 2 UI, its literally one of the most easy to navigate ones i've seen in years.

 

[Defenestra]

I really don't see any problem with Borderlands 2 UI, its literally one of the most easy to navigate ones i've seen in years.

Oh, when it's working right, the only things to complain about are the things left out, like effective weapon performance vs base. It's just that sometimes, my mouse goes one direction and the weapon I have selected for, say, putting in to my safe, goes the other. Or I'll be unable to scroll down the list of things.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Oh, when it's working right, the only things to complain about are the things left out, like effective weapon performance vs base. It's just that sometimes, my mouse goes one direction and the weapon I have selected for, say, putting in to my safe, goes the other. Or I'll be unable to scroll down the list of things.

Never had those problems.

Also, since your skills normally only apply to one type of gun, i only ever have two or three guns in my inventory, and thus i only ever need to compare assault rifles VS assault rifles and thus their base is useable for comparisons.

 

[alphamalet]

Sorry, I agree with Yahtzee. Borderlands 2 is painfully boring and uninspired.

 

[Soopy]

Sorry, I agree with Yahtzee. Borderlands 2 is painfully boring and uninspired.

I agree, the original was ordinary. The sequel was ordinary extended.

 

[Catfood220]

Since when is Zero Punctuation taken seriously? I watch it for a giggle but if I based my buying decisions on what Yahtzee says, I'd never buy anything other than his books.

As for Boarderlands 2, I'll buy it when it gets cheap.

 

[Gordon Freemonty]

Borderlands 2 is the worst game I have purchased this year. Just tedious.

 

[bojackx]

I got the original a couple of months ago and still haven't finished it. There just isn't anything to do in the game, as others have said it's just so tedious, so I will not be getting BL2. You also shouldn't take ZP reviews very seriously, since it's much more about the humour.

 

[Defenestra]

Well, if I told the folks hwo don't enjoy it that their failure to enjoy it is because they're idiots, I'd be taking a flying leap into rabid fanboy country as well as making a statement that was utterly unsupportable.


What I will say is that the game does have some things going for it:

It's a shooter with an actual healthbar and health pickups, so that a player is performing a bit of the old resource management from the days berfore all the cool kids were taking cover for five seconds to regrow their limbs.

The player gets control over their own capabilities. The stuff you like to do, you can set your character up to do more. Clubbing things, charging up and peppering things with bullets, setting everything on fire, grunting 'Flight of the Bumblebee'. Stick to cover or charge out out cover cackling like a lunatic. Sniping from long range or sneaking around to shank things in the eyeballs. Hell, you can even set yoursdelf up so that taking cover for a few seconds will let you regrow your limbs if that's your thing.

There's a variety of things to fight. A grab-bag of horrible monsters, killer robots and barking lunatics awaits. All visially distinctive and even the individual types of 'em varied from area to area, still retaining the visual distinctiveness that makes them easily identified as the specific kind of jerkass they are supposed to be. As with Team Fortress 2, all you really need is the silhouette to get a solid idea of just what is going to be trying to murder you in a second, and that means the design crew knew what they were up to.

Colour. It's really nice to play in a bright and colourful world. Each seporate region of the game really feels like it's own place.

Also, the writing is pretty solid. One might tire of the game's crude humour occasionally, but to its credit, the game uses said crude humour so that it can catch the player off-guard with moments that are sudden and chillingly grim. There's an especially poignant bit that I shall describe only as a strong 'From Hell's heart I stab at thee'. Heck, there's even an observation upon sexism in gaming in here. Delivered with the sort of subtle touch one might expect from Borderlands (So about as subtle as an exploding outhouse).

So, yeah. Flawed game? Yep. But it's certainly justifying its existence.

 

[zerragonoss]

I agree that his review seemed to dismiss it out of hand. I expected him to still not like it but it is a very good squeal in that it just took what people liked in the first and made it better.

Also I want to point out that a dps reader in borderlands would be worthless, and that is the reason its the best modern lootemup. You have accuracy and recoil effecting how much you hit and git crits but its still mainly based on your skill if you are good you will offset a high recoil by firing slower affecting the dps almost at random. than how much does reload time affect your aiming time, how long does it take to look down the sights, what does hipfire do to it. than add on top of that the half dozen different skills that affect it in odd way, than how kill streak skill effect it on top of that. Also even totally non numerical things like how comfortable you are with the weapons scope or sights affect its worth.

 

[dangoball]

Wait.

People still consider ZeroPuncuation episodes reviews?

How many times has it been said that Yahtzee is a gaming CRITIC and not a reviewer? There is a difference, you know.

And as has been said. BL2 expands on BL. If you liked the first one, you will like this one. If you didn't you won't. Simple as that.

 

[T_ConX]

The only problem I ever had with the GUI was that guns you would pick up or buy would only be compared to the gun you were currently holding. Well, that and the 'Calculate your own DPS' thing.

The plot was much improved, the action skills were much more useful, and I thought the visuals were much more colourful.

 

[Shuguard]

funny enough i had the same views as yahtzee did, before he did the review. Minus the GUI because GUI in any game is like it or hate it, no one is ever satisfied with a GUI.

 

[EHKOS]

I thought the game was great, and it had the best villain in it since Heath Ledger played the Joker. At first I thought Handsome Jack was funny, and a small threat. But what he does...oh the things that he does, and there's more than one horrendous thing he does. Makes me hate him.

 

[AngleWyrm]

Yahtzee made it clear that he was aware something was wrong with Wilhelm's reputation vs it's performance. But that sense that "I smell a rat" did not reach resolution when Jack revealed the trick. Apparently he quit playing before arriving at the moment where he could have said "I knew it!"

As a result, we got to watch some pants-on-head tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theory throw it's poo around the monkey cage. Valid entertainment, I suppose.

 

[krazykidd]

Since when is Zero Punctuation taken seriously? I watch it for a giggle but if I based my buying decisions on what Yahtzee says, I'd never buy anything other than his books.

As for Boarderlands 2, I'll buy it when it gets cheap.

I guess because you don't we all shouldn't . His reviews are accurate if a little exagerated . It's not like he makes shit up .

 

[Yopaz]

Since when is Zero Punctuation taken seriously? I watch it for a giggle but if I based my buying decisions on what Yahtzee says, I'd never buy anything other than his books.

As for Boarderlands 2, I'll buy it when it gets cheap.

I guess because you don't we all shouldn't . His reviews are accurate if a little exagerated . It's not like he makes shit up .

I have to agree. He brings up the flaws of a game because he is a game critic, not a game reviewer. He makes points and I usually find myself agreeing on everything he complains about, but I don't necessarily agree with his opinion of a game nor find the problems quite as annoying as he does.

OT: He doesn't like the game, clearly he has done a bad job playing it. Yes, that's right. He's not playing the game right. It's impossible that he did not like a game that I lied. Clearly he just didn't give it a chance.