23/09/2012

New Game - Borderlands 2

It's been nearly a month since my last post not because I've not been gaming (Skyrim Diary still to update, Uncharted 2 getting further, Guild Wars revisited & still iOSing) but just been far too busy with 'Real Life' things getting in the way.

Anyhow Borderlands 2 was released on Friday luckily my copy from Shopto.net turned up on Thursday.

Initial one word thoughts ?
AWESOME !!

Did you really expect me to say anything else?

The pre-order premiere club keys also applies to all the accounts on the console so the kids also get the golden guns, vault hunter relic (+5% chance of rare loot drop) & a golden key. You can also receive another golden key by signing up to the Gearbox Shift social portal (Via the extra section on the man menu).

Four different character class to choose from Axton the Soldier you love & know, Zero who is a Ninja Assassin, Maya who is the siren class & Salvador the Gunzurker.

I initially went with the Gunzurker class. The most obvious difference you notice from the first game are the custom skins & heads. You can unlock new skins/heads throughout the game but apart from making your character look unique it really does nothing else. The new BadAss rank adds an interesting element to the challenges in the game when completed you earn a token & you can upgrade a attribute like Maximum Health by 1%. These tokens will be applied to all characters you create with your profile. There have been some small modifications to inventory management in you can mark your loots as junk with a red cross or favourite them with a star.

The claptrap boys PMG session is on hold for a week until Jaimie returns to a 360 console. I went with the local split screen option to play with my daughter which is fine for her because she gets first refusal on any loot found.

We made it to the first town in the game & met Sir Hammerlock who gives you a few quests to complete to receive some nice weapons. This went well until we sat down on Friday to play again & my split screen character had lost all it's Bad Ass ranking & the extra vault key from the shift social portal. The challenges I completed previously were still showing as completed but I had a ranking of 0 & all my perks I had chosen were gone.

This seems to be a widely reported bug on the gearbox forums which I thought initially was for split screen players but a few gamers via twitter have confirmed that they have only played single player & have also lost their BadAss ranking.

The only way I found to get the challenges reset was to delete my character & start again.

This time I went for single player only with Zero after getting my character to the same part in the game I saved & turned off for the night. The following day I tested this character on local split screen with my youngest daughter's account (The other kids were to scared to try their characters & I don't think my 5 year old daughter is going to play Borderlands 2). I'm happy to report that all my Bad Ass ranking was still active but I have lost the golden key from the shift social sign up.

Time to brave it again then yesterday (Saturday) with my daughter on local split screen with another new character this time Axton. Getting to the same point meeting up with Sir Hammerlock so far so good no bugs. Fingers crossed then for today.