Borderlands 2 Ranking: C
Sometimes the game was actually a lot of fun, and I'll be the first to sing the game's praises on its personality and character. To illustrate, at one point you run into a dude named Face McShooty who loudly demands you shoot him in the face. Talk to him and he'll give you a quest, where the objective is to…shoot him in the face. Complete this objective, and you get an achievement.
The hybrid FPS-RPG thing was also a great touch and I loved seeing my character grow stronger over time while still retaining the player-skill-based challenge that is the FPS genre. So…why the average score from me?
The developers of this game do NOT understand how to make a game challenging. Instead, they know how to make the game frustrating. For one, shields in the game do precisely jack. There's a problem when I walk into a zone with enemies 20+ levels below me and a standard mook can still take out my shield in 1-2 hits. And after that, they can deplete my life marginally slower. And then, when I go into Fight For Your Life mode, they run away so I can't hit them for a Second Wind. Finally, when I respawn, an annoying voice appears to taunt me on dying when I couldn't do jack-shit about it.
The major boss battles all have adds. Example: at one point you fight a giant flying robot with mounted cannons, and he's pretty tough. But what really makes the fight annoying is the infinitely respawning mook robots that harass you as you're running around, avoiding the boss's attacks, while trying to shoot him. A great way to do that fight is to hide inside the bunker and take potshots…which makes the fight long, tedious, and not challenging. So my choices are (1) run outside and fight an annoying infinite army of respawning robots or (2) stay inside and potshot the boss to death. Great design, guys.
I fought the raid boss just to see what the fuss was about. The raid boss has a lot of HP and pretty damaging attacks, and that was fine. The raid boss can also one-shot you by knocking you off the cliff that you fight him on and you can do…hmm…jack-shit about that unless you stand in a specific spot where he can't do that and then chip away at his health until he dies. Are you seeing a trend here?
Look, there are ways to make a game hard without making it frustrating and unfair. I mean, I could design a game that's unfair too, where the maximum damage you can do is 99 and the weakest enemy in the game that can one-shot you 20 times over has a minimum of 568925782085709468029580 health. It wouldn't be a fun game, and neither is dying repeatedly to cheap one-shots while having to avoid adds.
Sometimes the game was actually a lot of fun, and I'll be the first to sing the game's praises on its personality and character. To illustrate, at one point you run into a dude named Face McShooty who loudly demands you shoot him in the face. Talk to him and he'll give you a quest, where the objective is to…shoot him in the face. Complete this objective, and you get an achievement.
The hybrid FPS-RPG thing was also a great touch and I loved seeing my character grow stronger over time while still retaining the player-skill-based challenge that is the FPS genre. So…why the average score from me?
The developers of this game do NOT understand how to make a game challenging. Instead, they know how to make the game frustrating. For one, shields in the game do precisely jack. There's a problem when I walk into a zone with enemies 20+ levels below me and a standard mook can still take out my shield in 1-2 hits. And after that, they can deplete my life marginally slower. And then, when I go into Fight For Your Life mode, they run away so I can't hit them for a Second Wind. Finally, when I respawn, an annoying voice appears to taunt me on dying when I couldn't do jack-shit about it.
The major boss battles all have adds. Example: at one point you fight a giant flying robot with mounted cannons, and he's pretty tough. But what really makes the fight annoying is the infinitely respawning mook robots that harass you as you're running around, avoiding the boss's attacks, while trying to shoot him. A great way to do that fight is to hide inside the bunker and take potshots…which makes the fight long, tedious, and not challenging. So my choices are (1) run outside and fight an annoying infinite army of respawning robots or (2) stay inside and potshot the boss to death. Great design, guys.
I fought the raid boss just to see what the fuss was about. The raid boss has a lot of HP and pretty damaging attacks, and that was fine. The raid boss can also one-shot you by knocking you off the cliff that you fight him on and you can do…hmm…jack-shit about that unless you stand in a specific spot where he can't do that and then chip away at his health until he dies. Are you seeing a trend here?
Look, there are ways to make a game hard without making it frustrating and unfair. I mean, I could design a game that's unfair too, where the maximum damage you can do is 99 and the weakest enemy in the game that can one-shot you 20 times over has a minimum of 568925782085709468029580 health. It wouldn't be a fun game, and neither is dying repeatedly to cheap one-shots while having to avoid adds.