Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2

Borderlands ranks high in my list of favorite games of all time.  It sticks up there with Halo, Titan Fall, and Prince of Persia.  When I'm board and want a relaxing game, Borderlands.  When I want some excitement and unleash a little carnage, Borderlands.  Its fun its creative and....

The Bad:

1) The story mode.  It is so loose and wonky that you don't really have a nice fluid approach.  You have about 5-10 side missions for every story line mission and those missions don't really have much to add to the story line.  Granted most of them are quite humorous (Tiny Tina among my favorite).

2) Glitches/flaws.  Glitches maybe a strong word hence the flaws.  I found a lot of areas where I would get stuck behind buildings, where subtitles would cover each other if more than one character was talking, I would be in cover between a box and a house and I wouldn't be able to get out etc.

3) It takes forever to finish this game. FOREVER! If you do the side missions that is.  You are able to do just the story mode and finish but really what did you buy the game for?

4) Map travel.  Seriously... If the side missions didn't require me to run from one end of the map and back every time to complete I probably wouldn't be as perturbed.  I can spend 30 minutes just getting to the mission.  I wouldn't mind it so much if it were a new map every time, but Borderlands is setup to be similar to an open map concept.

5) Money system... This is a bit nit picky but don't change the cost of my ammo every level, or at least leave the cost of the ammo at what it was on every level.  Level one, ammo is $4, level 20 ammo is $400.  If I make bank I want to buy things like I'm making bank, and whats the deal with shift codes?  Why can't you just make golden keys available in the game!  I don't want to follow you on facebook or twitter for codes for keys, that open chests for awesome weapons, just say golden keys when you complete blah or play x amount of coop campaign or battle arena.  Don't even get me started on multiplayer.  I hate it for the most part.

The Good:

1) I do love this game.  The characters have been stitched into our pop culture, the art style as created a cosplay, make up, and video game movement.  The creative characteristics of each playable character is amazing and keeps me coming back for more.

2)  The variety of weapons of course is nothing new for this game.  But I love having the choice of watching my enemies burn to death, dissolve in acid, be electrocuted into ash, or explode into a blood mess.  The special attacks for each player also never gets old, and the ability to customize these abilities is one of my favorite aspects.

3) The villain.  For real, who doesn't want Jack to be their best friend.  He's like that dark humor friend you keep around because he's so off the wall that its hilarious to see what he'll say next.  Butt stallion anyone?  Clever, love to hate, hate to love.  Just overall the way a villain should be.  Someone who in their mind is genuinely trying to make the planet better, but doing it in a completely horrible way, that may or may not have started out with good intentions.  Borderlands the Pre-Sequel (meh good but not my favorite Borderlands game).

4)  Art.  Like all things I appreciate when I game is crafted beautifully. The music, monsters, and badies alone make this a far more interesting game then many I have played.  However on top of that, the maps and levels are beautifully done and full of bright vibrate color and cool dull colors, landscapes range from cold and snowy, a desert, a giant junk pile, or an alien arena.  All amazingly crafted!

5)  It takes a long time.  I wrote that as a negative but that was in relation to the map travel more than anything.  If you play the side missions, which you should, you learn more about individual characters such as the main ones you play as, and more about Jack himself.  Not to mention the side stories are often funny and completely silly.  Tiny Tina's stuffed animal rescue, Clap trap freezing out bandits, delivering a homicidal robot core to various bodies before stuffing him into a radio.  Pure silliness.  Which is what this game is and should be.