Category: Borderlands 2 Main Campaign

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Natural Selection Annex – Borderlands 2 S03E11 – True Vault Hunter Mode

After taking on two slaughter missions in the previous videos, we thought we’d round off the series by taking on the Creatures in the Natural Selection Annex.

This turned out to be a much bigger challenge that we though, as even in the second round we were facing Ultimate Badass level opponents in a very open arena with little cover.

After the first failure in Round 2, we probably should have taken some time to discuss tactics. The relatively open arena gave little opportunity to take cover, but we probably should have made more of an effort to do this. Ultimately I was perhaps a little gung-ho in my attitude, leading to my dropping in to ‘Fight for Life’ out in the open areas of the arena.

The jump in level between this and the last slaughter mission was somewhat of a surprise though, perhaps it’s a mission series we can come back to in the future, with a more systematic and tactical approach.

Wildlife Preservation Slaughterhouse. It’s probably not called that, now I recall it might be the Wildlife Annexe.

Regardless, there is one word of advice I can offer you if you’re in co-op playing this in True Vault Hunter, which is if your buddy gets caught in the middle of the arena fighting for their life, you will have a hard decision to make, which is to revive them and risk the very high chance of dying yourself or to just let them die.

In my opinion, if anyone is stupid enough to get caught out in the middle with no cover in fight for life, they deserve to die. Only revive them if surviving rates above 90% and then give them shit if they bitch about the lack of team play.

I’m not sure I would actually have survived this slaughterhouse in TVM playing solo, as I’ve mentioned numerous times killing anything that isn’t bipedal isn’t my thing, I certainly struggled against those ultimate insects, but you ain’t never going to do it with your arse exposed out in the open.

Nuff said.

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Ore Chasm – Borderlands 2 S03E10 – True Vault Hunter Mode

After visiting Fink’s slaughterhouse, it only seemed fair to take a trip to Ore Chasm and visit with Innuendobot 5000. While we were there he had some fun in store for us, heading down the lift to battle wave after wave of Hyperion soldiers and robots.

We’d visited here after completing the main campaign in ‘normal’ mode, and it had been pretty challenging back then. Now we were True Vault Hunters we expected things to ramp up somewhat!

We weren’t to be disappointed, although slightly surprisingly we made it all the way to the fifth and final level before dying. A lot! We’d get to a similar point only to find ourselves surrounded by Badass and Super Badass bots, and the rest, as they say, is history.

A bit of strategic thinking saw us finally realising that we should take cover instead of barelling into the middle of them all, with all guns blazing. It was very satisfying to finally beat the final wave, hopefully that comes across in the video!

Ore Chasm, I think it is called. It is the most challenging of the slaughterhouse missions we have so far completed if a challenge can be measured as a good mix of fun and gameplay.

Of course, co-op and true vault hunter make it a little more of a challenge.

If I remember correctly, which I’m prone not to when my daring exploits are recalled, we died a few times at the beginning of the video. I edited those down to the death highlights because who wants to watch extended gameplay where someone dies, it’s like watching a movie where the hero eats a rocket at the end.

Until recently I’d never completed Ore Chasm, ever. Now I’m a super badass myself I’ve completed it once in Vanilla co-op, once TVM co-op and once TVM solo. Everything is doable if you avoid:

  • Standing out in the open
  • Standing out in the open especially when the super badass flying things come into play, they dodge gunfire and are deadly powerful
  • When the super badass loaders land in-front of you and then behind you, choose one group and take them out quickly and then use their vantage to take out the other ones. Preferably start with the ones on the edge of the level which means nothing can come at you from behind.
  • When the suicide bots come for you arm yourself with a shotgun and run like fuck, jump off something high, turn fire, land run, repeat till it goes quiet

It’s a toss-up between this and Finks Slaughterhouse for favourite level but although Finks wins because you can’t beat killing bandits, this is actually more of a combat challenge. You will have to make combat choices (as above).
Great fun.

 

 

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Fink’s Slaughterhouse – Borderlands 2 S03E09 – True Vault Hunter Mode

The slaughter missions are always good fun, and playing in True Vault Hunter Mode at level 50 gave plenty of scope for taking out some high level enemies.

This was to be our first ‘real’ video with on-screen Face Cams on both JBG and I, and to be honest we probably couldn’t have picked a worse mission to do this with! For a lot of this video, expect to see both of just staring blankly into the screen, as taking on wave after wave of bad guys left little time for a running commentary!

This was a pretty challenging mission, and we both died almost simultaneously while taking on the second round of bad guys (out of a total of 5!). The remainder of the video saw us giving a much better performance however, although I did let the side down right at the end by dying in the final wave of the final round, leaving poor old JBG to fend for himself for a minute or so.

On the whole a very enjoyable mission, and hopefully we’ll both get better at providing our thoughts during future sessions!

Nobody has ever asked, but if someone ever did ask what my favourite B2 gameplay is, I’d reply ‘Roland’s Rescue’ without hesitation. The rescue is a long sequence of levels covering different environments and opponents. A mini-game in itself which importantly bonds you with Roland as a character.

But this video isn’t about that, so let’s change the question to a favourite level. To which I would immediately answer Fink’s Slaughterhouse, which isn’t so much a level but a deathmatch arena unto itself. When you’re in the arena, you have to survive to get out and if you do you can choose to go back in against tougher opponents.

The attraction is my background in deathmatch FPS gaming which dates allllll the way back to Duke Nukem 3D (it was actually 2d but there was a perspective element). Most of my deathmatch experience came with Quake 1-3 and Unreal Tournament. In those days practice was all about fighting bots. I didn’t really care much for PVP and my perspective really hasn’t much changed.

So Fink’s Slaughterhouse is my kind of fun. I could play a whole DLC based on these kinds of ‘Game of Death’ levels. It was why Torgue’s Carnage DLC boss fight was a huge disappointment for me. It actually had a deathmatch arena in the game and you never got to deathmatch in the arena save for a fixed fight at the beginning.

Anyway, Finks slaughterhouse is good. Very good.

One final point. I picked up a Tesla grenade by accident about a third of the way through this session. I’d never used one before but accidentally came across one of my now favourite gameplay styles, which is to lure baddies towards me, drop a tesla and then slag them as they run through the electric field. I just need a Tesla to now last a decent amount of time.

Have fun, catch you soon.

 

 

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A Mission for Marcus – Borderlands 2 Facecam Test – TVM

Always keen to improve our production process and add a little more to our content, we thought we’d try recording a quick test video with both of us on-screen via overlaid face cams.

We chose one of Marcus’ side missions, which took us into the Sanctuary Hole and then the Caustic Caverns to retrieve a safe.

The first thing we learned was that the side missions do seem to scale up to match our current level. There were a number of deaths for both of us at the start of this mission as we found our feet battling creatures that were a couple of levels above us.

We eventually found Marcus’ safe, and returned its prized contents to Moxxi, thinking we were protecting her honour. In the end, she decided that she was just going to publish the pictures anyway!

The face cam test was pretty successful, so expect to see us build on this in future videos.

So AD and I were in the pub, which we don’t do as often as you might think, and we were thinking about ways we could make the Grey Ops videos more interesting. For some reason, it occurred to AD that adding a live video of us while gaming might do that.

I would agree, not that we’re particularly easy on the eye but my experience as a viewer has been better when there is a person to relate to.

We did this video that night, left the pub car park, went our own ways and recorded this test. The gameplay isn’t brilliant and I got a bit grumpy I recall, but having a face beneath each video helps. I think.

Of course, things got a little out of hand in the following weeks, evolving from us windowed below the video to chroma key overlaid. You’ll have to tune into the next few blogs to hear about the pop-up greenscreen mayhem that ensued.

I hope you do.

 

 

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The Final Showdown – Borderlands 2 S03E08 – True Vault Hunter Mode

The road to the final confrontation with Jack and the Warrior provides for some classic Borderlands 2 combat.

Wave after wave of Hyperion soldiers and robots (some very high-powered) provide excellent opportunities for some very enjoyable sequences of death and destruction.

With some experimentation going on with weapon loadouts (primarily finding the best sniper rifle to use!) we soon cleared out everyone that had been put in our way, and headed in to the Vault of the Warrior for our final showdown with Jack and his new-found friend.

The final battle was a bit of a slog, but amazingly we both managed to make it through without a single death. I came incredibly close at one point when I found myself underneath the lava in Second Chance for a significant time, but just about managed to get a kill to revive myself.

Once the Warrior and Jack were gone, the big reveal gave us a hint as to what might be to come in Borderlands 3. So come on, get it off Epic Exclusive and on to Steam!

In the meantime, what’s next?

The final stage of the main B2 story mission comprises three stages. First, you have to fight your way through the main gates protecting the vault compound. Then you have to fight your way through several layers of security leading to the vault and then when you’re in the vault you have to kill the Warrior, which is big and mean and breathes fire.

As the first two stages are all about taking down Hyperion robots my slag sniper and the golden corrosive gun did the job nicely.

Just inside the second stage, there’s a blown-up bridge you have to jump over which for some reason I regularly fail if I’m in coop. This time was no exception. Very annoying. I think it was my only respawn.

Save for that there were some excellent moments, AD and me sniping from scaffolding as Brick tore into the robots was a highlight.

As you get nearer the vault the fighting gets tough and a fight for life is waiting around every corner. The rule of the day is don’t rush into anything.

In the actual vault having to fight Jack is a nice variation on the boss confrontation but taking down the Warrior is still about staying alive and sheer volume of damage. The only weapon that seemed to make any impact was my slag pistol, which I also used to kill the Warrior in the vanilla game.

I’m not sure if you get extra loot for letting Lilith kill Jack but it is quite a nice way to end the game.

All in all, only playing through the story missions was a great way to experience B2, especially in TVM. We were way too strong at the beginning but I’ve never been averse to a bit of demi-god mode. I’m already itching to get at it again in Ultimate Vault Hunter, which from a brief taster seems much harder.

See you there.

 

 

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Infiltrating the Stockade – Borderlands 2 S03E07 – True Vault Hunter Mode

After Brick and his boys blew up the bridge for us, we now had to get to the Hyperion Info Stockade to find out where the Vault was.

As ever, the expected simple route didn’t work out, so we had to overload the pumping stations to blow a hole in the pipeline to give us access to the Stockade. Cue lots of enjoyable fighting against Hyperion soldiers and robots.

Once into the Stockade, Jack threw more high-level robots at us to fight our way past, including a couple of very challenging battles against the very well armed Saturn robot, and then a Constructor. Downloading the data also led to some more enjoyable battling of robots and the like.

Nothing particularly outstanding in this session, but some pretty decent sections of combat that definitely made this a fun session. Next time we’ll be taking on the Warrior in the final mission of the story. Watch this space!

You will notice at the beginning of this episode I have switched from using the golden gun as a primary to a slag SMG. It has taken me countless hours of gameplay in full knowledge of the world dynamics to realise a slag gun coupled with my corrosive cloud is a deadly combination in B2.

The slag SMG is a great option because it gets a lot of rounds into the enemy in a short time, almost always into a slagged state as the corrosive kicks in. If the enemy is high powered enough to survive the initial onslaught I’ll then pull out the golden pistol to pile on the corrosive damage.

Corrosive works really well against robots but isn’t so effective against flesh, but that’ll take me another few hours to figure. All the way to episode 9 in fact and Finks Slaughterhouse. I believe the penny only dropped because AD mentioned it.

This mission against the Hyperion data centre is pretty good fun, with a combination of challenging robot opponents and some interesting building assaults all the way to the underwhelming data centre. It would have been nice if the kind of assault required to shut down the pumping stations had been deployed inside the data centre which is roughly the size of a three-story house and mostly comprised of a single staircase.

We now have the location of the vault and the mission ends with all our friends in Sanctuary wishing us well in the final assault. Tune in next week for that mission and the finale to the main story campaign.

 

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Conflict in Sawtooth – Borderlands 2 S03E06 – True Vault Hunter Mode

“Just go collect some explosives”, says Brick. What could be more easy?

This turned into a pitched battle through the Main Street Reservoir and Cramfist’s foundry, before annoying Mortar enough to allow us to ascend the elevator and steal some explosives.

The difficulty is really starting to ramp up now, and this video contains a number of deaths for both of us! I’m finding that sometimes my weapon load-out leaves a little to be desired, so it may be time to return to Sanctuary to spend some of the Gold Keys I’ve accumulated.

The battles in this episode were often very busy, with lots of high level bad guys to take on. Some of my deaths were a little frustrating personally, as it always seemed like I would be attacked and almost killed by the sole enemy, leaving me with next to nobody to kill in order to revive myself.

Borderlands 2’s rather comedy driving physics also made another entrance right at the end of the video, where both JBG and I sped over a seemingly flat bridge, only for both our cars to end up almost taking off as if we’d driven up a 45° ramp and end up performing some sort of bizarre mating ritual for a few seconds!

Next video should see us heading to the Hyperion Info Stockade to find the location of the Warrior. Should be fun!

Considering we’re only in Sawtooth to find splosives there’s a whole lot of fightin’ happenin’ to get to them splosives. ‘Specially given the amount of ordinance laying about in B2, you’d think it’d be a little easier.

However, Sawtooth is one of the best levels of gameplay with varied environments both indoors and outdoors, wide-open spaces and street-level fighting. It is enormous fun. Not to mention this gold pistol is still kicking ass.

We both died in Sawtooth too, which I don’t particularly care to do. It was one of those situations where a stray shot takes you down, and the only co-located bad guy is a super-powered midget who’s hairline you can barely see over the top of the platform. You’d prefer not to die, but it happens, I guess.
We’d already spent a while here in the last session and spent the best part of an hour here getting out.

Sawtooth is always good fun and this time was no different, save for the dying that is.

 

 

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The Darkest Hour – Borderlands 2 S03E05 – True Vault Hunter Mode

We’d fought our way up to the Bunker in the last video, so now it was time to infiltrate it and meet Angel.

We had a good battle with a horde of robots while trying to take out the autocannons, before finding out that the Bunker wasn’t actually a place, but actually BNK3R, the defence mechanism Jack had put in place around the core containing Angel.

Battling lots of robots is always great fun, and when you add in a high-level, well-armed, flying droid into the mix, things get better and better! After dispatching BNK3R, I found a rather nice view off the edge of a waterfall, only to find the current of the water I was standing in pushed me off the edge to a rather embarrassing death!

Further robot battles were the order of the day as we infiltrated the Core, with Roland and Lillith turning up to help us. Angel was duly dispatched, only for Jack to appear, kill Roland and take Lillith hostage.

Our next mission was to infiltrate the Hyperion Info Stockade to find out where the Warrior was. As ever things were never as simple as they seemed, as the bridge to the Arid Nexus was drawn up in front of us, meaning we had to to find sufficient explosives to effect entry.

After our synchronised deaths at the hands of some high-level Bullymongs, we found some more enjoyable combat as we fought our way through Sawtooth Cauldron and Smoking Guano Grotto. The next video should see us fighting to get the explosives, bring it on!

There is a moment in a good story where you hit your lowest point, usually as you approach Act Three. Probably someone important dies or almost dies. Above all the moment tells you the bad guys are in total control. This moment in storytelling is called The Darkest Hour.

Borderlands 2 has endured for so long because it is propped up by a good story. The attack on the Bunker is the false high at the back of Act Two, as we reach and then kill Angel which turns into the darkest hour when Jack appears and kills Roland. With Jack in total control of the story, we have no choice but to fight back, starting with our quest to hack the Hyperion computer systems by gaining access to the Arid Nexus.

As per the last few sessions, my golden pistol was deadly, its use by me is described in some detail in previous blogs if you’re interested.

Although Roland’s death is shocking the proceeding attack on Angel’s bunker is a grind occasionally bordering on fun, see knee-high laser beams as an example of making gameplay difficult over challenging. The same applies to Angel’s crypt too. I always love killing robots but the obstacles often make it a slog.

Sawtooth Canyon is a lot more fun and has always been a section I look forward to, mostly because of the varied environments and bad guys, requiring different tactics and gunplay approaches. The section is so long we resolve it in the next video.

So, see you in the next one as we trawl deep into the major conflict of Act Three 🙂

 

 

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The Road to Angel – Borderlands 2 S03E04 – True Vault Hunter Mode

The sections of the main campaign in Thousand Cuts and Opportunity are some of my favourites in the game. There’s a good variety of enemies to face off against, and the locations provide for some interesting gameplay.

If memory serves they also provide some interesting side missions too, so we may return to these locations later to cover some of the better ones.

The variety of enemies means that changing out the weapon loadout is often necessary, as you switch from fighting Slabs to Robots to Hyperion soldiers. Aerial bombardment is a particular challenge in this section too, particularly when you’re fighting up a relatively narrow road trying to avoid being blasted off the edge by an attack from the skies.

The final section through Thousand Cuts up to the bunker is particularly satisfying, as a host of high-level enemies are thrown at you to try to prevent the assault on the bunker. We probably should have ended this video before starting this section, but JBG and I were having so much fun we pressed on regardless and ended up deciding to end the video in the middle of a key mission.

Another satisfying factor in this video is that the challenge is definitely ramping up again now, as we start to face higher level enemies closer to the end of the campaign. Now we’re coming into the second half of the campaign, this bodes well for some exciting videos to come!

You may have heard me banging on about my amazing golden pistol the last couple of gameplay blogs. If not here’s another chance.

This session was more of the same in as much it was huge fun. I’ll never have a problem walking as a demi-god through levels and obliterating all those before me.

AD complained it was a little easy. I guess that’s why I love playing as the siren, phase-locking with level nine Helios never gets old. Demi-god all the way.

As the first point of order, we easily convinced Brick to join our gang by killing his best soldiers (funny old world). The slab mission is always good because there are lots of bandits to kill and we like to kill us some bandits.

In Opportunity, we stole Jack’s voice from a body double and I died. Death in Opportunity is easy to come by, demi-god or not. I was toe to toe with a super badass on a platform when AD launched a series of rockets at the badass. The explosions lifted me off the platform and dropped me in the ocean a long stone’s throw away. I drowned. Dying always makes me a little grumpy, but it’s not really dying if your accidentally killed by your pal, is it?

Armed with Jack’s voice module we started the first stage of the assault on Angel’s bunker; lots of robots and lots of Hyperion soldiers. I used my golden pistol almost every step of the way. The low bullet and corrosive damage are compensated by the sheer number of bullets it can fire in burst mode. With my corrosive cloud skill, nothing stood in my way.

 

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Wildlife Preservation – Borderlands 2 S03E03 – True Vault Hunter Mode

We’d managed to capture a power core after defeating Wilhelm, and when we installed this it turned out to all be a trap! Sanctuary’s shield was down, and we were under attack. The only thing for it was to ready Sanctuary to take to the skies.

Regretfully, we weren’t able to do this in time before the attack took out the Crimson Raiders headquarters. Luckily Lillith was on hand to phase Sanctuary to a new location. The only way we could get back there was to re-establish the link to the Fast Travel network by stealing a beacon and have Angel use this to reunite us with the rest of our friends.

Our final objective in this mission was to retrieve a Claptrap upgrade from the Wildlife Preservation Reserve to enable us to infiltrate Control Core Angel. We had to fight our way through the shipping yard and into the holding cells, battling lots of robots, soldiers and various critters along the way. Finally we found out that Jack had been experimenting on Bloodwing, and our rescue mission soon turned into a fight for survival against a former ally.

Unsurprisingly this resulted in the death of Bloodwing, but at least we managed to retrieve the upgrade and return it to Claptrap in Sancturary.

During the earlier portions of this playthrough in True Vault Hunter mode, I was a little disappointed at how simple things appeared to be progressing. During this session things finally started to get a little more challenging again, and I found myself enjoying the battles a whole lot more as a result. Hopefully this upturn will continue through the remainder of the Borderlands 2 story.

There is a quality to the Borderlands 2 experience that comes with having a well-crafted skill tree and weapons to complement those skills and your play style.

I’ve always preferred the sniper rifle for medium to distant targets, the fast-firing SMGs (preferably with elemental damage and a big magazine) for short to medium distance targets and pistols with sights for short to medium given specific scenarios. I always carry a high damage shotgun ideally with explosive damage for those up close get the fuck out of my face encounters.

Rarely though do you ever find it all works seamlessly and you’re constantly on the hunt for a weapon that fills some necessary need. I guess that’s good game design.

While we were rescuing Roland I picked up a gold pistol which had a fast multi-shot fire rate, fast reload, decent magazine size but low damage in both bullet and corrosive elemental. It immediately handled well and because it had such a fast fire rate it actually did a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

I equipped it soon after and haven’t stopped using it since. It works best as a secondary weapon to either the sniper or SMG, depending on the situation. Because of my additional Siren corrosive cloud damage it’s a great way to finish off enemies especially if I have them phase-locked. As the back-end of the B2 main story missions is robot heavy I felt like a demi-god as we moved through levels.

In this gameplay we did a lot, it started with the loss of Sanctuary and trying to re-unite with it, which largely involved creating a new fast travel system in Overlook and then fighting off hordes of robots. I think at several stages I said I was having too much fun and really was.

An incredibly fun session because for once, weapons, play style and skill tree all worked well together. I think this was also the first time I started to realise combining slag damage with my corrosive cloud skill was a deadly way to take down almost any opponent very quickly. It would take me a few sessions to work out but this was the first time I started to realise how powerful it was.