When we read the announcement of Borderland’s 3 being released on Steam, JBG and I both pre-ordered in readiness to finally get our hands on it. Sadly, the day before we were due to record our first session, Virgin Media decided to upgrade the firmware in by Super Hub, and promptly added huge latency issues to my previously stable connection!
Fast-forward several weeks later, and we finally got thing stable enough to start playing through together. As expected the first hour or so of the game re-introduces all the various gameplay elements, leading to a slightly frustrating experience.
By the end of this video, we’d met up with Claptrap, Vaughn, Marcus and Lillith, before setting up camp and doing various ‘busy-work’ missions to keep our companions happy. Despite being a bit slow, all the familiar Borderlands elements seem to be present, together with some new game mechanics and skills trees to get our heads around.
Hopefully things will start to ramp up as we continue our playthrough. I’m sure the long wait will turn out to be well worth it after all!
Playing as the familiar Mechromancer at least meant I wasn’t all at sea at the start of this video. The opening sequences provided some fairly intense combat, and again it took both JBG and I a little while to find our feet and stop dropping into Fight for Life mode.
Sadly the ‘story’ didn’t really develop, and once we headed outside things started to go a little downhill. The final confrontation with the giant turkey was almost laughable, but once we realised what we had to do (slag the turkey!) we started to make some progress.
However, once the turkey was dead, things really took a turn for the worse. I’m sure someone thought it was amusing to listen to Torgue’s grannie’s story for minutes, but it really didn’t do it for me. Plus the fact that when JBG inadvertently went too far from grannie she started the whole story over again. Ah well. I don’t think we even completed the second of her ‘story’ missions.
Torgue’s Headhunter DLC started kinda well despite the premise of first poisoning then killing a giant unkillable turkey for prime time TV entertainment. There were initially a bunch of bad guys inside Torgue kitchens that were pretty tough, which was briefly fun.
The theme of these headhunter missions is to play a character we’re not playing in the main game and to start with only one weapon. Ahead of the first headhunter, I’d only briefly played as Axton. For this headhunter, I played as Zero who I’ve got a lot of history with. I like to max the killing blow melee skill and mix it with a high powered shotgun, one blast and a swish of my blade would take out most, except here I didn’t have a shotgun.
The gameplay stepped up visually as we got outside but stepped down the fun with the introduction of the annoying flying bugs and then the turkey itself. It took us a while despite a number of slag references and being given a slag gun as part of the mission, to realise we needed to slag the turkey (there might be a joke in there). Once we twigged the need for slag it was just another boss, lots of running around avoiding deadly barrages while shooting back from cover. After the turkey, we got the grannie conversation. I guess someone at Gearbox thinks they’re funny.
From a technical aspect, the only real issue was the appalling quality of my mic audio. I was using the Bluetooth headset that crashed out mid-game a few weeks ago but otherwise has performed admirably through over 40 gameplay videos, except I had noise cancelling turned on by mistake, which overlaid my voice with a robotic compression effect, which is difficult when your default voice sounds a little robotic in the first place.
Otherwise apart from editing out an eternity of the grannie chat and a small audio sync discrepancy, there wasn’t much to fret about.
I’d never played through the Headhunter content before, somehow missing them in my single player escapades. JBG came up with a couple of interesting twists to spice things up: starting afresh with a new character, and limiting ourselves to a single weapon.
The gameplay was relatively uninspiring, but given the original $2.99 price tag I guess you can’t really expect too much. We were given an interesting mix of bad guys to fight off, and our level 30 characters ran into a bit of trouble a couple of times.
We had a few technical issues during the recording of this video (not least JBG managing to turn off recording when he meant to mute his microphone!) but I think the edit actually comes out pretty well. We plan to continue with some of the other Headhunter missions in the future, so we’ll see how they go.
When AD asked me at the end of this video what I thought of the gameplay my immediate answer was rubbish; I’m never going to rate shooting pumpkins as a pleasurable pastime. The game restrictions we forced on ourselves were interesting entertainment though, especially as it was the first time we’d done something beyond straight gameplay.
For a start we played as each other’s Avatar, in that I was using a level 30 Axton and AD was using a level 30 Siren. On top of that, we had to allocate skill points and only carry one gun going into the level.
So, while I didn’t enjoy the gameplay and we DIED (once – a fire breathing flying pumpkin got us), it is actually quite entertaining to watch.
On the technical front, this was the first video we used OBS to record webcam. As ever we messed it up royally by only specifying 2.5Mbs data rate for the 720P video, which means our greenscreens had a lot of compression artefacts in the background. For once AD’s looked better than mine after it was chroma keyed.
We live and learn. We have since tested 720P @5Mbs and the chroma key works well. You’ll see that in the next headhunter video.
I don’t really have much to say about this video, as I seemed to spend most of it locked behind a grate trying to futilely assist JBG as he bravely fought all manner of magic creatures alone.
The slaughter missions seem to be very ‘marmite’ moments, in that they’re either incredible fun, or just more hassle than they’re worth. Sadly, this one seemed to fall into the latter category.
All manner of high level enemies was bad enough, but that coupled with numerous floor traps, flames and a precipice all around the level that meant instant death meant that staying alive in these missions was a real feat of achievement. One which I summarily failed to achieve.
I doubt I’ll be back, sorry Murderlin.
My overriding memory of this video has little to do with the gameplay and everything to do with the slog it was to bring together as a functioning video.
We’d been using facecam for a while and noticed some issues with lipsync for videos over an hour. This video was the first time we really started to get to grips with it.
We discovered MS Camera was recording at a much lower framerate than it reported. All our gameplay is recorded 30fps @48000Khz The camera was recording 14fps @44100Khz.
The short term solution was to eventually transcode the source webcam from 14fps to 30fps and then use that in Premiere Pro. They lipsync drift was solved at the cost of 3hrs additional transcoding before we ever got to start editing the video. We immediately started seeking a quicker solution.
The answer was OBS (Open Broadcast Software) which takes the webcam footage and codes it on the fly to our required 30fps @48000Khz. It wasn’t perfect by any measure, in fact, it was a step back in the quality of the captured chroma key background, but that’s a story for another day.
In the meantime, my memory of the gameplay itself was that I kicked arse once I realised running around the level was a bad idea and holding our ground was the way forward. My high powered, movement limiting shield helped a lot.
When we started this video, we assumed we’d get the final mission wrapped up, and maybe even have time to take in one of the side missions. How wrong we were!
This turned into one of our longer videos, despite cutting out a fair portion in the middle where we found ourselves wandering around the dungeons trying to find our way out!
Tina threw the kitchen sink at us in terms of combat, and we barely had time to draw breath as we fought our way to the top of the tower to take on the Handsome Sorceror in the final battle of this story. The identity of the queen had JBG guessing right up until the end, and led to a real laugh out loud moment when she was revealed.
A very strong ending to this DLC, and one which almost made me weep the first time I played it through.
JBG touches on some of the technical challenges faced in the production and editing of this video, and I need to offer an apology for the annoying level of keyboard and mouse sound on my side. I experimented with using the microphone on my webcam for this video, not realising that it picked up much more of the clicking of keyboard and mouse. Lesson learned!
You could not accuse the developers of the Tina DLC of cutting corners for the finale. It was non-stop for nigh on 90 minutes, with wave after wave of opponents to the very top of the tall tower and the face-off with multiple incarnations of the Handsome Jack bad guy wizard. It’s full-on.
The ending is both poignant and hilarious and is worth the battle to experience it, especially if you liked the characters and story narrative of the main game play-through.
Technically this video was the first time we realised the audio sync on the webcams was drifting when tied with the gameplay. Or the webcam video was drifting from the audio. You can see it on both our videos but more noticeably on AD’s.
The drift turned out to be Microsoft’s Camera application recording at some odd FPS well below the 30fps it reported it was recording. The framerate meant the audio drifted noticeably from 1hr+ when synched with actual 30fps video.
Most issues we can resolve during the edit, sometimes we can’t as was the case here. We apologise for the lack of lipsync at the end of this video.
The short term solution will be to transcode the webcam footage including the audio to 30fps before editing, but that’s a time sink in itself.
Going forward, we will need to find an alternative to MS Camera.
Tiny Tina’s DLC continues to offer up some great combat, although a few of the supposedly humorous parts of this campaign fell a little flat for us. Having to repeatedly die attempting an impossible puzzle, only for the ‘joke’ to be revealed wasn’t particularly fun.
That said, the rest of this episode was really enjoyable, offering up lots of varied combat against a good mixture of enemies of different levels.
I’m particularly pleased with the way these videos are turning out now. The newly-added facecams add a new dimension, and if anything are forcing us to be a bit more descriptive and communicative, knowing otherwise the bottom third of the video is taken up by two relatively static images of us starting slack-jawed out our monitors!
My recollection is that this DLC finishes really strongly, so I’m looking forward to continuing the series.
The second hour of our Tiny Tina adventure was great fun if you ignore the puzzle that only reveals it’s impossible to solve after you’ve killed yourself several times trying to solve it. That sort of game mechanic annoys the shit out of me.
The rest is of good quality and great fun. The setting is medieval with a dungeons and dragons flavour, and taking on bows and arrows with SMG’s and shotguns does sometimes feel a little unfair but…
On the technical front, we are starting to hit our stride now with the facecam. One of the rules we imposed on ourselves when we created the channel was that bringing the separate video feeds together as the final product should not become an industry in itself. Of course, it has been a learning curve. The goal has been to spend no more than an hour putting together each video. The first videos took three hours, but once the process was in the bag I got it down to 30 minutes, and then we introduced something else, that took it back to three hours, and then process and practice brought it sub 60 minutes again.
One of the biggest technical challenges at the beginning was synchronising two videos onto one screen. Synchronising the videos involved a lot of frame counting, subtracting frame counts, shifting timelines back and forth until I discovered you could select both sequences in Premiere Pro, right-click and select synchronise!
All hail synchronise. It doesn’t do it precisely every time; usually, it’s a couple of frames out. But adjusting those last few frames is a few minutes over the frustrating 20 minutes it was.
Hopefully, we’ll get to share more insight into the technical aspects of GreyOps over the coming weeks.
Tiny Tina’s DLC is a bit of a departure from the normal Borderlands fare. Instead of taking on the usual opponents, this DLC sees us fighting Orcs, trees, knights and various other fantastical creatures. Doing it with sniper rifles and rocket launchers does seem a little out of place however!
As seems fairly standard with the add-on content, the early levels are a little weak, but this DLC soon gets into its stride giving us some decent bouts of combat. Tina quickly tugs at our heart strings, seemingly unable to accept that Roland is dead. This theme continues throughout the DLC, and I remember the ending being particularly poignant.
This video also continues the evolution of our video presentation, and now sees JBG and I appearing in the videos in full HD glory, allowing you the dubious pleasure of watching us as we commentate on our various escapades.
I’m looking forward to continuing this DLC, as my recollection is that it builds to a very strong conclusion.
My first impressions of Tiny Tina’ DLC were not positive. Skeletons are one thing, but shooting walking trees are another. I’m glad we were committed to playing the DLC though because it gets a lot better once you are past the first orc village.
Throughout the campaign, there is a good blend of opponents ranging from skeletons, knights, archers, sorcerers and orcs. Throw in a dragon or two too.
Tina’s DLC has an excellent narrative on loss as well. It is very powerful, starting with the introduction of a story favourite at the end of this first episode.
If you have been watching our videos for a while (and who wouldn’t) you will notice a few changes in the layout; for a start, you can now see our faces. In just a few weeks, we have gone from having a twirling avatar beneath each of our screens to a gnarly face overlaid on the background and video.
Creating that sort of video overlay with a transparent background takes a certain level of technology; namely a greenscreen. Once we decided we were going to have our faces and then saw that we each either had a wardrobe in the background or a bookcase, it wasn’t a great leap to decide greenscreen was the future. We both bought the same fold-out green screen, which is excellent but HUUGE! Also folding it back up is an art form in itself.
Greenscreen is a challenge in every video because the screen must be well and evenly lit to remove it from the video. Currently, AD and I use bright off the shelf ceiling bulbs. If you see any static in the background or the transparent background isn’t entirely transparent, it is because we’re recording in the spare room and not in a studio. We have found recording the facecam at 1080P with a high resolution does result in a lot less static.
There have been challenges at every step creating these videos and still are, it’s one of the reasons they’re worth making. As we go forward, we’ll be discussing them and the solutions in greater detail. If you want videos demonstrating the process, let us know in the video comments.
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.
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 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.
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.
When we read the announcement of Borderland’s 3 being released on Steam, JBG and I both pre-ordered in readiness to finally get our hands on it. Sadly, the day before we were due to record our first session, Virgin Media decided to upgrade the firmware in by Super Hub, and promptly added huge latency issues to my previously stable connection!
Torgue’s Headhunter DLC started kinda well despite the premise of first poisoning then killing a giant unkillable turkey for prime time TV entertainment. There were initially a bunch of bad guys inside Torgue kitchens that were pretty tough, which was briefly fun.