There’s something about Borderlands that I love, whether it’s the fountain of numbers that come flying off an enemy as they take damage, the cell-shaded graphical style that works way better than it really should, or the anticipation when you find a weapons chest… even if the story is a little suspect (looking at you Borderlands 3 here) I’ll play through the game and enjoy the process.
Hell… I even enjoyed “Tiny Tina’s Wonderland” where they dabbled with more Dungeons and Dragons type mechanics and a weird Overworld layout between locations.
The game just clicks with me… the whole package, revamped for the Xbox One, with all the DLC added and a price tag under £10 was something I was always going to pick up… and when I hit a bit of a gaming slump around not long after finishing Banishers… it became the ideal solution to my problems.
April 16th
So… there’s a lot I’d forgotten about this… such as how slow the first game is when you’re on foot running from one place to the next, or killing a Skag by jumping on him for a Mario related Achievement… but it’s still a great shooter to play.
I’ve reached New Haven, the second hub you come across after Fyrestone, and I’m around Level 23… thus follows the usual routine of getting yourself a decent shield, a couple of quality weapons, and slowly working through all the side missions until the difficulty of the next main mission makes it appear manageable.
My main weapon is due for an overhaul… I grabbed it from the Golden Key chest at around Level 15 and it will still do a job, but sooner or later it won’t be fit for purpose and I’ll have to try and find a worthy replacement.
As usual, I’m carrying around a variety of weapons, have a modifier on my character that regenerates ammunition constantly and a turret which also heals me if I’m within a certain radius when it’s on the battlefield… basically everything I used to do when I played this back in the Xbox 360 era.
July 7th
Well… what with illness and Hellblade 2, the amount of time I’ve spent on Pandora had been fairly limited… until July kicked in and I found myself working from home with a renewed urge to game.
Now ignoring an indie or two that were completed, and an initial spell in Baldur’s Gate 3, this has been my main game for the last week… to the point where I’m now on my second run.
I’d forgotten so much, such as being able to carry health kits, or expanding your storage through helping Claptraps in various levels, and somewhere I missed one as, if you help them all, you expand your storage to 42 slots (and unlock an Achievement) and I’m still at 39… annoyingly having helped the first one I found in my second run didn’t give me the 3 slots I’m missing.
I remembered the Guardians in the final couple of levels watching over the Vault, and I remembered the creature that comes out the Vault… but I also remembered that this battle was much harder, whereas this time I didn’t need to use a single health item, hide once to recharge my shield or panic that I was so close to killing it and then failing just short of victory.
Granted I have a seriously high powered Repeater Pistol, with a magazine capacity of 97 or so at the time, so I just unloaded the full clip into it 3 or 4 times and it never had the chance to really attack me, let alone kill me.
I had remembered that, to access the DLC, you use the Fast Travel system to go to new locations… but had forgotten that you really need to be Level 51 to have a chance of succeeding, and I was only level 36 having killed the final boss, so a second play through is required.
Looking at the Achievement guides, a second pad will have to be brought into the fold to unlock a few co-op Achievements… not something I’m usually keen on doing, but these can be done easily enough in the first area you reach, so I may go there this time.
July 18th
My memory is really playing me up… more of that in the second part as it generally refers to stuff about the DLC that I’d forgotten that really kicked in this last week.
When I booted the game up I found that, due to obsessing over Twitter and Facebook in the days of Borderlands 2 and 3, when it came to starting this again I had rather a lot of Golden Keys to open the shiny Loot Chest in New Haven and Fyrestone… 147 to be precise.
I started using 3 every time I levelled up, and then upped this to 5 when I believed the Level Cap to be 61 from the DLCs… as someone now working towards Level 63 this clearly wasn’t the case.
It hasn’t provided many weapons, bomb types or shields that I’ve actually used… cash wise I don’t need to worry any more.
I work through the second run and hit Level 51 as I reach Old Haven, so I could just switch to the DLCs then, but the idea of running into those over levelled appeals and I work through to the end of the game again and finish close to Level 54.
I do spend some time trying to help Claptraps in various locations as, instead of giving me a slot upgrade so I can carry more loot, one gave me a bomb modifier so I’m stuck with 39 slots and can’t pop the Achievement for reaching 42 through repairing the annoying, wheeled noise boxes.
Even the one I’ve stumbled across on the DLC gave me a bomb mod… do I need to start a 3rd run through for this to pop?
I did hook up a second controller for a few multiplayer Achievements, and I’ve popped enough to pass the usual 1,000 on offer for a retail release… shame this one tops out at 1,750 and includes even more multiplayer stuff and the annoying Moxxi’s Arena stuff that I just never bothered with previously… anyway… onto the DLCs.