As-I-Play Borderlands 2: Throwing the Controller (Part Ten)

So I finished Tina’s tea party mission as quickly as possible. Mostly. The last thing she asked me to do was to escort her “guest of honor.” Turns out, he was a crazed Psycho. I accidentally killed him the first time – redo mission. Second time, he kept getting distracted and stopped following me, so I hit him… and accidentally killed him again because I guess my little fists are just that powerful. Okay. Retry. After about 15 minutes of failing to get him to follow me because he would wander off and get distracted, I said “screw it,” killed him again on purpose, and declined the mission.

This is the first mission I declined. And I don’t feel even a little bad about it. The Tina missions are both disturbing and annoying because of Tina, and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of her territory.

So I climb up the train, kill the robots, kill the unkillable robot (it’s not really unkillable, even though Roland thinks it is), and then steal its power core for Sanctuary. Carry the core back, and put it in the Sanctuary generator, just like Angel (AI voice that’s been guiding me all along) says to do.

And then the force field goes out. Turns out Angel has apparently been working for Handsome Jack all along. Color me shocked. (No, not really. I never trust robot voices, which made EDI in Mass Effect hard to work with since she isn’t actually evil, although I kept expecting her to turn on me, like Shodan, GlaDOS, Hal, Wheatley… you get the idea.) So then Lilith uses her crazy Siren powers to help Scooter fly Sanctuary away and then teleport it.

And of course Lilith accidentally teleports me off of it in the process, so now I’m chasing a teleporting city with Angel trying to justify herself incessantly in my head.

I’m becoming less fond of this game. Much less fond.

Teleporting enemies? Not fun. Teleporting enemies with ranged attack? Less fun. Teleporting enemies with ranged attack mixed with flying enemies with electric attack and robots? Pretty awful. And that’s before I do anything serious.

Killing the thresher that ate the moon beacon, for instance, almost made me quit the game. I was stuck in an area with very little ammo, no opportunity to backtrack, and fifteen robots on top of the thresher. I stopped counting the number of times I died, although at least I have a ton of money (since every respawn costs me between $1,500 and $2,500). I got the very distinct impression that this was meant to be played cooperatively, which I get, since it is a co-op option game, but I am NOT playing it cooperatively, and I don’t have the other three classes to help me, so…

Not fun.

Once I do get back to Sanctuary EVERYONE has stuff for me to do. Claptrap has a sad, pathetic birthday party, Lilith has things, Moxxie has things, Scooter has things, the board has things… And I know that if I’m going to have even a prayer of finishing this damn game on my own, I need to be higher than level 20.

Okay, go get a safe out of the ruins of Sanctuary. That should be tolerable.

Or not.

Killing the 25 bandits part of the mission was easy. Getting down to the bottom was easy. Dealing with the blasted varkid that keep respawning was not easy, but was okay. The threshers? Not okay. Especially the spiked one that pulls you to it and HOLDS YOU THERE while also being attacked by flying varkid. And then I run out of all ammo except the sniper rifle. Yeah. Cuz that’s useful close quarters. So I’m punching varkid to death (not really efficient), and dying repeatedly to threshers.

This is not making me like this game any more, particularly following on the heels of Tina and her creepiness making me feel like I need a shower. So now I’m just plain annoyed, because being simultaneously (or even sequentially) creeped out and frustrated are not things I particularly enjoy doing in my off time, thanks.

Also… Guarding the beacon from a functionally endless wave of robot after robot? Fire robots? Badass robots? Constructor? Flying robots? Sure! Why the hell not? Because it’s tedious and annoying, that’s why. Ugh.

I did make it through, mind you, but I’m not really happy about continuing to play Borderlands 2. I’m doing it for you, dear reader. All for you.