The Borderlands 2 end boss fight is long rather than difficult once you find the perfectly safe spot on the map. Your only risk is leaving it to grab more ammo. To help you rally in case of catastrophic misadventure, the boss fight includes an endless swarm of rakk. If you get knocked down, shoot one, and you’re back. Your main threat there is falling down so often that you do not have enough “fight for your life” time to shoot a rakk.

Playing as the Mechromancer, her pet robot contributes to the fight oddly. With the talent tree I was using, the robot could one-shot rakk to add 5 seconds to its battery life. It did so every 3-4 seconds. Instead of fighting the boss, it sat there farming, and it did so endlessly unless the boss accidentally AEed it out of existence. Free xp and money, scattered loot and ammo, auto-rez: everything you want except a meaningful contribution to the fight. That’s okay, I had it under control.

That endless rakk swarm does not stop spawning with the boss’s death. The rakk only occasionally hit the robot, so it just kept farming them as they flew by. I watched for a while, amused. I wandered around and picked up loot. I explored the area. Once it got around 200 kills, I activated the game’s ending. The robot was still farming rakk in the background of the cut scene. I watched the credits. When they ended, the robot was still farming rakk, and it had been doing so the entire time the credits were rolling. I leveled. I watched for a while, amused. I threw away less valuable loot and picked up better drops. I went to the bathroom, considered making a sandwich. The robot had 500 kills and was still at half health. I quit because I wanted my computer back, but I’m guessing you could get to the level cap just by leaving it running with a macro to hit F occasionally in case the robot dies.

: Zubon

Of course, at that point, just edit your save file.

Would Borderlands (2) be as much fun without the voice acting? I love both the lines and the delivery on Patricia Tannis, but I’m not sure how well the lines work without the delivery. There are some other performances I cannot cite without mild spoilers (feel free in the comments), so let me add that she was also great as the Firehawk, and I may need to go back and play Lilith in BL1 to hear what she does there. Marcus Mauldin also gives great delivery as the Slab King, and I may need to play Brick in BL1 to hear his performance there. Which is funny, because those two were the melee characters and so of less interest to me.

: Zubon

Colleen Clinkenbeard is the sorceress in the Orcs Must Die! games, also great work. Hey, the OMD warmage is also the voice of Axton? Hmm, I may need to try the BL2 Commando.

The Slab King is probably the single best character for exemplifying the setting of Borderlands 2. He is needlessly violent, friendly and silly, occasionally profane, psychopathic, and devoid of introspection. He has cheerful stories about people he has killed with his bare hands. He shouts rants against Jack. He fails to understand worldviews beyond his own amusements. His plans involve punching people in the face, blowing things up, or ideally both at once. He will call you during missions with advice on how to look like more of a badass. He seems to view existence as an action movie, and the world supports him; after you follow his advice, someone immediately recognizes how badass that move was. He happily reminisces, “I’ve killed a lotta people.” He is brutal, petty, helpful, and loves dogs. He is too bloodthirsty for what passes for polite society in a bandit-infested wasteland, someone who thinks nothing of the deaths of his closest allies, one of your loyal allies, and one of the last hopes for the world.

It’s that kind of world.

: Zubon

You could expect some spoilers in the comments, except that we do not get comments on the non-MMO posts. I seem to write these for my own amusement.

Borderlands 2 is silly but also darker than the first one. Most things are, upon a moment’s reflection, at least creepy and sometimes horrifying. There is lots of comedic sociopathy and black comedy that usually works best when it crosses the line twice. You may be distressed if you pause halfway or reach one of the moments when the game looks back.

For example, Tiny Tina wants to have a tea party. It involves luring a psycho into a trap and torturing him to death … while having a tea party with some dolls. The psychos are goofy insane, and we have a little girl who talks like the internet going over the top, so it’s funny. Did you notice the little name cards at the table, indicating that this psycho got her parents killed? How about that sidequest later on where you get recordings of their deaths when they were captured as test subjects for medical experiments? Or the other recordings from that quest?

On the creepy side, there are Moxxi posters in one (?) of the bandit bathrooms.

The tone is usually pretty light, and the game rarely dwells on these moments. Keep it moving, before the players dwell upon what happened there. Did you notice at the start of the game that all the Vault Hunters were on that train? All the survivors are in your group. Based on my Steam friends, it looks like most people are playing BL2 solo. You may have noticed the similar fate of all but one of the Claptrap units on the planet. Okay, next joke and/or explosion, go!

: Zubon

Borderlands 2 uses the usual achievements, but it has its own in-game achievement system in the form of challenges. Challenges award you 1-100 points of “badass rank.” Increasing your badass rank awards you badass tokens. Badass tokens can be redeemed for a diminishing bonus to a stat such as accuracy or gun damage. Badass rank and its bonuses are account-based, but challenges are character-based. If you play the game again, you may notice it to be marginally easier with +5% to everything, but then you thousands of badass rank to approach “+5% to everything.”

Pretty much everything you do contributes to several challenges, with the note that “everything you do” almost invariably involves shooting people in the face. One shot could potentially add a tick to getting criticals with submachine guns, killing enemies with submachine guns, killing enemies with criticals from submachine guns, getting a second wind with submachine guns, getting a second wind from killing badass enemies, killing midgets, dealing corrosive damage, and maybe a few more. That lucky bullet, of course, would need to be from a corrosive submachine gun, killing a badass midget while downed. There are also exploration, loot, and boss challenges, and the inevitable meta-challenge.

The math becomes interesting at times. Few enemies survive multiple headshots from a good sniper rifle, so you will probably complete kills with sniper rifle criticals before you complete sniper rifle criticals (which demands higher numbers), unlike other weapons. As Zer0, kills while using his special ability come slowly because you get one attack per special ability use, while the Mechromancer can hit F and go AFK while psychos die. Level does not matter, so you could round out your challenges by going back to a lower-level area and picking off enemies that cannot hurt you. Of course, that is putting in a lot of effort to get a few points that will eventually contribute to 0.5% bonus, but you are MMO players who grind fiercely for best-in-slot. Also, I accidentally earned quite a few points by putting on a spike shield (thorns aura) and walking through a spiderant nest (tiny enemies that pounce on you). It is enormously satisfying to watch the tiny, annoying enemies immolate themselves for having the audacity to threaten you.

Also, when you complete a challenge as the Mechromancer, she sometimes exclaims, “The completionist in me is like, ‘YEEAAAH!’”

: Zubon