To Loot or Not to Loot - A VERY Tenuous Borderlands 2 Preview

With Borderlands 2 and it's cel-shaded, action filled magnificence dragging us back to Pandora for more gun looting, skag killing madness I decided to revisit the first outing. And I have to say one thing, I bloody love loot.

When it comes to games with a loot mechanic I become that stinky old man in those TV shows with thousands of Radio Times that make my bed and mouldy old pasta that has formed the shape of an owl stuck to my jumper.   

Borderlands wasn't the first outing that I have enjoyed collecting every item an enemy drops and hoarding it. Sometimes I never even use 90% of the stuff I pick up. But Borderlands is one of the games that make you realise you have a problem once you go back to other games, and tries to controls that virtual hoarder inside.

The problem with other games with inventory and random loot is this, they give you too much space to keep your useless trinkets, and lots of options to store you crap elsewhere. Games like Skyrim, Kingdoms of Amalur, Fable & Fallout allow you to carry a boat of load of crap and when your full you can drop it in a load of chests or caches so you can go out and collect a load more. They just fuel that inner hoarder inside...

Where's my Xbox controller?

And a lot of it I never use, I would spend ages in Skyrim collecting any herb I walked past and just taking all items from any chest I found, and I don't even like alchemy or sagecrafting skills. If I wanted to spending hours making potions that turned me into a bad ass I would just auditioned for Breaking Bad. 

But I can't help myself I can't leave things alone I have to have it ALL, I MAY need it for something, some random quest  maybe so I HAVE to take it. And this is my problem, I spend a lot of my time being over-cumbered and wondering if I should drop a bunch of nimroot or that wood I bought earlier from Olaf (if you don't know Olaf see here). 

And this is where Borderlands saves the day, very limited inventory slots. It teaches you to keep the things you REALLY want and hawk off the rest to the nearest vending machine. It's sensible and treats your problem like that leather faced psychiatrist you see on that hoarding show on Channel 4.  

Limited your inventory is a great tool for making you value what you carry around with you and not just pick up any old shit. Now Borderlands isn' the best example to keep checks on your virtual hoarding skills, especially when you have Mad Moxxi's Underdome DLC and you have a bank to store more crap in. But at least it is just guns and shields that you could store and not just all those cabbages and old skulls you happened to pick up like in other gaming adventures.

There are some other (great) games that control my potential problem, games like Deus Ex, System Shock, and Diablo give you a limited inventory box to arrange the loot in a tetris style fashion. So not only do you have to be tactical in what you carry but you also have to rearrange your stuff to fit, much like a group of girls trying to pack all those shoes and sambuca into their suitcase for a trip to Kavos. 

Borderlands, with it's bazillions of guns you have to be scrutinous in what you pick up and that's a good thing and I hope more of the same for number two. Having a storage space for your guns can be a good thing, especially when you pick up guns you can't use yet and the whole share chests for co-op will be great when I finally convince my other half to play with me as it has a 'girlfriend' mode*. 

Severely limiting the amount you can carry really does make you a little bit more strategic with what you carry around and value the items you can but also keeps you becoming the guy who finds a cans of beans from 1993 with a dead mouse in it. 

*(this is not a sexist remark about women gamers, my other half only plays Sim games and Theme Park World. She's currently lacking in other game genres, a personal goal is to change this. Even if it does involve me watching One Born Every Minute or letting her touch my feet)

                                           Not the kind of item I was expecting (via Kotaku) 

So Borderlands 2 promises to be bigger, better, more colourful and with LOADS more guns. There is nothing new in this preview that you couldn't find elsewhere but ONE thing I know about Borderlands 2 that you won't find anywhere else is this.....I'm really looking forward to it and coincidentally have a week off house sitting at the rents and the pre-ordered copy is going straight there so I can play as soon as I've got the pleasantries out the way.  
There you go WHAT A SCOOP! Go share with your friends.



Now if I could fill my inventory full of beer what would I fill it with? Here's my top 3 beers I would hoard until I was over-cumbered and then had to drink more to fast travel anywhere.

Innis & Gunn Rum Finish - I can not get enough of this stuff to be honest would struggle to keep any in my house for long. A beer that is aged is rum casks giving this beer an awfully   fruity taste and hints of spice from the rum. It's sweet and almost desert like and I would finish a meal off with this any day of the week.

Magic Rock Cannonball - In true IPA style this weapon of mass deliciousness is quite a high ABV at 7.4% (even though the Human Cannonball is 9.2%) but packed with tropical fruit flavour with a bitterness that brings it back down on the finish.  Expertly crafted.








Jaipur IPA - If you can't tell from the previous beer I'm a bit of a fan of IPA. I love the massive amounts of flavour you can get from an IPA which is all down to the excessive amounts of hops used during the brewing process. Been discovering this in cask around Bristol and it's honey notes and it's great powerful finish really makes this one a 'pearlescent' item in my inventory.