PixlBit

                                     

                                          Hopsecutioner. Did Randy Pitchford name this beer?

     After eating a Philly cheesesteak and a Terrapin Hopsecutioner beer, I played solo a lot during the approximately seven hours Mark and I played Borderlands 2. I leveled up a Siren to get the achievement for Phase Locking 100 times. That’s a cool skill! It freezes an enemy in the air for a time so you can shoot at it immobilized. I got the 100 Phase Locks after getting to level 7 and reaching Sanctuary in the story. Mark jumped in my game at one point to help me with a mini-boss, but he got bored waiting for me to phase lock enemies and left to play solo. I had to tell him to wait a lot because his level 50 Gunzerker was just slaughtering everything in sight.

                 

                                        Liar's Berg. First epic view in Borderlands 2

     Then I leveled up a Gunzerker solo but didn’t get the 90 seconds of gunzerking achievement even though I tried many times. I got my character up to level 9 and was having some fun playing solo and really taking in the story and environments. There were many areas I barely remembered from our co-op play-through because we ripped through them so fast. I liked fighting in solo play too because the battles were always desperate and challenging. While using my gunzerking skill, I dual wielded fire enhanced pistols; unfortunately, I came to a mission that had lots of fire resistant enemies, so I had to go back to Sanctuary and change up my entire set of weapons to ones with explosive damage.  I’m getting a hang of this elemental damage thing. It seems absolutely essential to winning challenging battles.

     And speaking of challenging, Mark and I tried to go up against Terramorphous the Invincible. I changed over to my level 50 Assassin and entered his game but we couldn’t beat it. That thing is crazy hard even with two level 50 players.

                 

                          A Zoo during the apocalypse, The Creature Slaughter Dome.

    Then Mark and I both bought the Creature Slaughter Dome DLC. Mark started the area and I used my level 9 Gunzerker. I just sat in a corner soaking up the shared experience and got two levels as he mopped up the first round of the fight. The creatures scale up to the highest level player in the room, so I was pretty much helpless, all the creatures being level 18 or more because of his level 50 Gunzerker. He got his 90 seconds of Gunzerking achievement, and I realized I could get mine by using the arena during solo play later. The key to getting this 90 seconds of gunzerking is finding some place with a lot of enemies to fight. The Creature Slaughter Dome is the perfect place.

     It’s neat how you can change games so quickly in Borderlands 2. You can play solo and then, at a moment’s notice, jump out of your game with no progress lost and join another game. You can even switch characters pretty quickly and change their difficulty modes. Your game world is saved every time you leave it. It all works very smoothly.