PlayStation Blog Hands-on with Borderlands 2 PS Vita

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Takao

Banned
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PlayStation Blog:
The PlayStation social team recently had a chance to play a build of Borderlands 2 on PS Vita, and as the group’s resident Borderlandophile, I immediately called dibs. What can I say about this game? It’s Borderlands 2 on the Vita!

Controlling Borderlands 2 on PS Vita is a customizable affair: just go into options and remap to your heart’s content. To change a control, tap the action or button (even the abilities assigned to the touch screen or rear touch pad) you want to change, then tap wherever you want the action to be. By default, tapping different areas of Vita’s rear touch pad yield a sprint or a melee attack, while a tap on the front screen tosses a grenade or activates your character-specific ability.

Shoulder buttons L and R still aim and shoot, though I did notice a useful new feature that takes advantage of PS Vita’s built-in gyroscope: when you’re aiming down the sight, moving PS Vita will adjust your aim.

Environments and character models are surprisingly detailed, and the game overall runs at a solid clip, generally hovering in the vicinity of 30 frames per second. Slicing dudes up as my main cyborg-man-alien-mystery-assassin-thing Zer0 still makes me feel like a cyborg-man-alien-mystery-assassin-thing.

The gang’s all here, by the way, including DLC characters Gaige the Mechromancer and Krieg the Psycho. In addition to all six vault hunters, Borderlands 2 on Vita includes the campaign packs “Captain Scarlett and her Pirate’s Booty” and “Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage”; the Vault Hunter Upgrade pack, and the Collector’s Edition Pack!

Borderlands 2 is a blast when you’re flying solo, but the PS Vita version also includes support for two-player online co-op play between two PS Vita owners. We checked in with the SCEA Third Party Production team, who confirmed that while they strived to include four-player co-op in the game, they made a decision late in their development cycle to focus on providing the best two-player-only co-op experience possible. As a result, the maximum co-operative player count for Borderlands 2 on PS Vita is capped at two.

Oh, and good news for anyone who’s played the PS3 version for dozens of hours: you’ll be able to bring your save data from the PS3 version (standard or GOTY editions) of the game to your PS Vita, and vice versa. Just upload your save to the cloud when you are done playing on one device and pull it down when you want to play again. Cross-save, baby!

I’ll admit to being slightly skeptical when I heard Borderlands 2 was coming to PS Vita. It’s a big game! I’m still a bit unsure that making this thing happen was possible by any earthly, mortal means. But hey, I’ll take black magic and alien technology if it means I get to play one of my favorite PS3 games on the go. Put me down for one on May 6th!
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It just strikes me as a mismatch. Borderlands is best played co-operatively, but using 3G to play online will be laggy and use up all of your data, and playing on wifi defeats the point of an on-the-go gaming machine.
 
It looks pretty good. I'll wait for vitagaf impressions to see if it's worth checking out.

Savantcore said:
It just strikes me as a mismatch. Borderlands is best played co-operatively, but using 3G to play online will be laggy and use up all of your data, and playing on wifi defeats the point of an on-the-go gaming machine.
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There's wifi everywhere these days. How is it not portable and functional in that regard?
 
We checked in with the SCEA Third Party Production team, who confirmed that while they strived to include four-player co-op in the game, they made a decision late in their development cycle to focus on providing the best two-player-only co-op experience possible. As a result, the maximum co-operative player count for Borderlands 2 on PS Vita is capped at two.
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Translation: 4 player co-op is something they weren't able to get done without breaking the game.
But the game is looking pretty good so far.
 
Not excited for this at all. People go on and on about it like it's going to save the system or something.

I'm a happy Vita owner and there's so much I'd rather play on the system than Borderlands 2.
 
Savantcore said:
It just strikes me as a mismatch. Borderlands is best played co-operatively, but using 3G to play online will be laggy and use up all of your data, and playing on wifi defeats the point of an on-the-go gaming machine.
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Like people actually play these type of games on the go... in fact, most of the handheld userbase play their handhelds inside their homes.
 
Savantcore said:
It just strikes me as a mismatch. Borderlands is best played co-operatively, but using 3G to play online will be laggy and use up all of your data, and playing on wifi defeats the point of an on-the-go gaming machine.
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You can't use 3G on the Vita for online play, however it does have Wifi and it is great.
 
I don't really want it but I will buy it because this is a major test for Vita...If this sells well it will open up floodgates(hopefully)
 
Borderlands 1 is one of the most boring games that I've played on PS3. I'd rather buy a port of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair for a online coop game on vita.
 
Borderlands 2 is a blast when you’re flying solo, but the PS Vita version also includes support for two-player online co-op play between two PS Vita owners. We checked in with the SCEA Third Party Production team, who confirmed that while they strived to include four-player co-op in the game, they made a decision late in their development cycle to focus on providing the best two-player-only co-op experience possible. As a result, the maximum co-operative player count for Borderlands 2 on PS Vita is capped at two.
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They kept that one quiet.
 
I'm looking forward to it.
But it has have a close to 30fps as possible.
Though it doesn't help that the resolution doesn't look that great.
I'll props hold off my purchase until reviews (or digital foundry) come in.
 
thelatestmodel said:
Not excited for this at all. People go on and on about it like it's going to save the system or something.

I'm a happy Vita owner and there's so much I'd rather play on the system than Borderlands 2.
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Same, never understood why people were that excited about this title especially with it coming like a year or two after release. Also it just doesn't seem like a good match for the system anyway.
 
I would have been excited for this if it came out a year and a half ago. I might pick it up sometime down the line, but it just came in a little bit too late.
 
Just not feeling this. Too little too late. Already played enough of this on 360 to have any interest at all in a vita version. Anyone out there that hasn't played this already on consoles/pc really excited for it?
 
Savantcore said:
but using 3G to play online will be laggy and use up all of your data, .
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3G is not super laggy nowadays anymore. Depends on where you live and how good connection you get, but still.
Also online gaming doesn't really use a lot of data. Even if you have sometype of bandwidth cap, online gaming probably wont fill that bandwidth limit.
 
Iorv3th said:
Just not feeling this. Too little too late. Already played enough of this on 360 to have any interest at all in a vita version. Anyone out there that hasn't played this already on consoles/pc really excited for it?
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I am, never played it because of all my other games, but I'm sure gonna enjoy this
 
The cross save will be great, played the PS3 version for a couple of hours so I'll be happy to continue on the vita instead. Since I've gone nearly exclusively PS4. Also it's like a small upgrade since I had the standard version.
 
I might have picked it up but the "generally hovering in the vicinity of 30 frames per second" bit is the dealbreaker for me as that seems to be a pretty generous statement based on the trailer.

This is just a strange damn title to port to the system. Not sure what they were thinking with this.
 
so if you dont own the dlc on the ps3 version but buy the vita version does that mean the dlc will now be unlocked on the ps3 version? because I can't imagine cross-save working well otherwise.
 
I'm buying it, simply because I play handhelds more than consoles. The pick up and play nature of handhelds appeals to me.

Quite easy to get in to a game and suspend it for later.

I haven't played this game yet, so even if it's a port - it'll be new for me.
 
Environments and character models are surprisingly detailed, and the game overall runs at a solid clip, generally hovering in the vicinity of 30 frames per second.
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All of these here qualifiers, along with the short videos I saw from GDC, concern me about the performance. I have this on PC, but I have a friend who thinks it would be fun to do co-op on the Vita. I agree, but if it runs like dung my interest is basically zero. If it turns out well I'll be scouring the BST thread for a couple of download codes from bundle purchasers.
 
noobasuar said:
That's a bad reason to buy a game. Also there's not a chance in hell it does well.
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Plenty of people buy games like Wonderful 101 because they want to support a system and not necessarily because they're interested in it. I'd ask you to stop being so negative towards EVERYTHING but only rarely do people change their outlook on life.
 
Freedom = $1.05 said:
so if you dont own the dlc on the ps3 version but buy the vita version does that mean the dlc will now be unlocked on the ps3 version? because I can't imagine cross-save working well otherwise.
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I wouldn't be surprised if they lock out your save file on the PS3 if you haven't bought the PS3 DLCs. Hopefully the DLCs support cross-buy though.
 
Freedom = $1.05 said:
There's wifi everywhere these days. How is it not portable and functional in that regard?
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Eh...you mean there's Wi-Fi in many places, but not everywhere. And even when it's there, it's not always reliable. I live near Atlanta, and even in and around a major city, Wi-Fi is not everywhere, and it's usually not reliable.
 
This isn't out yet? There were like 3 copies of it at Target yesterday, just kind of stacked on a side shelf. Not exactly the most prominenant place for a new release.
 
and people that are remotely interested, people in the vita 2k thread and other places on the internet are selling their bundle code for $20.
 
Wow, this looks awful. This game doesn't belong on the Vita. A twin stick shooter would have suited the platform far more than this cash-in, but I don't expect much from 2K these days.
 
Iorv3th said:
Just not feeling this. Too little too late. Already played enough of this on 360 to have any interest at all in a vita version. Anyone out there that hasn't played this already on consoles/pc really excited for it?
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Me. It seems I'm in the minority though.

I was really LTTP with my PS3/last gen consoles (bought it late 2012) so there are a lot of games for PS3 I haven't played (or played really late in the game. I think The Last of Us and GTA V were the only games I didn't play much later than everyone else).

I've tried Borderlands 2 on the PS3 cause of PS+ and I like it but I actually held off because I was excited about playing it on the Vita (I really like my Vita and enjoy playing games on it more than the console in general I think. Though I admit with as many controls as Borderlands 2 has, it may be one I do prefer on console. But I like the idea anyways).

Plus, I'm with some one else, I really want Borderlands 2 to do well to show to do more of this stuff (though I agree judging from the internet at least that's a lost cause :( ).
 
chickdigger802 said:
and people that are remotely interested, people in the vita 2k thread and other places on the internet are selling their bundle code for $20.
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It's actually getting quite a bit of interest. It's currently #25 at Amazon US, and is outpacing the XBO Titanfall bundle at #27.
 
ThoughtsOfSpeaking said:
Seems like a game ripe for plus later in the year.
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While PS+ is a great service and saves consumers a great deal of money, I can't help but feel that there are hidden detrimental ramifications.

If everyone with PS+ hesitated on games released (Until they're on PS+), surely developers would stop making games for said PS systems?

I would prefer that not to happen, as I really do like my PS4/Vita systems. I try to buy games to encourage myself to try new experiences, while hoping that $ spent, encourages developers to continue creating those experiences, on said systems.
 
Iorv3th said:
Just not feeling this. Too little too late. Already played enough of this on 360 to have any interest at all in a vita version. Anyone out there that hasn't played this already on consoles/pc really excited for it?
Click to expand...

Never played it.Not excited.
 
JawesomeJaw said:
This isn't out yet? There were like 3 copies of it at Target yesterday, just kind of stacked on a side shelf. Not exactly the most prominenant place for a new release.
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How is it that this game is already out in the wild and yet we still only have about 2 articles, 2 videos, and 10 screenshots? Amazing.
 
I'll be getting the game in the bundle so will try it. Loved Borderlands 2. Maybe this time I'll actually know what the hell is going on instead of just shooting everything that moves.
 
Hell, I love Borderlands 2, and I can't wait to pick it up again on Vita. Still got to play through the game with Zero and Maya, so why not?

I get a lot of people are down on this port, but the console versions really didn't manage 30fps a lot of the time (especially in split screen, where the PS3 went as low as 15fps...) As long as its basically feature complete i'm gonna have a blast playing this again, especially as i'm gonna be doing a lot of long journeys over the next 9 months. This will keep me busy.
 
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