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10.30.2012

Borderlands 2: Master GEE the Invinci-douche

     WARNING: RANT AHEAD!

    Master Gee the Invincible.  As many Borderlands 2 players have learned, Gee is the biggest piece-o-crap battle ever.  Never have I, or many other gamers, been so frustrated. 
    After numerous attempts at defeating this truly invincible boss, I may actually give up.  That is a sad statement from an obsessive gamer.  To give readers an indication of how obsessive I get about being a completionist - I platinum trophied in Dark Souls, touted as one of the hardest games ever.  It was VERY difficult.  To the point of taking a couple months to finish.  Slowly, but surely.  At least if I died, it was usually because I messed up- such as a miss step or an poorly timed parry.  Not because an untouchable guy and his magical hydras were stopping the game system itself.

     Master Gee is a very large hitch in this game.  A problem that needs fairly immediate attention.  After roughly 25 attempts, through many variously suggested methods of fighting him, I have had the PS3 freeze upon his death at a 100% rate.  Every.  Single.  Time. 
     As soon as his life hits 0 (regardless of if I'm unloading a rocket to his face, or the acid eats up the last of his health bar) the game freezes.  The closest I've gotten after his death has been the little yellow check mark that travel to the upper right corner and turns into a "Turn In!" box almost made it to the "D" of Defeat Master Gee on the picture below. (the check mark isn't in this pic)  Some might ask, "Why do you keep trying?"  Well, other gamers on the forums have, after many, many attempts gotten his death to not freeze the system, and they are able to turn it in.  So I keep plugging away, but that may change.  I may just say F*** it, and abandon this DLC like one of it's lost treasures.  Granted this treasure is very rusty. 

     The pic is one of the times Master Gee and his wang gang all vanished.  That is a Dahl brand spiker gun, by the way.  I like the weapon a lot, slow bullets, but the small slagsplosions once the bursts hit is wonderful.
 
     In Borderlands 2 I enjoyed myself thoroughly, even if I got repeatedly slaughtered by Super Badass Nomads or got squashed by Terramorphous's body falling on me. 
     As for this last boss of Borderlands 2's first DLC: Captain Scarlett & Her Pirate's Booty, this is a whole different story.  It's not that he was designed poorly, there are a couple things that could be fixed or modified- say the almost ludicrously high spawn rate of his hard-to-kill worms and their homing globs of acid.  Yes, homing.  I've seen on many of my attempts to beat Gee that worms facing away will shoot massively damaging globs in an impossible arc towards me, following my path.  I haven't seen any other enemies shoot things backwards from where they are facing.
     It isn't that he randomly either doesn't take the damage from the acid spout shooting him full blast in the crotch, or that occasionally when he does it's at one quarter the rate he typically does.
     It isn't that it takes 30 plus minutes of struggling to wittle him down.  I can deal with long, drawn out boss battles. (I have seen some people clear him out faster, but I am not blessed with that super gear- even using the Bee+CC it takes me a long time from all the running around and dodging)
     It isn't the problem of when you go into "Fight for Your Life" mode, it's damn near impossible to recover because all the worms continuously bob up and down and 80% of the time they inexplicably become immune to any damage. 
     It isn't the fact that on multiple occasions Gee and ALL of the worms magically vanish, leaving me locked in the arena where the battle is supposed to be taking place, forcing me to quit and restart the game and get all the way back to him.
     It isn't the fact he has been known to erase character saves.  Lately I've gotten in the habit of backing them all up, just in case.

     It IS the fact his super power is being able to freeze your game after killing him.  On any of the systems.  That indicates a very poorly judged release of the game.  Many gamers would rather wait for DLC to be released if they knew it wouldn't have an ENORMOUSLY aggravating bug/glitch.
     I am absolutely sick of trying.  Once a patch is released, and I can actually finish this mission, I will never play this DLC again.  I have no care about getting any loot drops, no want for the Seraph crystals that buy sub par "Rare" weapons that are less useful than anything I've gotten in the main game, no care for anything other than completing this quest and being rid of this problem.

     Yes- I have been scouring the net and forums for ways of skirting this issue to finish the mission and get credit for the kill, but NOTHING has worked.  In all honesty this single problem has caused me to lose respect for this game.  Sure, it's nice to get DLC so quickly, but what's the use if you run into an impassable wall?  I literally CANNOT finish this game.  Not because of a lack of skill, but because the game is broken and prevents the completion.  I can't recall any other game that is so infuriating.  Being repeatedly knocked off ledges by Terramorphous is less of a pain.  Hyperius's unblockable explosions are an absurd mechanic, and even that is at least tolerable.  But both Hyperius and Terramorphous are at least still possible to finish, albeit with lot's of deaths, without freezing the whole system.

     I mean if it takes "nerfing" this boss, do it.  Drop the worm spawn rate if necessary.  There were MANY times where I had killed the first worm and got Gee to absorb the acid, and I somehow had 5 more worms to deal with.  Then another 2-3 pop out right after.  Completely absurd spawn rate.  That is multiplayer numbers.  Why am I taking on scaled rates in offline singleplayer?  It shouldn't be a parabolic curve to 9 worms in less than 3 minutes.  Happens to me every other, to every third, attempt.  That's even if I plow through quickly with a Bee shield and Conference Call shotgun.  Which I do NOT prefer to play with.  I like a bit of a challenge, but keep them in my backpack as a precautionary measure.(Thanks to the player that traded them to me!) 
     Even the fact a person can only fight him once every 24 hours doesn't bother me. (In part because the game would have to register a single time of beating him.)  It is a nice touch.  I don't mind waiting to face Hyperius once a day.  It might be nicer if he dropped slightly better loot, but that doesn't really matter.

     Gearbox/2k/whoever worked on this DLC- PLEASE remedy this as fast as possible.  Your fans have high expectations, but we also will wait for things.  I've seen on the forums talk of planning Borderlands 3 and I can only say that these DLCs need to be finished and ready before another full game is made.

     Done for now.  Good luck to any poor suckers like me that can't pass the freezing, hopefully a patch arrives swiftly.

     Side note- anyone else's characters seem to move slower than usual when "running" in Gee's cave area?  It happens to me all the time.  What an annoyance- it's like I'm running at a walk pace.

2 comments:

  1. Oh my Jesus, I am having the same issue. It's making me nearly regret buying a PS3 instead of a 360. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, and the Ps3 has killer hardware, but so many devs have trouble coding for it! As far as I've seen, this particular issue is PS3 exclusive, as are so many other in so many other games. Don't even get me started about Dawnguard...but yeah, this sucks.

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  2. No doubt about it, this is a MASSIVE problem. It kind of bothers me that there isn't a fix/patch for it announced, but Mr. Torgue is slated to release in just a couple of days. What the heck?!?! JEEPERS CRIMINY GEARBOX!!! Fix this so I can finish it before the next one is released!

    I haven't played Skyrim for a while, but I only ran into 1 large issue with missions crossing and having to go back roughly 10 levels to remedy it. UGH!

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