Part of that is I am a wuss, but part of it was the game itself. You guys, I feel pretty terrible saying this, but Borderlands 2 has not lived up to my expectations. Perhaps my expectations were just too high after the first game.
They improved on a lot from the first game like beautiful graphics and scenery, a plot that is more involved, easy money and fun ways to get weapons like the slot machines at Moxxi's, and the addition of Eridian "coins" to buy your SDU upgrades is actually pretty nice. Slag weapons are an amazingly fun addition too.
On the flip side, dear lord did they mess a lot of it up. I greatly dislike what they did to the personality of all the NPCs and especially the famous ones, they tried to make the game harder by adding more mini-bosses but all the bosses so far play out the exact same way so it gets repetitive and boring pretty quick, the quests don't scale well so you end up doing a ton of fetch quest that is too easy for your level, I hate what they did to the Angel, and there are a surprising amount of glitches, especially for multi-player. Don't even get me started on the inventory system.
What really started to piss me off though was the dialogue. I mean, it is just terrible. It is completely lame and full of old tired pop culture references. I have seen a lot of reviews say "you shouldn't take this game too seriously because it doesn't take itself too seriously in the first place" but now I see that as an excuse to not have to give them a bad review and anger the PR gods. Borderlands 2 very much takes itself seriously. You can see it in every character and word spoken and plot line. They tried way too hard and it shows; it ruined the casual snark and fun that made the first game such a surprise smash hit.
The first Borderlands didn't take itself too seriously. Borderlands 2 is a mess begging you to laugh at its terrible knock knock jokes. The worst part is that you do get that fun attitude in the trailers, but it doesn't translate to the game itself.
In the end though, enough of what I loved from the first game is brought back and improved that I am having fun. Plus I am just as in love with Axton as I thought I'd be. I just cringe and take off my headset when any NPCs start talking and go back to pulling the lever for one of the slot machines at Moxxi's Place.
Side note: It's definitely fair to point out that I am only to level 15-ish, so it's entirely possible some things will get fixed as I close in on the level cap. However, the dialogue and humor are not something I see improving the deeper you get.
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