Update: Since this post published we’ve made a small update at the bottom with two very specific tips we’ve recently learned. Other than that it’s unchanged from when it was first published.
Original: Borderlands 2 VR was the last big new VR game of the year. It just released about a week ago for PSVR and even though it lacks any of the DLC and co-op support, in addition to the PS Aim controller inexplicably not being supported, it’s still a solid and fun adventure. Borderlands 2 was already a great game and despite the issues, VR really does add to the experience. Claptrap is still as hilarious as ever.
Since a lot of people will be introduced to the PSVR through this game or will be playing this game for the first time, we wanted to round up some key tips to help you get started.
Experiment With Movement and Comfort Settings
Borderlands 2 VR on PSVR has four basic control schemes. The most familiar for most people, especially if you played the game outside of VR previously, will be the standard DualShock 4 method. This is essentially the same as playing outside of VR, however you have added head-tracking to assist with aiming and increase immersion. But if you have a PSVR headset then chances are you want something a bit more engaging than that, which is where the PS Move comes into play.
Unfortunately the PS Move controllers do not have analog sticks so no matter what you choose it’s gonna be a bit wonky. You can either have teleport only movement, full smooth movement with teleporting optional, or full smooth movement with jumping. Then on top of those options you can tweak everything from the movement and rotation speed to whether or not the field of view dims around your vision at all. If you don’t suffer from motion sickness we recommend turning all of those safeguards off like you see in the gameplay video above.
The end result is something similar to Skyrim VR on PSVR, but hopefully they add PS Aim support sometime soon.
Don’t Get Too Attached To Guns
Borderlands 2 VR is a looter shooter. That means that the whole game is designed around you looting brand new guns constantly every few minutes. All of the weapons are randomly generated in terms of their visual aesthetic, damage, accuracy, elemental type, rate of fire, and more so it’s extremely unlikely you’ll ever find two guns that are just alike. It’s a bit like Diablo, but in shooter form.
So even if you’ve been using that same rocket launcher for a while now you should be prepared to give it up and try something new sooner rather than later. The one exception to this rule is if you’ve sunk dozens of hours into the game and grinding for specific legendary weapons that are the de facto best guns — those you might want to hang onto.
Use Your Abilities Often
Borderlands 2 VR is unlike a lot of other shooters in that, even though there are lots of guns to shoot, you shouldn’t actually spend all of your time just pulling the trigger. All four of the characters play wildly differently with their specific classes and varied skill trees.
It’s easy to forget that Maya can toss out a massive gravitational orb to suck in enemies, but it’s super powerful and recharges fairly quickly. The same goes for the other skills such as the turret to assist in battle, turning invisible, or dual-wielding as a gunzerker. Abilities are the key to besting your enemies.
Plan Your Skill Tree Ahead of Time
Once you get an hour or so into the game you should unlock your class’ signature ability, which opens up the skill trees. Your main ability basically stays the same but you’ve got three different upgrade trees to follow. Before you level up too much you should study all three of the trees to see which ones stand out the most to you as appealing.
You’ll want to focus on one tree as your main skill tree to really take advantage of everything it has to offer, and pick a second tree as your secondary dumping spot for extra skill points. If you spread yourself too thin then your character just won’t be very effective at anything.
Don’t worry though: if you mess up and want to take back or change where you spent a skill point, you can pay to do that inside the game without having to restart.
Explore Side Missions
Finally, don’t neglect the side content in Borderlands 2 VR. A big focus of our list of the top 10 things we can’t wait to do in Pandora for when the game launched was a focus on side quests because there are just so many great ones. Not only are they fun and full of hilarious dialogue to experience, but they’ll give you some solid loot and XP to keep leveling up.
Borderlands 2 VR is not an easy game once you get deep into the adventure and near the end, so you’ll want to sprinkle in plenty of side quests along the way so you’re not under-powered at the end.
How To Aim Better
One things you’ll notice in Borderlands 2 VR is that a lot of the automatic weapons are incredibly difficult to aim. Basically, when you point and shoot, it’s like your hip firing in a non-VR game so the recoil is just terrible. But what we discovered on the recommendation of davestationvr on YouTube Twitch during our latest livestream is that in your left hand (or just non-shooting hand) you can hold the PS Move trigger to steady your aim. You can’t move quickly while holding that down, but your aim is dramatically better. Makes a huge difference.
Also — don’t forget to spend your Badass Tokens and make sure and redeem the SHiFT codes in the main menu. All of the same ones from Borderlands 2 non-VR still work!
Now that you’re ready to brave the wasteland of Pandora, make sure and read our full review of Borderlands 2 VR and check out our list of 10 wacky and fun things to do in the game. Let us know what you think so far down in the comments below!
