12/14/2023 0 Comments Borderlands 3 lunacy![]() Radiation damage makes enemies explode, which is always fun. Borderlands 3 usually tests players with a mess of enemies in open, multi-tiered arenas, more of a war of attrition than a tactical puzzle.īesides a few tough bosses, the true challenge came from deciding whether to shelve a badass electro-pistol that basically functioned as a super shotgun or a fiery SMG that shot bullets in a heart-shaped pattern for a plain weapon with an elemental damage affinity better suited to a region's enemy type.Ĭorrosive dissolves armor, electric damage melts shields, and fire burns flesh. Borderlands' signature comic book style hasn't changed much, but it looks significantly sharper in 2019, with characters and sweeping vistas that communicate scale and personality clearer than ever.Įach location has its own enemy types, but in practice there's not much difference between fighting a swarm of COV soldiers spawning in from all directions or a swarm of bandits spawning in from all directions. Promethea is a slick corporate dystopia composed of uniformly branded architecture and neon lighting.Ī few surprise locations mix things up further, though most environments are still a few open areas with branching corridors. Eden-6 is your typical swampy jungle, where fire-breathing dinos and club-wielding, shit-tossing jabbers chased me around swamps and through the treetops. The new locations are a welcome change of scenery from the muted deserts of Pandora, though it's still home to the most zones and where I spent the most time throughout the campaign. For the complete picture, here's our Borderlands 3 performance review (opens in new tab). Like many Borderlands bits, it's a joke that could've been a two-minute gag extended to 10 times that.īorderlands ran like a dream at 2560x1440 and 'recommended' settings (mostly high) on my souped up PC, maintaining 90-plus fps with a few dips when loading in new areas and during particularly chaotic combat scenarios. It goes on for so long that I gladly would've paid real money to skip it. Another makes fun of exploitative microtransactions and buggy early access games with a boring quest that forced me to either spend in-game cash for an easy skip or perform tedious tasks. There's a quest-giver who does their best Tommy Wiseau impression and talks about making movies, which is the whole 20-minute long punchline-the joke is simply knowing who he is. I dug the cute relationship between Sir Hammerlock, a charming interplanetary big game hunter, and his new boyfriend on Eden-6, and the fiery spirit of a young, new adventurer studying under Maya, but there are few genuine jokes, dramatic beats, or interesting character moments in Borderlands 3.Ī few quests: I collect brown rock specimens (poop) for a guy obsessed with brown rock specimens (poop), Claptrap needs help building a 'friend' who is clearly a feminine robot for his creepy private purposes, I plant dynamite in a massive poop dam to save a farm, I help a guy open a burger joint while he yells about burgers a lot, I help a guy escape from a porta-potty for a poop-spewing rocket launcher-it's borderline unbearable. They're just shitty, power hungry people who will do anything to rule the universe.īorderlands 3 reads like teenage lunch table improv circa Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Even as a parody of livestreamers, they offer no cultural commentary. There's not much more to them besides long, obnoxious monologues about how much I suck. Until then, they're just two cartoon villains who take up beef with the vault hunter, gunning to open the same vaults and collect the power within. The new big bads, the Calypso Twins, are murderous livestreamers whose motives and histories only become clear in the final act. It's as if I'm meant to come to Borderlands 3 with a preexisting deep affection for them all, and just seeing them should be enough to win my heart. ![]() Some even disappear for good, with little ceremony or reflection. Most don't change or press on the main narrative in vital ways, functioning as conduits for strained laughs or the rare serious moment, but rarely both. The new space travel setup takes the player on a tour of the galaxy in search of yet more vaults, each stop an excuse to roll out an old character only for them to disappear or fade into the background as soon as they say hello, shoot some folks, and crack a few one-liners in sidequests that do little to reveal anything about them or test them in any way. It irreversibly changed what I expect from the series.īut Borderlands 3 opts for a best-of approach, something like a sitcom clip show. Tales from the Borderlands proved that the Borderlands universe could balance goofy slapstick comedy with great character work, gracefully swaying between fourth-wall breaking gags about videogame clichés and heartfelt drama.
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