During this here quarantine I’ve been video gaming like it’s my erstwhile commute. Which is to say, daily and multiple times a day. Throughout my time in isolation, I’ve made it a point to stick to things I find comforting and calming. In gaming terms, this would be Dragon Age: Inquisition, which I have in fact been playing quite a bit.
But I’ve got a few friends I get together with regularly to play multi games, and while DA:I has a multiplayer feature, we’ve literally never messed with it. Nope, they wanted to give Borderlands 3 a try and even though I’ve only dabbled in the first Borderlands solo and have not touched the second game at all, I thought hey, why not. I like new things. Especially when I’ve got friends to bail me out of the rough bits.
The story in the game is weak but I’ve kept the review spoiler free.
There are things that really worked for me in this game and things that didn’t.
The first thing that this game does exceptionally well is gameplay. When I say gameplay I mean the actual experience playing the game: the controls, the HUD (heads up display), the feel of combat.
Now, I look like a god in this clip because I’m level 41 fighting level 24 dudes with literally one of the best guns in the game. This gun is so good that you can switch its mode, shoot out a copy of this gun that will then float around behind you and shoot people for you for a period of time. It’s amazing. And even though it’s only a level 27, I’m still confident carrying it around anywhere at level 42 (now heh).
It may be difficult to tell in this clip, but my gun has glitter on it. Yes, it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful, beautiful gun. That’s because another thing this game does well is its options for customization.
There isn’t a single thing in this game that doesn’t have a skin available for it. You can wear different heads, different patterns on your clothes (the clothes stay the same though), and all of it can be given your own color scheme. I tend to stick to pinks and purples no matter what gender character I’m playing.
Some of the skins are animated, like a taco skin that just has tacos floating on your clothing on a blue background. Best of all? The gunner’s big robot matches your color scheme.
Humor and a certain amount of irreverence are pretty flipping important to the Borderlands experience. See, for instance, tacos on my outfit. In the customizing clip above, you can also see a poop skin for your weapons that literally makes it look like you’re holding a gun made of poop. I don’t know who asked for this or who would use this skin on purpose, but I can’t seem to get rid of it so it’s just always going to be there, I guess, taunting me as an option.
You get ammo, guns, health packs, grenades, bundles of cash, etc. from lockers, crates, mailboxes, and also toilets. There are toilets everywhere and you can loot them and they’ll spit out gross water and also money or ammo. You can hear in the combat video above that the dying combatants will say pretty hilarious things as they die.
Anyway, I spent a lot of time laughing at things the characters say throughout this game, and at the different and hilarious ways you can customize your character.
The last thing I’m going to bring up here is difficulty scaling. Say you’re playing in a co-op mode with some friends, but you’re all at different levels. And not, like, close different levels. Like, one of them is level 20 already and you’re just hitting level 8. On story missions that advance the plot, the difficulty will scale based on the players level. So I was facing level 8 and 9 enemies, while my friend was facing 20 and 21. This is a small thing in the grand scheme of things but I’ve never seen it for group play before and I absolutely love it.
Now that I’ve sung its praises, here are the things I didn’t love quite as well.
I’ve been really spoiled for storylines by playing Bioware games first. I know this. I absolutely set myself up to be disappointed for the rest of my gaming life. They balance plotline and action so fricking well that it’s hard to go anywhere else. Although man Horizon Zero Dawn is also right up there.
Either way, the plot line in Borderlands 3 is not its strong suit. It’s simple, predictable, and ultimately not what I’m here for. Some of the characters that you have to deal with for extended periods of time are so boring and repetitive. The “twist” when it comes was heavily telegraphed beforehand and honestly the only reason to play all the way through the story missions is for the good loot at the end.
Again, I got started on Bioware games, which are third-person shooters. You can always see your character while you play, which makes it so much easier for me to figure out how to jump on top of things and control my character. First-person is just absolutely the worst. It made me dizzy at first too, which is never a fun feeling when you’re just sitting on your couch.
I know this is going to continue to be a problem for larger games with heavier graphics, but the load screen times are laughably awful. It got to the point that I would be playing Dragon Age, I’d see my friends start to hop online, and I’d immediately stop Dragon Age and start loading Borderlands, even before we hopped on a party together, because it was just faster than waiting for them to be 100% ready. Logging in takes forever, fast traveling takes forever. It just all takes a super long time and there’s nothing interesting happening on the load screens except tips typed in the smallest possible font.
If I wanted to balance my complaints and my compliments, I might talk here about the overwhelming number of guns and gun manufacturers in this game. Honestly, the customization, while I do appreciate the skins and stuff, gets a little overwhelming for me. So being spoiled for choice is sometimes just as stressful as not having enough choice, and I feel like this game spills over into too many options sometimes.
Especially when one of your friends takes longer than a screen loading time to ready up for a mission because he’s gotta look at every single gun to make sure he’s taking the best one. But that’s really being nitpicky.
In conclusion: If you played the first two, you’ve probably already played this one, unless you’re standing in solidarity with Claptrap’s original voice actor. If you haven’t played the first two, I’m here to tell you that jumping in at the end is fine. Yes, I know there are things I missed and references to previous games, but it didn’t make this one difficult to understand. Plus, really. The gameplay is super good.
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