BorderLands 3
After creating Borderlands 2, one of the more popular video games of this decade, Gearbox (The company that created the game) decided to spend a large amount of resources, attempting to create a sequel that would be able to crush its predecessors. With that goal in mind, a long 7 years of development passed, with the fanbase continuously growing, and their expectations only growing larger. Fans wanted brand new content, yet also stubbornly asked for the exact mechanisms that made Bordlands 2 a masterpiece of this generation. Yet, with the odds stacked against them, and time slowly ticking away, Gearbox have quite literally knocked their new game out of the park.
As someone who has sunk in hours upon hours of my own time into Borderlands 2, I can 100% guarantee that this game has completely blown it out of the water in almost every single way. Yet I am not here to discuss the positives of a game that critics adore. I would much rather discuss the pet peaves that would deter anyone that wants to game, if they don’t love the series enough to ignore them. Sadly the list can be made quite extensive.
My very first gripe with the game, is the unskippable cutscenes. At certain points in the game, it is important to have an animated section in which we are able to get a better understanding of the characters and the story. But the whole point of a video games is to take you out of stories, compel the player to explore a world, with others means such as art and music, yet Borderlands 3 completely ignores that. If anything the world building is a best shoddy, and the worlds that you explore seem quite shallow compared to the complexity of Borderlands 2. Worst of all, is the simple fact that you can’t skip the cutscenes, making the game seem extremely repetitive.
The second problem I hold with the game, is how they manage to suck the life out of the characters. The roster is a cyborg, a lady who can summon a mech, an old man with the power of holograms, and a person with magic powers, yet they suck the soul out of every character. They replaced gameplay with cutscenes, and did not allow you to find out about the character on your own. All the people in this universe have the same recycled stories, and it feels extremely difficult to differentiate them from each other. I would be able to overlook all these problems, if they didn’t overlook a simple detail, and it’s that the character say the exact same thing when you enter the game, every time. They gave the characters one voice line, and expected me not to notice.
The third problem, and the final one that I have found, is the slowness of the actual game. It is extremely slow to progress, and forces you to accomplish tasks that aren’t all that necessary. Not only is the progression slow, but various aspects of the game feel purposely slowed down in order to extend the length of the game. One of the most popular selling points of games nowadays is how many hours of gameplay the game holds. But this system feels extremely dishonest, and missions are purposely slowed down, and your progression is hindered to meet the correct numbers needed.
Aside from the problems that I have listed, in reality, the game is actually quite fantastic. It’s still something that you can sink a lot of hours into, and the core gameplay is as good as it always has been. Do not take my opinion for hatred of the game, I just believed that some negatives needed to be told of a game that is being non-stop praised by every critic out there.
I thought this was a fairly in depth analysis of the game. I definitely have yet to play it so I can’t really say much as for the content of your review but I do have a couple gripes about how I feel misled while reading. To begin the title ” Is Borderlands 3 Worth it?” implies that you will be going over the game as a whole, and yes you conclude by saying it is worth it, but the only in depth view we get is the bad parts of the game. This tells me absolutely nothing about how it is actually worth it, but rather just a couple things that go against your point of making the game desirable. I do realize that there is a need for the gaming audience to not just be fed the good parts of the game, but I don’t think a title like the one you have is appropriate to do so. If I could make one revision it would be to change the title to something like, “The flaws in borderlands the: the dark side of a masterpiece” or something to that extent. I do however like how much it just feels like I’m having a conversation with you, even thought I don’t play a large quantity of games, I would look forward to your future game reviews that you do in the future.