Borderlands 3 is out now, hooray. Regardless of what might be going on behind the craziness of Randy Pitchford and the shit that Gearbox Software is pulling elsewhere. Borderlands 3 is a game that no doubt many many people are excited for.
I'm pleased to say, that if you were a fan of Borderlands 1 and 2 (not the presequel because nobody liked that garbage) then you are gonna like Borderlands 3. It is SOOOOOOO much like Borderlands 2, that it might as well be Borderlands 2 again. That same funny dialog is there, the crazy NPC characters are there, the cooky villains who aren't as good as Handsome Jack but damn it they are TRYING. It's all here.
There are some modern changes to the game, namely the mechanics of the characters are more elaborate and the game can handle more going on at once than previous games. The hunter guy FL4K, for example, has 3 different pets and they are just always on the battlefield. They aren't his ultimate or anything, they just run around and help kill things with you. Which if you remember the mech girl from BL2, her pet was just an ultimate ability that hung out for a little bit and then left. The guns are more detailed and can do more things. Each gun has an alternate fire which can do any number of things, shoot tiny rockets, tazer people, flamethrower, whatever.
You can see how Borderlands 3 has evolved and become a more detailed game. However it has a bunch of problems and most of them seem to be technical. The game doesn't look any better than BL2, I guess with the cell shaded graphics you can't really get much better than what they've already done in previous games, things might be a little smoother but it not really all that noticeable. The biggest graphical upgrade is particle effects, where elemental damage, pools of poison, and environmental effects seem more prominent in this game than previous ones.
Basically I'm saying all this because the game chugs like a fucking ***** even on my RTX 2080. loading into a new area has such lag and texture pop in that after a new area loads I have to sit and wait another 30-60 seconds for all the textures to finish loading before I can move around. The frame rate is extremely weird, in that during combat it's fine 55+ FPS no problem. But driving around or even just walking from area to area causes locks or just massive dips in FPS sometimes even into the teens. It's like the game struggles to load each section of map as you pass through it, but once it's loaded (like during a fight) the game is fine. I'm playing the game on a 1TB SSD so I don't think it's a problem with my hardware, I just think the optimization is jacked for the game.
And like I said above, the game is basically BL2 again. And that might not be a good thing for some people because if you want to play BL2 again, you could just go an do that. Really the only different things on offer here are the new heroes, which may or may not matter depending on play style. I personally never really used the character abilities much and prefered a more run and gun style in BL2, letting the humor and the crazy guns carry me through the game.
I will say I really like FL4K's pets though, it does wonders to make me feel like my character choice mattered for the way I like to play. Because his pets are almost 100% AI controlled, I can play my run and gun style and still get the benefit of what the character is offering me that is special. So I really like that. The pet can die though in which you can either revive it, or it respawns after about a 60 second window. So you never have to babysit it.
Also you can pet it.
The humor in the game is just as Borderlandsy as ever, most of it leaning towards juvenile dirty jokes, references, and insanity, which might rub some people the wrong way but I really like it. It goes for the obvious and simple gags, because in the mayhem of a fire fight you need the jokes to be simple and easy to process otherwise you'd end up missing most of them. So the style of humor still really fits the game in my opinion.
Frankly the game is a blast. If you can get over the technical problems, and the fact that it's nothing really new. If you want more Borderlands 2, then Borderlands 3 is worth a buy.
I'm pleased to say, that if you were a fan of Borderlands 1 and 2 (not the presequel because nobody liked that garbage) then you are gonna like Borderlands 3. It is SOOOOOOO much like Borderlands 2, that it might as well be Borderlands 2 again. That same funny dialog is there, the crazy NPC characters are there, the cooky villains who aren't as good as Handsome Jack but damn it they are TRYING. It's all here.
There are some modern changes to the game, namely the mechanics of the characters are more elaborate and the game can handle more going on at once than previous games. The hunter guy FL4K, for example, has 3 different pets and they are just always on the battlefield. They aren't his ultimate or anything, they just run around and help kill things with you. Which if you remember the mech girl from BL2, her pet was just an ultimate ability that hung out for a little bit and then left. The guns are more detailed and can do more things. Each gun has an alternate fire which can do any number of things, shoot tiny rockets, tazer people, flamethrower, whatever.
You can see how Borderlands 3 has evolved and become a more detailed game. However it has a bunch of problems and most of them seem to be technical. The game doesn't look any better than BL2, I guess with the cell shaded graphics you can't really get much better than what they've already done in previous games, things might be a little smoother but it not really all that noticeable. The biggest graphical upgrade is particle effects, where elemental damage, pools of poison, and environmental effects seem more prominent in this game than previous ones.
Basically I'm saying all this because the game chugs like a fucking ***** even on my RTX 2080. loading into a new area has such lag and texture pop in that after a new area loads I have to sit and wait another 30-60 seconds for all the textures to finish loading before I can move around. The frame rate is extremely weird, in that during combat it's fine 55+ FPS no problem. But driving around or even just walking from area to area causes locks or just massive dips in FPS sometimes even into the teens. It's like the game struggles to load each section of map as you pass through it, but once it's loaded (like during a fight) the game is fine. I'm playing the game on a 1TB SSD so I don't think it's a problem with my hardware, I just think the optimization is jacked for the game.
And like I said above, the game is basically BL2 again. And that might not be a good thing for some people because if you want to play BL2 again, you could just go an do that. Really the only different things on offer here are the new heroes, which may or may not matter depending on play style. I personally never really used the character abilities much and prefered a more run and gun style in BL2, letting the humor and the crazy guns carry me through the game.
I will say I really like FL4K's pets though, it does wonders to make me feel like my character choice mattered for the way I like to play. Because his pets are almost 100% AI controlled, I can play my run and gun style and still get the benefit of what the character is offering me that is special. So I really like that. The pet can die though in which you can either revive it, or it respawns after about a 60 second window. So you never have to babysit it.
Also you can pet it.
The humor in the game is just as Borderlandsy as ever, most of it leaning towards juvenile dirty jokes, references, and insanity, which might rub some people the wrong way but I really like it. It goes for the obvious and simple gags, because in the mayhem of a fire fight you need the jokes to be simple and easy to process otherwise you'd end up missing most of them. So the style of humor still really fits the game in my opinion.
Frankly the game is a blast. If you can get over the technical problems, and the fact that it's nothing really new. If you want more Borderlands 2, then Borderlands 3 is worth a buy.
