Borderlands 3 is a lot more Borderlands, good and bad

We had to wait seven years to get a new numbered game in the Borderlands series and almost five years since the (surprisingly fun) Borderlands: The pre-suite that was supposed to keep us in the meantime. Now that the launch of the retail has taken place a few days (our evaluation codes arrive just a few hours before the sale of the game) and we have spent many hours in this game, we are struck by the little Borderlands has changed in this interim period, both for better and for worse.

On the bright side, it means that Borderlands 3 always provides the same kind of shady, rhythmic, varied and simply smooth experience that the series has always provided. As usual, the game features a seemingly infinite variety of weapons that, all of them, look alike and feel perfectly distinct from each other in many ways. Experimenting with new equipment to find the right mix of impact, accuracy, store size, reloading rates and special abilities is an endless and always fascinating process.

Gaining access to a new weapon that perfectly matches your style ensures that adrenaline hits unparalleled by finding another rifle identical to that of most other shooters. And many pistols now have a secondary fire option, greatly increasing the level of personal tuning by offering new advantages and disadvantages.

This variety now also seems to fit the game's environments. The neon and blue of the urban guerrilla planet Promethea is a welcome change from the brown and gray desert environments Borderlands is generally known forPre-suite also showed a lot of promise on this point). Even at a relatively early stage, it seems like there will be plenty of new planets and side quests to occupy the players if they want to achieve that 100% completed goal.

Vehicle navigation is another treat, with a good variety of fast ATVs to get you around quickly. These vehicles seem a little overpowered, so to speak, with artillery and shield that can easily pass through any ground based enemy. Speaking of mastery, I had a good time calling on Moze 's special skill to summon a huge bipedal "Iron Bear" dude to quickly wipe out huge groups of enemies. It's a big change of pace when you're tired of avoiding incoming shots and hiding behind random cover pieces.

What has not changed at all over the years is that it is BorderlandsThe writing, which alternates naively between nerdy, grumpy and "extreme" in the sense of the 90's skateboarder term. To be fair, it's not a huge change from previous games in the series but it turns out older and more juvenile with the benefit of an additional seven years of perspective.

If you think that the word "donkey" used ad nauseam is funny in itself or that a guy in underwear who says "brother" again and again is at the height of comedy, you are in the right place. In the opposite case, most character attempts feel forced and sophomoric in a way that would probably make the average teenager groan.

Sloppy on the edges

Even a few hours, Borderlands 3 has shown enough enemy variety to prevent shooting from becoming stale, and animals and humans have a lot of personality in their animations and sound design. These adversaries display a decent propensity to take cover, to flank their position and even to flee to have a better point of view when it suits them. That said, there have been a few situations in which I noticed that an enemy was confused and just stood still over a stock still uncovered in the middle of an exchange of blows. fire, then escape from their rejoicing once hit by a bullet (too late for them).

This kind of neglect around the edges is manifested in many ways during our play phase up to now. At one point, our extremely boring robot companion, Claptrap, was found stuck in a loop repeating the same two quest tricks every few seconds, even though the quest was already over (it required restarting the game for that it be corrected). In another fight, my AI companion ended up tirelessly shooting into an impenetrable and inaccessible building where our last opponent had been hidden (another reboot corrected that, but not before having to finish the whole fight again).

At other times, I saw guide characters stop just before reaching our destination (only to distort later without explanation) or have my mini-map disappear from the corner of the screen for a long time. period. And that's not to mention the unstable frame rates and occasional crashes that I've seen so far on the PC.

Alone, none of these technical problems are deadly sins. Taken together, however, during the opening hours of the game, everything seems a little more rude than a long wait would warrant.

In the perspective of Borderlands 3Since its release, Gearbox has repeatedly emphasized a plethora of improvements to the "quality of life" interface made to the series over the past years. And of course, things like easier access to fast moving, one-button refills of all ammunition available in stores, and the ability to pull yourself up or slip out of a race are all pleasant.

But these corrections also highlight the most anachronistic elements that have not yet been corrected. The card system, for example, can not display more than one lens location at a time. Instead, you must scroll through a list manually. This is a problem when trying to trace the most efficient routes through a growing list of Kill-and-Fetch quests.

The weapons comparison interface is also a confusing mess, especially in stores, where seeing how to compare new options to your current loot should be a priority for data visualization. Then there is the way information boxes for new objects often appear at an inflated zoom level as you approach, thus cutting important information above or below the edge of the object. Unless you position your character correctly.

These may seem like impulses for a game whose heart of the loop is just as fun and compelling. But it's these kind of little things that prevent us so far from letting me completely absorb into the world of Borderlands. Hoping that they will end up feeling like insignificant problems more than ubiquitous troubles by the time my playing time is over.

Announcement image by Gearbox Software