Good good or bad good?

Every Friday, A V. club Staff members are launching our weekly thread on game plans and the latest glories of the game, but, of course, the real action lies in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What are you playing this weekend?

One of the tricky aspects of video game criticism is that the metric used to judge whether a game is "good" is often even more subjective than elsewhere in the art world. A person can have fun with something that someone else is not having fun with, but some games are not supposed to be fun at all. Some games have a story. Some games involve inserting shapes into small holes and making them disappear. You can rent Red Dead Redemption 2His story while hitting his game, and you can rent TetrisWhile claiming that he would be better served if he had a story. That would be a strange argument, but that's what I'm saying. It can be subjective.

So let's talk about Borderlands 3. When he saw the game earlier this year, The A.V. clubWilliam Hughes, for his part, noted that it was "pretty much the same thing", which is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to an event as popular as popular. Borderlands 2. The problem is that Borderlands 2 was released in 2012, and there is still a lot of time without real evolution of mechanics. You shoot at villains, you collect tons of different weapons that all have small statistical improvements (like better reload speed or weird effects such as electric bullets and alternative fire modes), then you … Keep going.

You get better things. The numbers are higher. Sometimes you create platforms to find secret areas in the hope of getting better things and looking at numbers up. All this is good to play, Borderlands this is usually the case, but the technical skill is the lowest bar that a video game should have to break in 2019. Halo figured out how to make good first-person shooter commands on a console 18 years ago, and the original Borderlands already nailed the artistic conception of the visuals, but hey, it's good that Borderlands 3 managed to do what he is supposed to do.

Which is do not of course Borderlands 3 is pretty much everything else – and that's where all the subjectivity really comes in. I personally think, subjectively, that all the selectable characters in Borderlands 3 are extremely boring (I went with the gadget user because his ability to create holographic lures m reminded me of a better game). In addition, I think that writing is a disaster, and the classic Borderlands the humor is more squeaky than ever (I hope you like the pet jokes!). Each character is either a maniac who screams every word, or he is too cool to go to school and look at his eyes screaming maniacs. There are very few nuances or interesting characters that do not require a penchant for idiots like Claptrap the robot, and the narration constantly hinders the tolerable shooting. The bad guys, a pair of twins who are basically diabolical YouTubers, are pretty funny, but that might be due to my dislike of culture of influence.

Fundamentally, Borderlands 3 It's a game that does what it's supposed to do, in a fun way, which for some people is all they have to do. Many players will be happy to spend 100 hours in a game that does not Borderlands again, but I do not like it. It's so stupid that it's a dark indication that video games have not changed. at all since Pac-ManSince you always press a button, as you watch the game react in a certain way, then you are rewarded with cheerful sound effects and bright colors. It's a pity that this is what we accept as a big and new game when it does so little to be done appear big and new. To put an end point on it: Borderlands 3 is a good game that is bad.

On the other side of the coin is a technically bad game of creative quality: Daemon X Machina. Developers of Marvelous !, Daemon X Machina is a casual, arcade-like mech action mix, and the mech-style simulation's unnecessarily complex action, something like: Armored coreThe result is a game in which you can view absurdly accurate stats about how fast your mech can shoot and about the quality of laser shooting, but at the service of much too simplistic gameplay for such information to be particularly important. .

You play as a little anime mecha driver who never speaks and you can walk around your shed, equip your new arms, legs, heads and weapons, then perform relatively short missions usually involving the death of all enemies. robots in a given area then looting dead robots to get a new armor that you can attach to your robot. The story is incomprehensible, with characters you do not know have conversations with other people you do not know about concepts that have not been explained correctly, but at least all the other words do not speak of farting, unlike other games. could mention.

Combat is useful, but it depends so much on the chosen charge that you can easily use boring weapons to use if you only care about what's causing the most damage or the least complicated. The right way to play is to use cool or fun stuff, which typically means swords, Robotechswarm missiles and laser guns mounted on the shoulders. Although it may not be a wise tactic, I like to participate in all missions with as many rocket launchers as I can carry so I can navigate through the levels and blow up a shit like the Comet red.

Where Daemon X Machina actually enjoys a subjective reading unlike Borderlands 3. I'm on record as a big fan of Gundam Mobile Suit and all things mecha anime, which is exactly the tone that this game goes for. So I'm quite willing to miss out on unstable design decisions if that means I should move on to the next point where I can decide which arm will look best on my robot and which paint scheme will make it look more like a Gundam. It is very likely that Daemon X Machina you will not be interested at all if you do not go with an affinity for cartoons, and even then you might not have patience for its simple and repetitive missions. Yet he has a spark of life Borderlands 3 is lacking, and the obvious appreciation that its developers have for the same mecha anime material that I love so much tells me that there is still People who approach this medium with a certain degree of passion and enthusiasm are not content to give figures.