Revisiting Borderlands

It’s been seven years since I posted my first article on Borderlands. Borderlands, I should mention, is the title that re-introduced me to gaming. I had taken a hiatus after playing Quake in the mid-1990s. But my son picked up an Xbox 360 and in the spirit of bonding and on his recommendation, I played Borderlands. It turns out that the game was a lot of fun.

Fast forward several years. I have continued playing games and even have my own console. Through it all, Borderlands has always held a nostalgic and fun draw. I played through Borderlands 2 with each of the character types. Played the Telltale game. And played the Pre-Sequel. This past holiday, my son gave me Borderlands 3 as a gift. I am writing this post to give my thoughts on the latest in the franchise.

Let's face it. Borderlands is fun. The humor is great. The combat is great. The looting is great. Driving is great. It is fast and colorful and playful. The story might be a little trite, but in the end, it is basically comic book; it's not meant to be deep or serious. Instead the story is engaging just enough to keep the player occupied in more than simply running around and shooting things (which gets boring surprisingly quick).

I compare Borderlands 3 to Rage 2. Well, that's a little unfair. I mean, I compare Rage against Borderlands. I loved Rage 2. I thought it was a great and expansive successor to its’ originator. But compared to Borderlands (3) the Rage world feels tiny. The same is true for Outer Worlds, another game that draws some parallels.

In addition to the large feel to the Borderlands universe, it has a couple advantages over these other great games. First, the humor is funnier. Borderlands is filled with snarky and silly comments; nearly every moment has some joke in it from the weapons dealer accidently saying he has bullets with your name on them to the protagonist admitting … "bad form, that's what did you in."

Borderland is absolutely the best at this … the variety of weapons. When the ad says a bazillion guns, they aren't kidding. For all intents and purposes, there are an infinite number of variation of guns. You will literally never find the exact same weapon twice during a playthrough. The combat is excellent. Shooting is fast and smooth. And each of the character types have robust skill tree to make fights even more fun. The boss battles were challenging, and with only one exception, not tiresome grinds of ducking and shooting. Like Doom, the trick is to keep moving.

Borderlands and Borderlands 2 were very brown in their color palate. But the latest game leaves Pandora for other planets with cities and diverse biomes. For those of us who are loyal to the series, including the Telltale games, we are rewarded with cameo appearances with several past characters. The characters never feel flat or boring. The Calypso Twins as duo antagonists are evil, witty, and fun to battle. Maybe they don’t have quite the charm as Handsome Jack, but hey, there’s two of them.

Geek Cred

Vast environment can be freely explored; funny; billions of weapon choices; smooth and fun combat.

Geek Crud

Missions can feel repetitive.