Best Of

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Aaaaah, here's a proven franchise.

[spoiler]

Borderlands is always a good choice. The blending of shock humor, absurdity, and all the 'visceral' type adjectives that go with first person shooter games always gives me a good respite from my otherwise butt-slam free life. What's more, Borderlands always helps me connect with friends - I try not to play these games alone, and what luck! Two very close friends (and a new friend too!) happened to get in touch with me right as I was about to pick up this game, so we had a full group of four!

Alas, whether it's an effect of rose-colored glasses (that sweet Borderlands release LAN party from the days of yore), or simple developer exhaustion, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel does not live up to its prior releases. Even with wonderful company, even proceeding at a pace to hear the jokes and the lore... I dunno. This one really just didn't do it for me.

To my everlasting confusion, I'm not actually sure why. Me, who can complain about quality of life or voice acting until the cows come home - I can't figure out why this particular Borderlands installment wasn't the joyous laughter-fueled rampage that the previous two were.

It wasn't the voice acting. This comical, beautifully cel-shaded universe is home to some of the silliest characters I've ever seen... which means voice actors REALLY get to show their chops. The actors chosen for the cast are frankly some of the best I've ever heard. The lines spoken by Handsome Jack and Tiny Tina in particular have this meter about them that you can't HELP but strain to hear over whatever silly-ass gun you're firing at the moment.

...okay... well... there WERE a few new voice actors... one actress in particular served to drag us out of the moment - Hammerlock's sister, the Baroness. Now, in a game universe where characters are either

A. over-the-top gun salesmen whose every line is a one-liner about explosions,
B. over-the-top mechanics whose every line is a one-liner about cars and/or being a hick, or
C. over-the-top psychopaths whose every line is a one-liner about being psychopaths,

you'd expect a completely over-the-top rich tycoon whose every line is a one-liner about being wealthy to absolutely fit in, right? And yet... every single line somehow fell flat. I'm at a loss. I don't know why. It wasn't just me, either - every one of the other players hated that character too. Huh.

The combat should have been a shoe-in, too, right? I mean, this is a tried-and-true thing. Shoot, reload, burn, shock, explode, jump, fancy special maneuvers, melee, whatever... and yet. AND YET. Something about it felt wrong. Like the enemies we were shooting didn't seem to matter. Like we weren't shooting to clear an area, we were shooting until the spawn points stopped spawning. Like the special abilities to revive, heal, buff, or otherwise interact with your teammates didn't matter. Hell, half the time I didn't know where my teammates were.

But... why? It worked so well in the other games.

Even the art - as beautiful and detailed as every other Borderlands, and yet... something about an overuse of blues, or the tremendous expanse of the battleground was... boring. More boring than the first two installments... and that's saying something, considering those installments took place in a desert. Maybe it was that there was too MUCH to look at. I remember having trouble picking out enemies from their backgrounds more than once. I remember being annoyed that there was so much bric-a-brac in the various arenas. And for the life of me, I can't remember a single map like I can remember that first Borderlands map, or the arena in Borderlands 2.

What is it about this game? Why didn't it follow in the footsteps of its riveting, genius predecessors?

Maybe it was the story. The thin 'Handsome Jack is a good guy! Oh, uh, actually, now he's a petty murderer for literally no reason other than we need him to be a petty murderer' storyline was a GLARING problem. This guy starts the game worried about the workers on his space station, goes to sacrifice himself for said workers, then shows signs of abandoning his allies to die by not reinforcing them in a firefight? Blasts civilian scientists out the airlock? I mean, maybe if he'd suffered some catastrophic psychological setback between the events, maybe if they'd shown us something snapping in his head, sure... but really, he just becomes more and more of a dick as time goes on. And I mean, that'd be fine except that he started as a great guy! This wasn't a story of a guy who fooled you into thinking he wasn't a dick and then stole your beer and was like "HA HA BITCH, I WAS A DICK THE WHOLE TIME!" This isn't a story of a disgruntled jerk who became a dick because power got to his head. There was no impetus whatsoever for the rise of the dick! (lol phrasing) And the worst part? The writers eventually DO give him the impetus to go from good guy to dick - they put him through some psychological trauma (betrayal, destruction of his face) - BUT IT HAPPENS AFTER HE'S ALREADY BECOME A DICK! Like, whatever happened to causality, guys? Is this really what you storyboarded? Good Jack -> no character event -> crappy Jack -> no character event -> dick Jack -> Jack suffers betrayal and deformation -> we don't have anywhere to go from here so I guess we'll leave him as dick Jack?

UGH.

I dunno. I wouldn't play through it again, which is less than I can say about either of the other Borderlands games. However, I WOULD pay money to play it the first time... which is more than I can say about a lot of other games. It's just... I'm not sure. I guess each time you resurrect a game, it loses a little of that soul that it started with.

[/spoiler]

Oh, also, no screenshots, because I just straight didn't take any. Sors.