Borderlands 3 (PlayStation 5)

Obnixious Screaming and Too Many Guns

Like its predecessors, Borderlands 3 is still a fun game with a lot of crazy weapons and satisfying shooting.

Also like its predecessors, The story missions are mostly mindless processes of following the mission indicator and shooting everyone over and over again.

I remember the first Borderlands having a great atmosphere in the starting desert, a relatively quiet area with cool music. I felt like this never happened in this game - in fact, there were times where I was in disbelief at the constant obnoxious screaming of the unlikeable, unfunny characters. They would go on and on and on about pointless, drawn out failed attempts at humour, where the game felt like a parody of everything bad about this series. I ended up turning the volume all the way down on the voices, instead having a weirdly quiet world with bad ambiences (that would normally have been covered by the screaming voices).

The loot mechanics are similar to previous games - you get way too many guns and can spend half the game sorting through them and selling them. At the end, I discovered a nice way of handling this. I ignored all guns that weren't Epic or Legendary. That felt like a nice balance. I only wish you could disable all loot that was Rare and below, I think that would make for a more enjoyable game where loot actually matters. I don't know why they insist on having this much garbage loot in the game.

All in all, Borderlands 3 was a frustrating and somewhat boring experience due to the strange choices regarding voice acting, and the usual overabundance of loot. The combat is as good as it ever was in the series, and the guns feel great due to effective sound design. There is still a fun core game in here, you just have to deal with a lot of annoyances.

Story Missions:

1. Children of the Vault
2. From the Ground Up
3. Cult Following
4. Taking Flight
5. Sanctuary
6. Hostile Takeover
7. The Impending Storm
8. Space-Laser Tag
9. Atlas, At Last
10. Beneath the Meridian
11. Cold as the Grave
12. Blood Drive
13. Angels and Speed Demons
14. The Great Vault
15. The First Vault Hunter
16. Footsteps of Giants
17. In the Shadow of Starlight
18. Divine Retribution