This is baffling to me, since I think there’s a really obvious problem with the game and nobody is talking about it.<\/p>\n
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Are We Playing the Same Game?<\/h3>\n
<\/div>An example of the criticism of minor things that aren’t the MAIN THING: The big villains this time around are the Calypso Twins. Polygon said<\/a> they were “boring”. PC Gamer said<\/a> they’re “just two cartoon villains” with “no cultural commentary”.<\/p>\n This criticism is fine, I guess. If the villains don’t work for you, then they don’t work. But before the release of Borderlands 3, the series had one good villain<\/a> and two<\/a> duds<\/a>. So now we have the Calypso Twins, a swipe at livestreamers \/ influencers. In BL2, Handsome Jack was a cartoonish take on ultra-wealthy corporate leaders, and the Calypso Twins are a cartoonish take on entitled, brand-obsessed internet jackasses. Both villains are arrogant and destructive. I think Jack’s humor landed a lot better than the humor aimed at the Calypsos, but if we’re grading on a curve then the Calypsos are the second-best villains in the series.<\/p>\n But fine. I’m not going to try and convince you that the Calypsos are brilliant, I just think they’re not the weakest part of the experience.<\/p>\n There are a lot of gripes like this with the game. Mission design. Allies. Loading screens. Travel system. Technical problems and glitches. These are all fine things to critique, but none of them are anywhere near my top two gripes.<\/p>\n My #2 gripe is:<\/p>\n There isn’t a single, horrible sin at the center of the Borderlands 3<\/i> interface. It’s just that the game has a thousand trivial annoyances. The main map rotates to the player’s orientation instead of north=up, which is… that’s just not how maps work<\/b>, okayThere’s a menu option to disable rotating the minimap, but the main map ignores it, so you end with the maps oriented differently, which does more harm than good.<\/span>? The game begins with 8 solid minutes of completely unskippable cutscenes. After that it’s five more minutes of passively following Claptrap around before you can begin playing the game proper. This is ludicrous in a game with four classes where you might want to sample them all to see which one suits you best. The zones are now multilayered and the in-game map system is totally inadequate for helping to navigate these complex spacesLectra City feels like the 3D maze levels from the Descent games.<\/span>. Stores are a chore to use. If you can’t equip an item, then you also can’t compare it to other items, so you can’t decide if it’s worth schlepping this gun around until you’re high enough level to use it. Map scrolling and zooming is agonizingly slow and awkward with the mouse. When you’re supposed to bash something open the game can’t decide if the proper button is melee, the use button, or shooting it. The game allows you to bind keys to steer left and right in a vehicle, but it never actually uses them and you’re forced to steer with the mouse. The entire inventory screen is somehow even worse than before, which is further exacerbated by the fact that inventory space is tighter than ever before and you’re going to need to make frequent stops to figure out what you should drop to pick up the hot new item you just found. NPC talking cues, tutorial messages, and quest items are often positioned so that characters will cut each other off, sometimes ending important plot stuff for less important “just so you know” type reminders.\u00a0The game doesn’t go into idle when you alt-tab away, and instead continues devouring processing power rendering frames you don’t need and can’t see.<\/p>\n And so on, and so on. Like I said – these are all small problems in isolation, but as the hours go on I kinda start to lose my mind over all the little annoyances. In particular, I really hate how often I have to break the flow of the game to mess with stuff in the menus.<\/p>\n But all of these gripes pale in comparison to my main problem with the game…<\/p>\n What happened to my fast-paced game of punchy weapons and empowerment? Who looked at the Borderlands 2 gameplay and said, “This is good, but it would be so much more fun if the enemies were bullet sponges that could shrug off multiple shots to the face.”? Who said that? And who listened to them? Why does this game of frantic action now feel ponderous like Tom Clancy’s The Division<\/em>? And why is nobody talking about this?<\/p>\n It took me a long time to realize just how deep the rot goes. In the early levels, I was a little taken aback by how many shots it took to put down the bandits and cultists. These games normally start you off with pushover foes. The game is giving you a free hit of dopamine to get you hooked so you’ll be willing to work for it later. But this time putting down the early mooks was kind of slow and annoying.<\/p>\nThe Interface Needs More QA<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Rubber Bullets and Foam Bats<\/h3>\n
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