My takeaway from playing Borderlands 4 was that it could have been ANY big studio shooter release of the last 5 years. If I couldn’t see what game it was and you asked me what it was, I would have guessed Destiny 2 in some shape or form. There was just nothing about it that was interesting or fun. It felt like it had been polished to absolute death.
But Swapmeat was great. All the parts were there for it to be a ton of fun. It felt like all the stupid fun parts of BL2 with a body mod mechanism to let you get really weird with it.
I’m not a game reviewer type, but after being so disappointed by BG4, I was really excited after playing Swapmeat. They were pretty close to each other on the show floor at PAX and the vibes were night and day.
I just miss the fun set design of the first 2 games. Its more linear paths than you would expect but they had a lot of verticality and a usually fun loop.
When i played BL3 i realized they just made big empty spaces and told you it was fun to constantly drive back and forth between the minor sidequests that felt like they tried to hard to make “quirky” that fricking city map was just so boring.I didn’t make it to pax this year (usually go every 2 years), but looking at the schedule the only thing I saw that was AAA was Borderlands 4 and… yeah meh. As with all AAA games, it’s in the “Created by corporate committee” phase, which the original definitely didn’t feel like. They were edgy and risky with the first one - something that now no committee would ever let pass.
I still don’t get why the second one is held in such regard over the first. I actually couldn’t stand characters like Handsome Jack talking in my ear non-stop. Whereas the original dispensed the majority it’s humor via text and flavor text.
The gameplay of 2 was really fun. Jack and Claptrap did talk way too much.
Because two is an improvement on one in almost every way?
BL1 was the best aside from lack of auto pickup of gold.
I actually think that BL1 still had the absolute best special weapons. They always felt like a treat to discover and had a joy with the mechanics that you wanted to try them out even if you only got it cause a blind man was hanged.
I agree. When BL2 was soon to be out and being hyped about how many weapon varieties it had, I was excited. But then I played the game and I thought that the weapons in the first one were better–more rewarding.
It’s because they were. The system they used to generate weapons in 2 allowed for tons of unique but mostly garbage guns. This also combined with different drop mechanics so a random bandit didn’t have a chance to drop something amazing, you had to wade through trash to find the gimmick enemies and bosses that actually dropped good loot.
2 had better classes, but 1 was overall better.
