Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel review: Borderlands 2 in space - dudleywainvis1959

For months I've been referring to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel arsenic More Borderlands or, now and then, Morederlands Borderlands. That's still an likely description. Other possible titles could be Borderlands: The Largest Borderlands 2 Expansion operating theaterBorderlands 2 in Space.

That's what The Pre-Sequel is at its nitty-gritty. Just more Borderlands 2.

Let them deplete Borderlands

Borderlands is the latest franchise to capitulation prey to what I think we can now safely call an industry trend—stopgap games. Put differently, "Our unaccustomed game won't be ready for an unnecessary class, what do we do?" syndrome. Otherwise privileged members of this club include Assassin's Gospel: Revelations, Batman: Arkham Origins, and (loss back a few years) Call of Duty: Human race at Warfare.

With the "main" product still in development, a secondary studio is called in to create something to keep the franchise relevant and make a bit of John Cash while too (hopefully) not screwing everything up meanwhile.

Merely charged with regurgitating what's already popular while the primary studio works on something in reality innovative, these games are inevitably just retreads of what we've already played with enough story hooks to keep core fans interested and maybe one Beaver State two new features. Arkham Origins had the audacity to piazza you along the exact same map as Arkham Urban center except everything was Christmas themed. Revelations had that hook-thing that made you a bit many nimble piece climbing, but otherwise felt like precisely another Assassin's Gospel II expansion.

In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel it's the ability to jump high. This in style iteration of Gearbox's loot-driven taw serial takes station story-all-knowing 'tween Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and explores the rise of the second game's villain Handsome Jack. Rather than militant on the planet of Pandora equally in the last two games, this clock you're going to the moon—thus the low gravity.

You'll also have to monitor your oxygen levels, As most international areas don't have an atmosphere. And thither are forthwith laser guns.

In just deuce (short) paragraphs I've enrolled literally every newfound feature in Borderlands: The Pre-Subsequence. Secure, plenty of work has destroyed into this piece of content in damage of writing, voiceovers, et cetera. It's definitely monthlong adequate to be considered a "wide-cut game," whatever that means, and it's backed by a full taradiddle and new lore. I also really bask the way low gravitational attraction opens up the level design, adding much verticality and allowing you to scale of measurement some truly impressive structures.

But IT plays everything so safe, it's unbearable to think of The Pre-Sequel as anything but a long expansion pack. It's non just the corresponding engine as Borderlands 2—it's the same enemies, the same sorts of environments, the same everything. Oh, exclude these skags are Stanford White and are called kraggons, and the raiders now wear small vaporous masks over their faces to inhale space. Oh, and smaller enemies are now called "Lil Pillager" and "Lil Lunatic" because Gear case patently realized the word midget is perhaps not the kindest term to throw away around.

Even two of the classes feel like lean Ra-skins of old games. Athena throws her shell almost the identical fashio I used to confuse Bloodwing, and Wilhelm is distinctly the heavy weapons class only like Roland and Axton. Nisha's Lawbringer course of instruction, a dally on her role atomic number 3 the Sheriff in Borderlands 2, lets her mesh onto enemies without aiming, but it's a relatively useless skill and actually is worse to use along a PC because information technology's faster to queue up headshots than to automobile-aim body shots.

Only the picture golem Claptrap feels like a truly original and energizing class choice—Claptrap's special ability is actually a wildcard that emulates one of the other decade approximately classes from early games. Unfortunately, in regularise to play Rant you have to order up with listening to Claptrap for an entire game. If you can fare that, wellspring, you have more endurance than me.

Fan-service

Fans volition inevitably pick this up, though. IT's not forged. It's not broken. It's still fun. It's Borderlands. You'll get a quest, you'll run to a spot on a map, you'll fool away a dish out of things, you'll collect the guns that pop out of their exploding heads, and then you'll most likely sell all those guns.

2K Australia has made a few small tweaks to the dirty money system. In Borderlands 2 you'll collect lunar month rocks A a secondary currency. These Moon rocks privy still be used to purchase character upgrades, but likewise are used to unlock special chests at the remnant of most narration missions.

There's also a device called The Grinder that lets you put back in three guns of the same tier and get a rarer gun reciprocally.

Regrettably i think both of these additions slightly undermine the core loot grind. I felt like I received a lot more white and common guns in The Pre-Sequel, with blue-and-high loot few and remote betwixt. Possibility one of those unscheduled moon rock crates confirmed my fear—purple items are basically guaranteed to spawn in there. However, the torpedo inside is altogether random which way you could save upward for cardinal hours (as I did) only to purchase the crate and line up a nearly-useless rocket catapult (as I did).

And it's exactly non arsenic satisfying to get a gun from a crateful as information technology is seeing a bunch of rarefied lolly erupt unfashionable of a boss after a hard-fought happen. You're lucky when that happens, and even luckier if you can manage to snaffle those guns—I counted more than a dozen occurrences during the courageous where an enemy dropped a rare-ish weapon only low gravity made it float over the edge of a cliff and fall into oblivion.

The story of The Pre-Sequel also has its issues. The game is actually a frame-story where Athena, the Prizefighter class, is telling some of the previous Vault Hunters (Roland, Lillith) about Handsome Laborer and his accession. That setup is true regardless of whether you'rhenium actually playing as Athena. If, for instance, you're performin as Nisha and you're standing in an lift aside yourself, you'll still hear Pallas speaking about how she rode improving the elevator.

IT's a small affair, maybe, but it took ME unconscious of the story every clock time it happened and in conclusion made me wish I'd just played as Athene in the first place.

And along top of that, the write up just feels unnecessary. Like Arkham Origins, I realized that I didn't really need to know the origin story of Handsome Jack. I liked him better when he was just an asshole for no trade good reason. Nerve-wracking to make him (and characters like Nisha) into sympathetic figures just undercuts the strength of the writing in Borderlands 2proper.

Bottom telephone line

If this review feels overly negative, it's because the positives of Borderlands appear hardly worth discussing—we've already had two games (and countless expansions) worth of this stuff. This is a decent bit of fan-service, the despoil grind is still addictive when it whole kit, the writing is solid when it's not simply aiming for tooshie-of-the-drum meme and acknowledgment humor, and the shooting has a commodity feel to it.

But there's nothing innovative Hera, nothing fascinating to bring back those who felt up sated by the end of Borderlands 2, No actual hook. Information technology's a stopgap. It's more Borderlands. For some, that'll be enough. For others, well, I'm sure Borderlands 3 is on its way.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435795/borderlands-the-pre-sequel-review-borderlands-2-in-space.html

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