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Borderlands 3 (PS4) Review: A shoot-and-loot party where everyone's invited

By Kenneth Ang & Tim Augustin - 16 Oct 2019

Let's talk aesthetics!

Across the board

Frankly, not much has changed in terms of how the game looks, apart from a modern facelift to the cel-shaded aesthetics we’ve all grown to love. Still, credit should be given where it is due, and Gearbox has put in an impressive amount of work into both environments and enemies. 

There’s Pandora with its arid wastelands, Promethea with its high-rise skyscrapers and the murky swamps of Eden-6, among others. Each world you visit has its own unique “flavour” so to speak, making the whole experience even more dynamic than you would expect a Borderlands game to be.

Enemy variety has also increased exponentially from previous iterations, which is awesome considering players will be traveling across several planets. After all, it would be dull if every other planet had naught but skags, rakk and bandits.

Fortunately, our intergalactic menu now includes flying robot spheres, giant dinosaurs, teleporting soldiers and the odd Eridian warrior - there’s no shortage of interesting adversaries, each with their own unique attack patterns and weaknesses to exploit. Go figure!

 

The morality amidst the mayhem

On a separate note, what we really did notice (and liked) was having little snippets of morality here and there. Borderlands 3 presents several occasions where players can opt to do what their gut tells them to, instead of just being ordered around by the NPCs. It's a stark, but pleasant contrast to the utter lawlessness of the Borderlands - something we found quite lacking in the previous games.

For example, there’s a side quest you can accept regarding a young girl’s birthday party. However, when you get there you find out from her dad that she’s been killed by varkids, and he’s only organised the celebration in memory of her. So, he invites you to take part in some of his late daughter’s favourite activities like rakk-shooting, mentioning her impressive records. 

Although the game allows you to break them, it didn’t feel morally right to do so, so we held back on purpose. At the end, if you left all of them intact, the young girl’s father tears up and proceeds to thank you for keeping his daughter “just a little closer” to him. It was a real heartbreaker, but a nice addition nonetheless.

 

Borderlands 3 is no Mother Goose

Let's move on to the story, which unfortunately is the one area we felt a little shortchanged. The Calypso Twins' development as antagonists, or lack thereof was startling, considering the series has always prided itself on having solid storylines and characters amidst all the wanton destruction. 

It's perfectly fine to depict them as power-hungry streamers with a maniacal cult, but having them cram Twitch-style lingo into every nook and cranny because of that? That's shallow, borderline lazy, and something we felt we could do without. Granted, we understand the need to make them appear as asinine as possible, but too much of a good thing is usually bad, and this is an excellent example. 

At this point, the Calypso Twins are barely a shadow of the antagonist that Handsome Jack was, but in their defense, the latter is a really tough act to follow. After all, they’ve had around three to four games’ worth to build him up, versus just one for the Calypso Twins. Going by that train of thought, perhaps we all should close an eye here, although there is still the feeling that Gearbox could, and should have done more to flesh them out.

Since we're on the topic of old characters, we really weren't pleased with how they...dealt with some of them. Pardon the bluntness, but at some points the plot just seemed a little too convenient. The build-up to the climax was pretty straightforward, and worse still, it was predictable. Putting two and two together was peanuts if you were attentive enough. Simply put, we felt such treatment reduced not only the gravity of the narrative, but that of the game too.

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8.5
  • Playability 8.5
  • Graphics 8
  • Sound 8
  • Addictiveness 8
  • Value 8.5
The Good
Gameplay is dynamic and significantly more fleshed out than before
Good variety of visuals, aesthetics and character development
Easy to pick up and play for anyone
Streamlined co-op experience
The Bad
Overall lack of story focus
Post-game is fun but can get rather stale
Dialogue can feel forced and excessive at times
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