Borderlands 3 (Multi)
By: 2K
AFTER the space-age antics of The Pre-Sequel's misstep, we finally have the third numbered game in the decade-old Borderlands series. These post-apocalyptic murder-sprees have shifted 41 million copies, so it's testament to how much love has been poured into Borderlands 3 that it's taken seven long years to show its cartoon face, offering another mountain of content to grind through and lashings of yuk-worthy patter.
Combining the nippy gunplay of Doom with loot and role-play, Borderlands helped spur a fledgling genre: it begat the likes of Destiny, which isn't something to be proud of. Yet, while its progeny has focused on online multiplayer, Borderlands is (ignoring its couch-co-op) a resolutely solo experience for all the fun of loot-shooting without having to deal with (ugh) other people. Better still, you can tackle the game at your own pace, taking well-deserved breathers to appraise your newfound trinkets.
Hopping the planets glimpsed at the end of Borderlands 2, the third game follows four new Vault Hunters as they battle a cult led by the Calypso Twins, who've effectively crowdsourced a psycho army. However, while the main quest involves stopping the cultists' inter-planetary high-jinks, it's Borderlands 3's gaggle of side-quests that funnel the most fun – be it taking down a sex-crazed game-show host, looking for a head in a jar or stealing coffee from a hipster robot.
Toasted in the cheesiest humour, a colourful cast of friend and foe boasts plenty of fan-favourite returnees, with newbies including Balex (no, really) the AI, ably voiced by Ice-T (no, really).
The spaceship Sanctuary serves as a hub where you can buy and sell weapons or gamble in its casino, while outside worlds feature improved progression, movement and gunplay, with cannier enemies that duck for cover like champs.
And if the 30-hour campaign doesn't sate your thirst for pumping lead into cartoons, Mayhem Mode (which twists up encounters) unlocks after the main storyline, with True Vault Hunter Mode and story-focused DLC slithering down the pipeline.
Borderlands holds a Guinness World Record for amount of guns in a game and character progression comes from tinkering with your groaning arsenal. The drops are lenient, looting crates is more satisfying and a number of weapons now have secondary modes, such as giving your pistol a tracker to tag enemies or your SMG poison projectiles.
With an aesthetic mixing Mad Max style wastelands with Duran Duran's Wild Boys video, if the graphics don't look like they've moved on much, that's down to the timeless look of cel-shaded visuals. Still, Borderlands 3 is rougher around the edges than it should be, with chugging frame rates and bugs aplenty.
Videogame loot-shooting has come a long way in the last decade, though mainly by twisting the genre into a corporate, money-grubbing nightmare. The fact that Borderlands 3 offers simply more of the old-school same is something to be welcomed.
But seven years is a long time in today's age of yearly sequels - has it been worth the wait? If you're after more of the same buffed to a high shine, you'll be looting vaults with gay abandon.
