Watching the audience at Gamescom react in a very lukewarm manner to this announcement makes me think the movie damaged this game's reputation a lot more than they anticipated.
Watching the audience at Gamescom react in a very lukewarm manner to this announcement makes me think the movie damaged this game's reputation a lot more than they anticipated.
I doubt it's that. BL2 was already a bit divisive with it's humor being incredibly annoying to a lot of people. BL3 kept the trend going but didn't have as entertaining of an antagonist and had a...
I doubt it's that. BL2 was already a bit divisive with it's humor being incredibly annoying to a lot of people. BL3 kept the trend going but didn't have as entertaining of an antagonist and had a generally poorer story. The gameplay is solid but the BL universe might simply have worn out it's welcome.
In general I think we're at the tail-end of pop culture interest in the irreverent quippy humor that dominated the 2010's. You see a lot of similar harping on "Marvel dialog" with respect to film and TV. It makes me wonder if we're going to swing back to the grim-dark style of the 2000's or if something new will emerge.
A few months ago I finished a spontaneous playthrough of Borderlands, and I plan on starting Borderlands 2 sometime this year. That, on top of 3 apparently not being terrible, has me cautiously...
A few months ago I finished a spontaneous playthrough of Borderlands, and I plan on starting Borderlands 2 sometime this year. That, on top of 3 apparently not being terrible, has me cautiously excited that 4 will be fun when I buy it and all its DLC for $10 in five years as part of the Borderlands-Series-Ultra-Golden-Deluxe-Season-Pass-4 bundle.
Was this your first playthrough of Borderlands? I have the possibly uncommon opinion that 1 is my favorite. 2 is great, but I've played so much of it I can't really touch it anymore. 3 was also...
Was this your first playthrough of Borderlands? I have the possibly uncommon opinion that 1 is my favorite. 2 is great, but I've played so much of it I can't really touch it anymore. 3 was also fun, the gameplay and most of the dlcs were great, it's just I found the main story to be a slog.
1 was my favorite as well. Two main reasons for me are 1. I could use a simple .ini file tweak to enable perfect third-person mode (which they hard-coded out in the sequels), and 2. it just felt...
1 was my favorite as well. Two main reasons for me are 1. I could use a simple .ini file tweak to enable perfect third-person mode (which they hard-coded out in the sequels), and 2. it just felt like its own thing, with its own identity. Everything that game since just feels like someone tried to jam as many popular memes from that year into it before hitting go on the release.
Oh no, definitely not. I played an unhealthy amount of the first two games when they first came out. I still fondly remember hopping into co-op sessions on Xbox 360 and being given a ton of modded...
Was this your first playthrough of Borderlands?
Oh no, definitely not. I played an unhealthy amount of the first two games when they first came out. I still fondly remember hopping into co-op sessions on Xbox 360 and being given a ton of modded guns, including one that I think was named "Popcorn Machine". It was a grenade launcher that shot grenades... that exploded into grenades... that exploded into grenades. If you used it too much you would crash the game for everyone.
I definitely played more of the first game than the second, so I guess that's my favorite too. It holds up very well even today, and honestly I think it's going to be one of those timeless games that is always fun.
This was my first playthrough on PC though, and my first solo playthrough. My only complaint about Borderlands 1 is that the DLC difficulty scaling is a little weird. I completed the main game before starting the DLC, and did not start New Game+.
I think you're supposed to start New Game+ for the DLC? All the DLC were trivially easy, and my character was way over-leveled by the time I 100% the entire game, that I had honestly got a bit bored. I distinctly remember the General Knoxx DLC whooping my and my friends' collective asses back in the day.
Yeah I feel like this game series has always struggled with balancing DLC to the characters. 3 was much better about it than the others but it's been a minute, could be misremembering.
Yeah I feel like this game series has always struggled with balancing DLC to the characters. 3 was much better about it than the others but it's been a minute, could be misremembering.
Personally, not the biggest fan. Maybe I should give it another shot but my friends and I finally finished Wonderlands and hated it so I think I'm on a borderlands series break for a while. I...
Personally, not the biggest fan. Maybe I should give it another shot but my friends and I finally finished Wonderlands and hated it so I think I'm on a borderlands series break for a while.
I honestly don't remember much of the game beyond Australian accents and butt slams.
I've always preferred 1 but I'm uncertain if I'm just playing 2 wrong or something... But I guess the fact that I feel I'm playing it wrong is probably why I liked one more. With two, I constantly...
I've always preferred 1 but I'm uncertain if I'm just playing 2 wrong or something... But I guess the fact that I feel I'm playing it wrong is probably why I liked one more. With two, I constantly felt like at or slightly above the level for the content everything I encountered was a bullet sponge. I would usually get downed even with high level equipment but almost always able last stand...
Maybe I was too reckless? Maybe I was playing the wrong character? I dunno, I got at least half way through the main game but never beat it. I played enough BL1 to have multiple characters complete all the quests.
Yeah, I personally am not a huge fan of how spongey they had to make some bosses due to some of the awesome end game perks. I'm also not a big fan of having to drop my entire weapon load out every...
Yeah, I personally am not a huge fan of how spongey they had to make some bosses due to some of the awesome end game perks. I'm also not a big fan of having to drop my entire weapon load out every level due to how much higher the numbers get. Borderlands 3 has some of these same issues, but I felt like the gameplay was a little cleaner overall. 1 has its jankness, for sure, but maybe I'm just used to the jankness.
But I occasionally boot up 1 to replay a little, every few years. I just can't do that with 2 with how much I played.
When you play BL2, do you play solo? I had considerably less fun solo-ing BL2 than BL1 and remember far more bullet sponges and having to last stand more often than I wanted to. There's also some...
When you play BL2, do you play solo? I had considerably less fun solo-ing BL2 than BL1 and remember far more bullet sponges and having to last stand more often than I wanted to. There's also some DLC boss that feels like it would take 2-3x as long as the main game final boss which straight up sounds boring without friends.
Also wasn't happy about the different skill set for whoever the new siren was (I'm ride or die with Lilith on BL1), although Zero was decent to play.
Yeah, mostly solo but I did manage to arrange a co-op with some friends for a little but of course that meant they wanted to start fresh characters and all that so I retreaded a bunch of my steps.
Yeah, mostly solo but I did manage to arrange a co-op with some friends for a little but of course that meant they wanted to start fresh characters and all that so I retreaded a bunch of my steps.
I've seen this sentiment a lot in Borderlands series discussions the past year or two, and it's really surprising to me, no offense to anyone that has that opinion. Back in the day, Borderlands 1...
I have the possibly uncommon opinion that 1 is my favorite
I've seen this sentiment a lot in Borderlands series discussions the past year or two, and it's really surprising to me, no offense to anyone that has that opinion.
Back in the day, Borderlands 1 felt like "the first game in the series that totally exists and has a dedicated fan base, but do you know someone who's actually played it? Especially before the sequel was famous?" Some examples that come to mind are Team Fortress 2 vs Team Fortress 1/Classic, Dark Souls 1 vs Demon's Souls (especially before the PS5 remake), Payday 2 vs Payday: The Heist, or Rocket League vs Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (yes Rocket League is a sequel and that's what the first one's called).
It didn't help that Borderlands 1 wasn't included in The Handsome Collection, and didn't get its own re-release on modern platforms like the PS4 until 4 years later.
Going back to the first game in series like these where the sequel is "the popular one" has always been a weird feeling for me. The first entry ends up feeling like a beta build. Quality of life additions being missing, seeing unpopular mechanics that were later scrapped, or artstyle or writing style being different can be uncanny. In Borderlands 1 in particular, I got into the second one due to the humor far more so than the gameplay, which I found lacking in the first one. The other thing I loved in 2 was the cast of playable characters, and I found the cast in BL1 a lot less varied and interesting. Dual wielding weapons as a "gunzerker" is just cooler than punching things as a "bezerker", and Gaige's anarchy stack mechanic alone is such a great mechanic, I know tons of people who've seen that as a gameplay option and have only ever played through the game that way, it interested them that much.
The Witcher games are like that too. I started with W2 and was a huge fan when it was fairly new, and played a fair bit of the first one until I got persistent crashes that prevented progression,...
The Witcher games are like that too. I started with W2 and was a huge fan when it was fairly new, and played a fair bit of the first one until I got persistent crashes that prevented progression, and waited years for the third game. Tons of people seem to have only played the third.
Witcher 3 does a much, much better job of onboarding new players than the first two. I've picked up both 1 and 2 a couple of times over the years, and always immediately hit a vertical learning...
Witcher 3 does a much, much better job of onboarding new players than the first two. I've picked up both 1 and 2 a couple of times over the years, and always immediately hit a vertical learning curve. Maybe it was CDPR getting better at localization, or maybe it was console-friendly endumbening that did it, but I was able to get immersed in 3 far more easily than the first two.
Watching the audience at Gamescom react in a very lukewarm manner to this announcement makes me think the movie damaged this game's reputation a lot more than they anticipated.
Honestly, Gearbox has done enough damage on their own over the years to make me distrust the game until long after release.
Yeah, I recall the reception to Borderlands 3 being mixed at best.
Not to mention they took way too long to put out Tales from the Borderlands 2, and ended up ruining that formula as well
I doubt it's that. BL2 was already a bit divisive with it's humor being incredibly annoying to a lot of people. BL3 kept the trend going but didn't have as entertaining of an antagonist and had a generally poorer story. The gameplay is solid but the BL universe might simply have worn out it's welcome.
In general I think we're at the tail-end of pop culture interest in the irreverent quippy humor that dominated the 2010's. You see a lot of similar harping on "Marvel dialog" with respect to film and TV. It makes me wonder if we're going to swing back to the grim-dark style of the 2000's or if something new will emerge.
Borderlands 3 damaged the franchises reputation IMO
A few months ago I finished a spontaneous playthrough of Borderlands, and I plan on starting Borderlands 2 sometime this year. That, on top of 3 apparently not being terrible, has me cautiously excited that 4 will be fun when I buy it and all its DLC for $10 in five years as part of the Borderlands-Series-Ultra-Golden-Deluxe-Season-Pass-4 bundle.
Was this your first playthrough of Borderlands? I have the possibly uncommon opinion that 1 is my favorite. 2 is great, but I've played so much of it I can't really touch it anymore. 3 was also fun, the gameplay and most of the dlcs were great, it's just I found the main story to be a slog.
1 was my favorite as well. Two main reasons for me are 1. I could use a simple .ini file tweak to enable perfect third-person mode (which they hard-coded out in the sequels), and 2. it just felt like its own thing, with its own identity. Everything that game since just feels like someone tried to jam as many popular memes from that year into it before hitting go on the release.
Oh no, definitely not. I played an unhealthy amount of the first two games when they first came out. I still fondly remember hopping into co-op sessions on Xbox 360 and being given a ton of modded guns, including one that I think was named "Popcorn Machine". It was a grenade launcher that shot grenades... that exploded into grenades... that exploded into grenades. If you used it too much you would crash the game for everyone.
I definitely played more of the first game than the second, so I guess that's my favorite too. It holds up very well even today, and honestly I think it's going to be one of those timeless games that is always fun.
This was my first playthrough on PC though, and my first solo playthrough. My only complaint about Borderlands 1 is that the DLC difficulty scaling is a little weird. I completed the main game before starting the DLC, and did not start New Game+.
I think you're supposed to start New Game+ for the DLC? All the DLC were trivially easy, and my character was way over-leveled by the time I 100% the entire game, that I had honestly got a bit bored. I distinctly remember the General Knoxx DLC whooping my and my friends' collective asses back in the day.
Yeah I feel like this game series has always struggled with balancing DLC to the characters. 3 was much better about it than the others but it's been a minute, could be misremembering.
How do you feel about the pre-sequel? I wasn't a huge fan at first, but it's become one of my favorites.
Personally, not the biggest fan. Maybe I should give it another shot but my friends and I finally finished Wonderlands and hated it so I think I'm on a borderlands series break for a while.
I honestly don't remember much of the game beyond Australian accents and butt slams.
I've always preferred 1 but I'm uncertain if I'm just playing 2 wrong or something... But I guess the fact that I feel I'm playing it wrong is probably why I liked one more. With two, I constantly felt like at or slightly above the level for the content everything I encountered was a bullet sponge. I would usually get downed even with high level equipment but almost always able last stand...
Maybe I was too reckless? Maybe I was playing the wrong character? I dunno, I got at least half way through the main game but never beat it. I played enough BL1 to have multiple characters complete all the quests.
Yeah, I personally am not a huge fan of how spongey they had to make some bosses due to some of the awesome end game perks. I'm also not a big fan of having to drop my entire weapon load out every level due to how much higher the numbers get. Borderlands 3 has some of these same issues, but I felt like the gameplay was a little cleaner overall. 1 has its jankness, for sure, but maybe I'm just used to the jankness.
But I occasionally boot up 1 to replay a little, every few years. I just can't do that with 2 with how much I played.
When you play BL2, do you play solo? I had considerably less fun solo-ing BL2 than BL1 and remember far more bullet sponges and having to last stand more often than I wanted to. There's also some DLC boss that feels like it would take 2-3x as long as the main game final boss which straight up sounds boring without friends.
Also wasn't happy about the different skill set for whoever the new siren was (I'm ride or die with Lilith on BL1), although Zero was decent to play.
Yeah, mostly solo but I did manage to arrange a co-op with some friends for a little but of course that meant they wanted to start fresh characters and all that so I retreaded a bunch of my steps.
I've seen this sentiment a lot in Borderlands series discussions the past year or two, and it's really surprising to me, no offense to anyone that has that opinion.
Back in the day, Borderlands 1 felt like "the first game in the series that totally exists and has a dedicated fan base, but do you know someone who's actually played it? Especially before the sequel was famous?" Some examples that come to mind are Team Fortress 2 vs Team Fortress 1/Classic, Dark Souls 1 vs Demon's Souls (especially before the PS5 remake), Payday 2 vs Payday: The Heist, or Rocket League vs Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (yes Rocket League is a sequel and that's what the first one's called).
It didn't help that Borderlands 1 wasn't included in The Handsome Collection, and didn't get its own re-release on modern platforms like the PS4 until 4 years later.
Going back to the first game in series like these where the sequel is "the popular one" has always been a weird feeling for me. The first entry ends up feeling like a beta build. Quality of life additions being missing, seeing unpopular mechanics that were later scrapped, or artstyle or writing style being different can be uncanny. In Borderlands 1 in particular, I got into the second one due to the humor far more so than the gameplay, which I found lacking in the first one. The other thing I loved in 2 was the cast of playable characters, and I found the cast in BL1 a lot less varied and interesting. Dual wielding weapons as a "gunzerker" is just cooler than punching things as a "bezerker", and Gaige's anarchy stack mechanic alone is such a great mechanic, I know tons of people who've seen that as a gameplay option and have only ever played through the game that way, it interested them that much.
The Witcher games are like that too. I started with W2 and was a huge fan when it was fairly new, and played a fair bit of the first one until I got persistent crashes that prevented progression, and waited years for the third game. Tons of people seem to have only played the third.
Witcher 3 does a much, much better job of onboarding new players than the first two. I've picked up both 1 and 2 a couple of times over the years, and always immediately hit a vertical learning curve. Maybe it was CDPR getting better at localization, or maybe it was console-friendly endumbening that did it, but I was able to get immersed in 3 far more easily than the first two.