I AM SKIN CUPCAKE AND YOU CAN TOO!!! Borderlands 3 First Impressions

A few of us in the BAYOG community play shooter games and have been jonesing for some new game to play. We’ve all been quite stoked for Borderlands 3 since we saw the drug induced trailer a few months back. Between the new crazy guns, wild enemies, and the fact we kinda replayed the crap out of Borderlands 2, you can probably imagine why. Our buddy Christian actually took a couple days off and I joined him for a wild ride back into the insanity that is Pandora.

After putting in about 30 hours in the 48 hour window between Friday after work and Sunday evening when he had to go play some D&D, Christian and I had an absolute blast running around, shooting guns, and running around shooting guns that blast things running around. Now if that sentence had you confused but entertained, then Borderlands 3 is likely a game for you. With little background of the Borderlands universe needed, a brand new player can hop in while veterans will enjoy the subtle nods and hilarious references to past games and exploits.

Off the bat, we have the super fun and super entertaining intro as per tradition, with our vault hunters introduced via some insane and over the top combat. Then we pick our vault hunter and begin the tutorial, at the hands of the annoyingly lovable idiot robot, Claptrap. Some minor exposition later and we have our introduction to the charismatic and in your face antagonists of this game, The Calypso Twins. Tyreen and her brother Troy are the God-Queen and God-King of the Children of The Vault, a brand new cult that has swept up and unified the bandits of Pandora. Much as Handsome Jack was a brand new and entertaining villain in Borderlands 2, The Calypso Twins are great because you love to hate them because they are the epitome of douchey YouTuber/Streamers.

Between having “Iridium Tier Members,” and hosting gift unboxing “Live Screams” as well as being so overtly obnoxious and cavalier with their follower’s lives, The Calypsos represent everything wrong with YouTubers and Streamers today cranked to 11,000. And honestly, the only Villain development I’ve known of that does anything close to updating backstory to match modern perception of what is evil is Lex Luthor of Superman, where he starts as a mad scientist in the 1920’s, then became a CEO in the 80’s, most recently becoming Mark Zuckerberg. But with that I’ll segue into all the things that Borderlands 3 did right and man is this a massive list.

Quality of life features are many compared to Borderlands 2 from seven years ago. The UI is quicker and more responsive, and moving is much easier with the introduction of climbing mechanics and sliding. Another thing of note is the implementation of “Cooperative” vs “Coopetition” mode. Cooperative represents a very friendly game mode with instanced and unique loot as well as level scaling (so your level 5 friend can join your level 20 game and not get rofl stomped, or vice versa and your high level friend still gets something out of lower level content). Coopetition is a more traditional Borderlands game experience with no scaling (so you roll into the wrong area, you gonna learn today) and you competing for loot with your friends. Overall, the game just seems to run smoother, even the bugs to be honest with you.

With that, onto the issues with which are few and far between but still present. I had a single hard crash and that was during a cut scene, after which the game ran fine which given some games *COUGH* PUBG *COUGH* are still broken as shit, I appreciate in a AAA game. Other bugs I noticed were very minor aesthetic errors, like asset values appearing on hover over or the wrong title text appearing. These were kinda common but not consistent and were more funny than actually annoying. Beyond this the gameplay has left me super happy barring one moment that literally hit the point of being tedious and then ended. The final point I’d like to address that isn’t a negative in my opinion but I’d be remiss to omit is the fact that on PC, I can only play this game via Epic Games Launcher for the next 6 months. I’ll still be playing this game in 6 months likely with friends on whatever set up because its just that funny.

Otherwise I had a blast with this first experience of the game and look forward to playing more of it on Thursday Saturday with Christian, hopefully even finishing it off. The story has me enthralled but just like Vinland Saga, I hate children, and that’s all I’ll say without spoiling more. The game has me running through and I can see even without DLC released yet, I look forward to replaying over and over again. Gearbox’s humor is still on point with me dying laughing with my friends quoting the insanity of the characters from real quotes during cut scenes to even arbitrary flavor text. So let me know if you too enjoy Borderlands 3 or if you (like certain other elements I know) refuse to play the game because of Epic Game Launcher (which is a minor thing) and I’ll see you out in the Borderlands.