Late to the Party Video Game Review: Borderlands The Pre-Sequel

                The Borderlands franchise is probably my second favorite game franchise (right next to Mass Effect).  Naturally, when The Pre-Sequel came out, knowing that it was going to most likely be the final Borderlands game for this console generation, I had to pick it up.  The first Borderlands was great, the second was one of the single best games I have ever played.  The best thing about the franchise has to be the fact that you get so much for your money when it comes to content.  Not only are there multiple characters to choose from, making replaying the game fully justified every time, but the simple fact that the length of the game itself, even before the DLC is factored in, is massive makes it one of the best values in gaming.

                Naturally, I was hoping for more of the same with The Pre-Sequel.  To ensure the maximum amount of content available, I even obtained the “season pass” to ensure that I would have the DLC as soon as it was released.  In the past, this was never a waste of money and I was convinced that it would not be this time.  In terms of DLC, two of the season pass offerings are the “Handsome Jack Doppleganger Pack” and Sir Hammerlock's Sister, which are both playable characters.  While this is all well and good, I do not purchase a DLC pack with the thought that it will contain characters.  I want content.  I want to purchase missions, and levels and more things to play with, not just a new character when there are already four playable characters available.  There are also two "missions" that revolve around shooting wave after wave of bad guy in hopes of leveling up.  This is just a cop-out.  I don't pay extra money, basically the cost of another game, in order to have these bogus "missions".  There is one story mission that was released revolving around Claptrap, everyone's favorite hunk of junk robot, but upon downloading it recently, I was informed that I needed to update the game to play it, and was never offered the opportunity to update the game, making it a waste.  Believe me, if I knew that this was what the Season Pass would have entailed, I would have left that on the rack.  

                Okay, now on to the game itself.  Everything you have come to love about Borderlands, the design, the humor, it is all there.  There is less of it as this game is decidedly shorter than its counterparts, but it’s there.  The writing is very good and does a great job of fitting in between the two previous games (this game takes place before Borderlands Two, hence the Pre-Sequel).  There are quite a few nods to things that happen in Borderlands Two, and how they got that way.  My favorite has to be the scientist that shoots a Thresher (a worm-like creature that was the bane of my existence in Borderlands Two) from Elpis, the setting of this game, to the planet below, all so they can terrorize me in the future (past).  Those little in-jokes to the longtime players are what kept me going through a lot of stale missions. 

                That is one thing that I can honestly say I was not impressed by compared to the previous games.  The missions were boring.  I am the kind of guy, especially when it comes to Borderlands games, that likes to complete every side mission, to level up as much as possible before I head in to the finale.  This game was no different, but more often than not I found myself not wanting to complete a mission because I just couldn’t be bothered to go on another “fetch quest”, or to think that I had completed a mission only to be told that something else had broken in a machine I was supposed to fix so I need to go back out for yet another part.  It was like going grocery shopping with someone with ADHD.  It got to the point where, when I completed a goal, and it actually finished the mission, it surprised the hell out of me.  I didn’t even finish all of the side missions as I could not bring myself to do all of the driving missions.  I have always hated the timed, or driving missions in Borderlands games, and this was no different.  Instead of struggling through them, I just skipped those missions altogether this time around.

                The mechanics are all the same as you would remember in a Borderlands game.  The only new thing is the lack of gravity in certain areas, which leads to your jumps taking you further and giving you the ability to butt-slam.  I played the entire game and butt-slammed once, it’s no big deal as far as I’m concerned.  Being on the moon also leads to a lack of oxygen when you’re outside, but given the abundance of oxygen vents and air canisters, I was rarely lacking oxygen anyway.  The only other innovation was the inclusion of laser weapons, which, I honestly only used when necessary.  I beat the game with a shotgun, that’s about it.  I will say that the bosses were a lot more difficult this time around than they were in the last two games, but that could be because of the fact that I failed to complete all of the side missions this time around.

                Overall, the game was fun, but it failed to live up to its predecessors.  I wanted more than anything for this to be Borderlands Two,  but it wound up feeling like a bunch of DLC missions put out between the two games to further the story.  I hope that a second playthrough does more to instill confidence in me, but if this is the last Borderlands game I play (I do not own, nor will I purchase a next-gen console) I am severely unimpressed.