Playing A Game Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel PC

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is fun to play, but feels like a ... bit of a stretch, in a few ways.

For one, the fact that everyone on the moon is Australian. Yeah, we get it, this installment was made in 'straya. And the claptrap unit trying to do a robotic accent is a funny touch. But the overwhelming amount of Aussies in this game - just about everyone, except characters that were already introduced in other games - makes one wonder if Pandora had been using its moon as a prison island.

For another: the moon mechanics of managing oxygen and doing high jumps. The mobility options actually make for some "interesting" combat twists, like ground-pound attacks and mid-air direction changes; but they feel out of place in a class-based RPG. What I mean is, these mechanics feel at home in a Quake-style arena deathmatch -- and in Borderlands, when you get one-shotted by an enemy ground-pounding on you like an angry meteorite, it doesn't feel too great.

For yet another, the setting of the moon just isn't that interesting, at least so far. Borderlands 2 started in a barren, bleak glacier area, before introducing all sorts of other diverse and exciting environments. It seems like we're still stuck on the moon's equivalent of that glacier area. (I really hope we find a new area soon, with less of these goddamned kraggons.)

And finally, the Pre-Sequel's attempt at characterizing the party feels like a miss. Clever idea, to involve party members' voice-acting directly in quest banter (as opposed to having NPCs talk to each other). But Wilhelm's script is deliberately terse and uninteresting, which just leaves me wondering ... if a different character had talked to the quest-giver, would we have heard a more compelling story? (And at the same time, did the length or quality of the story suffer from having to rewrite so much, for six different characters?) As a storytelling tactic, I don't think that this paid off.

My co-op partner and I are still having fun blasting fools, and the madcap sense of humor is entertaining enough to push us along the Pre-Sequel's story. But the overall quality certainly doesn't feel like it measures up to that of Borderlands 2.

Progress: Level 11

Rating: Good