Opinion: “Borderlands 3” Review

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“Borderlands 3” came out shortly before the 10-year anniversary of the first “Borderlands” game.

Borderlands is a four-player first person shooter game that has been apart of the gaming community for almost 10 years. In Borderlands, players take on the role of a treasure hunter (Vault Hunter). Players are transported to Pandora, a planet, to look for treasure. Players go on quests and gather large amounts of treasure (AKA ‘loot’).

Thirty-seven days short of the game’s 10-year anniversary, Gearbox released the third Borderlands game. The new Borderlands game has many new updates and mechanics to make for a better experience, along with the new storyline for players to explore.

Here are some of the new features: 

Money: Money has many more uses. Not only is it used more to buy items, weapons, ammo and such, but it’s also used to upgrade ammo and buy SDUs. Weapons are more accessible to buy from vending machines throughout the maps. SDUs (Storage Deck Upgrades) are very similar to backpacks you would buy in other games.

Characters: Vault hunters is the given name of characters in Borderlands. There were four added vault hunters to the third game. The first one is Amara (Siren). Second, is Zane (Operative). Third, is Flak (Beasthunter). Lastly, there is Moze (Soldier).

Core mechanics, New vehicles, and Weapons: The core mechanics added were movements like sliding, vaulting, slamming, etc. New vehicles were added to make across-map traveling quicker and easier. There were also multiple new weapons added, but more importantly there were two new gun mechanics added called Switch Mode and Auto-Target. Switch mode allows the player to change the element of the weapons they are using, such as changing from a fire element to an ice element. Auto-Target is a mechanic that, once turned on, allows the player to hit the target without directly having the target in the crosshairs once you are locked on the target.

Planetary traveling and Skill trees: Planetary traveling was one of the things added in the third game. Planetary traveling allows the player to travel to different worlds. Next, The skill trees in Borderlands were made to have three different skill trees, each with a main ability and passive abilities that will affect each main ability.

Review: There were many great changes in the making of the third Borderlands game. Gearbox made many smart decisions about what to focus on changing and what not to change at all. They combined the best things from previous versions and new things from new ideas to make the best version of Borderlands out yet. I have no complaints on the new game. But I have a few ideas. Maybe they could make a similar borderlands game that is MMO (massive multiplayer online). I like that the game is four player and you can play with your friends, but sometimes more than three friends may want to join and when friends can’t play, you end up playing alone. Therefore, the creation of a seperate game in general for the MMO experience or an option to go into MMO version or the regular four player version before loading up the game would broaden the opportunities for Borderlands. One opportunity would be guilds and parties. players could create a guild and try to become the top guild in the game. With parties, you can join a team for when you need a little assistance from other players on a quest. Challenges and duels would be another couple of opportunities for the game. Duels would let players battle other players to see who is stronger similar to the opportunities shooter games allow. Challenges could range from anything, there could be game wide battles that players could sign up and participate in and would give an even bigger opportunity than a simple duel between two players. Players who win a challenge or a duel could win rewards, the value depending on the scale of what you participated in. I believe that this game is currently the best version, considering the large amount of work the previous suggestions would need. I cannot ask for a better version than the one released, September 13. Borderlands 3 is by far one of the better games available at this time.

Rating:  9.0/10

ESRB: M for Mature (age 17+)

Release Date: September 13th, 2019

Consoles: PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Mac