Borderlands 3 - Tested the new 2K Games shooter at Gamescom Cologne!

La Gamescom 2019 recently concluded it was the perfect opportunity to be able to touch numerous highly anticipated titles that have been making a lot of talk about them for months. Among the many products that we were able to try, one of those that we were most interested in discovering in detail was Borderlands 3, the new license plate creature Gearbox Software which in recent times has been able to capitalize on the attention of critics and audiences. The Cologne fair therefore gave us the opportunity to take a much closer look at the production 2K Games, a tasty test that lasted about an hour and focused on the gunplay displayed by the work.

The great hunt

The demo made available to us - focused on the endgame of the playful experience - placed us in front of a test to be overcome as part of the "Trial to Survive" mode, a series of arenas with ever increasing difficulty in which to face various hordes. opponents went to conclude with a boss-fight in which it was necessary to use all our skills to win. The mission was not particularly long, a particular that allowed us to replay it four times using a different protagonist among the four new hunters of the Crypt at each new game, in fact being able to test and study the different features in-game. Once the challenge began, our first task was to distribute the many skill points at our disposal, a detail that once again put us face to face with a rich and varied skill tree, in structure substantially identical to those already seen in the previous chapters of the brand. From the first seconds of the game, we were immediately able to notice the significant differences that characterized each of our runs, in fact finding ourselves in the situation of having to change our fighting style depending on the character controlled.

 

Zane it is a bit like the whole group, balanced both on the distance and in the most close encounters and able to exploit a real hologram of itself to catch its breath in some particularly difficult situation. It can it allowed us to launch with our heads down at the enemy with weapons drawn, all topped off by a huge drivable mech that we can call in case of need to spread death and destruction everywhere. Amara, the siren, is very familiar with elementary weapons and with its powers, essential tools to survive and whose flagship resides in a series of enormous psychic fists with which to strike against anyone who might be confronted. Finally, we were able to close our field test with FL4K, robot hunter who in addition to his trusty guns focused on the ranged battle can unleash the various creatures of Pandora against the enemy, useful allies that during the demo have got us out of the way on more than one occasion.

A weapon for a friend

Looking away for a moment from the different approaches that can be adopted, what immediately catches the eye is that incredible attention to such a vast arsenal that it will be impossible not to find the weapon of one's most intimate dreams. Since its inception, the brand has always focused on a very wide range of guns with which to give a hard time to any opponent so crazy that he wants to face us, but with this new chapter the software house has aimed towards much higher peaks. In fact, the player will find himself in the position of being able to shape a set of weapons that is simply perfect for his tastes, with endless variations to test and mods to apply. As easily imaginable, the possibilities are potentially infinite and range from the most conventional ones - such as pistols, machine guns and missile launchers - to others totally crazy, like a particular plasma rifle that once unloaded will become a practical grenade that will start chasing some opponent. before you blow up. In short, the work appears more refined and enriched than seen in the past, with great attention to the elementary powers that can be exploited not only against enemies but also on the game maps themselves. To give a practical example, once we found ourselves chased by a long line of hungry monsters ready to tear us apart, we opened fire on a strange puddle of smelly slime from which a huge fire broke out that devoured most of the opponents who wanted to make us. Skin.

According to what was declared by the development team, situations of this type will arise in large numbers and it will be of fundamental importance to exploit every opportunity to our advantage, under penalty of an inexorable game-over. Actually, the enemies turned out to be very fierce and the difficulty bar seemed to us to be set decidedly upwards, with a few well-aimed shots proved to be more than enough to send us to the creator, a sign of the fact that the most hardcore gamers will return to have bread for their teeth. From a more general point of view, what we saw seemed to us substantially in line with the previous episodes of the franchise, for better or for worse. Reactive and functional controls combined with a respectable technical sector have thus gone by mixing with a fun combat-system but at the same time afflicted by the same problem that we have been carrying around since the first Borderlands, that is infinite enemies that continue to look like bullet-eating sponges and in which the feedback of the weapons does not fully convince, especially in terms of recoil. In short, there seem to be improvements and certainly not few, but if what you were hoping for was a radical and profound transformation of the play sector, get ready to be disappointed.