Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Borderlands 4 Review - Kinda Funny Gamescsast

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

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Yeah, Andy, let me tell you something. He owes me one. Why? Because there he was. I was deep in a document. He was deep in the Duffy in this document. And he was given like, no, I don't have time for the outside world, Mike, today. And Nick always does a good job.

When I'm in a mood, I'm throwing a little fit, he walks up, gives me the big dab. He says, I'm here, big dog. And I say, that's my guy. Are you in a bad mood, right? And he always checks me. No, just, you know, sometimes when Roger, you know, checks me in the morning, fucking Roger. And so I gave Nick, I saw him head down and said, what up,

though, big dog, how are we feeling? What's the vibe? And he kind of, he brushed me off. He said, I'm busy right now. I walked away and I go,

I should adapt him up to force him and I to look at each other for fun. Yeah. That's a third daft so far. It's a third. Sometimes it's a three-dap day. It's a three-d-day. What are you going to do?

That's a record so far. Welcome to the kind of funny games cast. For Thursday, September 11th, 20-25. I am your host, Andy Cortez. And I'll be honest with you all.

I always, whenever I do a hosting job, I try to say, say like the you know the the the borderlands bros from whatever you know but I don't know any of the terminology in this game let me here

let me here oh go ahead oh gosh okay but I like you know it's is you want the alliteration yeah I was trying to do the alliteration yeah oh gosh okay yeah we won't go with that one I'll just say two psychos from San Francisco that's good Silk Mike and Greg Miller how are y'all doing it again

I'm great and Scroo just fell off like she heard that. Yeah. We're not going to talk about that. Someone's playing a prank on you. I don't know where that's screwed is felt. No, this chair's been going for a while on today's the day. Oh, is that the one that goes up and down? Yeah, yeah.

That's the one when you lean back, you drift off. Oh, gotcha. This is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. We get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services all around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with a kind of funny membership on Patreon. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, to get all of our shows ad-free,

watch us record them live, and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be part of the show. Submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping, tomorrow's the final day. Tomorrow's the day we're on Games Daily. It will be announced the final giveaway winners for the art contest, the art raffle for all the people who donated 10 subs. You can still get your subs in. Mike's been calculated in the way.

Boop-po-po, bo, bo, bo, getting in the system. and in the kernels calculating and typing in every winner to the document. Tomorrow we will select the winners. So you still have time to get those 10, get the subs in. And by the way, it's September. All that is discounted right now. The second winner chose asked me to draw the mantis lords, which I was so pumped up to do.

And I'm like 66% of the way through it. Go ahead, Greg Miller. As you guys know, I donated no less than 15 subs, perhaps 20, but at least 15. If you did 20, that's two entries. Well, that's my question is I did them in increments of five. Is that being totaled? or do they need to be 10 in a batch? Well, you telling me that right now,

I would put your name on there. Put me in there. Twice? I'm doing my very best to track. Did you see me? Yes. How many did I get total? You have two.

You have two. Okay. I got 20. We wanted to keep Andy here all day. The fun part about giving out gifted subs in Twitch on your phone is I don't know what credit card is attached to. Yeah. Because it doesn't even ask me to Apple pay.

It's just like I'm doing it. Maybe it's Tim's. Is this kind of funny money? Is this Greg money? Maybe it's Tim. Is Jen going to be mad or is Nick? could it be mad. I don't know. So tomorrow it'll be the final two winners.

The one of the winners will be selecting, you know, all right, you get the custom art piece. You ask me to draw whatever you want from Hollow Night. And the other winner will win the journal where I've been doodling all my notes and all the, you're so talented. Cataloging my experience. But here's the thing, Greg. Yeah. If the winner wins the journal is like, actually, I don't want that. Can you just draw me something?

Then I'll do that. No, you should draw inside the journal. Well, I am, I guess. What do you mean? Draw the one big one in the journal. Yeah, but like the paper doesn't accept the watercolor nicely, you know. Doesn't accept it. If I win, you can keep the journal, but you have to draw me like I'm in the journal.

Okay. Okay. What kind of bug would he be? Because here's a thing. Like, I was really close to getting started and surprising Mike and Roger and drawing them as fleas. The fleas. Nice. The flea troop.

But it's just like, how do you do that, you know? Rogers has to be bold. Well, here's what... It's like the fuzzy flea thing and then it's just a ball top. Gotcha. Okay. You did a really good job

with the pickman, remember. That's true. And the, what, the coughing? Wasn't he a coughing in Pokemon? Oh, I did. Yeah. I still love that one. That was a good one.

That was a good one. We are an 11-person business all about live talk shows. Kind of funny games daily was talking about Ubisoft confirming Far Cry will be more predominantly pushed multiplayer. I just really fucked up that sentence.

And after this will be a kind of funny podcast with Greg and Nick. A little one-on-one. Look at that, everybody. One B-1. You like that? They're going to be fighting each other. No, it's going to be the opposite of that.

We're going to see how much trouble we can get Tim in. Oh, no. How many sponsors will have to apologize about the time he gets back, you know? There was a moment just off-camera, not even doing content or whatever where Nick asked Greg out loud in front of Tim. Greg, when does Tim come back? In which he could have just asked Tim. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's one of those, like, teach a man to fish things where we got to get used to Tim not being here.

We can't rely on Tim all the time. Of course, of course. We've taken off the restrictor plate. This car can go as fast as we want it to now. Oh, crap. When I learned about restrictor plates, it's really kind of shocked me. Yeah. I really don't know what they are, but I know that you can remove and they go fast.

What do you mean? I can't go as fast as I want. What do you mean? The stream afterwards is Borderlands 4 First Look with Mike and Roger. If you're kind of funny member, remember that today's Gregway went up early. It's 24 minutes of Greg talking about 6-1 indie and how we're all so proud of them. Thank you to our. our Patreon produces Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney the Somme Twining.

Today we're brought to you by Shady Wraise and Factor, but we'll tell you all about that later. For now, let's start with the topic of the show. Border Lance 4 is here. The Steam description reads, Borderlands 4 is a mayhem, mayhem-fueled looter-shooter, jam-packed with billions of weapons, deadly enemies, and intense co-op action. Break free from a dangerous hidden planet as one of the four new badass vault-hundred. Developed by Gearbox, published by 2K. It's out now, and the Metacritics sitting at an 84, which is really, really nice.

This is the follow-up to Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, which came out a couple years ago. Greg and Mike have played a decent amount of this, and I'd like to kind of get into that right now. First off, top-level thoughts from either of you. Give me your time played, what platform you played on. and again just some you know quick little synopsis of how you're feeling about it so far so I'm like Mike okay I'll go first I have spent 50 hours in borderlands whoa I'm currently sitting at level 39 wow mind you I'm 300 experience points away from 40

so we're gonna count it we're just around and I just but you know what just to make me feel good and I played on PC that is what the review code I got for it I played two full weeks on PC I've experienced a lot of patches as well so the game has gotten progressively better to the point where at the end of the day, it has been running much better than where it started. Oh, nice. But we will be talking about the bugs. At the end of it all, Andy Cortez, I was a mixed bag of emotions throughout this journey,

but I end looking back on my time in Cairo's really enjoying Borderlands 4. I had a really fun time. I was happy to get lost in the world with the characters, getting just so much epic loot that I couldn't stop. and I just have enjoying the checklist open world that Borderlands and Gearbox have provided that I can't stop playing and thinking about it and I'm probably going to 100% this.

And that's a crazy thing to say when you look at this map later today when we open it up, there's a lot to do. And for some reason I have found a lot of joy and just getting lost in this world. And I think a lot of that comes from the tone, the gameplay itself, and of course just Borderlands being

that kind of comfort food that we all know and love. Borderlands 3 for me wasn't my dream borderlands. The jokes didn't hit. The tone wasn't really going towards what I was looking for from Borderlands. I think they kind of went overboard with what they were doing with the millennial, hey, we're on TikTok live.

These are the jokes that we're going to smash over your head. This one took a turn that feels like a, hey, we're going to really ring this back in. Of course, correct. And it is a much more serious tone. It still has the Borderlands fun, but like I put it as if Claptrap is an 11 to you, they toned him down to about a 7, maybe even a 6-5. Wow.

He's very, very toned down. The jokes and over the top crude humor is toned down. And they're still fun and joy in this, but it's not what you are thinking when you think of Borderlands 3. Very, very nice. I'm excited to dive in more because I have a lot to talk about. Mike, what would you give it? Have you beaten the game yet? I have beaten the game.

I rolled credits yesterday. I am now in the end game and very excited to spend more time in it. Like I said, I found a lot of joy in this. And throughout this journey, it was a six, seven, sometimes eight feeling. But I have finished my journey at a seven, five. This is a capital G good. Awesome. I don't want to go great.

I don't think this is a great game, but I think it's a really good game. And I think that Borderland's diehard fans are going to be really happy with this. I think people that are waiting for it to see where it kind of nets out, it's a perfect on sale game. It's going to be a fun time with your friends. But all in all, this is a really good game. 7-5. Greg Miller, how about you?

Hi, Andy, how are you? I'm doing well. I have, according to my Steam, well, I'm getting framing on that thing. I'm sure it's not happening. According to Steam, I've played just shy of 25 hours of Borderlands 4. I've played it on this.

Razor 16, Blade 16, the Razor Blade 16. Thank you to Razor for sending it. No, this isn't sponsored. They just know that I only use PC handhelds and have no real good tower. And so they sent me a razor blade 16 to kick the tires on and stuff. It's got stuff in it. It does have stuff in it. It's got the 5090 in it.

That's why I pass it to Andy all the time like help me make it look good. Andy do something. You know, I discovered today that when you open up the little the Nvidia deal inside of it you can click and it'll go go here's the best stuff for you and it'll just make the game do that. Oh, the optimized settings? They know that. InVIDIA app getting

a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not sponsor. No, none of this is sponsored. Again, we're just talking. Just PC. Big PC gamer Greg Miller over here, you know what I mean? Does it, in your experience, the NVD app is getting, does it, does it, is that, can I trust that or should I still come to you all the time? I would still come to me. Okay. Whenever anything is sort of automated as here's the best optimized stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I, you know, and maybe optimized great for that machine, but maybe it's not kind of seeing the, the whole experience of what you're trying to do. So, you know, it's always nice to kind of go in there and do some extra. And I love being, I love getting the late. night text from Greg Miller. The screenshots of me like I know, I can't figure out why this isn't doing what it is. What do I need to do? Do you want to discord in? I think we can solve it through text and we solve

a new text. As I was, as I was dozing off before the Silk Song 7am marathon. It's like maybe 10 p.m. and I'm like kind of dozing off and I get the text and I'm like, oh man, I got to lock in because like Greg needs hell with his PC. But it's been great. I'll do a Greg way or something about the Razor blade another time. But thank you again. Razor. No sponsorship. Nothing like that. Just they help me out

on this one. So let's start again. I've been playing Borderlands 4 on Steam on a PC. That is the code we were provided. We had no other option. Steam says I'm just shy of 25 hours into the game. I have not rolled credits on it. And I'm more negative. Not more negative.

Me and Mike have talked about this off camera of where we are with this game, the constant switching emotions. I've been saying two things around the office to people, to Jen, to Joey, even Mike, right? That I don't think are necessarily fair. And I want to talk about him here, right?

Sure. Number one, I've been saying, man, like this game, how's, how's borderlands? I go, it's more borderlands, which, as the guy who hosted the borderlands show, love Borderlands three, love the pre-sequel, love Borderlands, too, love Tales from the Borderlands, etc., etc. That should be a huge win for me. It's more Borderlands. Let's fucking go, yeah.

But I find it's not hitting what I want. And the second thing, which is incredibly reductive, and I'm going to say it to then take it back, because I've refined it, refined it, is that it's a soulless experience. even when I said that to people, I was like, it's not 100% like this, but I feel like it's that's not what it is. I have a better analogy for you, okay? For you two. I don't know if you've heard this right yet. I haven't heard this update now. Borderlands as an IP, as a brand overall is a can of soda. It is, you pop it, it's carbonated, you smell it right away. It can be too sweet. It can be just sweet enough. It's carbonated. It's this. Oh, man, it's too intense.

It's a Dr. Pepper. It's one of these crazy Mountain Dew flavors. It's that. blah blah blah but it hits the spot and it does the thing and you know what you're getting. When you're on an interview you need the Coke sometimes. Borderlands 4 to me is a flat can of soda. I think it removes the high highs of Borderlands but it also removes the low lows of Borderlands. I was really shocked this morning to wake up

and look at Metacritic and see how well it was doing all over the place and obviously scores are subjective, blah, but then to read Jordan over at GameSpot's 7.0 and really see Jordan nailing all the the things I was thinking and I've been doing about it. Like for me, I didn't realize Borderlands 3 was held in such disregard where it reviewed well. The Metacritic I think is still an 83 or an 84 when I went and checked the other day. But there is this thing of, I do remember the conversation of it being like, oh, do they go too

far with the humor? Is it too much Borderlands? Dat da, da, da, da, da. I think Gearbox grabbed the stick after that on this one and pulled way too far back. Because to jump, it's going to, I'm going to sound super negative. When Mike and I were playing this together, that beautiful night the other night, we're there, Ben's sleeping. I got the headset on. I'm being quiet, but we're having a great time. That's another quick question. How many hours did y'all play together, do you think? Oh, we did that one night and then... Three to four, max. Yeah, exactly. Connection was fun. Oh, yeah, it was great. Yeah, easy dropping, easy drop out. We'll talk about some call stuff later on, like, progression, but yeah, it was easy. But when we were playing and you're in that groove

and you've got the guns you want like and you're playing, guess what, everybody? It's borderlands. It's fun to do. It's fun to run through. Like, I think they've done a, a really great job and added some things that work really well and some that don't work as well and we'll talk about that. But it's more for me, the tissue surrounding it is just so bland. I think all the side characters I've run into to work with, I think are just forgetable and not enjoyable and not even funny. Like that's the other thing. Like Mike says more serious. I just think more tone back because they're still saying things they want to be jokes. They're still doing things they want to be funny. But maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it isn't funny enough.

And that removes so much of it. And I do miss the color, the splash. There's color here. There's splash here. But not like it was. Remove Borderlands 3. Talk about 2. Talk about the pre-sequel.

Talk about those splash screens. Talk about the color of it all. Like this whole experience feels muted. And I think it is, again, Gearbox trying to find their feet after the criticism of 3, which is great. And the review scores show

that a lot of people wanted that. That's fine. But for me, Borderlands is more than just looting and shooting. It is this colorful world. It is running around. it is crazy characters, and I feel all those dials have been cranked back for me, which makes me go, okay, playing with Mike is fun. I enjoy it.

When I finally, I would say around hour 15, hour 12, I finally had an assault rifle and a sidearm I really liked. And I was like, all right, now we're cooking. I finally had found a sweet spot of my skill tree where I was like, okay, I'm rocking this. I'm playing them on. You were playing a mom too, right? I'm like, okay, cool.

This works for me. and I'm enjoying the actual moments of it and the snapshots of it. But the problem is zooming out. It's like even those moments are, I've seen all these characters before. I'm really just shooting the same stuff. It really is just run into the room and do the thing and get the thing. We'll get into how they hold your hand and do this whole stuff.

What I'm left with here is a game that it's shocking for me to say is like, I'm going to put it down today and obviously move on to a different review because that's our thing. But I don't ever expect to come back to Borderlands for in any serious capacity. We're streaming it next week Fuck yeah I want to play And I want to hang out And I want to play with my friends

Yeah And if Jen was like Hey I really saw something I want to play this board on I would be open to it But as it's left right now No connection to anybody around me Or my Vault Hunter really

I'm just like Cool It's there if I want to go Grind out and shoot some stuff But I'd rather go do that And a million other games That also offer me a better story And better progression

Better World So do you think that this game Like Based on what you're saying This game didn't really ever introduce an NPC that you go, oh, this is something that, this is one of those memorable NPCs that I can see, you know, getting more love in the future, maybe with a DLC or something like that.

Like, it sounds like everybody's pretty forgetable for you. Mike, do you feel the same way? Like, were there any NPCs that you could latch onto and go, oh, I love going back to this dude to go turn in quests? And I love seeing what they've got to say in kind of progressing their story. Yeah, there's one for me. that's memorable that I think we could easily make some fun out of and build off of. And that is an NPC you'll meet in the middle of the game.

You just got done in her area. I know who you're talking about. And she's a ton of fun. And I agree. And she has like, she's got the charisma. She's got the pop. She stands out in a bland world. Her world is very desert-like, but she pops out like the desert cactus where you see

her from a mile away. And it's like, okay, this is going to be my character. And from the rest of it, yeah, one guy, totally forgettable. rush the first person you meet tries to be that over the top fun borderlands in your face guy but he does it I'm going to go up to a seven

like I said clap trap trap and all everything's been rained down to about a seven it used to be 11 and 12 they said hey like Greg said this was a hard crank to the right of like we're going to crank that down still fun they have the nice jokes and writing on some of the side quests

but none of it is in your face when your eye rolling clap trap is an enjoyable character clap track has really fun moments in this story that you will experience through side quests, but there is never a time where you go, clap trap. Like, no, because he's so toned down. He's different.

Are there moments for, because you've done more sidequests than I have, are there moments where you love clap trap? Yeah, oh yeah. There's been some really, there's an early side quest with clap trap where he shows a lot of character growth and you go, wow, I didn't think I'd get this out of clap trap.

And then there's moments where you get the clap trap, kind of over the top nature at the end of the game where you're kind of laugh and giggle, like that's a clap trap moment that old borderlands fans if you love clap trap like I do you'll go oh there's my clap trap and then there's also the new borderlands fans

that might go that's a better way to write clap trap that's not going to make me roll my eyes I'd like to get to a super chat remember you can get your super chats in and we'll continue to read them throughout the show Ty Wilkins VO with a very generous $10 super chat thank you for supporting us here says Borderlands 3 felt like a game made in a vacuum

heads down doors shut gameplay, story, and comedy felt out of date on release to me. It sounds like they corrected that. So I asked, does Borderlands 4 feel like a modern game? Yeah, the gameplay mechanics. I mean, when we talk about first person shooting, Andy, this is one of the top of the classes, right? We always kind of highlight those more in your face, multiplayer,

heavy war, call of duty, so on, first person shooters. But when you think of Borderlands, this is a class act. This is a game that you pick up and play, and it feels good on the sticks when you are. aiming, shooting, you feel the response of the gun from recoil to sound. When you have thousands of billions of guns, it is hard to sometimes do that. And I have some, I have a lot of things I like. We can go into the, things I didn't like, but there's more good bads is my subject matter.

Sure. And the good bads are the guns here, like there's a lot of guns in borderlands that you think, wow, those are wow factors. I actually didn't experience that in my 50 hours. I had more guns of like, man, this is really a letdown that I'm not seeing more gun variety. The gun feels good. The movement feels great. They elevated borderlands for moment to moment gameplay and movement unlike ever before. It feels like a competent first person shooter in 2025. There's a slide. There's a dash. There's a hover. There's a grapple hook. There's the anytime call in

the digger and get on your bike and ride. The moment of playing feel like it is can compete with anything in 2025. But not so fast, my friend, is what I want to say when you were just you have the positivity because yes the gunplate feels great i'm with you of i struggled so long to find a gun i loved there were so many guns where i was like this isn't even a fun gun to use but it's the best i have right now so i have to do it my i think the super chat was more like tonally like i think the super chat was asking more of like what was the you know in terms of memes and modern like comedy and stuff it felt like vortland's three was like all right we're taking all the memes that we just saw three weeks ago and then when it comes out it feels dated i think

that the Super Challenge is more asking like a total thing. No, they're not doing that as much here. No, this feels more tonally accurate of today right now. Okay. And what you would want to hear from side quests and characters. I felt more like that was a good joke. But I want to riff on the actual gameplay here. Because again, gunplay, yes, feels good, especially when you get it.

I think the longer you play and you find your kit and you find your thing, like where I am right now with Amman, right, of having that shield, having that whip, and then also now having, you know, put down my giant thing, and then I just started opening, like, the swords that float around and shoot people. I don't know if you built in the cybernetic build. I'm like, okay, I got a good vibe here, and I like my salt rafil, I like my pistol.

Here's something I would say. When Borderlands 3, and I appreciate the Super Chat. Thank you so much. Over here, it's gone now. Yeah, somebody was like, Borderlands 3 felt outdated mechanically. Are they crazy? Like, remember, Borderlands 3 added in mantling,

which was such a big deal that you could run up and climb over stuff. and everybody loved that so much. Mantling is still here. Mantling is so much more difficult this time. I saw other reviews today calling it out, that there are weird invisible walls in geometry that you should easily be able to mantle up to. You can't.

That's frustrating. That takes me out of the experience. They add this grapple hook, right, Andy? There's these spots. You pull yourself up. You shoot da-da-da-da. This is very well-implemented, I would say, in the battle arenas you are in,

where you are in these multi... You come into the next room, here are all the different psychos to kill. Great, go up and do that. when I am fucking running around this open world and I want to get up to that high point and I can't figure it out and there's no there's like just this circle grapple hooks icon you look for

why isn't the world littered with this? It does, this I am probably going too far but it feels like a mechanic that they thought up late and they didn't build the world with it in mind where this you should be able to grapple everywhere. The amount of times I've done the where I'm like, okay cool like I was trying to do the one yesterday of the battery thing.

we bitch about. I was like, you know, I'll come back to the battery. Pick up the battery. Can't put the battery in my fucking car. I got to run it across. I'm running and I'm opening up the map because they took away the mini map. There's no mini map. Open up the map.

I'm like, where the, okay, it's over there. I'm just going, going, going. I'm like, wait. And I'm running around trying to find it. Finally, I hit up on the D pad to see them spell out the golden path line. And I'm like, what? Pull up the map. It wanted me to like corkscrew around all this other shit and come.

Like, come on, guys. I can fucking fly. Let me just go up there and get it. I have a big wall of text when it comes to exploration, right? Cairo's is this massive open world. You're going to be stunned and roll your eyes probably of like, this might be too big. It is screaming, explore me.

It is yelling, hey, with all this new gameplay mechanics, come out here and enjoy the ultimate playground. But then you start to play and it's like, oh no, they want you to play on the playground their way. You want to access this slide? you have to take the stairs. You don't climb up the side of the slide. You don't hardcore parkour around the jungle gym.

It is very much of like, here is this moment where you will be wowed by how big it is. You'll be excited to explore. And then you will get smashed in the face for the first five hours of invisible wall, non-mantable object. You cannot get up on that ledge. No, we want you to walk this path at all times.

And sure, you'll break it sometimes like I have, but 99% of the time you will have to follow their rules on the playground. And it is a little disheartening of like, you added in the scrapple hook, you have the hover, you have the redeploy flying mechanic in this, let me just

go wild. And there is very much strict rules on this playground on how you can follow where to go and how to get access to things. And this is another one interesting for me. We joked about this, you and me, I think, privately, in our hot tub session this week. Right, right, right. About

Slop. You were saying how you hate the words been overuse or whatever now, but how it was so funny when I'm like, I am the open world slop guy. Just give me stuff to go do. I love going off

checklisting, yada. Borderlands four, I think wants to get you to the action and the fun so fast. They just vomit out things onto the map. To the point that like,

the map is cluttered, I feel, starting this game of trying to go to the first few objectives and I'm like, what the fuck is? And I hover over it's a vault symbol. Come touch it and it'll give it. Oh, now there's a giant glowing thing.

Is that one of the giant domes where I fight the enemies. No, this is a giant open thing where you can get a vault key. And I'm like, y'all, there's too much here. And I don't, I think the exploration feels so obtuse that I don't want to go do it. Like, I was shocked of like being,

I love that kind of shit. I would have loved, I was, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, and I was just like, so turned off to it that I had to stop myself from Golden Pathing and be like, all right, let's go do some side stuff. Let's actually see how we feel about this. Do you think the exploration that you enjoyed and Hell as Us has affected this experience at all?

This is something I talked about. So again, 25 hours didn't roll credits on it. Why? For a game I care so much about, I had to go see some bugs about a woman named Hornet, right? I had to go. I had a Silk Song dropped, and I had already been reviewing Borderlands that point after Hellas Us went into Borderlands. And yes, it was very much like jumping into the cold plunge after being in the hot tub of like, oh man, I was having so much fun having Hellas Us go, figure it out, look around.

What are you going to do, limited things? jumping into borderlands and having it be, all right, you got to go find this thing. We don't know where it is. And then I look at the map and there's the yellow prism right there that I can hit up on the D-pad that will take me straight to it. You know what I mean? And it does just become, you're on a leash, go do this thing, go get the thing. Now, that's always been borderlines.

So it's not a fair. And I love borderlands. I want to make sure I still, that's shining through, even though I'm sure the comments hate me. I love borderlands. It's just this one, when you strip away the things that I think make borderlands, borderlands and come down to what I think is a flat game here. it's like okay well i don't this doesn't work for me it's an interesting one because it is the

endless jawbreaker gobstopper right of like you will lick and lick you will play and play and you'll never stop because there's so much to do and when i think of borderlands and the co-op nature of it it is the well we want to play in this world forever i don't want this to come to an end so give me more and more and you will be overwhelmed by every side activity everything that you can do i have 100% of the bottom half of this map there is still three other sections ago, and it is endless, right? But there's some sweet rewards to that, right? Like, when you do find the vault symbols and it leads to the vault fragment key,

you're going to find a vault in one of these sections, which will lead to one epic boss fight, right? There are like boss fights here, and boss fight is a good and bad. I was going to say, get the Y going, Barry, because I'm, let's get ready. How many great boss fights have we have? Boss fights in Borderlands Four are good and bad. These are the best boss fights that they've had in the series. They are the most over the top, giant bosses doing some really cool things. But it's borderlands.

It is a barren, open circle or square that you will run in circles, kiting this enemy around nonstop shooting. It screams, add some cover, add some cool grapple points. And some of the bosses will add in that moment. There's been like three bosses where they're like, hey, let's get you up and elevated. The floor is now hot lava. Use your grapple hook. Go up here and shoot down on him.

but every single boss fight is the exact same thing. Here's a barren open wasteland. You're going to run in circles, shoot them. No cover, no nothing. I fought a giant beast last night in a cave that had two pillars, and we just played ring around the rosy on this giant bullet sponge of a boss. They look great. They have fun mechanics on some of the bigger level bosses,

but 90% of the time you're going to be going, man, this is just five minutes of me holding down shoot and running in a circle. you agree with that Greg I haven't done as many right and I've done what mainly I've done world bosses yeah no I so from my limited experience I have seen people who keep coming back going

did Greg give a score Greg was wrong I'm not going to give a score I didn't roll credits 25 hours in I'm what two of them I've done a few bosses to build to the end game thing or the end of the game but I'm not there yet and then Borderlands has such an end game mechanic to it

that I haven't touched it's not fair for me to do I think to come out and score it and say anything like that So these are just impressions review so far, whatever you want from me. But yes, from what I've seen, I have not been. It's another reason of why I feel totally, I am fine to put down the controller and walk away, but I'm also totally down. If Mike's like, hey, let's stream borderlines. I'm like, and I don't have another four games to review.

Yeah, fuck yeah, let's go. That'd be a lot of fun to run with my friends and shoot and do the thing. That sounds really, I mean, that's kind of a bummer because I, I don't know, played for maybe 30, 45 minutes. Yeah. And just got a grasp of what all the tutorial. sort of mechanics are, the grapple, the glide and all that, and was just really stoked to see what some of the bosses, boss fights could be and how you interact with them. And if a lot of it is just

like, here's an empty playing field, uh, and you're just sort of shooting the thing until it dies, that, that kind of stinks. And that's where my mind goes to in 2025. It's like, here are these really cool, well done bosses. And the top bosses do a lot of cool, fun mechanic stuff, but they're so boring. We live in a world with remnant from the ashes. We live in a world with remnant from the dashes too, where you're making me do X, Y, and Z to do this. We live in the Dark Souls world, and I know we use that all the time, but like, you're making me do different things. This is simply, I'm going to dash to the right.

I'm going to dash to the left. I'm going to run in a circle. Oh, my God, I just got down. Let me find the minion to kill that and get back up. It's just so repetitive and boring. Yeah. And you just, it's like, man, you're not doing these bosses justice when I'm just doing the bare minimum.

And so to bring it back, that's what I've been wrestling with in some degree. thinking about talking on this is that I can close my eyes and go back in time and snapshot either last night, me at the kitchen table, on the Razor, running around because my TV Jen sisters in town, I can't play. Ah, I guess. But like, and I'm

in that moment. Good refresh rate on that monitor though. You know what I mean? How about that? Running, not sponsored. If you want to, though, Razors. You sent me like to. Send Andy, one. Yeah. Uh, running around shooting. And I'm having fun in that moment, right, of gameplay. Me and Mike doing our thing, I'm having fun in that moment. But then it's to expand out and be like,

that moment is repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and it's not the fun of the moment. It is the moment of, all right, here comes this psycho with the blue mask or here comes this guy with the golden black outfit who I'm going to shoot and he's going to bleed gold blood. And it's like, I'm just doing that over and over again, pumping the things into them. And I think I'm the biggest, and I don't know when you want to kick to ads, but I can set you up if you want. One of the things I'm the most excited to hear from Mike is more about side missions because I know Mike did so many to the point that when I was like, like, hey, I got distracted with Hollow Night and I want to be on that review. You need to finish this game. He's like, oh, fuck, I'm playing 30 hours slap it. I've done no story. So you went and did it. Anyways, uh, I've had such a hot, cold experience where I had done a couple

side missions and I was like, damn, the side missions are outclassing the main story left and right. And then I got to do more over the last 48 hours. And I was like, oh, some of these are so rinse and repeat half baked where I'm just like, this isn't enjoyable. So I'm, I'm excited to hear Mike's thoughts about side missions. I'm excited to get more information about narrative, mission design, surprises from missions, progression, the characters you're using, but we'll have to wait for that, everybody, because we need to hear a word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Shady Ray's. You know that moment. The one when you realized you left your favorite pair of sunglasses at the beach. We've all been there. I'll never forget

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Yeah. You were saying, like, again, talking about this beautiful razor blade 16, they sent 5090 in there, right? Not sponsored. But hey, what the heck? Fuck, you know, why not? I slacked you something. I forgot when they said, hey, I was like, I'm going to use it to review borderlands. And they're like, oh, that's perfect.

Because if you want one, you want to try to convince them, this is your chance. Here you go, man. Wow. Love this razor laptop. It's so cool and sleek to look in. No, they didn't tell me to say that. No, that's me. That's me.

That's me saying that. But they're running a promotion where you get the game for free with any 50, 70 laptop or above. And they got several Blade models on promo right now, too. How about that? How about that? Shameless. How about that? The same shipping address, by the way.

Just FYI. Just slap Andy on the front. Just FYI. I have a super chat here from Resolute and we'll get into a lot more super chats throughout the rest of the show. So make sure you get your super chats in Resolute with a. a $2 superchat says, did you guys do much of the weapon part customization? No.

No. At the very end, the end game, you were introduced to the mechanic of starting to move it. Let me pull it up here on my list really quick. At the very end, you will be introduced to the transfer machine, which is ripping firmware off of one item

and applying it to another piece of gear. Now, that's not the weapon part, but you are starting to get introduced more into the deeper systems when you end the game. The min-maxing all of that fun stuff. what people fucking obsess about in borderline. Right. Mike, I want to get your thoughts on, you know, some of the cool, I mean, don't give me spoilers or whatever, but just were there any cool surprises in side missions? Were there any moments where you thought, oh, wow, they're doing, we're actually doing this right now.

That's always some of my favorite moments in side missions in big games like this. Yeah, it's tough because Greg talked about just like what you're doing on these side missions. And what you're doing is borderland stuff. Right. Right. There's never a moment where I'm like, wow, you just broke the code of borderline. Borderlands. It is very much go to point A, kill a horde of monsters. Go to point B, grab this object. Bring it on back to me, big fella. Like, there's never a moment in side quest that blows your mind of like,

this isn't what I've expected. It's everything you've ever expected from a Borderlands game. Know that up front. But the story, the tale that they're trying to weave is fun. There's some really good ones of Clapchap, I said before. There's another one with a little Pokemon nod that I thought was cute where you might be catching some people there, you know, maybe Pokemon sues them. Oh, yeah. They're spawning monsters. You can capture them. You can't spawn them.

Make a fight. Yeah, the side quest stuff led to a lot more of like, hey, this is where the writing, we talked about, like, so many people being brought on board to elevate the writing. The writing shows in the side quest, right? Like, the main story, you're going to forget, you're going to have fun, you'll find characters. The side quest where you're like, you know what, that was a nice nod to X, Y, and Z. That was a nice little quip right there that you wrote.

this was worth my time to do, but none of it. Gameplay-wise will ever stand out other than the, this is the tried and true borderlands formula. Yeah, I think, you know, the side missions, like I said, in the front where I was like, oh, wow, like, you know, characters you want to connect with, characters you, that'll mean something to you. I think so far, 25 hours in, this game is void of that

in terms of any of the main characters. Even the woman we're talking about and her partner, you know what I'm talking about. Yes. I like that back and forth and that was endearing and I like them, but even that's cheating, which I don't want to get into because it's spoilers. Back to this, there was a side mission early on of helping this AI basically, right? I'm going to be very, very vague.

And by the end of that, I was a really sweet one. I really liked that. That was like introspective even for me. It even made me like my character. You're for a caveman like me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But like then you get to like what I did last night, which was like the setup of we're doing a heist. And I was like, damn, this is a side mission.

I'm going to do this kind of heist. And it was like, okay, just these two little mechanics to get these people on board. and then I went to the thing and it was just shoot a million dudes as always and it was like clearly I know what this is building to and it built to exactly that I thought the performances were flat I again where you're like

not you but some people are like oh they stripped out the humor like they are trying to be funny in this mission and I thought they were not I did not find this funny this was an eye roll for me of what they were doing and how they were saying funniest line in the game I will spoil for you

it's one of the I always like the wild lines people just throw out so you know hit or miss on it there's not as many again I guess people hate that about borderlands three, I liked it, whatever. But there's one, and this is a meme, I think, too, right? I was just like, I killed the guy and he just goes, oh, sometimes it do be like that. And I was, I was like that's funny funny.

I won't forget that. I like that one a lot. I got a gun that speaks to me, and if you've been watching kind of funny content, you know what she's saying to me. It's been pretty wild. She's fem-doming me. Oh, I like it. Oh, gosh. I like it.

Yeah, Andy, there's a fun one that we needed that much information. It's like, they introduced a Simon says. mechanic into this. And the first time you do it, it's a lot of fun. The fifth time you do it, you go, you know what, this doesn't need to be 90 to 120 seconds of my time. Like, let's just open it up. Let's get there. The first time, second time, fun, enjoyable. You're like, this is cute. Fifth time, no. And again, it's that traditional borderlands thing. I do think of like, again, these side missions are vomited onto the thing. I feel like there's more of them, but maybe it's just because there's so many icons. And then the rewards are so little. And you go back to these

things as you've been playing and they don't necessarily scale. So some of them are just beating the shit out of like, okay, this is like, this is the normal shit that I would just leave at the side and not do, which of course is a total an option. And I think this is as every video game review, I hate saying it because I started saying it in every video game review, but your mileage will vary.

I primarily played this single player, which is how I guess primarily, borderline street I played with Jen the whole time. So it's like you're getting, I'm having a different experience than you will when it's four of your friends running through and doing it. and none of this will, you just, to Mike's point, just want that everlasting gobstopper to return to eat, to go,

to get a better gun. Like, that's all there for you. Do you think that if you end up playing more multiplayer, whenever we eventually have streams or whatever, do you think that your enjoyment will go up? Because I know that when I'm playing a co-op game like this, that is very class-based, I find a lot of enjoyment in,

I want to set up my team with that one move that shoots out a bomb that sucks all the enemies towards it, and then they can do their, ability or whatever. Do you think a lot of that co-op gameplay would raise your enjoyment of it? Enjoyment moment to moment probably, yeah, because that's fucking around. You also get through things faster. There was

you know, I had, they're torn up. You got missions that are, you know, it's normal, or easy, normal, hard, whatever, they're rated on what they are. And I wasn't paying attention and threw myself into the next Golden Path story bit yesterday. And I was like, totally fine. I wasn't paying. And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, they're hitting kind of hard. Oh, they're three levels above me. Oh,

shit. Okay. So I had to start playing not tactically, more way defensively of like, behind this thing, come out, shoot that. And finally, I was like, Mike, get in here and help me. And we just fucking steamrolled then, right? So it's like, you can take that and apply it to the whole game and have it go out that way. But what's interesting, I think, again, for me, a very specific type of player is just that without the buy-in to the world and the enjoyment of the characters in the universe,

it just, it is a game to come out and come to play a little bit and leave rather than be obsessed about. I remember with Borderlands 3 being like, I love the world, I love the characters, I'm doing the thing. and I was so excited for the DLC, the wedding DLC, the Halloween event, like you can go, like, all the things, the, um, handsome Jacks, casino, cruiser, like they had so much fun DLC that I knew was coming,

not necessarily what it was, but knew it was coming and I was like, I enjoy this all so more. I just want more and I want more and I want more to consume and play. Whereas with this one, there's so much to consume out the gate, but I'm just not at all bought into the universe. It does not have its hooks in me where I'm like,

I can't stop thinking about what I'm going to do and where I'm going to go. Even, again, we haven't talked too much about skill trees for our character, but like I respect, I respect twice, I think, to get to where I am now.

And even the tree I'm in now, I'm like, I don't love. Like, I don't find Amon's abilities and what I'm doing in skill tree are not, I think, nearly as fun as flax were in Borderlands 3. Tell me a little bit about Amon.

He's this big old dude. You know what I mean? He kind of looks like Thor if you want to. Maybe a Kratos type. You know what I mean? His family all dead. You know what I mean? He killed by a voled.

when it came out a long time ago. And so now he runs around talking like this and doing this. It could have been Travis Willingham. It's not, though. I don't think that you sag actors. I think that's always a problem. Anyways, he's a big hulking dude

who runs around and shoots and is very strong. What are the abilities we're looking at? The tree I've specced into, Andy, thank you for asking, right? Is cybernetics. So early on, I went with the other one. I forget the name of it, but it is I was using dual axes,

one ice, one fire, right? And bring them up and throw them into people and bury them in there. Are you selecting those elements? Yeah. Well, no, the elements are tied to that skill tree. Gotcha. Okay.

Eventually, though, I went back and did cybernetic build where I get this like diggy shield that I can bring up or whatever. And then if I want to, when it's active, I can undigy and I use this whip that can hit somebody melee, but it also throws out projectiles for it as well. And then you go down and you build out more. You'll bring in more things and do that or whatever. Yeah, Barrett, if you could bring up the assets, I do have a video of the skill tree for Amman. There won't be any spoilers in this. I tried my best just to show the skill tree.

I also have specialization in SDU. This is kind of like, this is what you were going to character build. You're going to build your classes around and choose from. And as you can see, I went with very similar of Greg. I went with the shield slash the whip. And I went very offensive with it. I noticed with Greg when we were playing, he used it a little more defensively than me while shooting at the same time holding the shield.

I would never do that. I would just whip as much as I could. It would put out a frost effect on it. And I would just slow them all down. and the whip did so much damage. I was full offensive with my build. Now, I'm very excited to respect. I did not do that during this time.

I really liked what I built into, but I want to see more. I hated, I did respect once. I hated the axes. The two axes I never found a good flow with. It always felt like when I threw it, it was over, and you're supposed to go a little more melee

swiping with it, then throwing and going back and grabbing it. Every time I would throw it, I would never be able to get back and grab it and it would just end. And so I found, having the whip and shield a lot more offensive. Do you have to be within a certain distance to retrieve it?

I don't know. Like does it come back to you or you have to go pick up? No, you got to go get it. You throw it and then you're going to chase it. Okay. So it's not like a Kratos. It's like you throw it into them. One's the Frost axe, right?

Freezes him like Kratos would. And the other one's the fire axe. Now you set them on fire. Gotcha. And you're supposed to be able to get it back and keep going. But I never got that mechanic down. Really? Yeah.

Every time I threw it, it was just over. And it's like, well, that's not what I wanted. Then I started melee slashing it. and finishing it with the throat. And it felt like just a massive left down every time. The more I look at the gameplay, it's like I really wish that they also added a third person. Hammer.

Sure. Yeah, there's plenty of times. There was one, you know, laser mission where I had to get around a bunch of lasers. And I was like, this is annoying. I wish I could see around me.

I think I'm okay to jump and I jump fine on the second one. I didn't. What I would like to bring up here, because we just looked at the HUD and stuff, we talked earlier, you know, does this feel like a 20-25 game or whatever. I want to talk about quality of life stuff. Obviously, Borderlands

deserves all the flowers for the quality of life stuff. It's established throughout the years. Drop in, drop out co-op, amazing. Borderlands 3, we forget about it now, but it was a big deal in Borderlands 3 that it was. You can join my game and I can be level 50 and you can be level 10 and you'll see level 11 enemies and I'll see level 51 enemies and we play together and there aren't these roadblocks to it. That's all still there or whatever. I remember having so many complaints with Borderlands 3 and Borderlands overall, but especially Borderlands 3, 6 years ago,

whatever was the 7 years ago, say whatever it was and their item screens and the UI and all that jazz. Does this feel like a 2025 game? I hate the fucking inventory in this game still. I hated the fucking inventory and how it functioned in Borderlands 3 and here I am just as annoyed.

I have the four slots for my weapons, right? I click on one of them. It opens the backpack. Now I can go over there. I go over there. I say sort by type because I want to see all my pistols together, right? And then I'll go through, find the better pistol. I click on it. It equips that pistol on that slot closes the inventory. So now when I go to my assault rifle, because I just kill a boss and have all this stuff, I click on my assault rifle. It opens the backpack. The backpack is set back to whatever the default is.

It isn't set to fucking go back click type. Go into the, it's like the, why? Just leave it open. Do it like destiny. Like there's so many better inventory management. I mean, look at Diablo. There's so many games I play where I'm like, this is exactly what I need. I don't know why this is still so goofy. It's a lot. It's truly Borderlands has gotten to the point after all the years and what they've added, where when you open up that menu, you get overwhelmed. It is a lot to take in.

There's a lot of things that will kind of just slow you down and be frustration points as Greg brings in. There's so much to each and every gun that you will be sitting there for eternity, trying to go, which one is the better one? There's green, there's red, there's up, there's down. you don't know what you're doing and you get hit with so many guns. I always tell Greg, whenever we play Diablo or a game like this, like none of this matters for the first 10 to 20 levels.

None of it ever matters because we're going to get to the end game where then I have to actually do all of this. And so for the first 50 levels, it's like, here I am going through a gun. I don't like the feel of that. Chuck is supposed to be. The damage is so tiny that you'll never feel like I'm outgunned or out class because most of the time I'm just burning through you anyways. and if I don't like that gun, I'll switch to the other one.

It's a lot. And I totally agree with that, Greg. It's too much, but it's like when you have a billion, gajillion guns, this is what it's going to turn out to be. And they need to tweak that of like, how do you refine the inventory, just a player, like, looking at this and going, I can comprehend all of that. As soon as I found them Jacob's guns, though,

I was like, oh, man, I just love the way the hand cannons feel. Guns. 100%. Love those style of guns. I had a couple of questions here in the Superchast. Jeff Bull, Jr. with a $5 superjad. Thank you for your generosity. He says,

did you guys try a split screen thinking of picking it up on PS5 for my wife and I had to play together? I did not. No, I only played on PC. Pretty shocking that sort of thing does function.

Very, very cool. We have a superjad from Alec Bobcoe says, Bobcoe. Excited to play some BL tomorrow night. That's Borderlandston. That's a good joke. We have another superjad from Gary Gilbert just asking about the co-op experience.

There wasn't a whole lot of time spent with co-op with Greg and Mike. Yeah, me and Roger played it as well. The only frustrating part is we are in 2025 where only the host progresses. So it did suck. Story-wise. Story-wise. Where Roger goes, hey, Mike, come into my game.

And, like, we have finally linked up. And I've spent a lot of time in this. And I want to progress my stuff. And I jump into Rogers game. We do the mission. I come back. And I'm just absolutely deflated going, I got to run that fucking back. And so that sucks.

It doesn't do the thing. Do you want to skip? Exactly. I wish in this modern era, would understand it's like, well, if we both have this synced up, just click it for me, right? So it's very host of like, you better identify who you're doing. For me, I'm very happy of like, now that I have this complete, I have like a weight lifted off my shoulders of, oh, I can just join Andy's game, join Greg's game, and it's fine now,

right? Because I have very much bought into this and I am fully in where there's going to be nice where I just want to spend it either alone or you can come join me, but I'm getting all this stuff. I'm 100% in this. So you're on board. you want to do missions, I'll come to your world now. I love that the gameplay seems fun enough for you to want to just 100% it.

It kind of reminds you of goes to Sushima where a lot of people give me a shit and go like that, and the gameplay gets so repetitive, but it works for me and I love it. If the exploration wasn't just so handcuffed, it would be, I'd be all over the place. It's such a 50-50 good and bad because, yeah, I want to explore all of this. And because they've made it so easy to do that with the hover, the jump, the Digi rider at any moment. They've made it easy for me to do some of this stuff. But at the same time, when I hit an invisible wall,

and I go, God, now I have to do this switch back over to this quarter turn. I got to go up this mountain. It's like, that's frustrating because it's right in front of me, and I should be able to jump up to that, right? There's some other smaller ones like Greg brought up where one side mission is straight up. You grab a football-like item, and you have to walk it 600 meters that way.

You're not allowed to put it on the car. You can't put it on your back. You hold it and you shoot. anything else will make you drop it, right? And so now there I am. I chuck the football with the throw button. I run 20 steps. I whip it back to me.

I grab it. I rinse and repeat. And those suck. But there's other ones that are much better than that that lead to more fun stuff. But it is the endless. Like when you do that, you get rewarded 20 guns and you go, ooh, now my brain is freaking. I love that. I will say, I only had two bats.

One was the bugs and the performance, which we'll talk about. It has gotten significantly better. since we first got introduced to this game two weeks ago. When I booted it up, it was rough. Two weeks ago, this was bad. This was heartbreakingly bad. A lot of hitching, a lot of stuttering, audio dropping getting out, Quest not being completed, Quest Givers, not being there,

Quest main items not doing it, the borderland bugs that you would know. After two weeks with it, the hitching, the frame rate problems have gotten much better. There's still some audio loss that really gets me uptight. there's still some more quest that need to be tightened up with quest givers not being there the main item, not popping in when you need it the most. So this is going to be a game that's probably going to come in hot that will have some bugs,

but it is the Borderlands bugs that you know. So be prepared for that, you know what I mean? I do want to call out. I remember it in the chat to two. In Borderlands 3, you can skip missions. You've played on somebody else's thing, but you couldn't do that with Roger? I hadn't done it yet.

So I had never played it. Roger had never played it. I went to his world. We played through it. I went back to my world. I had to replay it. Oh, so the start of the game, the prolog? The, no, we were like, we were in the middle of it.

Because in Borderlands 3, if I went to your game and I helped you with a mission, I came back to my game and I went to that mission, it pops up and it goes. I didn't see anything like that. No, it said play it again. Okay. And so then my other one is they're stingy. They're stingy with the guns, Andy. And I know that this is a game of like, hey, we're here till the end.

The end game is where you're going to really grind. The final boss, beat. They were rewarded you with four chests. All of those chests were with green and blues and one purple. Hey, y'all, he'd shove it. This is the thing that people were covering. Again, I liked Borderlands 3 and I liked getting legendaries and everybody's like, oh, they gave them away too easy. I don't the final boss. The final boss, you're not going to give me, green and blues?

The real game's the end game. Which is crazy. Don't you guys know that? They are very stingy with us. for the game that you are erasing guns out of your mind at just rapid pace, put some more out there, up the number, because I have run through this and I can probably count on one to two hands, how many purple and legendary guns I've gotten. It is a lot of greens, it's a lot of blues, not enough purple, not enough golds. Of course, that is safe for the end game. They want you to do that.

The end game is pretty solid. I'm impressed with the introduction of the end game of wild card missions, which are now, you go and replay larger scale story missions. But they'll add in a twist. So when I jumped in, every enemy I killed had this big black hole vortex. And they would suck you in and then explode. So now you're running around the map, jumping out of these vortexes. And there's new ones being popped up every enemy you kill to get more loot.

They have Moxie's big encore. Every time you beat a boss, whether it be a tiny little world boss, whether it be the biggest and the baddest, you can go and replay that with your friends for two different levels. one for cash, which will get you just kind of basic rewards, and then one for Eridium, which is like the purple cash, the special cash. You can pay that, and they'll pay out bigger rewards for that, which is fun and makes it a little bit harder. We haven't talked about world bosses.

I mean, I know that, I mean, we're talking about it in just a moment. And then there's a transfer machine. You'll be introduced to the machine that will rip firmware off of items. So when you're Fran Merribelling this and you're going, I got to get the perfect build and you start really getting in, you can rip certain pieces off of that item. that will go on to another item. Now, I don't know if I have it on that,

probably not Baird. I think it took photos. It's a smaller thing. It's not what you're thinking. You're probably thinking the main big text in the middle. No, there's these smaller pieces that look like a logo unless you hover over it and it will give you options, right? So for me, the first one was called Baker.

And you're going to build into the Baker build if you get three pieces of Baker. So the first one was, Shield's capacity is increased at 10%. I get a second piece of Baker. I'll get repair a cool down duration is reduced by 15%. And if I get a third piece that has the Baker stuff on it, I'll have maximum health increased by 25%.

And all those are different, right? I have different examples. They go a little more in depth. But like that's what you're ripping here. It's not the, hey, this gun does X, Y, and Z for this duration, plus this damage, plus this, you're going to add it to that. No, you're not ripping that off of in this framework stuff. And then number four is Marisa's black markets.

Think Zer from Destiny. We have a vending machine that is going to go all around the map. It's going to have the badass of the bad gear. It's going to have options for each of those pieces of gear. So like for me, it gave me two different guns, but four different guns within those two guns. So now you're really reading the text of going, what's the best fit for my build, A, B, C, or D?

Is that refreshing? Yes. Every time you buy, it'll go somewhere new, you'll get new guns. So it was exciting of like, okay, here's the end game. This is where I've been working for. but the end game got me excited. I'm like, okay, this plus all my side activities, I'm in.

I got plenty of things to do. Very, very cool. Let's talk world bosses really quick. Yeah. Just what they are because they're new to the game, right? The big bubble. And these all procedurally randomized and generating. Like they just pop up and.

Yeah. So when you're driving around, it's kind of like destiny where all of a sudden activities pops up. World event. So you'll have this big bubble pop up. And you'll see it from a mile away. And if you go in, a boss will be

generated right there on the spot. And it's boss battle time. Some of them are lackluster. Some of them you go, okay, kind of cool. But it's still the same borderlands boss of here's an empty area, running circles, run around him, right? He's going to drop out big loot. He's just a big bullet sponge. The catch is, is if you get pushed out or run out, it's over. So there was moments where me and Greg were fighting and Greg died. All of a sudden, he's back at the checkpoint. The world boss is over. I got all of a sudden caught up backing up too far. I stepped out of the bubble, world boss is over. So you got to stay in the sumo wrestling ring

and battle them or else it's over. Can't cheese it from far away. So yeah, it's one of those of like, you're still going to run in circles. Some of them suck. Some of them be like, oh, that's cool. I haven't seen this guy yet. Like, that's fun. That's it. Are there cool boss patterns? Like, because one of my favorite things

is, you know, you see the waves of red. It's like, oh, jump and avoid the waves of red. And here's these wave of projectiles. And you got a dash here. And then this new thing popped, like, or is it just... I mean, they do that, but I feel like... Only on the top of the top of the top boss.

So the big, big bosses will get that. The vault bosses will get that. And there's these moments where you're like, ooh, you're cooking here. This is a fun idea. But then it goes back to ground level and we go back to like doing the basic. And you're like, oh, like, this is cool, but it's not great.

It's just good. And so, yeah, you'll get these big name bosses. They'll get the splash screens. Splash screens. really toned down. They do about 12 of these total. And you're like, man, I wish there was more of these. That's the borderlands flare.

And it just feels like they took Borderlands and they just cranked it down to seven. And it's like, you could keep it up there and find a better way, but they cranked it down. And so, yeah, that's unfortunate. But you'll find some cool ones, Andy, but you won't be wowed because it's just so basic. Any final thoughts on Borderlands for gamers?

I found joy in this game. I really didn't think I was. been a mixed bag of emotions the first two weeks of the first week with all the bugs and problems, I thought, wow, this is going to suck. Then there was parts of me who was like, man, the heart and soul of borderlands is not here. I'm looking for something different and it's not. But then after a while, it was like, wait, this is borderlands. It is still the borderlands you know and love. It is still that over-the-top zany, wacky, like four-player co-op mayhem that you're looking for from a looter shooter. It has all the guns.

It has the moments. It has the vibes that you want. And I think all in all, I'm surprised with how much I enjoyed this game walking away from it. So I think borderlands, you know, we use the term it's back. For me, this is the best borderlands since one and two. Wow. It's the most enjoyable borderlands experience I've had since the beginning. And I'm really excited for the diehards to love it.

I think if you're on the fence, this will wait on sale game. We know those kind of games. This isn't you. I can't wait for this. Then you wait. And you're going to have a great time when you jump back into it. but for the diehards this is your one this is the one reggie what about you yeah this is a step away from the borderlands i wanted um i understand obviously review scores mike's opinions obviously

it's great gamers are different all over the place but yeah for me it's just it it's too muted it's just not what i want out of the experience again that's not to say the moment to moment isn't enjoyable especially playing with people but that's where it is for me of like in a world of this many amazing video games to go out there and play and especially shooters and single player shooters or whatever, open world, blah, blah. Like, it would need to be, hey, we're playing this tonight. Come over. Hey, we're doing this on stream. Because I'll, like, I think we're, I'm streaming with you guys Monday. So it's like, yeah, totally. I'm excited to jump in there. Like, I'm down to play it with people, but I won't, I can't. Nothing in this game is making me go, I need to go back to it on my

own. God, I'll tell you what, man, Mike bringing up Remnant from the Ashes too just got me all jazz stuff. Greg, we need, we need to play Redmond from the Ashes too. That game's got some freaking boss fights that are just so unbelievably well designed. That game is so damn good. Gamers, let us know in the comments what you, how you're feeling about Borderlands for, whether you're planning on hopping in, whether you're going to wait for a sale.

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