An epistolary narrative assembled from Geocities pages, Hypnospace Outlaw could have easily slipped into twee Web 1.0 nostalgia or punched down on the collection of weirdos and outcasts who populate its alternate reality version of the 90s web. But somehow, miraculously, it creates a fully realized and lived-in world of surprisingly multi-layered characters whose flaws and eccentricities are often humorous but more often endearing. There are some fairly easy to spot influences: Michel Gondry’s blend of technology and magical realism and the lo-fi surreality of Tim & Eric immediately spring to mind. Yet this brand of storytelling and writing still feels utterly unique. There is nothing else out there that approximates the Hypnospace Outlaw vibe.

An embarrassment of riches is hiding in plain sight, from emotionally wrenching chat logs saved in text files to pitch-perfect parodies of musical genres ranging from nu-metal to kosmische. The kind of petty dramas familiar to anyone who frequented message boards in the 90s bubble up from passive-aggressive snipes to full-on flame wars in delightfully absurd ways. Jokes layer on top of jokes layer on top of heartbreak. And it all feels genuine, because the writers have affection not just for the era but for the characters.

The gameplay has obvious influences from hidden object games, as well as the keyword-driven search of Her Story and the meta trickery of Cliff Johnson’s works such as The Fool’s Errand. While there are a few clever “a-ha!” moments, hunting for the next MacGuffin to advance the story can occasionally become a chore. This almost would have been better with mechanics stripped out in favor of presenting a pure interactive narrative. But this is a minor gripe in the face of brilliance. Hypnospace Outlaw accomplishes the rarest of feats: It got me invested in its world. I cannot wait to play Slayers X and (hopefully!) Dreamsettler soon.

Mind-numbingly exhausting in every way, an absolutely terrible experience. It doesn't try to build upon its predecessors, it's basically the same as the Pre-Sequel with more memorable antagonists. Instead, it's even more sluggish mainly because its story refuses to end, collecting keys to build keys to do something but unfortune strikes and you take a detour, for 30+ hours.

The story is very much superhero-esque, the most important things happen in cutscenes with bewildering consequences and actions that make no sense - the worst death scenes I've ever seen, as well as a shoehorned bittersweet ending with basically no setup. The only good things about it were Lilith and maybe Tina. Everything you expect happens, Claptrap does something dumb in the beginning, people die, people didn't actually die, some new concept about the vaults springs into existence, there's nothing new.

The balancing is once again atrocious, but instead of being under- you're much rather overpowered, ending most boss fights hilariously quickly. It's not helped by the hyperinflation of legendary weapons appearing, every second skag has one, and especially during the last chapter it's not surprising to find at least 20 of those - giving you no time to try them out, much less store them. Even with great power, it's a slug to navigate the last quarter because the levels are overly long filled with the same enemy types over and over and over.

I think this all mainly points to a complete collapse of the direction and management, which is sad to see. There seem to have been big cuts or changes in the story, and there has been no time to fix the numerous glitches, UI and UX issues that are still apparent now, three years later.

Play Borderlands 2 instead.

There were two moments throughout Borderlands 3 where the game gave me any form of positive emotions. The first was a side mission called "Life of the Party" where you attend a celebration of life for someone who recently passed away. You play several little games and you're given the opportunity to one-up the score of the recently deceased, but if you don't you're rewarded with a very genuine and very solemn response from the game. For once in the 50 hours I had played up to that point, the game didn't feel like it wasn't trying to peddle its new stand-up routine and it gave me a moment to think about what it could have done more.

The other moment was the Bounty of Blood DLC. After trudging through the other three expansions and the Designer's/Director's DLCs, I was praying this last one would at the very least end quickly. Instead I got a genuine homage and adaptation of classic western themes that, while occasionally quippy, managed to hold my interest the entire time. The narration was charming and the characters were much more realized than anything in the base game. It felt closer to the roots of the series with generally deadpan plot beats and darker humor and it made me miss the days of playing Borderlands 1.

Past that, it's astounding to me that this game has any positive reception. Everyone's heard the take "the story sucks but the gunplay is good" followed by "Borderlands never had a good story so who cares". Both of these points deserve a large amount of scrutiny as the issues lie much deeper to the core of this game.

The gunplay, while improved from Borderlands 2 to 3, relies on improving your loadout through picking up gear from enemies or chests (no shit, I know). The issue is that if you aren't using one of a couple dozen legendary weapons, most of which come from the latter half of the game, you're putting yourself at a severe handicap. Anything worse than a legendary deals pitiful damage while also not having any unique gimmicks to potentially make them stand out in your arsenal. I get that BL2's standards of regearing every few levels suck major ass but when you get a weapon at level 12 and you're using it until nearly level 28, there's something wrong with your base weapons (BL1 had the excuse of being effectively the first game in the genre which gives it a pass in my mind).

When it comes to early progression, you have no reason not to grind out the legendary sniper rifle from the first map and the legendary pistol from the second because nothing else comes close in damage potential and nothing will for a long time. This leads to very little in build variety since even if you use differing characters and skills, you'll be using the same weapons every single time. Doing side missions doesn't alleviate the issue either as nearly every single mission reward is near worthless from my experience. Contrary to BL2 where many mission rewards throughout the entire game were incredibly useful for pushing you forward through the game. It all circles back around to farming the same enemies over and over to get the best legendary drop out of the massive piles they explode into, which makes the name legendary oxymoronic.

Every single criticism to the plot is 100% deserved. There are very few, if any, good moments as you progress through the story. This applies to the side missions and DLCs as well, as they're trying so hard to be funny at nearly every single moment (again, Life of the Party and Bounty of Blood withstanding). The very few moments the game shows restraint tend to consist of some of the most baffling and jarring choices the writing team could come up with. None of what I'm saying here is new, but there's nothing wrong with restating the lack of core quality.

Borderlands has had good writing before. BL2 has some great moments, from the twist and betrayal of using Wilhem's power core, to the death of Angel and Handsome Jack's response to it, to the Tiny Tina DLC and its solid campaign direction and heartfelt emotional conclusion. The core team at Gearbox is capable of making good writing choices on their own. If you extend it to other Borderlands properties, Tales from the Borderlands is consistently touted as one of the best Telltale games to be released and there was a lot Gearbox could have learned from it (I swear I remember some articles from before BL3's release saying they took lessons from the game but I can't find them and it's very obviously not the case). The Pre-Sequel also had a solid core plot from beginning to end and it did a great job showing Jack's character progression, letting serious moments settle, and best of all the Claptastic Voyage DLC which is one of the best pieces of Borderlands media in my opinion. The point is, the world of Borderlands is capable of having good stories to tell and nobody should settle for the trash Gearbox has decided to continue pursuing.

Borderlands as a series isn't in a good place in a critical sense. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is so devoid of content that even the most diehard of Borderlands fans won't touch it. New Tales from the Borderlands is a miserable experience from beginning to end. The movie has been in development hell for years and takes the plots of the first two games and puts them in a trash compactor. I don't see this series going on much longer and in my humble opinion this game was the first domino to fall.

There's a ton of work simulator games but not many about workers, which is a shame, cause it adds a lot to this one.

The core game play rules. It just really clicked with me. Learning the ships felt good. Trying to work too fast and getting sucked into the furnace really made me re-experience the feeling of fucking up at various jobs. I like how mistakes aren't really punished mechanically, but the context makes you feel bad anyway.

In general, I was a big fan of the writing. Lot of the specifics about the work and the characters felt real. A subtle thing I think they nailed is how there actually are people who like doing dangerous, physically demanding jobs, and people who take pride in their work, and how the company uses that earnestness to exploit them further. Also, upgrade trees suck, so it was a good joke how all the upgrades are about having to pay for proper software updates and safety measures.

The dialog gets a little hokey, and I didn't like all the performances, but whatever. The endings (both of em) were just awful. But overall a game that was extremely my shit.