"As long as you're amazing enough, you'll never be forgotten by the world." ”
2009 was a year of urgent reform and innovation in the game industry. At that time, the traditional FPS market has become saturated, whether it is online or console games, manufacturers will focus more on optimizing the game, after all, compared to innovation, maintaining the status quo may be a better way out. At this time, a new 3a masterpiece that uses both RPG and fps has appeared. He is Borderlands.
Borderlands 3
At that time, Borderlands could be said to be a bomb thrown at the fps game market, stuffed with a variety of characteristics and extraordinary gunpowder: specially rendered American comic style, unique equipment system, the use of RPG gameplay to obtain resources, with different types of equipment to affect the feel of shooting... These are things that traditional fps game manufacturers dare not try, and Borderlands takes the lead in doing it. Because of this, Borderlands is considered the elder of the root-shooter (resource-grabbing shooter), and until now, this gameplay has not become obsolete, and has been borrowed by various game masterpieces.
Borderlands itself is also a seeker of game quality. Although it has been a decade since the first work was released, the Borderlands series did not officially release the third work until 2019. It's been a full seven years since borderlands 2 was released. In seven years, the rapidly developing game market has long been in the sand and is no longer the original, but "Borderlands 3" still has a strong vitality. Even its debut on a platform like Epic, which is not very well-known, still earned five million sales in five days and helped the total sales of the series pass the billion-dollar mark, making it difficult for all competitors to match.
Today, Penguin will take you into Borderlands 3 to see the true face of one of the "legends" in the game world.
When I first saw Borderlands 3, Penguin's first impression of him at first was: it was still that familiar feeling. Whether it's a familiar picture, a familiar character, or a familiar weapon. In some negative reviews, there are many players who think that Borderlands 3 is more like a large DLC from the previous game, and use it to lash out. It seems to be forgotten that Borderlands itself is an innovation. Optimize on top of innovation to better show his charm.
First of all, Borderlands' special optimization of the map is a highlight.
In the Borderlands series, the explorers revolve around the treasures of the planet Pandora, so in the previous works, both the mission and the exploration are dominated by the pandora planet in the game. This has been improved in this game, Borderlands 3 should be the first game in the series to describe the story of multiple planets, and the design direction on the map is more inclined to the regional seamless map, that is, the player can explore the same planet at will without restriction, and only between different planets need to teleport, making the player more immersive.
A seamless map overlooking the angle
Other maps now have their own quest lines and exclusive monsters, interactions, and more, like Pandora. "Borderlands 3" also creates a more realistic atmosphere through the map environment, such as being affected by the real local time, day and night are relative on different planets, some planets have a more detailed portrayal of the landform, some planets are a desert waiting to be explored, some planets have their own civilizations, such a diverse world plus unstable exploration mechanism, but also give players more space to explore.
Civilized city in the early morning
For the planets that are suddenly on top in the new game, Borderlands 3 also uses a very clever way to introduce these planets: by burying Easter eggs or hiding treasure chests to lead players to explore the planets, and put the story into it, using side quests to connect the one-sided stories in them, so that the appearance of these new maps has no sense of violation, which is a very wise design. In addition, the "Borderlands" series of games is very friendly to domestic players, with a special Chinese dubbing and subtitles, these unique optimizations add up, at least penguins in the process of exploring the map successfully circled fans.
Numerous task systems
The last point is the unique style of American comics in the Borderlands series. Borderlands 3 still inherits the style of the previous game, which is affected by the improvement of the picture quality, which does not affect the player's ability to judge space like the previous game. Whether it's an interactive area or an easy-to-mix map, players can clearly distinguish the terrain in the game, which is a big boost to the game experience. And some special effects Penguin personal feeling should be added later and not rendered, such as flames, beacons, shields and other elements, these and style of the elements are easy to adapt at first, over time will feel very comfortable to see, whether these special effects should also be rendered into a comic style, it is a matter of opinion.
A map with a clear sense of hierarchy
Secondly, Borderlands 3 gives players more room to develop in terms of equipment and skills
When Penguin first learned about the trailer for Borderlands 3, it was very interested in the official "at least a billion pieces of equipment added to the game". Taking Borderlands 2 as an example, Borderlands 2 has relatively large drop restrictions on equipment, and many rare equipment require a lot of energy to brush out. At the same time, subject to the limitations of hardware, the character is not obvious in terms of characteristics, and the characteristics of the skill and talent tree are not obvious, which makes it easy for players to have no interest in playing a single character after developing a fixed routine.
Old version of the graduation gear
This has indeed changed a lot in the sequel, not to mention whether there is really so much equipment, but at least it solves the problem of solidification of equipment. In Borderlands 3, it's easy to drop a variety of high-level equipment during monster fighting, and some of the more difficult weapons in the previous game are very easy to get here. And most of the attributes of the equipment are also random, in a high-level equipment, only the corresponding weapons produced by the weapon factory will have fixed attributes, as for the other attributes are all random, the player may even brush n more equipment can not find a copy of the same. I have to say that as long as the magnitude of the equipment is large enough, this "random" is really the right to speak.
Richer equipment slots
The abundance of equipment is on the one hand, and the shooting feel brought by equipment is also a key that cannot be ignored in games with fps elements. Borderlands 3 has designed enough equipment to still not forget to optimize the shooting feel. For a simple example, most weapons carry a specific multiplier, the multiplier multiple is accurate to the decimal point; the feel of weapons with different output methods is not the same, such as the special effects of rapid-fire weapons and the look and feel can easily affect the feel of the gun, and the rapid-fire weapon optimization in Borderlands 3 makes the player look very comfortable, which is obviously easier to get started than similar games.
High-precision mirror multiplier weapon
The character skill aspect has also been significantly improved in Borderlands 3, and the talent tree for a single character is very complex from the beginning. Although the initial talent tree is still three talents, each talent has its own exclusive active skill, and even the gunner Moser can unlock new active skills and expand skills, and can carry two active skills in battle. Passive skills are also designed to be powerful enough, including unlimited magazines, increased damage, and unlocked additional features that allow characters and equipment to form more linkages. The already huge weapon specializes in a rich talent tree, and it is easy to form more unique chemical effects. Penguins do not guarantee that the routine will not be solidified, but on the day when the routine is solidified, there is absolutely no problem in holding on for another seven years.
Unique talent system
Finally, Borderlands 3 is also remarkable in some details, and can even be said to be a surprise found in exploration
1. In terms of gameplay, the teleportation can only be carried out at a fixed teleportation point before, and now it can be easily achieved only in the menu bar interface, which greatly reduces the player's errand time and avoids the embarrassment of novice players not being able to find the teleportation point.
2. The minimap has become richer, the guidelines, markers, etc. have been optimized, and it is easy to distinguish the surrounding situation even if you do not open the world map. However, the only drawback is that the minimap is still not very good at marking the terrain, so to make full use of the minimap, the player still needs to understand the terrain in advance.
Transfer interface
3. The vending machine has added more items that can be purchased, and it is easy for players to get the supplies they want.
4. Characters have also added a skin system on the basis of model reset, and all kinds of beautiful or funny skins are very collectible.
5. Deliberately added chaos mode to avoid the player having nothing to do. The Chaos Mode in Borderlands 3 is divided into three levels, the first level is opened after passing the Main Line of the Weekly Eye and the Second Weekly Megumi Secret Hunter, after the player manually opens the Chaos Mode, the combat effectiveness of all enemies will be greatly increased, the mission will be reset, and the explosion rate and attributes of the dropped equipment will be higher. Some of the gameplay that existed from the previous game and new gameplay have also been added to the Chaos Mode, including Ered Trials, Kill Round Robin, Legendary Hunt, and more. Although the gameplay of Chaos Mode is easy to find similar shadows in other games, this method is indeed easy to extend the player's exploration time, and the increase in the power of monsters will also allow players to study for the sake of strategy.
Introduction to chaotic mode
6. Optimizations on online mode are more friendly to newcomers who are new to online mode for the first time. On the basis of the original online mode, there is also an independent drop of the online mode, which is a disguised personal pickup, the probability of the player dropping equipment is independent, what is picked up is what, the difficulty of fighting monsters has also been reduced a lot. That is, compared to the original online mode, the drop rate of advanced equipment has also become lower, after all, everyone grabs a piece of equipment to sacrifice everyone's luck, which is definitely much stronger than one person's luck.
Whether a game is really good or not, the key lies in whether the core gameplay is played to the extreme. As a rooter-shooter game, even after seven years of polishing, the core gameplay of borderlands 3 has not changed, and the player's main body in the game is still exploring the three-step process of attacking. Therefore, in the process of experiencing the game, Penguin spent a lot of time to experience this process and gave his own opinion.
One: The exploration process
The Borderlands 3 exploration experience benefits from the "regional seamless map" mentioned above, which allows for unlimited exploration of an entire area on a single planet. And each area is also very independent, not only in the landscape, but also in a variety of details: side quests, vehicles, monsters, Easter eggs, etc. Because these elements are very densely distributed and refreshed at random, it is easy for the player to "do something" while exploring the map, it is possible that patrolling enemies will attack when they pass by, or it is possible that a mysterious treasure is suddenly refreshed in a gap. Because of this, the maps of Borderlands 3 cannot be explored in one go, and there will be new surprises with each exploration, which can make the player very sticky to the game.
The five front displays are fully illuminated to summon the hidden boss
However, "Borderlands 3" still has some details that are not in place in the exploration. For example, the boundaries between the camp and the enemies are too small, and there are often enemies hovering around the camp, and the areas that the player can explore in some extreme cases will be limited. Similarly, in the case of health crisis, players are more likely to be "mended" because of this, and it is better to win easily, even if the character can still be resurrected, the wasted time is still more offensive. In addition, the impact of the game's mold wearing problem is not small, and it can be used not to mention, some of the textures lost due to the wear mold are still more affecting the perception. Therefore, it is a good thing to explore the richness of content, and if you can optimize some more details, it may be the icing on the cake.
A small door through the mold
Two: Attacked by the enemy
As the main theme of exploration, players can encounter a variety of enemies in Borderlands 3, which can be summed up as ordinary creeps, elites with skills, and plot or hidden bosses. Among them, ordinary creeps are likely to meet casually, elites have a slightly less number of encounters, and bosses only have a low probability of encountering at the end of the plot or exploring the world. Compared to the previous game, borderlands 3's enemies are much more distinctive in their characteristics.
First of all, the enemies on different planets are not the same. Although the types of enemies are nothing more than these three, if you can do each map and even different areas of the map of the enemies are different, this is not simply a change of skin, but in order to cater to the characteristics of the world and in the modeling and various actions, equipment and other details of the redo, but also added an exclusive dubbing, living passerby A as the protagonist. To do this, the cost of doing this is definitely much higher.
Enemies are different in different areas
More critically, some elite enemies also actively carry vehicles that can be snatched. Players can grab the vehicle by attacking enemies on the vehicle with weapons or other means. Of course, these vehicles are also redesigned with the class, and there are some better vehicles. For example, the vehicle snatched in the penguin diagram has weapons on both sides to attack, and the model is relatively small, and the control will be easier. Unfortunately, the vehicles in Borderlands 3 still cannot enter the indoors or some areas, and are generally used for one-time errands, so it is still a pity that the key means of transportation have not become a permanent function.
Vehicle attack
Finally, there are the bosses who play an important element in the game. Borderlands 3 attaches much more importance to the boss than the previous game, not only for the boss to set up a series of tasks of the Vault Hunter, but also for the boss to design a map site, as well as a unique model and skill set, saying that designing a boss is equivalent to designing a new character is not too much. Similarly, the game experience brought by the carefully designed boss is also unique, such as the grave guard attacked by the penguin in the picture below is very shocking in skill, and finally there will be an exclusive special effect of dropping loot when knocked down, like raindrops, and the incentive effect played by this official "congratulations" is self-evident.
Boss loot drops
However, Borderlands 3's enemies still have a lot to improve, such as creeps still belong to the category of bento, and in some of his kind, creeps are key in number and strength, and will make actions including hiding in bunkers or shooting accurately. If the creeps are all bento, the creeps that the player sees during the exploration process are nothing new, and it is easy to give people the illusion of no use. Since the modeling of the creeps is done so carefully, it is really inappropriate to almost be hot in operation.
The design of the boss is the same reason, the bosses in "Borderlands 3" are basically not able to open the chaos mode to feel his difficulty, and even some bosses are not even bothered to look at the skill, that is, "see what to hide" is finished, plus the model is larger, the mobility is inconvenient, the player is easy to hit a lot of critical hit output, this hit a wooden stake to test their output ability is no difference. There are many ways to highlight the importance of a boss in the early stage, increasing the difficulty is only one of them, and the more critical thing is whether you can design a good-looking and powerful boss, which is a problem that the sequel urgently needs to solve.
A creep who is very easy to pick up a bento
Overall, Borderlands 3 is the best game in the series, and even with a seven-year engagement, players are not white, and it deserves to be an excellent 3a masterpiece. On the basis of the unchanged gameplay, this game has been optimized for most of the elements in the previous game, and has significantly improved the playability and player viscosity, which is an excellent game that can definitely be played for a long time when it is bought. Even if Penguin pointed out some of these details during the review process, the game is still the first choice for every little friend who wants to experience the rooter-shooter game.
In summary, if it is limited by ten points, Penguin is willing to give this work 9 points.
Similarly, the release of "Borderlands 3" this period of time, but also gave many game manufacturers a space to think: with the "Borderlands" series of works alone, looter-shooter game mode has a very large room for optimization and improvement, after all, a world that can be explored always has a lot of surprises hidden in it, perhaps "Borderlands 3" brings the possibility of fps gameplay integration, but can the future be on this basis again to make a breakthrough, Then it depends on the ability and boldness of future game developers.