Borderlands 4

This game feels like a massive "safety" over-compensation after misreading the room with character and story writing in BL3. There's a lot I could say about the game itself or the circumstances surrounding it, but I'll stick the biggest let down. I really agree with commentary highlighting the poor character writing and simple story. Gearbox has resorted to writing characters with well worn ruts and limited risk. There's little variety in personality archetypes and humor is bland and safe while trying to rely on sexual innuendos and crude humor. Its boring. At one point, Amon, who I play as, literally says "I get it, you had sexual relations" in response to the asinine banter at one point and it felt painfully self-aware yet clearly trying to further sell/excuse the over-used humor. Also, what is so damn sinful about including 'simple' 'rational' characters, especially male ones? Nearly all the males are soppy sniveling narcissists who are obnoxious for no reason other than "THIS IS BORDERLANDS NORMALITY DOES NOT EXIST". Roland, Axton, Mordecai, and Wainwright Jakob are examples who had their humor quirks, but carried some semblance of "wow this is FUBAR" and made it easier to connect with the world happening around them. In BL4, I found I could only feel some relatability or empathy for a very small selection of characters, mostly female/other, who didn't feel the need to scream dumb jokes about caring more for their hair while facing slaughter and extinction. Zadra's personality (the female Order scientist) embodied my mood towards the characters of BL4: cold, exhausted-from-your-bs, and distantly empathetic. Truly, I am not attempting to insert political commentary here; my point is that it was hard to feel any connection with the story and characters because the writing tried to rely on absurdity-humor/commentary to carry the mundane plot. BL 1 & 2 did well because they used such characters with temperance and paced their 'camera' time well. Also, while I agree with many reviews celebrating the gunplay as this games saving grace, I'm still frustrated by many of the minor decisions in how guns function. Examples: Why do Maliwan snipers almost always come with burst fire OR torgue sticky jet bullets? Both ruin the point of sniping. Why do COV magazines wait to BEGIN their cooling down for the same time as reloading would take? COV mags are an instant sell for me. Sure, combat was fun and paced super well, but after the initial novelty of learning BL4's weapon selection and spawning patterns, I found my self struggling to enjoy anything beyond a limited selection of weapon patterns that would spawn. To the games credit, that limited selection I like is really satisfying and one of the few things keeping me going. I'm just disappointed overall. I'm going to finish the game, but it will be hard to want to play past the credits.