I came from Borderlands 1 GOTY directly to TPS, a game with a pretty mixed reception. Right away I appreciated the significant improvements regarding movement and gunplay, as well as the little QoL improvements such as picking up most loot automatically. I also very much enjoyed the addition of laser weaponry, their interaction inside oxygen bubbles as well as freezing enemies, then shattering them into tiny pieces. It’s also great to finally have more than just a couple of platforms to base randomly generated guns on. Also more gun properties, shields granting all sort of different bonuses… more diversity and wackiness in general. Initially I wasn’t a fan of Oz kits, but the added mobility and ability to slam Scavs into the ground won me over!
Map design and campaign progression wasn’t all that different from BL1, I thought. Moving from one self-contained area to another, accepting side missions along the way. These were thankfully more varied, not just “go there and fetch x items/kill x enemies”. Could tell the developers were trying to offer things of interest. I also felt the main campaign was overall well-paced, and as far as my experience was concerned, none of the visited areas or enemy types within truly overstayed their welcome. Nice changes of scenery once in a while. As soon as anything or anyone started to become annoying, it was time to move on. Probably intentional design choices!
Soundscape, audio mixing and voice acting were great. And so Australian. I also highly recommend playing TPS (and BL2 using the same engine) with full GPU PhysX enabled if you can. It greatly enhanced the visual spectacle and my immersion too.
Of course it’s not a flawless game and I think the main complaints stem from:
1] Lack of fast travel stations. Many locations only have a single one at the very start of the level, or somewhere out of the way and inconvenient. This seems on purpose to enforce vehicle use (when there is one...). Also, sucks to be you if the game crashed or you gotta do something else instead of finishing the area in a single sitting!
2] Deliberate inability to chain missions together for efficiency. A story mission will lead to a new biome, you move all the way through it and then, and only then will local side missions be activated. So get in there and clear out all the enemies once more! This theme repeats multiple times. What’s more, some side missions seem to be designed to zig-zag the entire map as much as possible. Poor little Wilhelm’s feet were really hurting.
3] Enemy respawning seems extremely aggressive. Sometimes shamelessly in front of my very own eyes! Can’t count how often I cleared out the same spawners because of points 1 and 2.
4] From what I understand, TPS has the initial symptoms of certain BL3 quirks, yes? Sometimes having to wait for people to stop talking or walking, quest givers talking into your ear piece just a little too eagerly and some attempts at forced humor. Thankfully, it wasn’t so bad yet in 2014! Relatable or at least tolerable characters, no cringe dialogue, nothing making me want to quit the game. Thank God. Certainly bearable for me and I have low tolerance for that ♥♥♥♥.
In conclusion, turned out to be a neat little game for me. Go in with the right expectations and I don’t think you would be too disappointed.
