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Hands On With Borderlands 3 At E3 2019 | Culture of Gaming

Culture of Gaming went hands on with Borderlands 3. Will it be worth the wait? A worth successor? Find out what we thought in this article!

Culture of Gaming went hands-on with Borderlands 3 at E3 2019. The team was treated to a roughly 20-minute presentation followed by a 15-minute demo. So what are the takeaways? Does Borderlands 3 live up to the legendary status that the previous games have achieved? Here are my thoughts below.

Gunplay

The most important aspect of Borderlands is of course: guns. There are allegedly “one billion guns” in Borderlands 3. Numbers are great and all, as at least you won’t run out of loot, but the bigger question for me has always been how do they feel? This has been a frequent criticism of mine regarding the Borderlands series. While an over the top, looter shooter always seemed fun, I was never a fan of the gunplay as it was implemented. To me, the weapons never felt satisfying enough. They never came off as though they had a punch or any sort of force behind them. Put simply, they felt weak, and they didn’t really sound like guns.

This was the first thing I paid attention to hopping into the demo. And, after “beating” the demo (the demo comprised of running a sequence leading up to, and ultimately defeating a boss) I can say that my harshest criticism of Borderlands was alleviated. The guns felt very satisfying to shoot and felt like they had power behind them. Already off to a good start in my book. Related to the gunplay, one other detail I noticed was the ragdoll physics implemented, particularly on the shorter, smaller enemies. When faced with a high powered weapon, say, a shotgun as I wielded in the demo, the smaller enemies would get knocked back and flung away (to a reasonable degree). The enemies seemed to have a consistent collision with objects, reacting to hitting objects appropriately.

AMD did show off some cool render tech coming to their newly announced RX 5700 cards, so maybe on PCs the graphical difference will be more noticeable.

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, I got a very positive impression of Borderlands 3. A lot of the issues I had with the franchise seem to be fixed in Borderlands 3. After seeing the presentation and playing the demo, my opinion towards the game shifted from “Probably won’t play it” to “Maybe when it comes to Steam”. The gunplay is great, the environments diversified, the characters unique, and the classic Borderlands humour ever present.

For more E3 2019 Coverage, keep it here at Culture of Gaming where we’ll bring you more written as well as video content from the show floor.

Special thank you for Performance Lab for sponsoring our trip, as well as a thank you to Gearbox for showing us Borderlands 3.

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