My takeaway from playing Borderlands 4 was that it could have been ANY big studio shooter release of the last 5 years. If I couldn’t see what game it was and you asked me what it was, I would have guessed Destiny 2 in some shape or form. There was just nothing about it that was interesting or fun. It felt like it had been polished to absolute death.
But Swapmeat was great. All the parts were there for it to be a ton of fun. It felt like all the stupid fun parts of BL2 with a body mod mechanism to let you get really weird with it.
I’m not a game reviewer type, but after being so disappointed by BG4, I was really excited after playing Swapmeat. They were pretty close to each other on the show floor at PAX and the vibes were night and day.
I didn’t make it to pax this year (usually go every 2 years), but looking at the schedule the only thing I saw that was AAA was Borderlands 4 and… yeah meh. As with all AAA games, it’s in the “Created by corporate committee” phase, which the original definitely didn’t feel like. They were edgy and risky with the first one - something that now no committee would ever let pass.
I still don’t get why the second one is held in such regard over the first. I actually couldn’t stand characters like Handsome Jack talking in my ear non-stop. Whereas the original dispensed the majority it’s humor via text and flavor text.
The gameplay of 2 was really fun. Jack and Claptrap did talk way too much.
Because two is an improvement on one in almost every way?
There were a lot of big games that just weren’t my type of games. The line for Resident Evil was 2 hours the entire show. Nintendo was showing Pokemon and Kirby and the lines were nightmares. I think that PAX Rising was the best I’ve seen though. All of them were interesting, and some of them I would buy right now half broken if they released them early access. Blocks for Babies, Never’s End, Rollergirl, and Arcane Eats were all fun ideas. Rollergirl’s world change based on your music choices felt really great.