Recent reviews by 🎀 John Horrigan 🎀

Boring puzzles, bad bosses, tedious all the way through.

At least it was free.
(The sequel is 10x better in every way and also free)

You can use your spikes to jump. It works similar to TF2 rocket-jumping. 10/10

Dammit, just let me give her a hug.

The game manages to nail the sweet spot of being fun as hell and addicting for just the right amount of time. It's a fantastic little gem and you need to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ buy it now.

Most fun I've had in any FPS game in a good while. It's in really early access, but what they have already is strong enough to carry you through.

Great pack of classic Flash. Purchase.

Just so you know, you can collect power-ups that you can use at any point in the game. But, there's a single point in the game where you lose everything. You get back all your weapons, but your power-up stockpile will be long gone. Forever.

Don't hoard, go crazy with whatever you have.

Also the game's alright. Plays like most other shooters, has a similar weapon wheel to DOOM: ETERNAL, and you can parry basically any projectile and make it explode just like ULTRAKILL. It's a fun enough time killer.

TL;DR
I can confidently say that this is the worst game in the Borderlands franchise. They took every single bad thing that has built up over the years, and slapped it into a single package. Writing is bland bordering on bad just like in Borderlands 3. How they scale your items, and your enemies health bars goes back to how absolutely atrocious Borderlands 2 was in its endgame, on top of bosses that heal 50% of their shield in a matter of seconds. And bringing a general lack of content on top of it being far too expensive just like with Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I couldn't come up with anything for the original Borderlands, it's just better. Buy this game only if you have an irrational hatred of your own money, because boy is this not worth it.

The writing is both better and worse. Better in terms of them banking on Tiny Tina for literally the entire game. And it works, somewhat. They made sure to focus all their best efforts on every single bit of dialogue Tina has in this game, which isn't much to begin with. Unfortunately, that means the writing everywhere else suffers. You remember in Borderlands 3, when you had to sit around and listen to the awful dialogue? And when the game literally would not progress until whatever character was talking would finish? That's MOSTLY been relegated to the side content, but that presents its own problems I'll explain in a bit.

Borderlands 3 (in my opinion) has the strongest gameplay in the series, so it's almost entirely unchanged here. There is loot, and more equip slots to put the loot into. Even a dedicated melee weapon slot. But, you may be asking, "How do you find the loot?" You don't, until you do side content. They severely toned back the drop rates, and the only way to permanently increase it (until the endgame) is to find 20-sided dice all around the game. I didn't find anything orange rarity until level 25. Borderlands 3 I usually get my first orange item at level 11 or 13. Side content is a REQUIREMENT to get anything done. It takes forever to get to that point anyway, due to the fact that they somehow stretched their "comedy" and "jokes" even further this time. If you turn on the subtitles for some of the dialogue, it will straight-up cover about 20% of your screen.

Let's focus a bit more on the gameplay for a minute, specifically how they balance it. I've always held the opinion that Borderlands 1 did health, shield, and damage scaling the best. Clearly, Gearbox agrees, because this is the closest they've gotten to to Borderlands 1 scaling in the entire franchise. However, there's always been a flaw with that, due to the fact that the scaling has been so out of whack in every game afterwards that you need to leech a ridiculous amount of health to stay alive for longer than a second. The Borderlands 2 meta revolves entirely around the Grog Nozzle, which returns 65% of all damage you deal to you as health. Borderlands 3? Every character has a dedicated way to do the same thing through their own skill trees. And in Wonderlands? They straight-up made it its own element. Without buffs, it's garbage. Base health leech is 5%, it isn't useful until the endgame.

Speaking of the endgame, it becomes the best and worst part of the game in literally the same second. Due to how the loot works, you won't find a reliable amount of good stuff until you start "Chaos Mode", the new Mayhem Mode. Similar to Mayhem, you increase the Chaos Level to find more and better loot. But how do you do so? You have to increase the max Chaos Level by going through repeated runs of the chaos labyrinth or something, I forgot the name of it. Throughout the run, you collect crystals, lots of them. And at the end of the run, you can spend them on a category of loot of your choosing, whether it be pistols, chestplates, amulets, snipers, whatever. All the loot is guaranteed to be blue and above. This is the entire endgame. There's no True Vault Hunter Mode, and there are no options to reset mission progress and play the game again. All you have are those runs through the labyrinth. You have no choice but to do run after run until you get to Chaos Level FIFTY. And THAT is where the endgame ♥♥♥♥♥ itself. Weapons don't level with the chaos levels, instead, there's a random chance to find a gun with a super special prefix like "Chaotic" or "Primordial". The really good stuff doesn't start appearing until after level 20. At that point, I feel like I'm playing Borderlands 2, and I endlessly despise Borderlands 2's endgame.

EDIT: I previously had far too much trouble keeping up with anything past chaos level 26. Well, the very same day I wrote the review, I made it to level 50. Forget using guns unless they're Tediore crossbows. Put anything you have into spell damage and get the Lazerhand spell. High damage and relatively short cooldown. Few other spells can keep up with this one, and it drops in the Chaos Chambers. Good luck.

Selling this at $60 is nothing short of taking the piss. Just like the Pre-sequel, this would work so much better as DLC, but here it is, as its own standalone game. Add on $30 for a season pass, you're not only taking the piss, but you're shoving it right back in my face. I see this as nothing but a collector's item that has very little value. Buy it only if you want to round out your Borderlands collection, but DO NOT pay full price, wait for a sale.

Still waiting for those employee bonuses, Randy. Still waiting.
(also thank you epic store for letting people beta test the game)
(and thanks for adding denuvo two days after the steam launch to give everyone false hope)

The game wouldn't suck if it wasn't a cover shooter.

Vanquish has two sides. The first side is everything that's cool. Here's a list:
- Power-sliding around the arena while being able to slow down time to shoot things
- Admittedly cool melee attacks that are decently powerful
- Being able to smoke in-game, and flinging the cigarette as a distraction to draw fire
- Being able to upgrade your guns

And the other side is how they screw up every single thing that was just mentioned:
- Power sliding, slowing down time, melee, and even some weapons all share the SAME METER. Now, this wouldn't be too big of an issue were it not for 2 bigger issues. The first being that if you take enough damage, time automatically slows, and you can't turn it off until the meter runs out. And two, at complete random, enemy attacks will just instantly deplete the meter. While this does force the use of the cover mechanic, it's an instant pace killer.
- Melee attacks also instantly deplete the meter
- While being able to use a cigarette as a distraction is charming, it's never mentioned. It's bound to the same button as your slide, but you can only use it while your behind cover.
- There are a decent variety of weapons in the game, but the way you upgrade them is to either find upgrade chips or find another of the same weapon while you have full ammo of it. This actively discourages using any other weapons, as if you switch out for a new one and don't go back for that old one, say goodbye to those upgrades forever. (also you'll lose an upgrade level if you die anyway)

I really, really went into this game wanting to like it, but I just can't. Maybe I'm biased against cover shooters, and also maybe I just suck, but I can't recommend this game. Everything about it gets in the way of itself. It's endlessly frustrating and I can't stand it.

Just go buy Bayonetta.

Agony is not very fun. It's set in a very standard depiction of hell, your basic movement is stiff and slow, and it's just a frustrating experience half of the time. The other half of the time is hilarious how over the top it goes from the very start. Once I got the achievement for ending the existence of 30 infants, I decided that was a good place to stop. I had seen all I needed to see.