Borderlands 3 Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

5. Weapon Variety Sets An Industry Standard

The biggest issue with loot-shooters - or loot-based design in general - is twofold:

1. The grind. You know the vast majority of everything you're picking up across those opening tiers is worthless, and has no role other than getting you from A to B.

And,

2. Only the top-tier stuff has any real sense of worth or customised design. Even then, few games dedicate art departments to this stuff, as they can just crank the statistics up on a lower-tier weapon, and call it a Legendary (looking at you, Anthem).

In Borderlands, neither is a problem.

The sheer amount of guns the game generates feels overwhelming in all the right ways. Throwable turrets, ones that explode, clattering belt-fed chaos-bringers that don't reload at all, disco lighting-covered fully-automatics, flame-spewing shotguns, pistols that launch miniature rockets - Gearbox really didn't hold back.

Essentially, where something like Destiny's Legendaries are the only ones that stand out, this feels like someone opened a faucet and showered you in top-tier rewards, all in the name of fun.