Recent reviews by Ducks

What to even say about this game...

It's downright a downgrade from Killing Floor 2.
It seems to be Tripwire's first experience with corporate greed, unless even Tripwire has stooped that low by now. If you take this game as a standalone, fresh game, it is absolutely a fleshed out game. It's got maps, enemies, guns and a relatively decent variety in approach. Some performance issues, a lot of reasons for crashes. Like if you look at your skills page for too long, the game has a tendency to crash. Very useful for reading what skills do. But in its core, it's a fleshed out game. Kudos.

Now, when comparing it to its predecessors, that's where the game goes south far too quickly.

Killing Floor 3 took everything that made Killing Floor 2 fun, looked at it, and flushed it down the toilet.
Gone are the days of having an armory ready at your disposal, now we are dealing with 4 guns per perk. Each gun can be upgraded, sure, with anywhere from like 4-6 mods, which increase the price dramatically.
That price increase makes it difficult to bring a varied loadout to any fight, as with no mid-game objectives and lowered zed count, unless you are murdering half the planet each round, you're not gonna have a fun time.

Gone are the customizable games. No more 10+ wave games. We're now limited to 3 difficulties (Normal, Hard, Hell on Earth) all set to 6 rounds (5 waves, 1 boss wave). We have only one game mode, being survival. These difficulties have some of the most insane jumps I've ever seen, and has been proven by their post about victories per difficulty.

The perks are an absolute mess. It feels like an approach to a hero shooter in a zombie game, which is at least a more unique twist, but it falls short incredibly fast. Killing Floor 3 struggles HEAVILY with a meta problem. Currently, and it appears to be a common consensus among players who strive to push through Hard/Hell on Earth. Commando is currently the best perk in the game by far, but not for the kit it offers, not for its ability or grenades. For its one skill that reduces weapon costs at the trader pods. The perks abilities are so underwhelming against anything that actually matters, people have simply resorted to buying the strongest guns possible. Commando allows the players to get the Vulcan from Firebug or the G33 from the Engineer at an alarmingly faster rate, allowing these harder difficulties to quickly become a walk in the park.

Fortunately Commando starts popping off at perk level 8, because with reduced zed count and a weird experience system in comparison to KF2, leveling to any max level feels like a second job and a chore combined.

With the plentiful of performance issues, quality of life issues and the fact we still do not even have a text chat, this game falls short in every aspect, and at its current state it is impossible to recommend this game unless you want CoD Zombies with underwhelming Overwatch-like abilities.

I have little hope left for Tripwire, but maybe the future can bring us something good, like Gunslinger, our first new perk, in a years' time.

5/10 game. I'm neutral as can be, bordering on not.

This is a heavily inspired game, taking a lot from Necesse and Terraria (Cave music is like 99% Terraria, its bound for legal problems). I don't normally like to compare games because every game does their own thing, but this? Terraria or Necesse just do everything better.

Networking code is honestly bad. Any distance from host, and that which so many other games survive through, this game sets you back with anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minute lag.
I prefer these games multiplayer, but cannot play multiplayer with such networking issues.

I am still curious about the future of the game, but the devs got a lot to fix.

5th of December 2024 - forever at this point?

Still no game optimization. Prone to crashing PCs, potentially cooking parts.
Avoid game if you prefer to maintain your PC's lifetime.

MINOR "SPOILERS" AHEAD
TL;DR - Rating 8.5/10

Absolutely spectacular game. Gorgeous views and interesting gameplay mechanics.

There are a few pointers regardless, the story, while not always as cohesive as its predecessors, still shows great relevance throughout the game. A few parts where it feels a little rushed, but garnering the situation with the characters not knowing eachother, it still makes sense to a degree. There is room for some speculation, but the story unfolds generally quite well as the game progresses, learning more and more about the different characters.

In regards to the gameplay mechanics, it definitely feels a little hectic at times. The combat in the game can very quickly deteoriate into chaos, and often ends up in some sort of Bullet Hell type gameplay. With some solid patience, it is easy to overcome.

There is a lot of similar actions happening in the game in between the different stories, but it can be overlooked with the large variety of instruments that do become available, making each part refreshing enough.

Overall, I would give it an 8.5/10 - It delivered wonderfully and shows the hard work of the developers and their finely tuned finished project. A breath of fresh air for the gaming industry, in my honest opinion. Filled with great direct references or speculative references (You can apply a lot of other games to the different stories), this is definitely a game I will recommend to anyone wanting a co-op game to sink some good hours into. I gifted this to the missus to play together and it was worth every single bit of money.

I suck at this. Quack

Another solid addition to the franchise by Total Mayhem Games.

Runs very fluidly, while reasonably short still offers a LOT of thinking with the different puzzles. Slightly rage-inducing, but also very rewarding when completed. Go get the highest score!

quack

This game is difficult to review. It had a great potential starting up, a massive map with plentyful of objectives fun to play through once or twice. I started on the hardest difficulty with a friend, because it was by instict to challenge myself.

Playing through any lower difficulty is therefore pointless, if you ask me.

Now, the real struggle is the map. It's not open world, it's basically a normal singleplayer/co-op campaign with a incredibly massive map. You have your main missions per continent, then these few side missions that pre-generated most of the time, having no reason behind them. Why are we stealing helicopters all the time?

The DLCs, having bought the full version of the game, I've realised that suck. Every DLC is through their own individual save, and since the DLCs are all mission-based, all the rewards are not transferred over. Why can't I go through the "open-world" with my crossbow? I want more options!

It's a fun game for one or two playthroughs, but after that, it loses it's shine to Ubisoft's greed for money.
I wouldn't recommend buying this game for full price, as it won't last you for too long.

So, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a rather strange game, in the sense that it's developed more by 2K Australia than it was of Gearbox. That resulted in this game to be more "Australian", which is something I've noticed heavily during my multiple playthroughs. There are a significant amount of references to the Australian culture which, being a Norwegian man, I have no knowledge about and the story gets confusing because of that.

Other than that, the game is generally entertaining at it's own level.
The gameplay is decently smooth, with a challenging combat style involved. The enemies has gotten more elemental weapons, which can really change the pace of fighting, thus making the game slightly more difficult in fighting than it was in Borderlands 2, where only a few enemies had a competent elemental weapon. Along with combat, comes the slamming possibilities from oz kits, which is a part of changing the combat style significantly.

What about the game's DLCs?
Some people were surprised about how the DLCs came around. The first gameplay based DLC (First vault hunter upgrade pack) was a complete mess. The only real positivity around the DLC was the fact you could get more skillpoints. The Holodome Arena was a pretty bad release, as it was basically an arena where they re-used enemies and bosses and gave you a horrible rewards. The price of this DLC is, in my opinion, too high. However, despite the failed DLC, they saved a lot of people by bringing in the 2nd gameplay DLC, Claptastic Voyage. Explaining the origin of the franchise's most annoying and glorious character, CL4P-TP.

So would I recommend the game?
As I am a huge Borderlands fan, I will recommend the game. This, sadly based mainly on Claptastic Voyage. If you plan to do playthroughs, I recommend highly that you find a friend to join you, as the game can become rather boring on your own.

I hope this helps you understand the game a bit more, despite my foolish attempts of writing a review.