Recent reviews by shiny

TL:DR Game is great and highly recommended if your PC can handle it. Randy Pitchford can go suck lemons for being a awful CEO.

I beat the main story of BL4 and am currently doing the post game and I can say with a very high degree of certainy that this game is great. The gameplay is super sick, the enemies and bosses are super fun, and the story is one of the best in the series. This game took the failures of 3 in stride and I can say for certain that it improved on it in every way. In my experience the preformance has been pretty good when using the recommended settings BUT I HAVE A BEEFY PC. I understand I am a bit of an outlier but outside of some hitching in the start of the game with all the new areas, I have had a consistent 140 to 160 FPS with the recommended frame gen. I highly recommend trying the game and refunding it if it doesnt work out. To simplify my thoughts:

PROS
-Great Story
-The Timekeeper and all of the command bolt bosses are really cool and pretty intimidating. Tempus Range's final boss could have easily been a entire game on his own if given more missions.
-Great Gameplay/Gunplay
-Movement is awesome and gun play feels great
-Good Writing
-This goes with the Great Story section but the characters are enjoyable and not super annoying. Heck Claptrap is kinda endearing again. He is still Claptrap but he isn't nearly as bad as BL3's.
-Fun Map to Explore
-Regions are really stylistic and fun to explore, granted if going for collectables isnt your thing then it can get quite boring.

CONS
-Lack of Gun Variety
-There is a lot of fun and cool combinations possible with the current system but I do think removing manufacturers has been a bit of a shame. Order is a cool manufacturer but Daedulus just kinda has no reason to exist when something like Dahl or Atlas could have quite easily filled the void. I do believe that future dlc can allieviate this so its not a massive deal but it does show.
-Some Trees are overtuned
-All of the characters are decently strong and can succeed in all of their trees but it is apparent that melee has been kinda shafted with the removal of weapon melee bonuses.
-Some characters like Rafa and especially Harlow have trees that are just the best by a mile. You can succeed with the other trees but like Red trees for both of them are borked. This can easily be fixed whenever the first waves of buffs and tweaks happen so its not a big deal for me.
-Preformance
-As previously stated, I have not had any real issues ON MY END. However, I still want to make mention that this game is on Unreal 5 and thus can be quite difficult.
-Cutscenes are 30 fps
-why?

Its okay but it suffers from too much content and powercreep. Set the game to be Level 72 max and its much better.

The game is active malware at this point, with multiple reputable cases of it outright ruining hardware. The game also runs horribly even without breaking hardware. Not only this, but the business aspect is really scummy and inefficient, rather burying heads in sand and promoting censorship than managing the game and community properly.

Justice for Eravin and Lightbeer.

I am really split on how I feel about this game.

Its a fun game and I dig the aesthetic and what its going for but it just feels so poorly paced and feels so empty. I understand that its bound to feel like that with the procedural generation but it just feels so barren. It does not help that traveling on the planet is just so slow and tedious due to how spaced out everything is. Its so slow to walk about 2000 meters away from my ship for a single spacer camp just so I can have actual combat. My biggest issue however is that it feels like it does a lot worse than Fallout 4 did in a lot of places (companions, crafting, arguably perks but jury is still out on that one.)

The companion system is such a big downgrade in my mind due to its pacing being so poor and you aren't even able to talk to some companions about game events until you dismiss them and you can't even check in on what the companions feelings with you are. It doesn't help that the companions are just *bland*. Like your options are smart explorer, criminal explorer, smart explorer, etc. None of them feel super interesting, except maybe Sam.

However, it is a fun game. It is a mechanically solid and enjoyable game. The gun play and ship combat feel good and are fun, the only issue is how long it could be before you are able to fight.

Unrelated to the rest of my review but I got the premium version for free with my new AMD gpu so I am marking this review as free.

Its like when Battlefield was good and without the vehicles being incredibly overpowered. Also use medium scopes on snipers, thank me later.

Its a incredibly fun game. Bit of a steep learning curve but nowhere near as oppressive as Tos1. If you have the cash, its totally worth a attempt.

Please use CongusDongus in the referral menu, I really want my skins :P

Game is really fun but currently not worth the price. maybe 12 would be nice. The story telling is great.

My current run has the oldest race in the galaxy experience 4 separate apocalypses, went from collectivist communes to a cyberpunk corporate dictatorship that results in war every few decades. That same race spent a few hundred years traveling to a system, losing 90% of the fleet along the way in a attempt to colonize a new world, that was recently left abandoned after the vampire race nuked themselves. That colony has ironically been the most sustainable so far. Humans are by far the most successful since while they progress slow they are the most green and sustainable nations.

My personal favorite moment is when a bunch of otter like people became Anti-natalist and went extinct fighting to hold together that planet's Rome.

This game makes me mad and the women make me horny. Its a awful combo when playing with friends.

I greatly regret buying this however it was on sale so H3H3 doesnt get as much. The perk deck is awesome but everything else is by far the worst thing the game has added.

where houston