What are you playing?

[Vipershark]

Borderlands for the PC.

I hated it.

...
Well, I suppose hate is a bit too strong.

I didn't enjoy it. Let's put it that way.

My friend recently got Borderlands 2 and kept nagging me to get it to play it with him, but I told him that I wouldn't play it unless I played and beat the first one first. I had no intention of actually playing the game (any time soon?) (...even though I own, uh... three copies...) because it just looked really boring to me even with all of the great reviews it had been getting and I just had no desire to play it. Long story short my friend nagged me enough so I gave in and gave it a try.

Honestly I think Borderlands (and the concept of the RPS in the first place) is a really cool concept, but the game just suffers from terrible execution.

It has quite possibly the worst inventory system I've ever seen.
Buying and selling items (which you do a lot of) is really annoying to do. One of the things you buy the most often is ammo, but there is no option to either fill your ammo or buy as much as you can in one button press. You can ONLY buy things ONE AT A TIME and buying it in small amounts (with large maximum capacities) means that you have to sit there and repeatedly hammer the buy item button over and over for every type of ammo for every gun. Buying health works the same way and it's really dumb.
Comparing weapons in your inventory and in shops is so badly done that it's not worth bothering with.
Having a terrible inventory system in a loot-based game where the main focus is adding things to your inventory is kind of a huge problem.

Speaking of loot, looting drops is flat awful. There is no autoloot whatsoever so you have to press the E (or use, whatever) key to pick up each individual item on the ground. Items drop in groups and it's possible to hold the E key to pick up things in a group but if there's a gun in that drop you better not do it because holding the E key is also (very in)conveniently the button that you use to drop your current gun and switch it with the one on the ground. Meaning that every time you accidentally try to pick up some stuff and there's a gun there or hold that E key just a little too long, you drop your gun and have to pause the game to open the menu to unequip the gun and equip your old one.

The map system is just jarring.
The game is large and sprawling and maze-like but there's no minimap so there's no way to quickly see what's around you. The only way to access your map is to hold down the Tab key for a second or two which immediately stops the game and goes to a map screen. (Yes, you can press the M key to do this as well but the game teaches you to do it through tab)
The compass.... kinda works I guess but not that well so the lack of a minimap means that to even know where you are you have to completely stop what you're doing to pause the game to open the map. Every time. This is really jarring, especially in the middle of fast-paced combat. The game is rather fast paced but having to actually pause the game to open the menu to do anything at all from change guns to look at the map completely kills any kind of flow that you've got going and pretty much forcibly rips away any immersion.

The sprint mechanic is kind of odd and takes some getting used to when used to hold-to-sprint systems but it's not too bad except for when it randomly decides that you aren't sprinting anymore for whatever reason even though you never stop running.

As far as the actual gameplay, it's okay, I guess. We got up to around level 20 and the game got really hard. I wish crits were a bit easier to pull off and weapons in shops were better (or at least weapons were upgradeable) but whatever, it wasn't too bad.
If anything, it was just kind of repetitive and I felt that my turret skill was completely useless (I was playing the Soldier class) since it had a really long cooldown time and did a tiny amount of damage but I guess that might get better as time goes on.
It started to feel a bit forced-difficulty during the last quest we did because there was an enemy in a stationary turret surrounded by 20 to 30 other enemies. Getting hit twice by shots from the turret left you with just enough health to be one-hit by the other enemies meaning that you had to fight all of them off while dodging the turret and trying to shoot the turret at the same time as it shoots as you and the other 30 guys shoot at you, and, well, dying over and over for 30 minutes gets old quick. It got to the point where I couldn't tell if I was bad at the game or the game was flat out cheating considering that you get hit by the turret as soon as you enter the area leaving you open to be immediately killed.

In short, the game was almost a chore to play.
I played for about 5 hours, but I never really had any fun during that time. I mean, I didn't necessarily lose interest (if you could call it that) but it was more, like...
Borderlands kept me engaged, but not entertained.
And that's a problem.