To sit down, all this time later, and to have a game that runs worse, acts worse, and is more glitchy than one from 2009 is an abysmal experience, and distracts us from actually having fun with the thing. I’m playing through my co-op run with my best friend of fourteen years, who I spent countless hours in high school doing practically everything there was to do in the first game. But for me, this series is about playing with friends. It’s a fun, streamlined shooter with loads of personality, lots to do, and some of the best shooter mechanics of 2019 – not to mention the fun, whacked-out narrative and (mostly) lovable characters. The worst part of this? I really, really dig Borderlands 3.
After plenty of hype and build-up, Borderlands 3 is.
Certain menu text shrinks to a completely illegible jumble in some cases, and the size can’t be changed. Fans voice their displeasure at a lack of vertical split-screen option in Borderlands 3, but Gearbox Software isn't giving the answer they want. Triggering cutscenes while in a menu can plaster and stretch the menu overlay over the cutscene, partially obscuring vital story beats. Subtitles will randomly change size and plaster themselves into weird areas of the screen. Graphical bugs and glitches galore plague local co-op – ones that I haven’t even seen in my single-player playthrough. The performance issues aren’t the only problem, however. And even when we both managed to navigate the menus, it was a slow, choppy process that took forever to just allocate a skill point and equip a new weapon. Now Stadia is capable of streaming two sessions to the same client and allowing a pseudo local split screen. Gearbox could take the same approach with Stadia and just omit split screen.
Not only that, but there were instances where the menu just straight-up wouldn’t load, forcing me to exit out, open the menu again, then wait and wait as my friend’s framerate took a massive hit. The OnLive version of Borderlands was a port of the PC version so it lacked local multiplayer. There were instances where my buddy and I were both working on skill trees, and had to wait an upwards of twenty to thirty seconds just to get into that menu. This problem persists when both players are in menus, even.
Related: Boy, The Map In Borderlands 3 Sure Is Terrible It’s baffling how the simple act of opening a menu can cause the rest of the game to essentially up and die, and unacceptable when so much of your time with the game will be spent in said menus. The game slows, stutters, and even outright freezes for seconds at a time. Opening up a menu when your co-op partner is in a firefight is basically a form of accidental griefing. The game’s menus aren’t the most efficient things in the world to begin with, but they absolutely destroy a local co-op playthrough at times. But things really start to get dicey when it comes to navigating menus.