Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (for PC)

The More Things Change...There are four new playable Vault Hunter characters in The Pre-Sequel, each with their own unique skill sets. Athena has a damage-absorbing shield that she flings around like Steve Rogers; Wilhelm has two robotic drones that pop out from his hand to attack enemies and replenishes his health; Nisha automatically targets enemies; and the newly combat-ready Claptrap scans areas and selects the skill that's best for the situation. Depending on a random roll, Claptrap can toss out a mini version of himself, dual-wield guns, or receive a big boost to his damage output, among other possibilities. Everyone plays how you'd expect (Athena's the tank, Nisha's the room-clearer, etc.) except Claptrap, who's the closest to a new experience you'll find in The Pre-Sequel. His random nature adds an element of surprise to an otherwise staid shooter experience.

The other breath of fresh air is the lack of air. In order to breathe on Elpis' lunar landscape, you must equip Oz (oxygen) kits or find oxygen deposits on the surface to replenish that all-important resource. Fail to do so and your life meter depletes until there's nothing left, and you must restart from the last checkpoint you crossed. Oz kits also grant stat boosts such as elemental resistance.
The oxygen meter also regulates your double-jump, an ability that appears to be all the rage with shooters these days (see: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare)$47.98 at Amazon. The double-jump is a great move to use in Elpis's low-gravity environs, as it makes travel slightly less of a slog by propelling you through the air for short distances. In addition, the low gravity makes for interesting combat thanks to an added ground-pound move that can damage multiple enemies and the slow-motion satisfaction of sniping enemies while floating from on high. It's even better to freeze foes with the new Cryo ammo then shatter them with a well-timed headshot or melee head-butt.
Elpis looks mighty fine, too. The night sky is consistently beautiful, with wide swatches of violet, red, or orange, and celestial bodies to peer at from the planetoid's rocky surface. The surface, however, varies little between volcanic and craterous, and industrial and sterile. On the other hand, the cel-shaded graphics and smarmy characters ooze personality.
The More They Stay...Combat feels better than ever, but everything else in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel needs an overhaul. For whatever reason, decent loot is still difficult to come by. You get showered with an obscene number of guns, Oz kits, and shields, but most of them aren't worth using, let alone keeping. It's easier to chuck them away because you have limited space to carry gear. If you want to hoard loot drops you'll have to keep them stored in a locker in the main town and return to it every time you want to retrieve something.
It's a waste of time to check every locker or box when nearly everything you find will be useless. After a while I quit checking altogether. There's no balance to what you find, which is something Borderlands desperately needs to fix. The Pre-Sequel is full of time-wasting inconveniences.
Borderlands desperately needs to break out of locking you into fixed character classes, too. You also can't change classes mid-game, which means you have to stick with one class until you realize that, maybe, it isn't for you. It doesn't help that the game's pace is glacially slow. You can go hours without gaining a new ability due to the low amounts of experience points you receive and the way skill trees are arranged. Combine that with the paltry loot and you got a rather monotonous adventure on your hands.
Then there are the main story quests and accompanying side-quests. The Pre-Sequel, like the jokey title suggests, feels like filler. Handsome Jack's story and his overly sarcastic dialogue aren't interesting enough to carry an entire game, and the tasks you're given are the usual dull, repetitive fetch quests similar to those found in Borderlands 2$73.93 at Amazon. Grab this. Go back to where you started. Return to where you grabbed the thing. Defeat 20 of the same enemy. Some areas are devoid of enemies, which makes questing through the same areas even more of a bore when there's no shooting involved. If you have buddies to play with, the co-op multiplayer mode makes things more fun. But you can say that about waiting in line for the bank teller. Friends make games better, that's a fact, but why not play better games with the same friends?
...The SameUnless of course you and your friends love Borderlands. Then you'll love The Pre-Sequel, especially since it has a few slight improvements like double-jumping, an interesting new class in Claptrap, and a new oxygen meter to mind. Then again, do you really want to go through the same motions you went through for hours on end in Borderlands 2 and its DLC? The experience is about the same. Perhaps it would be better to skip the Pre-Sequel and wait until Gearbox crafts a real sequel that finally lives up to the franchise's potential.