It scratches my FPS itch like no other game does (with the possible exceptions of BL2 and TPS, an honorable mention goes to Doom 2016/Eternal). Every time I pick up another FPS that I’m not in specifically for atmosphere/storyline (where I’ll put up with “good” combat to get my hands on “great” atmosphere), the play is so… boring. BL3’s combat is exceptional.
- Movement speeds are slow in other games.
- There’s no serious vertical element to the game (mantling to get up: slam/no fall damage to get down), and jumping is useless (where it’s a huge part of my gameplay in BL3).
- The enemy variety isn’t as deep… different attack types, various armament types, various dodge types, elemental affinities
- There might be a couple action skills? BL3 has, what, over a dozen functionally different action skills to choose from (that can be augmented differently too). Beyond the action skills are the active skills in the skill trees, COMs, anointments, guardian ranks, and even Mayhem Modifiers… many things that I can manually toggle/stack to take advantage of.
- Does anything have weapon variety like this game? Note: I use every weapon in the game with red text and/or an alien barrel.
- The map/environment variety is huge, and there’s a live end game. Like I don’t need to reload a prior save point, I can just plop down anywhere and be in a wide range of combat (plus the missions are all resettable without having to start over).
I have a spreadsheet that randomly picks a map and one of my ten allegiance characters (one’s alien-barrel only). Each of those has a different build/action skill/pet, and they’re all using entirely different weapons, so the combat is fairly different between them (like there isn’t an action skill or weapon that’s off the table here).
When I go to play, I roll those dice and I play wherever and whoever comes up. Then I go pick a loadout based on the map, what I’ll be doing there, and how hard I want the combat. For example: if I roll Dahl Zane in Trashlantis, I’ll pick out some Dahl corrosive and cryo gear. Easy mode? Hornet, Night Hawking, Brashi’s Dedication, and Breath of the Dying. Hard mode? Kaleidoscope, Vanquisher, Autoaime, Digby’s Smooth Tube.
Then I figure out what I’m going to do there. Unfinished story missions take precedent, but I’ll grab a side mission, an open map/weapon challenge, chest run, or total map purge (depending on my mood and how much time I have). The next time I play, I have to use weapons I haven’t used previously, and the cycle starts anew.
The number of different map/character combinations is around a thousand, I think? With this and the different loadouts used every time, it’s very rare that I do the same thing in the game… like it’s still a very fresh experience even after all this time. Each of the characters tends to come up a bit over once a week, and with so much weapon variety, I might not fire the same weapon for a couple months. Hell, I think there are some Maliwan things that I still haven’t even fired yet (finally figured out how to tame the Shrieking Devil, and took that for a legit spin for the first time a couple weeks ago, and that weapon has been a thing for days).
tl;dr - not even a little boring yet.
