It's fun for like 20 minutes, but the game just feels kind of empty after that. There are a few things that I actually like, like how you need to confirm a kill by ramming into them, building up cover with foam, or the 2D art for most of the characters, but that's really it. It's a pretty basic hero shooter that "borrowed" a few of Splatoon's mechanics without really understanding how they work. All the characters have these really big shots with a large spread, which makes sense for spreading foam over the ground, but since foam basically doesn't matter outside of moving slightly faster, covering enemy foam with your own is nowhere near as important as inking over your enemy's turf in Splatoon is. The same goes for the foam boards which replace squid mode, as they basically just let you move a little faster than normal but don't come with any of the other bonuses of squid mode like camouflage or ammo recovery. As far as modes go, there's a basic team death match that kind of reminds me of Kid Icarus Uprising's multiplayer in the sense that you whittle down the enemy team until a marked player appears, a standard payload mode, and a really basic horde mode that feels more like a tower defense game in terms of enemy distribution than a real horde kind of thing (there might be more but the second mode cycles just like Splatoon's ranked modes and I'm not playing any more of this to see if there are any more modes.The game also only has a total of eight characters, one of which is locked behind the paid battle pass in a paid game (yeah it's free on PS+ this month but after that it'll be $30.)

Also the game's cosmetic shop just prices everything with real money. Normally there's at least some level of abstraction in games like this, even if it's just needing to use proprietary fun bux instead of your local currency. That's the kind of egregious business decision I've come to expect both from Square and from this kind of perpetually online live service shooter, but it's still really funny to see them be upfront about asking $10.99 for a recolor of one of these generic characters and up to $45 for one of the "premium" skin bundles.

Like The First Soldier, this game probably won't even last a year.

I played this game specifically to spite people in a Discord server who were saying it's bad in one sitting to 100% because I will not take slander towards this absolute gem of a game. Mario 64 isn't perfect. Rainbow Ride is mid, the bosses aren't anything special, some of the stars are tedious as hell and exiting a stage every time you get a star gets monotonous after a while. But despite those issues everything from the controls, to (most of) the levels, to the music, to even the visual style for being one of the first N64 games is absolutely stellar. There's a reason why this game is the golden standart for 3D platformers, and why it's remained that for so long.

Did you know? It's well documented that first lady Hillary Clinton was an avid player of the Game Boy during her husband's presidency. However, what isn't as well documented is how she loved the handheld system so much that she bought two of them to give to George Bush and Dick Cheney before their inauguration as a symbol of goodwill among the two parties. Bush and Cheney reportedly loved Metroid II in particular so much that the game's plot about the Galactic Federation making up some bullshit about dangerous weapons and sending Samus to SR388 was what inspired the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Borderlands 3 doesn’t seem so bad at first. It’s a bit like that small scab on your leg. You pay it little mind, pick it a little bit but for the most part everything is okay.

But as time goes on that scab gets worse and worse, and by the end of it you’re in the hospital having your whole leg amputated.

Maybe that’s a little extreme but I can’t think of a better way to sum up my feelings with this game. Though I need to make it clear, any positive opinions I had were strictly gameplay related. The movement, shooting, and skills feel amazing in this game. Guns are loud, have stylish animations, there’s a lot more variety to the randomization of guns too, with many more unique shapes and all that. You can vault up ledges now (fucking finally) and slide, which automatically makes every game better. Of course these mechanics will get kind of old as things go on. Sliding up to an enemy and blasting them in the face with a shotgun somehow does get old actually.

Borderlands 3 has the best iteration of the skill trees as well. Giving you three separate trees to focus on and level up, each tree is tied to unique ability the character has, so you don’t need to play around your ability as much as you have another to utilize.

It ends there though. Nothing else in this review will have any praise whatsoever.

Firstly, mission structure is still exactly the same as it was in borderlands 1. Go to place, fight generic enemies, listen to agonizing dialogue over the radio along the way. Repeat this a bazillion times on like 4 different planets using the same 3 guns you found on the second one since they’re legendary weapons that do boatloads of damage for no reason. Beat a boss fight effortlessly and open the vault to find blue and green rarity weapons, listen to EVEN more annoying dialogue as you attempt to do side quests or just drive around a little. It all just wears you down and eventually you start hating it, only playing to see the end. You’ll essentially hold yourself hostage thinking “yeah I think I’m getting close to the end” but it just keeps going, the storyline plot points get worse and worse, and the dialogue somehow manages to make you wince just a little bit more every time one of the goobers this game calls characters opens their stupid mouth.

If you lose the ability to read and hear, this game is probably amazing, but alas.. my superior brain makes this a miserable slog. Don’t play this unless you have 3 friends to play with you. Even then maybe don’t play this anyway, it’s not worth it.

Just because Rivet and Kit are cute, it doesn't mean you can repeat the same boss over and over and get away with it!

I remember liking the 2016 game, so I was actually quite optimistic about Rift Apart. I don't know if this one is worse, or if I actually don't like the other game that much either, but I was so let down by the gameplay. The graphics are stunning, the planets have interesting biomes and exploring them can be fun, but I don't like the combat very much, mainly because you fight the same enemies throughout the entire game. I played on normal for the most part, but by the end I was so tired that I switched to easy (the second option, not the "story mode"). I don't care, It's not like I was having any enjoyment before, I just wanted to be done and move on.

I like that there is a lot of variety, though. Each planet has a theme, minigames are scattered in a way that isn't annoying or tiring, you play as different characters, so on. It's all signs of a good mascot platformer. However, nothing really grabs me. For example, the Glitch portions are neat at first, but with each stage they just throw more enemies without doing anything interesting besides that. At least it's cute when she winks. The dimensional portals could be better used as well, since the whole game revolves around it.

My point is, I'd rather they get the core gameplay right before adding so many different things, resulting in a hollow experience overall.

Before finishing the game, I went to past levels to find some things I missed. There is a pocket dimension in Blizar Prime where, if you die like the dumbass that I am, you get stuck in that place forever due to a glitch (not the spider). I tried finding a solution and all people say is to go to your files on PC and reload a previous save, but with no solution for PS5 players. Turns out, you just have to load a safety save in the main menu, instead of continuing, so don't worry if the same ever happens to you. It's astonishing how Insomniac still hasn't fixed this, on top of many other glitches like an enemy with frozen AI and getting stuck in geometry. After this scare, I just went to the end before the game blows up or something.

Oh yeah, and the ending was fine. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks-like story. I'm disappointed there wasn't a scene with the characters dancing to a generic pop song.

Gameplay: C
Level design: C
Story: C
Characters: B
Visuals: S
Music: D
Difficulty: Optional (Normal>Easy)