I'm sorry everyone, I tried - I really tried with this one, but this was maybe the single most miserable gaming experience I've ever had. The only positive I can say is that there's no shortage of content; between the base game and its 4 DLCs it will keep you occupied for a good while. Not that it's good content, but hey it's something I guess. Otherwise I think this is one of the worst things ever put out by a Triple A studio. It's got that godawful early-seventh-generation level design where it's just these gross, turd-colored environments that are claustrophobic, vacant, and not at all fun to explore - there are a ton of 'worlds' here but they all look and feel mostly the exact same. The characters are all insufferable as they spout the same embarrassing 'le epic lulz bacon gamerbro' humor which is actually so deeply unfunny that it fucking hurts (speaking as someone who loves juvenile/immature humor). But mostly I think the issue is that the general gameplay is totally braindead and one-note, it's what I would call 'fake difficult' - by that I mean that it doesn't actually challenge you as a combatant in a game that sells itself on its supposed challenging combat. Not that it's unfair or too easy per se, but the way in which it approaches a battle is super dated and childish - just piling enemy on top of enemy with zero strategy whatsoever so each fight feels identical, just move around and mash the trigger for every. Single. Goddamn. Fight. It's beyond vapid. Not to mention its looting/rarity system is pretty bad and doesn't really at all fit with the rest of the game. To say I hated it would be an understatement - the shitty, repetitive music has been burned painfully into my brain even over a year after 100%-ing it and all its DLC (which, sidenote, I actually vastly prefer to the main game even though I still think they all suck). So bad that it unironically felt like I died and was watching my own corpse play it out-of-body.

Expected to find an overhated blast here, but no... I get it. I totally get it. In actual disbelief that this took 12 years to make, and not 12 minutes. Jon St. John's voice acting as Duke is once again sublime, but otherwise this is an overly-simplistic dud. The Disaster Movie/Epic Movie of video gaming, wants so hard to be a parody of the seventh-generation shooter (which - especially at this time - is a perfectly acceptable target) but mistakes lazy references with actual satire. I can get down with immature stupidity but you gotta have some actual gameplay here too, I mean this has to be in contention for worst level design of all time - with zero exploration to be had as you make a straight-line, laggy trek to the exit each and every time in uninteresting environments. Still far from one of the worst games ever, it's definitely a superior Gearbox outing than Borderlands - which this is still (somehow) clunkier than, though this is also shockingly less obnoxious and the combat here is at least diverting unlike that other one. Plus I applaud any game with this amount of interactive side shit to do, including chill levels where you kind of just fuck around and kick back. But overall it's not even memorable trainwreck levels of bad, just boring bad - especially when its loading times must take around one hundred thousand years. And FUCK that pinball machine, man.