I've yet to play a game that so thoroughly allows for such compelling moral decision making, weaving narrative and mechanics perfectly. While you yourself are a victim of the totalitarian regime you work for, you wield a large amount of power with that stamp. Of course you have to think of your family, but what benefits your family often time comes at the expense of other innocent people. It's not about whether you are complicit or not but about how complicit you are willing to be. Making these decisions are not easy and are made even more difficult due to your limited time and need for enough money to survive. I felt a ton of pressure to just send people one way or another as quickly as possible and put them out of mind so I could focus on the next person; the constant stream of monotonous work is numbing and yet there are real consequences to your actions whether you know it or not.

But sometimes there aren't. Sometimes you send someone away who desperately needs to get in and nothing happens, you just have to live with what you've done. Games focused around morality are difficult to make because they require confidence that your audience with fully engage with the game and unfortunately I don't think Lucas Pope had that confidence because the inclusion of an endless mode gets rid of everything that makes this game amazing and is not something I'd ever want to play. Yes, being good at the job is very satisfying, but that is a source of horror for me not one of pride or accomplishment.

At the end of each day you get a report on your earnings, expenses, and the well being of your family. It is incredibly distressing to have to decide if your family will go without food or heat for the day, or having to pick which sick family member gets medicine and which does not. Choosing who to trust, who to help, who to ignore, who to throw under the bus, all while keeping your family safe, is virtually impossible and creates an incredibly stressful and sometimes disorienting experience. One moment that really stuck with me out of all the little story threads is when your son gives you a drawing of yourself, calling you a hero. Of course, if you make it to that point in the game you most certainly are not. I'm amazed at how well made this game is it's so fucked up.

Take my review of this game as a note on the whole series.
The writing in these games is unbearable to the point where I would always play these games with the sound off while listening to my own music, and this is not something i say lightly as someone who thinks it's important to experience games in all of their facets. I have played these games a lot, but now I'd like to think my brain has healed enough to where the "number go up" form of game design just isn't doing it for me anymore without anything else substantive backing it up and I can finally put this series to rest. So with that being said, fuck Borderlands I am extremely over it.

Nothing here works, it seems like this was created just to show off all the fancy new things they could do on the SNES. The directional whip makes the enemies useless as actual obstacles. That combined with the newly added fall control makes it so that you barely have to think about your actions. Most of the difficulty comes from stupid shit coming out of nowhere and knocking you into a pit and in general the level design is either bland or annoying. I know it's a new direction for the series or whatever but it's not properly designed around the less restrictive control. Obviously it looks great, the music is solid, and it at least feels decent to play. Maybe I'm being a little harsh, but I really really do not like this entry.