Promising game ruined by constantly re-spawning enemies, uninspired quest design and unbelievably pathetic weapons
The biggest problem is the constantly respawning enemies, which is compounded by a frustrating save system. The game promises it will save your game, and it does in so far as your progress in terms of achieving the objectives of your quest. However, it does not save your game in terms of where you are physically located. If you have to leave mid-quest, or if the game crashes, when you restart, you will begin at the start of the level, and guess what, all the enemies you have painstakingly eliminated have all respawned and you have to kill them all over again. On a long level, that you cant really complete in one go unless you dont have a life, that can become unbelievably frustrating and tedious. Even better, when you have finished your quest and turn around to return to the start of the level, hey presto, those pesky enemies have respawned and you have to fight them all AGAIN!
The quest design is very insipid and monotonous. If you're not interested in loot, then there's little to do except kill a very repetitive bunch of enemies. The level design features endless repetitions on the theme of junkyards, wastelands and hole in the wall bad-guy camps. There is almost no interaction with NPCs to vary the monotony. The world promises openness, but the levels are actually quite small and constricted. The game does supply entertaining to drive vehicles, but the levels are so small its hardly worth using them. The side quests are basically not worth doing after the first level - they are all repetitions on the theme of kill the monster, find the missing gun parts, turn on these switches etc, and you will quickly tire of them since they offer little challenge.
The weapons in this game are unbelievably bad. SMGs spray a feeble & anemic spatter that has all the stopping power of a kitten's fart. Rocket launchers are so weak that sometimes enemies dont even realise you have hit them, and then will stand there perfectly unharmed while you empty a whole rack of missiles at them. The weapons on the vehicles are particularly laughable - the machine gun wont harm a fly and the rocket launcher will raise an inpressive amount of smoke but wont kill a thing - much better and more satisfying to just drive over your enemies. Its saying something that the most powerful weapon in the game is the shotgun - it was my weapon of choice, or rather necessity, the whole way through.
Did I find anything to like about this game. Well, the antics of the Claptraps are sometimes quite amusing. And some of the level design, at least from a distance, is quite pretty. The vehicles are fun to drive, if only there was somewhere to drive them to. And if you can stomach the game's repetitive nature and many frustrations, it is at least quite long, so you get some of your money's worth. But overall, a worthwhile idea has been spoilt by sloppy design, sheer laziness and a complete lack of understanding of what makes a game immersive.