Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Low-Gravity Loot Mayhem on the Moon

This is a co-op shooter first: you join a lobby, pick a Vault Hunter and tear through the moon's bases and badlands together. Each of the four classes plays differently, so a group can split the work: Athena soaks damage up front, Wilhelm deploys his gear, Nisha shreds at range, and Claptrap does whatever Claptrap does, which is rarely the plan. The low gravity makes group fights gloriously messy: everyone leaps in slow arcs, lasers cross the air, and a well-timed butt slam flattens whatever survived. Loot drops for everyone, so nobody fights over the good gun. If you want a session that is social, loud and easy to jump into, this fits.

The moon changes how a shootout works. Every jump hangs in the air, so you can leap clean over a firefight and come down on enemies from above, then finish the landing with a ground slam. The arsenal gets a space-age twist too, with new laser weapons and ice-based guns. Freeze an enemy solid, then shatter them. Between the floaty movement, the vertical arenas and the new space-flavored enemies, fights feel faster and more chaotic than a flat-ground shooter has any right to be.

This is the origin story of Borderlands 2's villain, told between the first two games. Handsome Jack starts here as a Hyperion programmer who believes he is doing the right thing, and the campaign follows him as events push him, step by step, toward becoming the monster you already know. You work alongside him, which puts you in morally gray company, and the game frames the whole tale as a prisoner's interrogation, with your character talking back instead of staying silent. It is a story-driven campaign with a villain's side of the story, and it makes the rest of the series land differently once you have seen it.