Is the looter-shooter series as fun as ever?
The definitive looter shooter arrives in 2025. See if you have what it takes to go down in history as a legendary Vault Hunter as you search for secret alien treasure, blasting everything in sight.
The Borderlands series has had its highs and lows, the highs of Borderlands 2 and the lows of the movie. Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands were pretty good as well though. Borderlands 4 feels like it could be the make-or-break for the series going forward, so after planet hopping in BL3, what can the 4th entry provide?
Instead of jumping from planet to planet, Borderlands 4 is set on a single planet. But it is huge in size and there’s rarely a load screen between areas, mostly only occurring during some of the story’s main bosses. As with past entries, you get to pick different vault hunters to play as and it’s a whole new cast as always. I personally love Rafa’s humour and his side-cannons to help me in combat.
You’ll get a jetpack and grapple hook. Gone are the catch-a-ride points so you can with summon a vehicle in most locations. Scattered across the planet are dozens of collectibles, side-quests and activities such as bunkers, vaults and world events where you can storm a spaceship, take on rounds of enemies or whatever bosses pop up in randomly placed bubble arenas.
Weapons have always been the bread and butter of Borderlands, and 4 is no different. There are thousands of different guns and finding the right one for you will take considerable time, depending on random drops or by using Golden Keys by redeeming Shift codes found online.
The story itself is impressive and gives you all the motivation to push forward. Claptrap has less involvement here, so if you find him annoying then you’ll be pleased his appearances are lessened here. You’ll come across faces both new and familiar and it sets up an interesting premise for future games or DLC, depending on what path Gearbox decide to take going forward.
At launch, there were a few issues with performance and glitches with some missions. Some have been fixed, but the worst offender for me was the framerate drops after playing for a considerable amount of time. Luckily, quitting to the main menu and reloading my save would solve this problem. It has seemed to happen less since so I’m hopeful they’ve fixed what was causing the memory leak.
The visuals are impressive and when the game runs at a smooth framerate, it handles well. Voice-acting is the best in the series so far with hilarious one-liners, but also some dramatic and emotional dialogue thrown in for both main and side missions. As for post-game content, you can mop up whatever side missions and collectibles you’ve missed, live events as well as taking on a tougher difficulty mode.
The Verdict
Borderlands 4 becomes a fully open sandbox with a few new gadgets and quality of life improvements to the core gameplay we’ve been used to since the original. It has a great story and is still the enjoyable looter shooter we all know and love. Performance issues at launch has been frustrating, but things are a lot better now and now is a good time to dive into this latest entry.