Any franchise that’s been around for over 15 years and spanned three console generations is going to have its ups, downs, and remasters.
Borderlands is no exception, and you’d be hard pressed to convince anyone that things have been looking up after a ho-hum Tiny Tina spinoff, the dreadful New Tales from the Borderlands that squandered all potential, and a disastrous feature film that tried to please everyone but somehow accomplished the opposite.
Borderlands 4 enters an environment where merely being competent would be a pleasant departure from the current trajectory. Technical issues aside, it is a return to form, where mostly same-old mechanics are bolstered by an open world that’s a surprisingly good fit.
That open world is the biggest new addition, and it does wonders for the pacing.
Gone are the tedious trips to and from fast travel stations to turn quests in – every fast travel destination can now be reached from anywhere via the map, and completed quests don’t need to be turned in anymore.
Big, open, empty expanses forcing you into monotonous vehicular combat have been eliminated – your vehicle can now be summoned on the spot to quickly travel through areas more densely packed with activities.
So many of the traversal annoyances of prior games have been streamlined away to get you back to the first-person shooting sooner, and it all still works seamlessly with the drop in/drop out co-op.
Unfortunately, the open world comes at a hefty cost, and that debt is paid with performance problems on both base and PS5 Pro consoles.
The move to Unreal Engine 5 has not been kind to the frame rate. Stutters and frequent frame drops are unavoidable in both performance and resolution modes.
Everything runs fine in confined spaces, but that smoothness gradually degrades as effects start filling the screen, bigger fights ensue, or co-op partners join the fray. Whenever Borderlands 4 should be at its chaotic best, performance is at its worst.
Despite the Unreal Engine “upgrade”, the customary looting and shooting hasn’t changed much outside of some small tweaks and additions, but the formula still works.
The gunplay is a little tighter, the hit markers are a little flashier, and the procedurally generated loot has more variables to randomise. It loses its lustre as the level ups slow down, meaningful loot drops grow rarer, and the numbers just keep getting bigger – but its precisely tuned loot treadmill still serves up a steady drip feed of dopamine even as you progress onto the endgame.
The dizzying build variety does help spice up the moment-to-moment gameplay amid the looting and shooting repetition.
All four playable characters have three distinct skill trees that can be mixed and matched to build a character around speed, status effects, skills, specific synergies, or any combination thereof. Respecs are cheap and the possibilities are endless, so experimenting with builds around your latest legendary weapon drop is easy and encouraged.
New movement abilities have been sprinkled in with a grappling hook, glide, and dash making their debut, but their impact isn’t as firmly felt. The utility of the grapple and glide rarely stretches beyond some light platforming or puzzle sections, while the dash is most useful as a dodge in combat.
Stamina is extremely limited which prevents any crazy movement tech that could’ve come from the glide or dash, and the grappling hook is only usable on specific grapple points or throwable objects.
There’s a lot of unfulfilled potential that might be realized in a future instalment. Here they just add a pinch of extra variety.
The only sequences that do leverage all the new stuff at once are the excellent main boss fights. Mechanically, they’re a massive improvement over prior games.
More akin to MMO encounters, they feature clearly telegraphed attacks, long wind-ups, and easily distinguished projectiles that give you the chance to dodge out of the way before dishing out the heavy damage.
They also introduce unique mechanics that utilise the new gadgets, keeping you engaged and on your toes as you mow down their health bars and progress through their phases.
In the story department, Borderlands 4 is more soft reboot than sequel.
It distances itself from prior games by a handful of years on a new planet surveilled by an omnipresent villain called the Timekeeper.
After escaping his clutches in the opening hours, you and any fellow Vault Hunter co-op friends wreak havoc across Kairos to inspire an uprising as you work toward confronting the Timekeeper on your own terms.
Hitting the reset button with a new setting makes Borderlands 4 a great entry point for newcomers, but it still throws a few bones to those invested in the overarching narratives of militant weapons manufacturers and playable characters of entries past.
Borderlands 3’s intergalactic globetrotting antics have been cast aside for something more focused and smaller scale. It’s a restraint we haven’t seen the franchise exercise after the second game’s success, and it provides a suitable backdrop for this game’s more serious antagonist and sinister undertones.
There’s a veneer of earnestness and self-seriousness this time around, but behind that facade is still the same crass, referential humour the franchise is known for. Thinly veiled innuendos abound, enemies spout non sequiturs aplenty, and Claptrap is back with his grating enthusiasm and disdain for stairs.
Love it or hate it, the franchise’s sense of humour hasn’t changed with the times, even if the references have. It’s still unabashedly Borderlands beneath its more serious moments.
That humour features prominently in the bevy of side-quests that are consistently a highlight.
They’re self-contained pockets of zaniness that’ll usually stick around long enough to set up and pay off their own story arcs.
Some are simple farces while others are surprisingly substantial and touching tales in a world of frenzied chaos. You never know what the next one might have in store, and they’re often more enjoyable than the main story that’s more focused on teeing up big boss fights and paving a path for the franchise moving forward.
Other than the poor console performance, the only place Borderlands 4 takes a significant step backwards is with its UI.
Borderlands 2 and 3 featured diegetic menus that displayed in front of your character and inside the game world. That’s all gone, having been replaced with a dull, homogenized interface that you’ll be spending a lot of time interacting with as you manage your inventory or dish out skill points.
Gearbox has even introduced the dreaded mouse cursor that has to be dragged across the screen, making everything a little less snappy. Borderlands hasn’t lost its identity yet, but its menus certainly have.
