Borderlands 4
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K
Platforms: PC, Switch 2, Xbox Series X (Reviewed), PlayStation 5
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $69.99 USD – Available Here $119.95 AUD – Available Here
Overview
Few games can capture the magic of the “looter shooter” like the Borderlands games, and that’s probably because it was one of the first in the genre to make a name for itself through the mechanic. Sure, players of other genre were used to slaying bosses or tough beasts and seeing loot drop, but Borderlands made literal fountains of loot spew out of corpses in a colorful rainbow of rarity. After striking gold with the antagonist in Borderlands 2, the series fumbled with its third entry six years ago and while we have had a bit of Wonderlands to tide fans over, many wondered if Gearbox and 2K had what it took to bring new life into the series with Borderlands 4.
Offering an entirely new and literal open world to explore, new traversal options, and of course four new vault hunters, Gearbox has certainly made great strides over the years but not without some more stumbles along the way.
Story
Finding a brand new planet called Kairos teeming with loot and Vaults to potentially hunt makes it a prominent target for a new set of Vault Hunters and it isn’t long before the new batch of four Hunters arrive ready to cause chaos. Vex the Siren, Rafa the Exo-Soldier, Amon the Forgeknight, and Harlow the Gravitar all slam into the planet eager to take on the monsters and recover the loot within these Vaults but unlike in past Borderlands games, things don’t go quite as planned. After crash landing through a sea of Psychos and taking them down as usual, the Vault Hunters find that Kairos isn’t a planet of chaos, it is one of controlled order at the threat of death and direct mind control by the Timekeeper who reigns over the planet with an iron fist.
Despite the player’s best attempts, they find themselves implanted with a bolt control device in their spine, allowing the Time Keeper to control them at anytime. But through the help of a single man claiming to be a member of the fabled Crimson Resistance the player’s chosen Vault Hunter manages to escape at great sacrifice, losing their newfound ally in an effort to retain freedom from the Timekeeper’s control using the Echo-4 robot as their assistant. With their free will obtained at a great cost, it quickly becomes clear that this isn’t just about hunting a Vault, though there are three to seek throughout the map, but about freeing a land of tyranny and those held under strict rule that the slightest misstep could lead to instant death. To do this not only will this require the help of a few familiar faces but also uniting the three still surviving bands of potential rebels each eking out a living under one of the Timekeeper’s brutal leaders.
Borderlands has always been known for having some rather crass humor that ranged from fourth-wall breaking jokes, toilet humor, and just blatant sex jabs and it must be said that Borderlands 4 actually does shift things away a bit at least in regards to the main storyline. The core storyline is far more serious and focused this time around, with players helping these struggling militia groups try to overthrow their ruler in an attempt to eventually reach the dictator-esque Timekeeper. The Timekeeper himself isn’t the most enthralling villain despite his power over the planet, as his three commanders are actually far more prominent overall, especially with the various developments that occur in the latter half of the storyline. It is interesting to note that while we won’t spoil these events here, it is notable that Borderlands 4 does heavily establish itself as not only a fresh launching point for the franchise both by setting itself up on a new planet but by teasing way more dangerous threats to come, though whether that may come as DLC or as a future title entirely is up to the developers.
Where the real heart of the story comes from are the various side characters for each of the factions that players fight alongside as well as some of the best initial jokes and callbacks to past entries in the series. There are quite a few emotional moments throughout the game’s core plot, something that is rather surprising considering the franchise’s history. To go with this there are also numerous well-thought out and developed character arcs that feel a class above the usual writing style from past games. That being said, not everything is serious. Not only are the main characters and many side characters, especially some returning characters, more than willing to toss out a witty one-liner or mess with one another in the middle of a mission over the Echo device but the real jokes come from the side missions. Kairos is absolutely teeming with side-missions that are completely optional but feature some of the best humor in the game’s storyline.
These side missions range from being completely innocuous single mission affairs to map spanning multi-mission affairs that have to be completed numerous times to reach the final outcome. Not only does this often result in some rather hilarious events taking place, it also pull at some heartstrings here and there too, making the wide-range of side-missions a surprisingly effective treat, and boy are there a ton of them as players can easily spend hours upon hours finishing side missions in one region only to find that the next contains not only more missions, but probably continuations of those they thought already completed. This level of extra writing and potential humor is great and gives fans plenty to see and delve into, especially if they have already finished the core storyline and are looking for more untapped side-content that they may have missed before.
Gameplay
In many ways Borderlands 4 still remains as true as ever to its looter shooter core, but it has also undergone some massive restructuring. Now, rather than going to small maps broken up by loading screens, players will find that the entire world of Borderlands 4 is open to them to explore. This includes the ability to spawn “digirunner” hoverbikes at any time and zip through locations whenever players want at the tap of a button rather than spawning one at a “Catch A Ride” and even using the menu’s map to fast travel to any unlocked fast travel locations that tend to be either mainline hubs, major boss encounters, and outposts that players have reclaimed throughout exploring. Similarly, the game is filled to the absolute brim with side-content beyond just the aforementioned side-quests. Not only are there optional locations players can battle against waves of enemies to face off against an optional boss, vault keys to hunt down to challenge powerful vault guardians, world events, miniature domes of boss encounters, bounty contracts on unique enemy types, and tons of collectables. There is even the ability to double jump, glide using a “glider” style jet-pack of sorts, and zip around using a tether that can grapple onto highlighted locations.
Just like always each of the four Vault Hunters have their own unique special abilities and techniques that can help vary up the combat. To go along with this, each Vault Hunter also has three primary “action” trees that they can build along with skill points from every level. In Vex’s case for example, the Siren can be built to always have a large feline companion named Trouble battling alongside her that takes on the elemental properties of her firearm and supercharge it into Big Trouble for a period of time, a powerful Phase Explosion style skill tree where she deals damage to enemies and restores her own health and can fire off blasts to deal massive damage to enemies, and even the Dead Ringer skill tree that allows Vex to spawn multiple minions to taunt or dish out damage to her enemies as well, all of which can be further built upon along the skill tree. Each Vault Hunter has their own unique set of skills and experimenting with how they want to build their character, or simply rebuild it from the ground up, is quite simple to do as any major hub will have a skill reset machine at a nominal cost that increases as the player’s level does.
Similarly the various elemental types remain the same with lightning dealing extra damage to shields, corrosive melting through armor, and fire burning through flesh with things such as ice and radiation also offering different variables. It is interesting to note that the primary weapon difference this time around is the fact that heavy weapons, such as rocket launchers or massive lasers, now fall into the same category as grenades which recharge over time. This does mean that players can only have access to either a set of grenades of their choosing or heavy ordinance. Similarly a “repkit” can be used to heal portions of health that are lost and work on a similar cooldown timer like ordinance. Like everything in the game, including the shields players will acquire, the randomization of their stats, elements, modifications, and even appearance can vary wildly from drop to drop.
This remains as true as ever here as players can actively “hunt” faster than ever before thanks to a quality of life addition in the form of Moxxi’s Big Encore vending machines that spawn after a boss has been beaten the first time. For a nominal fee players can restart a boss fight from the very beginning, taking their new and stronger weaponry to the equally leveled boss and hunt it down once more, hoping to get new and better loot or perhaps even a legendary to drop. In fact, this can be done easily enough that players can find multiple legendary items within a few minutes if they are properly kitted out and lucky, and here is where players can also see the randomness at its core since one time a legendary shield can drop that’ll spawn magazine refills, trigger a nova explosion upon depletion, and overcharge the player’s weapon while the next time that same shield drops it can instead spew out explosives when damaged, ricochet bullets off, and have a boosted overall charge. This allows for a massive amount of variety when it comes to farming and building up the player’s character and there is even a bit of extra customization through some minor part modification in the end-game that allows players to take some properties of certain pieces of equipment and, destroying the original in the process, apply it to another piece of their choosing, making it so not quite everything has to be randomized.
Speaking of bosses, it must be said that Gearbox has gone out of their way to make sure that many of these boss fights are quite memorable as well as challenging. Sure, there are still some rather generic enemies to fight as bosses but many of the main storyline bosses are truly outstanding to fight against. Players will need to utilize their movement tech more often than not to dodge incoming AoE attacks, zipline to safety for dangerous blows or trap damage, all while laying on the punishment with their own weaponry, hoping that they can also pick off a straggling minion if they happen to be downed as the “Fight for you Life” mechanic that allows players to stand back up rather than die instantly is as same as ever.
Borderlands 4 is absolutely dripping with content and feels wonderful to play, but it is unfortunately plagued with numerous bugs such as the “lost loot” machine not working as intended, making it so players might miss out on a legendary that fell into water or off a cliff and certain weapon affects not working properly thanks to improper stat reading, literally falling through the world sometimes, but the most blatant of all is a memory leak issue. No matter what, whenever the player is playing the game on the Xbox Series X the game will start and run perfectly fine but will slowly degrade in quality over time to the point that the game is nearly unplayable. The longer players play the game in one sitting the lower the frame rate will drop to the point that the game will crash entirely to the Home screen and, in two cases, shut down my console. The only way to mitigate this is to quit out of the game entirely, as leaving it on “Quick Resume” will actually make matters even worse.
Audio & Visuals
The series’ signature art style returns in full force in Borderlands 4 and even with the jump to Unreal Engine 5 it still happens to be as impressive as ever. The enemy variety is quite high and it feels like the world itself has had quite a lot of attention given to it, players aren’t just zipping around an empty open world, but one crafted with unique looking locations and areas that vary from region to region, with each of the three regions having their own unique designs for flora and fauna. The character designs and customization remain as strong as ever as well and thankfully any customization, including even applying skins onto guns, can be done through the menu. It also must be said that Borderlands 4 is still quite the gory game, as players can blow enemies into chunks of bloody meat, blow off a limb, head, or anything else and watch the rainbow of loot pour out of the corpse alongside the blood. That being said, the game does feature some annoying menu navigation that either makes use of the D-Pad to try and shift through the inventory or a terrible mouse-cursor handled with the right stick, something that has to have had a better alternative.
The voice work throughout the game is phenomenal with all of the new voice actors portraying their characters well and having quite a bit of chatter amongst themselves and against enemies while in a fight. The characters that do return have all seen their voice actors reprise their roles as well which is a nice touch. As for the soundtrack the title features a solid collection of background music for action but it does feel surprisingly lacking during exploration. Given the grander scale of the game and the world, this is something of a disappointment.
Overall
Borderlands 4 takes the step forward it needed by expanding into a full open world and offering players plenty of new ways to take on enemies and move around that world in what might be one of their best looter shooters since Borderlands 2 alongside a well-thought out storyline that isn’t afraid to get serious between jokes. With a wealth of content to enjoy, excellent boss encounters, and impressive character build variety, there is a lot to love here but it isn’t without some growing pains as numerous glitches and issues plague the release even now and hopefully will find some form of patching in the future, especially the dreadful performance issues.
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