Is Borderlands 4 the series at ‘its most potent’, or ‘uninspired’ and ‘painfully dull’? The PC Gamer team is divided
The Borderlands series is near and dear to the hearts of lots of members of the PC Gamer, and sure enough a bunch of us have been sinking hours into it over the last few days since launch.
So, with our review still a few days off, I thought I’d canvas the team and see where our collective thoughts are currently landing.
The loop hits just right
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I’m about twenty hours in, and as a certified Borderlands sicko who has been playing the games since I was fourteen, I’m having a great time. Borderlands 4’s on-ramp is a bit slow, but once you start getting your build online? The loop hits just right.
Speaking of loops, I was deeply skeptical of the shift to a full open world, but now that I’ve properly got my teeth into it I’m a believer. Borderlands’ cycle of ‘shoot guys, get loot, sell loot, shoot more guys’ pairs so devilishly well with this style collectible/objectives hunt that I’m shocked it took this long for Gearbox to make the shift.
I keep getting distracted, vanishing down side-quest rabbit holes, saying ‘just one more thing, and then I’ll get back to the campaign’ like Sisyphus planting his feet before shoving that boulder up to the next ledge. Except you don’t have to do much imagining to recognise I’m happy.
This game isn’t revolutionary, or anything. It is more of the same, but it’s a same that’s been distilled into what I think is its most potent, from-concentrate form yet. It’s liquid freak-juice specifically designed to keep me glued to the screen. All this in spite of some of the most baffling design choices I’ve seen out of a big-budget release.
I’ve been having constant performance issues—and to Gearbox’s credit, the most egregious examples have been fixed, with more patches to come. But what really gets my goat is the UI design: It’s really, really bad. Here’s my list of complaints:
- Why does my inventory auto-sort to “by manufacturer?”
- Why do I have to inspect my class mods to see what skills they improve, and even then, I need to go to the talent tree to see what those skills actually do?
- Why do I keep getting a bug where marking weapons as trash marks a weapon three rows above it?
- Why are cosmetics not sorted by unlocked?
- Why, if I want to replay an echo log, do I have to sit in the echo log screen to listen to it?
- Why are the subtitles for said echo log in said screen a block of text, instead of being organised by speaker, like in the scripts they wrote for them?
- Why are my currencies nested in a mouse-over widget instead of just being displayed with the miles of free real-estate available?
My complaints are a mile wide, but I keep coming back for more. Partially because it’s my job (I am reviewing this game) but I get the feeling I’d be doing so without the contractual obligation.
Painfully dull and incredibly familiar
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I’m only about five hours in so far, but… am I the only one finding it painfully dull?
My concern heading into Borderlands 4 was that it would just be more of the same. I think in terms of the core action, I was pretty much right there—the shooting and looting feel incredibly familiar.
At the same time, there’s stuff that does feel very different—particularly the story, the setting, the open world design, and the traversal. But those are the elements that are most falling flat for me.
We all wanted Borderlands 4 to cut back on the meme jokes and obnoxious snark, but now I’m starting to wonder if we should have been more careful what we wished for. Those elements were annoying, but they were at least distinctive—here, they’ve been taken out and replaced with… well, nothing. Tonally it feels kind of lost—not funny enough to be a comedy, not an interesting enough tale to be taken as serious sci-fi, just floating somewhere bland in the middle.
Similarly, being able to explore more freely should be exciting, but it just feels like an excuse for busywork, with a million collectibles and sidequests. Combine that with the performance woes and what for me have been pretty regular bugs (I found a gun that doesn’t shoot—what greater crime could Borderlands commit?) and even my enthusiasm for just turning my brain off and watching the numbers go up has been completely sapped.
Some of the most fun characters in the series
Rory Norris, Guides Writer: To my surprise, Borderlands 4 marks perhaps the only time I’m actually glad a series decided to shift to an open-world structure. Like Harvey, I’ve been getting distracted every single time I set out across Kairos. Each main mission smartly sends you across the map, throwing wide the door to endless side quests, points of interest, and MMO-style world events. It’s not revolutionary for the genre, but it’s the logical evolution of Borderlands, and it works oh so well.
This open world wouldn’t mean anything if the core gameplay wasn’t fun, and that mainly comes down to Borderlands 4’s Vault Hunters. I’ve been playing Amon and Harlowe so far, and they’re some of the most fun characters in the series—it’s on the weaker side, but I love Amon’s flaming fist. Skill trees are bigger than ever, but most importantly, the perks in each one are build-defining; they’re not simple, boring, ‘+10% damage’ that you’ll generally see in RPGs, though Borderlands has never really stooped to that.
While I have my complaints and my worries, particularly around the state of the endgame at launch, I know I’ll be playing Borderlands 4 at least four times, and I’ll no doubt find even more to do on Kairos along the way.
A great brain-off game
Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I’m kind of with Robin in that I’m finding Borderlands 4 a little drab, but that hasn’t stopped me from pouring just over 15 hours into it over the last couple days. It’s a great brain-off game, and my absolute favourite in the series for how goddamn good both movement and gunplay feel.
Gliding is an excellent addition, and I’m having way too much fun floating around headshotting enemies before coasting off a cliff to my next destination. I wish the grappling hook was utilised more as a traversal across Kairos, as I keep forgetting it exists right now. Using it to grab a canister and launch it at a gang of baddies, though? Top tier.
Being able to mark an item as junk when picking it up is a great quality-of-life addition, but one that’s wrapped up in so many weird missteps. The inventory system straight-up sucks right now, and I dread any time I have to open my backpack to sort through my stash of weapons. It’s a frustrating endeavour that makes me want to experiment with loadouts even less, which feels like half the point of playing Borderlands in the first place.
Also, is the mayhem of Kairos getting to me, or is there a weird lack of ambient music when there’s no combat happening? It makes the empty segments between gunfights feel even more barren, and not in a “cool lawless wasteland” way.
Why is it so hard on your hardware?
Andy Edser, Hardware Writer: Well, one thing’s clear to me after spending my weekend futzing around on Kairos—Nvidia’s optimised settings charts really weren’t kidding.
I’ve got a fairly beastly machine with an RTX 5070 Ti and an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, yet I’ve been forced to lean on DLSS Balanced and 3x Multi Frame Generation to keep things smooth at near-max settings. Borderlands 4 might just take the title of the most demanding game I’ve tested on this particular PC to date—and although it’s a fairly pretty thing in motion, it’s sometimes difficult to see why.
That being said, as an unashamed Borderlands-enjoyer, I’ve had a grand old time bouncing around the early game grasslands making numbers go up at the end of a barrel. The movement feels slick, the guns are varied, and some of the environmental design is simply lovely. I’m also appreciating the slight toning down of the toilet humour compared to previous iterations, and the huge world’s accommodation towards my tendency to explore.
Still, I’ll echo Robin’s comments that it does feel a touch… uninspired, so far. I’m currently 13 hours in and already beginning to regret spending so much of my time on side missions and collectible, err, collection, rather than advancing the plot. Those fields are certainly lush—but I’m hoping the environments vary up at some point soon, as there’s only so much time I can spend admiring the grass.
And I can’t help but feel a genuine pang of sympathy for those trying to run the game on older hardware. Borderlands 4 has proven to be a very enjoyable way to spend my weekend, but if I’d spent my precious time fighting with the frame rate rather than the Rippers, I think I’d have a much lesser opinion.
It looks decent, for sure, but I do find myself wondering how a game with this many visual similarities to the previous versions ended up being the biggest performance pig of the year. Roll on the optimisation patches, that’s what I say. They are coming, right?
