Think of the last Ubisoft game you played or really any of their open world titles that they’re so renown for. I want you to name one of the characters, can you do it? Odds are you can’t and it’s not your fault either. Ubisoft are great at building incredible, massive worlds that are utterly forgettable. They’re great at what they’re for, whiling away the hours on semi-mindless activities while receiving small dopamine hits as you do whatever you want to, but once you put them down there’s little left there for your mind to hang on to. For whatever reason Gearbox seems to think the Ubisoft approach was the way to go with the Borderlands franchise and, predictably, the outcome has been much the same. Gone was the tried and true formula they’d perfected over numerous games and instead it was replaced with a world that feels big, lifeless and utterly forgettable.
It’s been 6 years since the Moonfall incident that revealed the planet Kairos. That’s brought with it a new generation of vault hunters who are seeking the riches and powers that the vault contains except there’s one problem: the planet’s dictator called the Timekeeper. He sits within the vault, doling out slivers of powers to his various lieutenants to ensure that his rule is absolute and unquestioned. The vault hunters quickly find themselves imprisoned by him, fitted with nasty devices called control bolts and then left to become the Timekeeper’s playthings. That is until the Crimson Resistance comes in to save the day, giving the vault hunters the opportunity to pursue their prize and, perhaps, save the planet as well.
My crew and I had a quick romp through Borderlands 2 recently after we couldn’t land on a game to play for our usual gaming gettogether. The step up from there (and even from the screenshots I have from my more recent reviews) is quite impressive. Everything looks sharper, there’s another layer of detail to the cel shading and the game just generally looks like the best version of Borderlands you could imagine with today’s tech. Of course I wasn’t immune to the launch day performance issues, even after a couple patches that were apparently targeted at fixing the problem. The fix for me was downloading this mod, enabling frame generation and following this guide on performance tweaks. Whilst going to this level of detail used to be par for the course for any game modern titles have gotten good enough at the self-optimisation that it bears mentioning whenever that doesn’t work.
The core of the Borderlands formula remains, for the most part, in this latest instalment with a litany of changes that bear mentioning. As I mentioned in my opening remarks the more curated, smaller sections have been done away with and replaced with a seamless open world, removing loading screens a lot more other things that I’ll get to in a bit. Combat retains the same main tropes with the four different character classes, 3 available talent trees (each with 3 specialisations), a wild variety of procedurally generated weapons and the smattering of different enemy types. The loot mechanics have also been reworked, yet again for the worse. The map designs have a lot more verticality to them thanks to the introduction of more abundant traversal mechanics like the grappling hook and on-demand vehicles. There’s a lot more to it but they’re just the window dressing on the rest of this Ubisoft-esque house that Gearbox has built.
Combat has that same RNG feeling that most of the previous games had. There are plenty of times you can walk into an engagement and seemingly walk out of it in seconds because you managed to pull off some incredible combo. Other times it can feel like you’re turning the Titanic with a teaspoon, your weapons seemingly doing nothing to the enemies until you’re out of ammo and other options. Now in the past this would be mitigated somewhat by you always being able to rely on one weapon, that god-rolled something which would keep you going until you could fill out your kit with other similarly-powerful weapons. Thanks to the loot tuning that Gearbox has done though this isn’t as much of the case now and instead you’re going to find yourself engaging something else I abhor doing in games like this.
Grinding.
You don’t have to go far to find many people reporting that Borderlands 4 has individual level scaling and whilst that’s true to some extent it’s only part of the picture. Each of the zones have different level brackets associated to them and, should you find yourself ahead of that bracket (like say, if you’re trying to power through the campaign) then you’re quickly going to find yourself facing off against enemies that you have zero chance of beating. The solution? Go back and grind the previous area before moving onto the next one. To be sure the game’s narrative feels the strongest in those side missions but still I don’t like being forced out of an area just because I didn’t do the requisite amount of levelling in the previous one.
Which honestly calls into question why Gearbox went for an open world at all in the first place if they were going to gate it like they have. Even putting that issue to the side for a minute the way they’ve constructed it feels decidedly not open world. Try going in a straight line from one point to another and you’ll quickly find not much of anything at all. Stay on the roads though? Tons of things dotted by the roadside. Even worse is that the worlds have very specific ways they need to be traversed too with certain parts of maps completely inaccessible from each other unless you go along the predetermined route. Truly I have no idea why it was constructed like this as it feels like it was done in the traditional Borderlands style until someone yelled “SEAMLESS OPEN WORLD” in a meeting and the execs (sorry, probably just Randy) thought it was an amazing idea and smashed all the different levels together.
Progression is OK but like I mentioned earlier the loot, which is arguably Borderlands’ signature feature, has been tuned all wrong. In my 17 hours with the game I have not seen one legendary drop and the 2 I have came from a friend dropping one (after a quest we co-completed on gave one of us the legendary reward) with the second shown below in a shop for purchase. Now I’m not saying I need to be showered with overpowered loot to keep playing but the legendary drop rate is a symptom of the underlying problem with the loot system as it currently stands: it’s deeply unsatisfying. Other games have come back from similar progression and loot based blunders so I know this isn’t beyond fixing but the damage might be done at this point.
Which brings me to the final nail in the “meh” coffin I’m placing Borderlands 4 in: the story. In the past I’ve been a fan of Borderlands’ stories as they strike the right balance between levity, seriousness and just all round general fun vibes. This time though I didn’t find much to latch onto. The various factions you work with, the other characters, they just all had that same forgettable quality that I get from when Ubisoft tries to do the same things with their open world. To be sure there’s some great banter, some good well contained side quest plot lines, but the stuff that made the narrative engaging in the past has just…gone.
My crew and I were enjoying the opening moments of Borderlands 4 for a little while before the cracks started to appear in the experience. In the end nearly all of us put it down with far fewer hours in it than we had in previous titles, which says a lot. Indeed even for me, someone who’ll doggedly stick to a game just to finish its campaign in the hopes it gets good, couldn’t find the will to drive me further once the rest of my crew dropped off. There’s a glimmer of hope in patches and sales that’ll revitalise the game like it has done so in the past for others but for me I think I’m done with this one. It’s a rather huge misstep for a franchise that’s taken so long between drinks.
Rating: 6/10
Borderlands 4 is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2 right now for $109.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 17.3 hours playtime and 14% of the achievements unlocked.
