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I have no particular love or hate for the Borderlands series. I’ve played every single entry, but they’ve all just blurred together in my mind. If there’s a word that perfectly describes the games for me, it’d be forgettable. I still look forward to their releases, mind you, (which was why I wanted to review Borderlands 4), but once I’m done with them… I forget pretty much everything about them.
It didn’t help matters that the previous two entries in the series (Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands) were utterly generic and trite. The plots for both sucked, and Borderlands 3 had the most irritating villains in the series’ history!
Borderlands 4 couldn’t be worse than those games, right?
…right?
What is Borderlands 4?
Borderlands 4 is a single- and multiplayer co-op FPS with RPG elements. Borderlands 4 is developed by Gearbox Software, with publishing done by 2K. It is available right now on the PlayStation and Xbox consoles as well as the PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is planned, but with no release date revealed.
Our review copy was provided by the super, super folks over at 2K! Thanks so much!
After the abysmal Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Borderlands 4’s more grounded approach is a breath of fresh air. Pretty much every aspect of the game is an improvement on the past two games. Taking place entirely on a new planet called Kairos, the plot deals with the new cast of Vault Hunters trying to break free from the clutches of The Timekeeper and escape from the planet.
That is of course, after finding the Vaults on the planet.
As a FPS looter shooter, Borderlands 4 hinges on its killing and looting cycle. You kill people, you get better guns (if you’re lucky) which you use to kill more people, to get even better guns. It’s a formula that’s worked in the past and works now.
The grind is one of the best parts of Borderlands 4. The allure of getting a Legendary (orange) weapon still never fails to drive me forward. It’s a rush too because these weapons are usually packed with their own unique effects and attacks!
Straight off the bat, Borderlands 4 is leagues ahead of Borderlands 3 The plot is better. It’s tighter, features a better villain, and more interesting missions.
Borderlands 3 flopped on its face. Hard. It lacked the humor the series was known for, the plot sucked, and the characters void of any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Even the gunplay got old. It got so bad I was cheering for everybody to die, just so I could stop playing.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands just continued the streak (despite having a super interesting premise), so it’s really not a wonder that Borderlands 4 wasn’t high on my ‘To Play’ list.
I’ve played the game for a while now (mostly as Vex, the Siren) and let me tell you something…this game… isn’t a return to form for the series.
Before I start, know that I’m reviewing the game on three different hardware setups.
Here are the specs in case you’re wondering:
Desktop 1 –
– MSI B550M Mortar WIFI
– AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with NZXT Kraken X73 RGB Liquid Cooler
– MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim X 24G
– Teamgroup T-Force Dark Z 64GB DDR4 RAM
– Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD
– NZXT C1200 Gold ATX 3.1
– Lian Li LANCOOL III RGB case
Desktop 2 –
– MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
– AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D with Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core ARGB cooler
– Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB
– G.SKILL Trident Z5 NEO 32GB DDR5-6400 RAM
– Samsung 990 PRO 2TB SSD
– Corsair RM850x PSU
– Lian Li LANCOOL 207 Digital
Notebook –
MSI Raider GE78 HX 14V
– Intel Core i9 14900HX
– NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
– 32GB DDR5 RAM
– 1TB SSD
The majority of the hardware above has been kindly sponsored by MSI (Desktop 1 and the MSI Raider GE78 HX 14V) and AMD (Desktop 2), and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support!
I ran the game on 4K (with all settings maxed and DLSS/FSR on Balanced) on the desktops, and on 1080p (with DLSS on Balanced) on the laptop.
You know what all our review rigs have in common?
Performance issues.
This is after having waited weeks for Gearbox Software to iron out the game’s kinks with performance patches.
Did they work? Not really.
Does Gearbox think the game still has issues?
Here’s word straight from the horse’s mouth (or ass in this case):
Now, I’ve made no secret of my dislike for Pitchford. Ever since the Aliens: Colonial Marines scam he ran, he’s been on my shitlist. I’ve tried to be neutral for Gearbox Software as a company, but in this case, they deserve the fire.
Borderlands 4 is an unoptimized game.
Now, there are times when this is understandable. Perhaps the game is so innovative with hardcore visuals and physics that current hardware just can’t handle it. Like Crysis was back in the day. Or The Witcher 3. Or even Cyberpunk 2077.
Borderlands 4 is not in the class of any of those games.
It barely looks better than Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and just a smidgen improved over Borderlands 3 visually. Why then, do I get framerate drops all over the place and in the cities?
The answer here is one that most gamers have known to hate – Unreal Engine 5.
I don’t know whether the engine itself is FUBARed (maybe Epic doesn’t really provide great documentation) or whether Gearbox Software couldn’t get a hang of it. All I do know for damn sure is the end result is a stuttering, slowdown-prone mess that is Borderlands 4.
… and that is after weeks of performance patches.
Please don’t make me talk about how the game performed at launch. *shudder*
It’s great that Borderlands 4 has a bigger open world than past games. It’s so big now that even with vehicles, it takes a massive time to get where you’re going. To be frank, I rather enjoyed traversing the wastelands of Kairos. The different regions look distinct, and exploration is fun. The whole thing is seamless, with no loading zones at all.
Superb work all-round and props to Gearbox Software for that.
The problem is that with this huge open world, the game stutters whenever it streams new data. It’s random but it’s pretty regular. Performance also tanks whenever you get into a pitched firefight outdoors. That’s like pretty much 80% of the game.
I’ve had the on-screen FPS counter hit the low 40s multiple times, always in the same circumstances – when there are a ton of effects on-screen in pitched firefights or when I’m in a city area populated by NPCs like Carcadia. It’s always either of those culprits or when the map streams in data while I’m blazing through on the hoverbike.
The huge maps also come with another very annoying problem. There’s a lack of fast travel points.
The game only lets you fast travel to safehouses, which is fine. Until you realize that there’s only a handful of them per region. That leaves large swathes of open world with no way to fast travel.
It’s a huge issue if you missed a collectible or have to head somewhere with no fast travel point nearby.
This could’ve easily been avoided if you could also fast travel to the copious respawn points. But noooooooooo, Gearbox Software wants you to suffer.
It’s a sad state of affairs really. Borderlands 4 does show signs of being a great game. The gunplay is awesome, the characters are likeable this time around (I grew attached to Rush, the leader of The Outbounders faction and his uncompromisingly positive outlook on things) and new enemies to fight.
The new Vault Hunters are pretty fun to play as too, with Vex (the Siren) being my main. Playing solo, Vex’s ability to summon short-lived clones is invaluable! Not only do you get a boost of firepower, but also other targets for the enemy AI to shoot at! With the right equipment and the appropriate skills, Vex can burn down bosses’ HP bars at an insane rate!
The side missions here are also much more interesting than the ones in Borderlands 3 or Tiny Tina’s Wonderland. Some even feature characters from past games, which is a good bit of fanservice. Claptrap is in Borderlands 4 too!
Some might hate the guy, but I personally love him. I wish he played a much bigger role (or is a selectable character) in the story though. Sigh, maybe next time.
There’s also looooots of loot to get. Guns, shields, grenades and more! So much more! It gets a bit too much at times, especially as it becomes a major pain to see if that new gun you get is really that much better than the one you’re using.
You’d think a quick check at the DPS and raw damage numbers would settle it, but you’d be wrong! A high DPS gun might theoretically be better than a gun with high damage but low rate of fire. In practice though, that slower firing gun might be more useful because it kills enemies faster due to its high damage.
Same thing goes for the manufacturers. Order guns might sound cool (and always have high DPS scores) but them needing to fully charge up to fire can mean the difference between life and death. I’ve found that Jakobs guns (with their ricocheting bullets) are almost always the best guns to use, low DPS be damned.
Checking to see which gun is better is made all that much harder by a UI that refuses to save your last sort setting. It always resets to showing guns by Manufacturer first, despite my changing the filter to sort my weapons by type or damage.
Every. Single. Time.
It gets super old having to keep changing the sort settings every time. SUPER OLD!
If it’s not a glitch, whoever thought of it should be shot. If it is a bug, why hasn’t an essential one like this been fixed yet?!
That’s not the end of it too.
There are other glitches that still plague the game. Mission items (especially those that you can carry) can just disappear when you drop them. That means a restart. Environmental interactions (particularly crawler assaults) can just not trigger, which means… you guessed it, a restart.
Even the missions themselves aren’t safe! I’ve had mission triggers simply not activating, which means I couldn’t continue the mission. Guess what needed to be done? Yup, a restart.
Borderlands 4 really, really, reaaaaaaalllly shouldn’t have been released in this state.
There’s a fun game here, but it’s buried deeeeeep down by loads of questionable design choices and technical issues.
The Bottom Line.
Borderlands 4 is fine…but being just fine doesn’t cut it for a series that pretty much invented the looter shooter genre. Yes, in all fairness, Borderlands 4 is much better than Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderland but those are low bars to shoot for.
However, the game brings with it its own slew of issues.
Performance is problematic with constant FPS drops and stutters. It’s smooth one minute, and stuttering the next. Usually with no warning in between. The game world is huge, but the lack of fast travel points means time wasted traversing huge distances. The game’s UI can be obtuse and broken.
These issues are honestly not ones that should be in a game of this standard. This is the fourth entry of the series (more if you count the spin-offs) and Gearbox Software still can’t get the basics down.
On the flipside, though the issues do detract from the experience, having capable hardware does minimize the technical ones. To be honest, I did have a great time, in spite of the problems I ran into.
Borderlands 4 isn’t as bad as you’d think, but it can do with lots more fine-tuning and patching to make it more stable.
TLDR:
Major issues to be resolved but there’s quite a bit of fun to be had with the game.
The Good:
- Decent plot.
- Fun sidequests.
- Great gunplay.
- Huge seamless open world.
The Bad:
- Stuttering during map traversal.
- FPS drops during big battles or in cities.
- Not enough fast travel points.
- UI needs work.
- Lots of bugs.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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