I love me a stupid-ass action movie. Something where the plot is thin while the muscles and accents on all the henchmen are thick as hell. Think Broken Arrow or Eraser — movies that were artistically and sometimes commercially terrible but nevertheless thrilling watches that you forgot about almost immediately after leaving the theater.
Borderlands 4 is the video game equivalent of that movie. Is it artistically creative? No. Profound in its narrative? Nope. Innovative in its gameplay? Not really. Fun? Absolutely. And honestly, that’s all you really need out of a Borderlands game.
If you’re new to the Borderlands series, it’s a looter shooter that allows solo play or up to four-player co-op. In every game, you play a vault hunter — adventurers who travel to dangerous planets seeking mythical vaults that promise great power and treasure. For B4, that formula’s been changed up a little bit. You’re still a vault hunter searching for the vault on the planet Kairos, but you’re way more interested in settling a score with the planet’s immortal dictator: The Timekeeper.
To take him down, you can choose one of the game’s four vault hunters, each with their own special abilities. There’s Amon the Forgeknight, who swings a big ax. Rafa the Exo-soldier deals damage with huge shoulder-mounted machine gun turrets and energy blades. Vex the Siren uses magic to project a ghostly and deadly body double, while Harlowe the Gravitar kills things with science by way of her big-ass gravity gun.
The Borderlands series has always had cool-ass player characters, but I’m a simple girl; I see a Black woman like Harlowe, I pick her. But it speaks to the incredible talent of the Gearbox character designers that I actually hesitated before landing on her.
No dumb action movie would be complete or even fun without quips, one-liners, and gags, and Borderlands 4 is no different. Early on, Claptrap, a small but mouthy robot who serves as the game’s central quest giver, told me that crazed gang members kept splatting off the walls of a nearby cliff. I had no reaction when I found a body, cartoonishly posed with its legs sticking straight up out of the ground — that’s the kind of sight gag I expect in Borderlands. But I had a genuine guffaw when I looked up to see a smear of blood that looked just like the messes bugs leave behind on my windshield.
The series’ earlier entries have suffered for their heavy application of humor (remember Claptrap’s “I’m dancin’! I’m dancin’!”), but thankfully B4 exercises restraint with its silliness such that it doesn’t feel oppressive.
In interviews, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford touted that the game contains over “30 billion guns.” While no one’s ever gonna be able to test that, I do very much enjoy Borderlands’ guns and shooting action. My personal problem with shooters is that they’re often so fiddly, requiring near-perfect accuracy and awareness of one’s surroundings to survive an encounter. In firefights I panic, shooting off at the hip and spinning around in circles to see what’s killing me. It’s not great; I often don’t survive.
But in Borderlands, I was not penalized for being a spray-and-pray-er. My supply of ammo and my health was functionally inexhaustible. No matter how many bullets I took or shot, I just kept going, kinda like Keanu Reeves in John Wick or Daniel Radcliffe in Guns Akimbo.
I also dearly love that the guns themselves have personalities as determined by their manufacturer. When I pick up a Jakobs gun I know I’m gonna get an old-timey piece done up with quaint American cowboy flair. When a Tediore gun runs out of ammo, I don’t reload it; I get to throw it to deal an extra bit of “fuck you” damage.
I haven’t played much of Borderlands 4, about 10 hours, some of which was divided across the different characters to get a feel for their play style. I haven’t felt much of what’s supposed to distinguish B4 from its predecessors, aside from the more subtle humor. In older games, transitioning between areas meant spending time on a loading screen. That’s mostly gone, but it’s not a significant change. I also have a grappling hook and a glider, which add a neat wrinkle to exploration, but again, they don’t make the game feel different or better. They feel like things that have been put there because that’s what we expect in our big AAA games now.
But spamming unholy amounts of bullets like a stormtrooper at a shooting range, that’s what I come to Borderlands for. That hasn’t changed, and the game is better for it. I know it doesn’t sound like a compliment when I say Borderlands 4 is a dumb action movie. But sometimes it’s enough that you know exactly what you’re gonna get with a game, no fuss, no muss, no bullshit. Sometimes I just wanna make things go boom, and Borderlands 4 makes things go boom real good.
Borderlands 4 will be released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X / S on September 12th. It’s coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on October 3rd.
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