Borderlands 4 Review: Guns Gone Wild

In an era of shooters that wanted to be the next Call of Duty, Borderlands established itself as an outlier right from the start. The first game in Gearbox Software's looter shooter series laid down the blueprint for what has become a phenomenally successful franchise. More than 15 years and 93 million copies later, Borderlands still embodies the cell-shaded mayhem and juvenile irreverence that has come to define the series.

This, however, is a different era. Shooters left their mark on the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation, but aside from a couple of legacy franchises and live service behemoths, the genre is on the wane. Looter shooters, specifically, have found lesser acceptance. After years of updates, Destiny 2 has struggled to refresh its offerings, and last year's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was practically dead on arrival. Borderlands 4, which released September 12, has its work cut out for it.

But Gearbox's latest entry in the co-op looter shooter series succeeds where other games of its ilk failed by sticking to its guns — quite literally, too. While Borderlands 4 has changed some things from the last time around, it remains immediately recognisable and incredibly fun by staying true to its roots. Almost everything is expanded in scope — the gigantic open-world playground, the menagerie of firearms and frag grenades, and the cuckoo cast of characters. But Borderlands 4 is good because it's still Borderlands.

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That means some of the flaws particular to the series are present here, too. It has dialled back the grating silliness of Borderlands 3, but has not completely abandoned it. And the series' trademark abundance, now dialled up to 11, can get exhausting. But the changes driving Borderlands 4 keep things moving at a pace not seen in previous games in the series. It might not signal the return of looter shooters, but it does attest to the merits of doing something well, even if it's been done to death.

Borderlands 4 is a direct sequel to Borderlands 3, but it doesn't quite pick up where the last game left off. The game takes its manic, vault-hunting action to the planet of Kairos, six years after the events of Borderlands 3. New planet, new vault, so of course, a new cast of vault hunters. As in previous Borderlands games, you get a pick of four vault hunter classes that each come with distinct abilities, now expanded to a slideshow of skills and augments. While the gunplay and movement abilities will be the same across four classes, each character allows for detailed and specific builds catered to different playstyles. Borderlands has always offered that variety and replayability, but Borderlands 4 goes far deeper into gameplay tailoring than any other entry in the series before it.

Borderlands 4 is set on the planet of Kairos
Photo Credit: 2K/ Gearbox

Kairos, however, is under the iron fist of the Timekeeper, who rules the planet ruthlessly and keeps his citizens in line with cybernetic implants and a synthetic army. As soon as you land on the planet, you're taken captive by the dictator and implanted with a bolt control device. You escape, barely, with the help of the Crimson Resistance, a group of scrappy fighters rebelling against the Timekeeper's hold on Kairos, and find yourself at the resistance headquarters, being greeted by the familiar face of Claptrap, the quippy robot that has become a mascot for the series itself. You're swiftly brought up to date on the dwindling prospects of the rebellion and then tasked with finding and recruiting a conveyor belt of cartoon heroes to your cause.

It's a setup seen in every other open world game released in the past decade. You go around gathering allies scattered across the breadth of the map before your scrappy group of rebels launch a final offensive to bring down the big bad. Borderlands 4 follows well-established genre conventions when it comes to funnelling its story forward. Within that larger story structure though, it plays out more like Borderlands of yore. And even though the series isn't known for radical game design, it occupies a very specific identity that feels distinctly its own. So, while you're chasing down map markers, doing side quests, and taking contracts across Kairos — things you've done in every open world game ever — the way you go about completing those objectives feels zany and fun.

Claptrap is back
Photo Credit: 2K/ Gearbox

The big change comes to how your traverse across the open world in the game. The traversal tools Borderlands 4 provides you make it the zippiest game in the series yet. In addition to your double jump and dash abilities that let you pinball across arenas while taking on multiple enemies, you get a glider and a grapple hook that expand your movement in the game. After the first few hours, you also unlock the Digirunner, a vehicle that makes travelling across the expanse of Kairos' three distinct biomes easier.

But there's a downside to the vastness of the world, despite newer ways to traverse across it. Borderlands 4 lets you hit a button on the controller and bring up a guiding path to your next objective. This is helpful, sure, but it also diminishes how you interact with the game world. You're constantly looking at the guiding path alongside the map to check where you're going and the feature becomes more of a hindrance than a help. A bigger map also means that some of the more fun missions and side quests get lost in a library of map markers, while the cookie cutter filler stuff becomes more visible. And so, Borderlands 4 feels less bespoke than other games in the series, even if it is more populated and polished.

You can use the Digirunner to traverse across Kairos
Photo Credit: 2K/ Gearbox (Screenshot - Manas Mitul)

What does feel the same is the shooting. Guns are at the heart of every Borderlands game, and Borderlands 4 is no different. From the moment you're let free on Kairos, you enter an all-you-can-eat buffet of weapons. Every lockbox, every chest, every container you open — and you'll be opening a lot of them in the game — stores guns and ammo. You're constantly comparing the loot to the existing arsenal in your inventory, checking stats and buffs, and picking the firearm that best suits your needs (or is the coolest). It's best to not get attached to a weapon in Borderlands 4, especially early on, as you're always finding better gear. The game has billions of combinations of pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, snipers and shotguns across eight different manufacturers.

Each weapon manufacturer favours a specific playstyle, too. Tediore guns, for instance, don't reload; when you're out of a clip you throw the gun at the enemy like a grenade and a fully loaded replica materialises in your hands; Maliwan weapons come with elemental buffs that can shock, incinerate or corrode your enemies; and Daedalus guns are versatile, allowing you to swap out ammo types and turn an assault rifle, for instance, into a sniper. You quickly unlock four weapon slots so you can mix and match and equip an arsenal of your liking. A Jakobs sniper rifle, though, was a constant presence in my equipped weapon slots. I truly enjoyed taking high-crit headshots from a distance with it before going in and engaging the remaining foes in close quarters combat with a shotgun or an SMG.

Guns are the highlight in Borderlands 4
Photo Credit: 2K/ Gearbox (Screenshot - Manas Mitul)

Gunplay feels incredibly good, too. Borderlands has always nailed the feel of different firearms, and shooting here is the best of the series. It's snappy and chaotic but also deceptively controlled and calculated. Weapons feel well-balanced and the game throws enough enemy types at you to keep you juggling. Just like previous games in the series, Borderlands 4 is not a static shooter. You're never just hiding behind cover. A shootout involves jumping, dashing, and sliding across arenas laid out to favour frenetic encounters. The environment always comes to your aid, too. Combat areas have grapple points and elemental canisters that can be picked up and thrown at enemies. These chaotic showdowns are best embodied by Borderlands 4's boss fights, which present a formidable challenge, but rarely cross over into tedium.

Aside from the cornucopia of guns at your disposal, your player character is a weapon in its own right, too. Borderlands 4 lets you pick from four vault hunter classes: the Siren, the Exo-soldier, the Forgeknight, and the Gravitar. The Exo-soldier carries high-tech weaponry built into his exo-suit and is ideal for players who intend to jump right into the action with mid-range firepower and close-range combat. The Forgeknight is an axe wielding tank class, best suited for players who want a damage sponge who can unleash devastating elemental attacks. The Gravitar is a scientist class vault hunter proficient with high-tech gadgets and contraptions.

Vex, the Siren, comes with phase energy abilities
Photo Credit: 2K/ Gearbox

I chose Vex, the Siren, for my playthrough. The vault hunter wields supernatural phase energy and can use it to call minions to fight alongside her or incarnate into a more powerful phase form to deal more damage. A vault hunter comes with three distinct Action Skills that are all tied to a corresponding skill tree. While you can only equip one Action Skill at a time, you can keep investing points across three skill trees to experiment within your vault hunter class. Skill trees are largely composed of passive skills, but they also include augments and capstones that, when equipped, enhance or modify your Action Skills. Borderlands 4 presents the most versatile and customisable skill tree in the series, allowing for variety in each class. Even though you're locked to a vault hunter in a single playthrough, the three skill trees offer enough options to tailor your playstyle to your liking.

Borderlands 4 also ups the visual ante, but there's a cost to it, as well. The game maintains the series' trademark cell-shaded style, but dials up the detail and variety in environments. There's a lot on your screen at any given point, but the overall image is always cohesive, never chaotic. Guns especially look great, and the game adds visual variety through weapon skins and customisation options. On the PS5, Borderlands 4 runs well, especially after patches that addresses some of the performance issues at launch. The game, however, drops a few frames during intense shootouts.

Borderlands 4's cell-shaded visuals are the series' most detailed yet
Photo Credit: 2K/ Gearbox (Screenshot - Manas Mitul)

Despite a few technical issues and familiar flaws of open-world design, Borderlands 4 is a robust first-person shooter that is bursting at its seams with things on offer. It's a beefy package that you'll likely sink dozens of hours into, beyond the main story. Gearbox has promised a ton of post-launch content in the shape of legendary weapon drops, new missions and boss fights, and a story expansion in 2026 that will add a new vault hunter and a new map region. And it helps that there is no other live service looter shooter aside from Destiny 2 to challenge Borderlands 4 and its unique place and relevance in the medium.

Borderlands 4 also nails the fundamentals. A game about guns must pack a lot of firepower and Gearbox truly went overboard in that department. This is the most fun I've had in a shooter since Helldivers 2. The expanded scope presents a next step in the evolution of the series, but it also comes with its drawbacks. The game's open world becomes a natural habitat for the chaos of Borderlands, but it also often stretches the game thin. The relative linearity of previous titles kept the helter-skelter madness of Borderlands in a container to the series' benefit; Borderlands 4 drives an axe through that container with glee.