Borderlands games have always been known for a handful of distinctive elements: They’re over-the-top looter-shooters that feature a striking cell-shaded art style; scores and scores of bizarre, randomly generated weapons; eccentric, oddball bad guys; and a constant flood of absurd and satirical humor. All accompanied by blast-your-foes-into-bloody-chunks violence.
Other game franchises have jockeyed for a similar space in your gaming lineup, but few have hit upon the same bloody elbow to the ribcage formula. And Borderlands 4 hopes to keep the trend going while kicking things up a notch
Like its predecessors, Borderlands 4 gives gamers the option of playing as one of four different Vault Hunters. They’re outlaw mercenaries who drive the game’s narrative action forward as they seek out skill boosts, loot, weapons and treasure-filled Vaults left behind by a long-dead civilization. And in this case, your anti-hero vault hunter is also vying to shove an alien-tech-empowered baddie called the Timekeeper off his planet-ruling throne.
All four Vault Hunter choices possess unique skill trees and abilities. Which, of course, gives you the option of choosing one that best fits your playstyle.
Amon the Forgeknight, for instance, is the defensive-focused tank who uses a shield, axes and a whip in melee combat. Rafa is an Exo-soldier with a robotic suit that engages ranged shoulder cannons or melee lightsabers.
Vex the Siren is a summoner who creates ghostly fighters to join her while she blasts foes with elemental attacks. And Harlowe the Gravitar is an engineer with high-tech gadgets who specializes in gravitational bubbles and other crowd-control abilities.
A big change this go ‘round is Borderlands 4’s open-world map. Players can strike off in any direction on central and side quests. That said, the game navigation feels more clunky than that of past entries in the franchise. (A new robotic sidekick, Echo-4, can be called up for extra guidance, with mixed results.)
The game also improves its movement mechanics. Sliding and climbing are much easier. And they’re joined by new grappling and gliding abilities which allow players to, for instance, grab and pull containers to them and let them soar over large gaps in the terrain.
Borderlands 4 can be played offline in single-player mode or in local co-op play. But multiplayer and cross-play with different gaming consoles will, of course, require an internet connection.
Gamers play as “outlaws,” but they end up fighting for the betterment of groups of people seeking freedom from the heavy-handed and manipulative rule of a deadly tyrant and his bloodthirsty generals. So, many of the quests end up being self-sacrificial and heroic.
The game’s new customizable Vault Hunters, along with its seamlessly open world and improved game mechanics, also make the gameplay more enjoyable than some past entries.
This is, however, a very messy shooter. In a number of ways.
On the violence side of the ledger, there are scores and scores of pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, shotguns, rocket launchers, elemental magic attacks and blades of every stripe which are used to stab, riddle and rip humans, animals and robotic foes into large, splattering chunks. Enemy attacks can also be frenetic and swarming. Body parts get torn free, brains bounce to the ground, entrails paint the scenery, and torsos melt into goop. (There is a gore censer available in the game menu, but it isn’t applied to the blood-spewing cinematics.)
The language can get goopy at times as well, with uses of f- and s-words and a wide variety of other curses and crudities. Dialogue wanders into sexually themed innuendo at times, too. We don’t see any physical interactions, but characters joke crudely about those encounters. (We also see sexualized phallic shaped objects.) And some of the female characters put jiggling flesh on display.
On the gameplay side of things, it should also be noted that the battle interactions tend to be much more geared for co-op play in this latest entry, making the conquests more daunting for those playing solo.
And the game’s story has also been given some tone tweaks that players may find surprising. There’s still some of that prototypical snarky Borderlands humor here, but overall things feel more serious. Which in turn makes limb-shattering violence seem more serious as well, while the interactions between characters feel somewhat dry and unmemorable.
Borderlands games have always been very M-rated and not geared for younger family members’ ears and eyes (despite the fact that these titles are cartoonish looking and sounding). This newest entry somehow feels even less family friendly. And it’s fairly rough around the, uh, borders, too.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
