Once a games franchise hits its fourth outing, it is certainly mature – yet maturity is not a word generally associated with Borderlands, the colourful and performatively edgy looter-shooter from Texas. This series is characterised by a pervasive and polarising streak of distinctly adolescent humour. But in Borderlands 4, developer Gearbox has addressed that issue: it features plenty of returning characters in its storyline, but this time around they are more world-weary and less annoyingly manic. Borderlands has finally matured, to an extent. And not before time.
Borderlands 4 still flings jokes at you thick and fast, and they are still hit-or-miss, but at least its general humour is a bit more sophisticated than before. It retains the distinctive cel-shaded graphical style and gun and ordnance-heavy gameplay that people have always loved. Indeed, it throws even more guns at you than any of its predecessors, and with a little work at filtering out the best ones, you will find plenty of absolute gems with which to take on hordes of straightforward enemies and more interesting bosses. A decent storyline emerges after the formulaic first few hours, eventually sending you off on some unexpected, fun and sometimes gratifyingly surreal tangents.
The action takes place on Kairos, a planet new to the series, which feels more coherent than any of Borderlands’ previous settings. Kairos’s inhabitants are suffering under the totalitarian yoke of the tyrant Timekeeper, so you must rouse the downtrodden natives into joining your resistance movement, liberating tribes of folk by eliminating the Timekeeper’s oppressive lieutenants and removing surveillance-and-control implants from their necks. The deeper you get into the story, the more sidetracks and digressions you find, from dungeon-like vaults stashed with loot to environmental puzzles.
You play as one of four vault-hunters – a Siren with summoning powers, an Exosoldier super-soldier, a hammer-wielding tank called a Forgeknight and a tech-wielding Gravitar. Each has battlefield skills that are crucial when you’re up against it, giving you the chance to spawn scythe-wielding phantom reapers, turrets, or defensive shields. The usual high-quality shooting is present and correct, but movement has been greatly improved: you get a grapple, a hover-bike and a huge jump-and-glide, all of which come in handy in the heat of frenetic battle and when you’re out exploring. They also translate well to the series’ famed co-op play, which supports up to four players.
Borderlands 4 is a big game – the main storyline takes 20 to 30 hours to complete, and there’s plenty to do afterwards. It is not entirely frictionless: sometimes you need to traverse huge distances in its missions, and the directional indicator that helps you along the way is annoyingly erratic. And it has been buggy at launch: playing on PC, it has occasionally crashed on me, even after a huge patch, and early players have reported problems with stuttering and other performance issues. But Borderlands needed to grow up a bit, and that’s exactly what it has done, without losing its essential charm. Its top-quality shooter action might be comfortably familiar, but it’s also an awful lot less annoying than it used to be.
