I hope you like riding through open fields on a hover bike. PC screenshot taken by the author.

Borderlands 4 Is a Fascinating Mess

I’m not at all shocked the Switch 2 version was delayed

What happens when you take an engine that famously struggles to run large open world games smoothly, and then awkwardly jam a vast loot-based shooting experience into it with distressingly little thought towards technical optimization or player joy?

Borderlands 4.

I wasn’t planning to buy this game. The marketing did less than nothing for me, and the movie sapped so much fan goodwill that I’m shocked it didn’t also get the fourth game installment cancelled. I’ve played a ton of every other Borderlands title. I’m the sort of weird person who thinks Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is probably the best game in the franchise even though it was made on a shorter timetable and isn’t as brutally violent. The trademark blend of humor, action, and piles of loot found in Borderlands just does something for me, and I’ve always rooted for it in the past.

My overwhelming love of the series made me cave on buying the new one after just a few days…and wow, Borderlands 4 is certainly a thing. It feels like the development team at Gearbox couldn’t decide whether they wanted to make a true sequel or a full reboot, so they just sort of did both? On top of that, an upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 over their proven fork of Unreal Engine 4 has led to…