With action-packed gunplay, an innumerable quantity of badass guns to loot, and some of the most crass humor in gaming, the Borderlands games have held a special place in my heart since way back in 2009. But it’s also a series that practically invented the looter shooter genre, then saw itself fall behind the curve as a renaissance of RPG-infused multiplayer shooters dominated the space. With Borderlands 4, the team at Gearbox seems eager to take some big swings in hopes of reclaiming the throne of firearms and shell casings they themselves built, and whether it’s the greatly improved shooting mechanics, an interesting revamp to RPG mechanics, an entirely fresh setting, a slew of new characters, or a more grounded tone in its story, the handful of hours I played left me fairly confident that I will find myself pulled back into this wonderfully weird world of psychopaths and extremely irritating robots.

I Need Guns

There’s a whole heck of a lot of novel things Borderlands 4 tries, but the first thing that immediately jumped out at me was the focus on movement. I counted no fewer than five additional ways to keep your vault hunter in motion while hunting for treasure and blasting wild animals, including double jumping, gliding through the air, dashing from side to side, pulling yourself around with a grappling hook, and even swimming – which is especially great, because dying every time one of my toes got wet was always pretty annoying in the previous games. Each of these traversal options added an interesting dimension to navigating arenas while sniping mercenaries and lobbing explosives in the faces of the local fauna, and also went a long way to speeding up how quickly I could close distance between me and the baddies in my path. That was a welcome change, because I’d always found myself frustrated by how slowly I move in old Borderlands entries. If there’s anything worrisome about all these extra ways to get around, it’s that there are so many of them I often forgot to use them. Being able to double jump, glide, and grapple hook across a room all in the same motion honestly feels like too much power, at least in the hands of a rookie like me who only had a few hours to familiarize myself with it all. By the end of the demo, though, I felt a lot better about my ability to keep myself in motion while bringing my arsenal to bear upon swarms of monsters, but it definitely feels like it’ll take some getting used to.

Borderlands 4 Switch 2 Screenshots View 16 Images

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Borderlands game without the promise of a bottomless cache of weapons to discover, each designed to inject a little anarchy into combat. While I only got a small sampling of what’s in store, there honestly weren’t a ton of things I wasn’t expecting, even with the additional weapon manufacturers introducing some new stufft. One of the new gunmakers, Ripper, seem to have a lot in common with the COV weapons from Borderlands 3, as they need to spin up before they can be fired, but then pile on a heaping helping of lead into enemies, while Daedelus reminded me a lot of the Dahl weapons that offer multiple ammo types to switch between. The only distinct new type I got to try out was called The Order, which have an alternate firing mode – like a pistol I found that could create gravity wells instead of shooting normal bullets. Most of what I played was from pretty early in the campaign, and I only found a single legendary weapon during my travels, so it’s fairly likely there are more surprises I haven’t seen, but at least on the surface I wasn’t too shocked with what I found in that regard.

Get Built

What seems significantly more distinct are the new buildcrafting options, including a healing item, called a Repkit, that can be used in addition to the usual pickups you find in chests and pick off the sorry corpses of slain foes. These add an interesting dimension to defining your build, as you could just play it safe and equip the item that offers the most healing with the shortest cooldown, but bolder vault hunters might instead favor one that intentionally offers lesser healing benefits to instead grant some other effect every time the item is used. For example, I found one that caused a large explosion of cryo to explode around me whenever I used it, versus another that restored significantly more health and could be used twice before it needed to be cooled down.h Depending on how risky you want to play it, or the specific strategy behind your build, I could see this opening up a lot of doors for clever min-maxers to do some pretty fun stuff.

Play

Each Borderlands has a different roster of vault hunters to play, and this entry is no different. I got the chance to try out Vex, the magical siren whose main focus (at least with my setup) was in summoning NPC companions to help me fight off mobs, and Rafa, a soldier who had a bunch of high-tech gadgets to unload onto anyone stupid enough to get in his way – including some melee blades that made short work of anyone within arm’s reach, or some shoulder-mounted cannons that automatically helped me lather folks in lead. It’s al ways hard to tell just how awesome each of these bonafide badasses is going to be after just a few hours, but I was already very much heartened by the number of interesting options to pick from, and I already felt myself transforming into an armed-to-the-teeth instrument of death, even as low-leveled as I was. Also, some of the perks I saw on those trees looked downright spicy, like the ability to disconnect Rafa’s shoulder-mounted turrets to convert them into a stationary battle station, so consider me pretty hyped to try out a late-game build.

Story Time

Another interesting change coming with Borderlands 4 is the new, clearly darker setting and story. Taking place on a new world called Kairos, the world has been dominated by an oppressive, immortal being known as the Timekeeper, who controls the population using cybernetic implants. But naturally, the actions of the vault keepers in recent Borderlands entries (which I won’t spoil here) has ruined the perfect, unjust order on Kairos, throwing the place into chaos, and opening the door for you and your friends to shoot everything in the face and score some sweet new loot. Noice.

Play

The change in tone is pretty clear, and even though you’ve still got the usual cheeky characters, sexual innuendos, and over-the-top gore, there’s also quite a bit of darkness and the beginnings of what seems to be a significantly more grounded story in play, which will hopefully wash away some of the shallowness found in Borderlands 3 – specifically where the antagonists are concerned. It’s also worth noting the intentional shift away from Pandora to focus on this new world. This, combined with the fact that a lot of the cast is entirely new (at least in the sections I played), makes things feel a bit like a soft reboot that gives a fresh start to tell new stories compared to prior games that have mostly leaned pretty heavily on the locations and characters established in their predecessors.

“ Borderlands 4 feels a bit like a soft reboot that gives a fresh start to tell new stories compared to prior games that have mostly leaned pretty heavily on the locations and characters established in their predecessors.

I’m all for this shift, honestly, because although Borderlands was my addiction for many years, it’s also pretty clearly been on its backfoot as a series, as the looter shooter space has both evolved and become more crowded, especially where its ongoing live-service peers are concerned. To be clear, I don’t want to see Borderlands chase the GaaS model and fundamentally change what it is, but it’s nice to see that Gearbox seems willing to take some sizeable risks in pursuit of evolving the series, because I genuinely think it needs to do so if it wants to keep the attention of longtime fans like myself.

Play

That’s not to say that there isn’t a ton of good, old fashioned Borderlands goodness inside Borderlands 4 – quite the opposite. I still spent ludicrous amounts of time dabbing on loads of enemies who shouted expletives at me after running out of darkened spawn points, watched colorful loot explode out of enemies like fireworks, and ran doglike enemies over with my vehicle, which is now very awesomely available to be summoned anywhere on the map, rather than having to be picked up at a designated spawn point (thank God). There are also perilous vaults to be raided and massive, badass bosses to take down in the name of loot, XP, and bragging rights – which I unfortunately can’t show you today, because of some unfortunate restrictions on what I’m allowed to showcase at this time. But I can say that the one boss I fought a number of times is perhaps the most mechanics-heavy and interesting enemy I’ve encountered in Borderlands, and if it’s at all representative of the level of quality we can expect from Borderlands 4, then we’re in for quite a treat.

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After several hours dipping my toes into what is sure to be a massive looter shooter, I’m much more optimistic about Borderlands 4’s odds of recapturing my affections after years apart. Stay tuned in the coming days, when I’m allowed to show off some later game footage and a boss fight that I took down a number of times in an effort to grind out some unique weapons – old habits die hard, I guess.

What questions do you have about Borderlands 4? We’ll do a follow-up video soon based on the questions you leave in the Comments below. And for more on the biggest upcoming games, check out our recent previews of Resident Evil Reqiuem and Ninja Gaiden 4, and for everything else keep hunting for vaults with IGN.