Borderlands 4 is pretty darned slick. Gearbox had promised a grand overhaul of the game’s movement systems, a rejig of how weapons and customisation all works, and obviously a whole new planet to rampage across as a Vault Hunter, and I could definitely feel a lot of that when jumping into the game at Gamescom.
It’s really the enhanced movement that stood out for me. Gearbox has thrown everything into this – baby, bathwater and the kitchen sink – to give perhaps the broadest movement options found in a first person shooter. With a dash, a double jump, a glide, a grappling hook, and even all the Vault Hunters having learnt to swim, the only thing that’s really left for Borderlands 5 is straight up teleporting everywhere!
Beyond just letting you explore the bigger, broader open areas that Gearbox have promised for the game world, the enhanced movement will really allow for more front-foot combat styles, helping close gaps quickly to unload that spicy shotgun you have, while grapple points can be a great way get to elevated positions as a sniper to unload. Though, of course, there’s nothing that’s going to stop you just keeping your distance and blasting away, as you would have done in previous games.
Speaking of weapons, there’s now a myriad of new possibilities — and that’s saying something, considering how broad, sprawling and crazy the options were before. There’s a handful of new weapon manufacturers that define their particular styles, so Order weapons are charge and release, while Daedalus guns can use multiple ammo types. But there’s much more control over them thanks to now being able to combine mods and properties, blending the series’ distinctive weapon tweaks to let you create something that little bit more special.
A Jakobs pistol, for example, has critical hits that will see the bullets ricochet to nearby enemies, but why not add a Tediore accessory that gives your gun legs, so you can thrown it on the ground and have it keep blasting your enemies? Or a Maliwan SMG that has radiation and cryo elements to switch between, but with a Tediore accessory that has you throw on reload, homing in on enemies and exploding into four further grenades? Things can get pretty wild…
Another great twist is being able to replace the typical grenade or ordinance slot with another weapon, giving you a heavy weapon outlet that’s surprisingly just on a cooldown. You won’t have many bullets each time, but when you can reliably trigger another significant damage dealer, it liberates you from the pain of running out of ammo for your best guns.
We got to play with Harlowe for the first time, trying out the new Gravatar class with some high tech options for her Ability. We stuck with the CHROMA Accelerator for her Action Skill, firing off slow-moving energy pocket orbs that deal Cryo damage and can explode on command to deal further damage. Her alternate Actions put enemies in Stasis, again with a damaging effect, or place a Flux Generator that projects a damaging field to enemies while granting allies Overshield.
Battling through the Vault of Inceptus for this demo took us down to a series of floating rock islands in the foggy aether, battling against Seneschal robots and soldier types; animalistic Pinheads which charged at us; and tougher, named enemies to boot. We battled through each area to power up the bounce pad to the next area, ultimately flying through the sky to a hollowed out arena to face the Primordial Guardian Inceptus — a big, broad metallic-looking creature with two stinging tails and shifting attacks and abilities.
Initially it bounds around this space, leaping in to attack with a sweep of its tails, before jumping up to the roof and spawning poisonous pustules adding hazards to the ground for you to avoid. That’s nothing compared to when it’s folded up in a cocoon of leaves, spreading a poisonous gas on the floor that forces you to adapt and stay up in the air.
It’s a fairly challenging boss battle, and really the main shame is that I don’t feel like I made the most of all of the gameplay possibilities that the game presents me. Much like min-maxing your builds in a Diablo game, you can often just go in blasting and have a nice time, but dropping into the middle of the game and with completely new loadouts to use, I didn’t quite grasp the best way to use Harlowe’s Action Skill — tricky when trying to target a fast-moving boss— and I failed to notice the grapple points in the final boss arena, which would have really helped me to stay up and away from the poisoned gas clouds. I was trying instead to jump and glide to stay off the ground, which was not entirely successful…
But, what I did see from this all-too-brief hands on opportunity was the potential that all of these additions off. Having enjoyed the earlier games in the Borderlands series, but skipping out on the last game, Borderlands 4 looks promising after, and is likely to pull me back into the looter shooter fold when it launches on 12th September.
