Borderlands 4 hands-on: Yeah, it's just 'more Borderlands,' but Gearbox's consistency is respectable and there's a cool hoverbike

There are no big surprises here: Borderlands 4 is more Borderlands. But if you're all extraction-shootered-out and a regular old co-op campaign is what you're looking for (I can sympathize), then I think you've got something to look forward to. Specifically: a big world, some fun new movement abilities, a cool hover bike, and fewer pop culture gags (at least so they say!).

The majority of my time in Borderlands 4, which I played for a few hours during a visit to 2K's offices last month, was spent exploring its uncharacteristically green opening environment. It's set on a new planet, Kairos, which had been hidden from the universe until series protagonist Lilith went and teleported a moon into its orbit at the end of Borderlands 3.

That has to be a cosmic war crime, but there's a silver lining: The disaster disrupted the rule of an order-obsessed dictator called The Timekeeper, and the latest crew of vault hunters have now arrived on a planet in revolt.

First contact

The grassy Kairos landing site isn't as evocative of Old West outlaws and post-apocalyptic gang warfare as Pandora's badlands, and I slightly missed those Mad Max vibes. Like previous Borderlands games, however, Borderlands 4 will take us to multiple environments, including in this case a snowy region, the "shattered lands of Carcadia Burn," and The Timekeeper's fortress city.

The journey may be ever-so-slightly more serious than we're used to: After the excesses of Borderlands 3, which included a poop launcher called the Porta-Pooper 5000 and an extended Tommy Wiseau impression, Gearbox has promised to keep Borderlands 4's sense of humor more grounded in the Borderlands universe. The first important NPC I met stressed staying hydrated, so it feels like the studio followed through.

In fact, I never thought I'd be saying this, but I wouldn't have minded if my time with Borderlands 4 had been zanier. I'm sure I'll think differently whenever Claptrap shows up, though. Borderlands may have been retuned, but it hasn't been transformed.

Case in point: The new movement abilities, like grappling, double jumping, and gliding, will be familiar to any modern FPS player. And they're fun. I liked using them to quickly close the distance on hiding enemies and get above them. The butt stomp attack (technically a fist slam, but whatever) you can perform while airborne is fun to spam, too.

A whole new world

My favorite part of the demo was the hoverbike. Unlike in previous Borderlands games, where you have to find a Catch-a-Ride station to "digistruct" vehicles, Borderlands 4 equips you with a "Digirunner" that can be materialized whenever and wherever you want with just a button press, at least out in the overworld.

It makes this amazing noise, a sort of harmonic fan blade whine that tickles the brain stem. It can rotate on a dime and strafe, which makes aiming its front-mounted minigun relatively easy, but it's also fast and its momentum prevents it from changing direction instantly, so it takes finesse to round corners and thread gaps between trees.

I only wished that when I plowed into enemies the bike would send them flying, but I didn't manage any good punts. Maybe I just needed to try harder.

The more convenient access to transportation pairs with Gearbox's refrain that this Borderlands is the biggest Borderlands yet. I had to stay in my preview playpen, so I didn't get to experience that bigness myself, but there was lots to find in the hilly grasslands I was constrained to.

Granted, Borderlands is mostly about finding guns and shooting people with them, so I mostly found guns and people to shoot. (And robots and aliens, to be fair.)

During one excursion, I swam through a partially submerged drain pipe into a secret base full of resistance fighters, where I found a cache of guns. I also shot my way into a little facility and pressed a button to release a tethered weather balloon thing and although the premise escapes me, this somehow awarded me a vault key fragment that in the full game could be used to access one of the vaults of legend, challenging side activities.

You can also zip up the rope to the balloon high in the sky and then survey the landscape as you glide down. Why you can glide wasn't explained, but I didn't really care. I landed on a pillar I wouldn't have otherwise been able to reach, which earned me more guns, as you might've guessed. It felt like something you'd do in an old 3D platformer.

The looting

The procedural 'bazillion guns' loot system that defines Borderlands alongside its art style and sassy robot has seen some tweaks—nothing wild, but it all seems reasonable.

Gearbox says that legendary guns will feel more legendary this time around, as they've lowered the drop rates, but that regular guns ought to be fun to use, too. Instead of using ammo, heavy weapons like rocket launchers now reload on a cooldown, so you don't have to save them just for bosses. And guns can now be made with parts from multiple manufacturers, which is helpful because certain equippable bonuses are tied to manufacturers.

Since I only had a few hours to play Borderlands 4, I mostly stuck to the gun selection Gearbox kitted me out with, and I was impressed by the variety in my curated armory. I used multiple sniper rifles with different firing mechanisms: A classic bolt-action rifle, one that fired two quick shots, one that charged up briefly and then fired a bunch of slow but powerful projectiles with a distinct pew pew pew sound.

I encountered lots of fun secondary fire modes, too: grenades, rockets, a disc that bounces between enemies.

My favorite gun was Amassing Buzzymuzz, an assault rifle with a secondary grenade launcher, huge ammo capacity, and a fire rate fast enough to make shots sound almost like a continuous tone. Its "Ripper-Licensed Mag" meant it had to charge before firing, complicating its handling but also emphasizing its power as a bullet hose.

The shooting

My time with Buzzymuzz took place in the second half of my session, when I left behind the starting area and loaded a save with a level 20 character—Rafa, the Exo-Soldier, who's all about firepower—at the start of a Primordial Vault, a challenging side dungeon with a boss. (2K isn't releasing video of this part of the game yet, so I can't show it to you.)

The vault was a series of floating rock platforms under the dim glow of celestial gasses, each of which has to be cleared of waves of enemies on the way to a boss fight.

Some of Borderlands 4's baddies are, essentially, wizards: Floating wardens with big hats who shoot sparkly magic at you. There are mechanical martial artists with glowing red faces that spin giant blades at you. There are badass dudes in golden armor. And as I backpedaled and fended off the swarms of these guys I was always at risk of blundering over the edge of the level or into a lava pit—good thing for the new double jump.

It was tough going it alone, but when my Buzzymuzz was buzzing I had a few satisfying gun-ballet moments: Buzzymuzz a guy half to death, strafe behind a rock pillar to switch to the secondary grenade launcher, pop back out to launch a grenade into his face, flick one of Rafa's throwing knives into the head of another guy, jump over a gap in the rocks. Arena shooter ninja stuff.

Bossed around

I did not look quite so much like a gunkata master when I got to the Vault's boss, a giant metal scorpion ape who attacked with a pair of pointy, segmented tails. Jumping over his sweeping tail attacks wasn't too hard, but he also had a piercing attack and I misunderstood the related visual cue for an embarrassingly long time, dodging too early.

It's not the most novel boss design stuff, but I'm glad he and the rest of the vault weren't a pushover. (I did get it done in co-op thanks to another previewer who was better at it than me despite just coming off a very long flight; thank you to that guy!)

Back when there was more hair on my head, I reviewed the original Borderlands. I said at the time that it wasn't as charming as Fallout 3 or Half-Life 2, and that the story didn't matter much, and that the quests were boring MMO-style 'go here and kill things' tasks, but that it was really about "finding weapons and shooting things with them" and that was good enough for me.

Almost 16 years later, a lot of people actually do care about the Borderlands story, and I appreciate more now that it at least has a signature style, because there's some excruciatingly bland stuff out there. (At least I feel something about Claptrap.)

Otherwise, my feelings haven't changed a lot, and there's something to respect in Gearbox's consistency. While Bungie struggles to drum up excitement for Marathon, Gearbox is still refining the same four-player co-op shooter format that made it famous. Words like "extraction," "roguelike," and "survival elements" are nowhere to be seen.

There are some new Unreal Engine 5 lighting flourishes that I didn't really find necessary, but if that's the only modern excess, then I applaud the restraint. The main thing you do in Borderlands 4 is find weapons and shoot things with them, except now there's double jumping and a cool bike. Fine by me.