Deep Dive in the Gearbox Borderland 4The seemingly endless combat system surprised me quite a bit. Evolving some of the best bits of the previous game with cherry picking and adding some new layers, the amount promised is amazing. But how do they feel when everything comes together? Gamescom has tried one of the new primitive safes, which allows you to get around 25 minutes of practical time with Borderlands 4.
Let one thing be clear – the shooting, no matter what weapon you are swinging around in Borderlands 4 – slap. In this short session with FPS games, I was dealing damage with SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, light machine guns, pistols and even catastrophic disc launchers. All the guns I used have punches and they all have parts visible too. Most people had switchable modifiers that could change fire rates, deal scorch damage, irradiate enemies, and hop during that time. The slump times of some of these weapons felt a bit unfair and sometimes broke the flow of combat, but it is a small complaint and can definitely fight attachments and abilities.
To run through the Inceptus safe, I played as a Viking-inspired Amon and had access to enough skill points to embody my desired skill tree. Of the three options available, I invested in CyberNetics Tree. This causes Amon to fire in one hand and an ice x on the other, causing the controller trigger to determine what I want to fire. It was a high damage option to get me out of trouble, and thanks to my expert (hurriedly selected) skill choice, it also generously had a short cooldown.
The three skill trees you can choose for Amon Build look a little impressive at first. It’s a bit impressive, especially when you find some super detailed explanations embodied in exact damage count, multiplier, duration, etc. Due to session time pressure, we didn’t fully analyze all options, but we ended up awarding reduced cooldowns, damage to bonus abilities, increased critical hit chances and damage, and added elemental effects. It’s a very deep system and should be much easier to navigate when you can’t throw it to the deep edge like I did.
The decision to move healing from ground pickup to actual items is another major addition. The ability to add additional buffs and effects makes it a valuable component of your build. My only complaint is that by playing with the controller, the decision to put it on the D-PAD means I stopped moving with the stick on my left hand and broke the momentum. But that should be able to be fixed with some remappings.
Also, movement feels more dynamic than ever, thanks to the addition of new mechanisms like dashes. As Amon, I wasn’t as sprite as I expected, so I was a bit overwhelmed by how I wasn’t doing anything from the legend of the apex. But there were certainly moments when Dash especially helped me out of the tough spots. It’s paired with some geysers scattered around the vault, so it will improve you into the air, which certainly felt much more static than previous Borderlands games.
So we have satisfying weapons, powerful abilities, trees of skill, healing items, and enhanced movements. That’s a good sign. But if these dungeons are intended for desirable, reproducible activities, I can’t say the same thing about the primitive vault itself. The environment on this rocky path was quite a note. There were a wide variety of enemy types to kill, but it certainly kept me on my toe, but it was literally the only purpose and killed the enemy. Jump into one section, defeat everything in as many times as you like, jump to the next area and do the same. There was a boss at the end, which offered a little more variety from what I saw, but due to the short length of the session I was hardly able to experience.
The difficulties really surprised me. I love challenging FPS games. Please don’t get me wrong. This was of course my first time playing Borderlands 4. I hope that it’s just my inexperienced product with Borderlands 4, but if the idea of increasing the difficulty of Gearbox is just a counter slaps you with a very difficult attack, I can’t see it being too fun. I also warn that I was playing this solo. This means that all the enemy’s attention was on me, which could make it easier to manage with the cooperative crew.
We hope the full release will provide more interesting activities. And we hope that the gearbox approach to providing a more challenging battle will not hinder the surprising work that has led to this combat system.
Borderlands 4 finds it great to play mechanically, but if the dungeons and other activities don’t offer an impressive and memorable experience, they simply become a looting farm. I can’t talk about the Overworld and its story’s mission, but I didn’t think the Vault in Inceptus was a compelling place. When the Borderlands 4 release date arrives in just a few days, I’m open to winning, but for now I’m a bit worried that my axis will be left in their lockers.
