"Borderlands 4": More weapons! More weapons! MORE WEAPONS!
The looter-shooter madness known as "Borderlands" is entering its fourth round. And it's not getting calmer with age, but increasingly fidgety.
(Image: Gearbox)
“Borderlands,” released in 2009, was one of those success stories that nobody really expected: originally planned as a gritty, realistic shooter in the “Gears of War” wake, the developers at Gearbox Software radically changed the graphic style meanwhile, gave the whole thing a comic book look, made loot collecting the central gameplay element, emphasized the many, many, many, many possible weapon combinations extra-doll, and landed a million-dollar direct hit.
Generally speaking, if you know one "Borderlands," you know them all. Anyone familiar with the gameplay of the series will not experience any surprises whatsoever in Borderlands 4. You still take on the role of one of four "Vault Hunters," who are explosively introduced in the fast-paced intro. Collecting loot and the associated improvement of your character and their equipment is still the central core of the game principle. You still run, jump, and drive through a reasonably open world; engage in lots of bombastically staged battles; endure the squeaky chatter of the “Claptrap” chatterbox; and collect loot, loot, loot, and then more loot.
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Quantity, quantity, quantity!
Everything is full of loot: enemies, plants, animals, garbage cans, grills, cupboards, crates, plastic bags, fridges, outhouses – if you can kill or use it, money, new weapons, ammunition, or items pop out. There is regular loot, rare loot, super-rare loot, and legendary loot. Something always lights up somewhere. There are extra rewards for killing enemies with a sniper rifle but without a scope for killing so many enemies of a certain type or with a certain type of ammunition.
What you then receive depends on your player level on the one hand and on chance on the other. Most of the glittering stuff that jumps out at you is crap that you can't use, but at least you can sell it at the appropriate vending machines. Every now and then there's a weapon, an upgrade, or an item that fits in well with your current equipment or personal play style. But like a lottery, a jackpot here is mainly a matter of luck.
More weapons than in Texas
No wonder, as Gearbox Software is slowly testing the limits of mathematics with its random number generator: “Borderlands” has always had the motto “MORE GUNS!” We currently have around 30 billion possible equipment combinations—if you want to try them all out, you'll be busy for an afternoon or two.
"Borderlands 4" im Test (11 Bilder)
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)This surreal number is, of course, great for marketing materials, but you have less of it in the game itself. You simply check whether the newly acquired pistols, shotguns, rocket launchers, or sniper rifles are somehow better than the ones you've just equipped. See if you prefer to do additional corrosion, fire, or ice damage. See if you can get to grips with weapon effects such as the powerful “Singularity,” which sucks in enemies and temporarily incapacitates them, allowing you to dismantle them very quickly and safely. Or spend a lot of time in the ever-expanding talent tree for each fighter.
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Or to put it another way: just to get through all the systems that the game offers you, you have to invest some time. Not to mention the mid-double-digit number of hours it takes to play through each character.
