Borderlands 4 review: a confident return to form with sharper writing and bold movement

Five-star scores don’t come easy in games, yet that’s exactly what Radio Times handed to Borderlands 4. The verdict isn’t about spectacle alone. It’s about a series that finally marries its madcap energy to cleaner writing, smarter systems, and a huge technical step that makes the world feel whole for the first time. The punchline? It’s simply more fun than Borderlands has been in years.

A tighter script that keeps the chaos

The writing has been Borderlands’ love-it-or-leave-it trait since the second game broke through. The humor was always big, loud, and relentless; the problem was the balance. Borderlands 3 pushed into eye-roll territory often enough that some players tuned out. Borderlands 4 realigns the tone without losing the series’ personality. The jokes still fly, but they’re paced. Punchy scenes give way to quieter beats, and characters get space to breathe.

That change pays off in how story moments land. The script is still self-aware, still ridiculous, but it now leans into stakes when it needs to. Emotional beats are used with intention, not as quick detours. You feel the weight of choices, the fallout of a fight gone wrong, and why the vaults matter beyond being loot fountains. The end result is a story that treats its world like more than a punchline generator.

Characters benefit most. Side quest givers aren’t just quirky vendors; they have arcs that fold back into the main plot. The performance style hasn’t changed — big delivery, bold energy — but it’s anchored by clearer motivations. That cohesion helps late-game payoffs land harder than in previous entries, where jokes sometimes bulldozed momentum. Here, comic and dramatic notes push in the same direction.

Crucially, the script keeps variety in how it tells moments. One quest might go full slapstick. The next will pull in with a dramatic note, then swing back out without whiplash. It feels edited — in a good way. The series’ voice is intact, just better tuned.

Movement, guns, and challenge: the best it’s felt

Gameplay is where Borderlands 4 truly clicks. Two additions change everything: double jumps and gliding. They sound like small tweaks; they aren’t. Across fights and exploration, verticality opens up ambush routes, escape lines, and aerial combos. You can vault a balcony, tag a weak point midair, and drift behind cover in one fluid chain. After an hour with these tools, it’s hard to imagine going back.

The gunplay remains a franchise anchor — loud, tactile, and varied — but the weapon roster gets a strategic bump. New manufacturers slot in alongside reworked favorites, which means more distinct recoil patterns, alt-fires, and elemental tricks. The feel of a firefight shifts depending on what you’re holding, and the game nudges you to swap often rather than cling to one crutch.

The big innovation sits in weapon customization. Borderlands has flirted with crafting and parts systems before, but 4 pushes the idea further. You can mix components to build hybrids that carry signature effects across manufacturer lines. Think a precise burst rifle that also spits sticky explosives, or a shotgun whose pellets chain lightning from a rival brand’s tech. The late-game possibilities look wild, not because numbers balloon, but because interactions do. It’s less about raw damage creep and more about how effects bounce off each other.

That deeper buildcraft puts pressure on the sandbox to respond, and the game obliges with a sharper difficulty curve. Encounters hit harder and faster than prior entries. You’ll down more often, especially while experimenting with new movement options, but the loop encourages iteration rather than punishment. Failing forward is part of the rhythm: swap a part, reroute an approach, try a different altitude, and suddenly a stuck fight becomes a highlight. When a looter-shooter makes your next attempt feel exciting instead of tedious, it’s doing something right.

Boss design reflects that same split personality. Vault bosses shine — big mechanics, clean phases, and patterns that invite mastery. Main story bosses are a mixed bag. A few feel like holdovers from older design, more tanky sponges than puzzles. They’re not broken; they just don’t hit the high bar set elsewhere. It’s the lone consistent knock in an otherwise confident package.

The technical leap might be the quiet star. Borderlands has always wanted to be a road trip across a scrapyard galaxy, but previous games sliced that journey into chunks with loading gates. Here, the world finally breathes. You move across regions with far fewer interruptions, and the engine streams in big playspaces without tripping over itself. Series creator Randy Pitchford has said the team was waiting on hardware and tools to catch up to their ambitions, and this is what that looks like in practice: momentum preserved.

Seamlessness changes how you play. Exploration becomes sticky; you wander into a side path and actually follow it because you aren’t staring at progress bars. It also helps pacing between bombastic firefights. Quiet drifts across dusty flats or neon-stained outposts feel like part of the adventure instead of dead space between dungeons. That breathing room lets the writing cadence shine, too, since jokes and drama no longer reset at loading doors.

Performance matters in a looter-shooter, and the combat sandbox holds up when the screen gets busy. Effects stack, mobs swarm, and the frame delivery keeps the chaos readable. The new movement tools don’t break encounter flow either. Instead, they elevate the dance: enemies track vertical lines, arenas feature layered platforms, and hazards push you to move with intent rather than bunny-hop in panic.

All of this funnels into late-game tinkering. Hybrid guns plus a tougher baseline create a real incentive to refine builds. Elemental crossovers, status primers, and control tools come into play across the roster, turning inventory management into strategy rather than hoarding. It’s the rare looter that makes you excited to reorganize your stash because the next combination might unlock a new playstyle.

For series fans who fell off after feeling burned by tone or repetition, this entry reads like a course correction. The humor is still brash, but it’s not desperate. The systems are still extravagant, but they’re cleaner. The focus isn’t on bloat — it’s on frictionless fun, the moment-to-moment feel that keeps sessions stretching late. The Radio Times five-star score lines up with that picture: not perfect in every corner, but relentlessly entertaining where it counts.

Here are the standout wins:

• Movement overhaul with double jumps and gliding that redefines combat and exploration.
• Hybrid weapon customization that encourages creative, late-game builds.
• Sharper writing that balances comedy with dramatic beats and character arcs.
• Technical strides toward a seamless open world, reducing interruptions and improving pacing.

And the caveats worth flagging:

• Some main story bosses don’t match the quality of the Vault encounters.
• Higher baseline difficulty means more early wipeouts while learning the new movement and builds.

The bigger takeaway is about intent. Borderlands 4 doesn’t reinvent the genre; it retools the series’ identity around flow. The action flows because you move better. The narrative flows because scenes breathe. Exploration flows because technology gets out of the way. That coherence is what separates a loud shooter from a great one, and it’s why this return to form doesn’t feel nostalgic. It feels new.