Critics Review Borderlands 4: The Shooter Nearly Becomes the Best in the Series
Diana Golenko
With just hours left before release, critics have published their reviews of Borderlands 4. At the time of writing, the game holds a score of 84 on Metacritic and 85 on OpenCritic, making it the second-best entry in the main series.
Selected review scores:
- PC Games — 9/10;
- Screen Rant — 9/10;
- GamesRadar+ — 8/10;
- VGC — 8/10;
- IGN — 8/10;
- Windows Central — 8/10.
Overall impressions: according to critics, Borderlands 4 keeps the franchise’s signature traits while refreshing the formula with new features. It takes a more grounded approach compared to previous entries, placing greater emphasis on character motivation.
The trademark humor, though slightly toned down, remains intact, even as the writers attempt to give more depth to both the cast and the central theme—though the latter falls somewhat short. Movement mechanics now resemble Doom Eternal and Halo, while combat has been expanded with acrobatic mechanics and a massive arsenal of weapons. The story is once again simple, serving mainly as a backdrop for chaotic fun.
Ultimately, Borderlands 4 gets the crucial things right that you would expect from a Borderlands game. It's a loot shooter, and the looting and shooting works so well that we don't want to stop playing.
Borderlands 4 extracts the essence of a finale shootout and spins it across an entire game, with a staggering amount of guns allowing for pure carnage. While the game's story and tone fall far from those heights, at times it simply doesn't matter as much as shooting six robots out of the sky with an electrified explosive gun.
Borderlands 4 is a badass open-world evolution of a wonderfully unhinged looter-shooter series that needed to try something new, and it largely nails the biggest swings it takes.
For context, Borderlands 2 (2012) remains the highest-rated entry in the franchise, with a Metacritic score of 89. Borderlands 4 launches today on PC, followed by September 12 for Xbox Series X/S and PS5, and October 3 for Nintendo Switch 2. A full breakdown of everything we know about the game ahead of release is also available.
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