Borderlands 4 has debuted after many months of intense promotions and marketing campaigns from 2K and Gearbox, and fans everywhere are sinking their teeth into the first seamless, open-world game in the series. Not everyone is enjoying it, though, and on Steam in particular, the negative reviews are coming hard and fast.
In the hours after Borderlands 4’s release, thousands of reviews cropped up, 41% of which are negative. They’re mostly bagging on the game’s optimization and performance on PC, which isn’t looking good.
What’s Wrong with Borderlands 4?
Borderlands 4 has a few niggly issues that players are struggling to contend with. For console players, it’s elements like a missing POV slider, but for PC players, it’s sometimes the inability to play the game, period.
The most upvoted review on Steam is a negative one, with the user writing:
None of my friends can get the game to start past main menu
When you quit and restart, it doesn’t close the original instance and it still uses full memory
It doesn’t matter how good the game is. AAA devs deserve low reviews on their games until they learn to release working titles. Indie devs release working games but multi million dollar companies can’t? Pathetic.
Another user, who received a review copy of the game for free, stressed that they’ve been a Borderlands fan since day dot, but they’ve branded Borderlands 4 ‘Stutterlands 4’.
The extensive review bags fairly heavily on the game:
On paper, Borderlands 4 looks gorgeous. Unreal Engine 5’s lighting, reflections, and seamless world transitions give it a scale and detail the franchise never had before. But the moment you actually play, the shine fades. Stutters, frame drops, and bizarre loading hiccups pop up constantly. Even top-tier GPUs like the RTX 4080 and 5080 are struggling to keep 60FPS in 4K with DLSS on, and if the cutting edge hardware can’t do it, what chance do the average players have?
More than 4,000 Steam users reacted to a review that was short, simple, and precise: “Terrible, terrible performance. Worst I’ve ever seen. Turned it down to Low graphics presents and couldn’t hit 60 FPS, even with FSR upscaling on my RX 6900 XT.”
I played an hour of Borderlands 4 at Gamescom and had a brilliant time, and that was with a pre-release version of the game. I can’t say what specification I was playing on, but I had no issues. I’m yet to dive into the game myself, so I can’t speak to any performance issues I might have on my home rig.
Are you experiencing these issues? Let me know on the Insider Gaming forum.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that a Super Mario Galaxy domain has been discovered
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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Take 2 putting out flops Gearbox needs to go and so does Randy. Remember he overhyped this game.