Borderlands 4 delivers deep, tricky FPS combat, but it still hasn't hooked me

Gearbox's deep dives into Borderlands 4's seemingly endless combat systems have left me pretty stunned. Cherry-picking and evolving some of the best bits of the previous games, and adding in some new layers too, the amount being promised is mind-blowing. But when everything comes together, how do they feel? At Gamescom, I was able to get around 25 minutes of hands-on time with Borderlands 4, trying out one of its new Primordial Vaults, and while there were certainly some impressive aspects, it didn't sink its hooks into me quite like I hoped it would.

Let me make one thing clear - the gunplay, no matter what weapon you're wielding in Borderlands 4 - slaps. In just this brief session with the FPS game, I was dishing out damage with SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, light machine guns, pistols, and even a devastating disk launcher. Every gun I used felt punchy, and they all look the part too. Most had switchable modifiers that could change the fire rate, deal scorch damage, or irradiate enemies, and hopping between these on the fly feels great. Some sluggish reload times on a few of these weapons felt a bit unjustified and occasionally broke the combat flow, but that's only a minor complaint and one that can no doubt be combated with attachments and abilities.

For my run through the Vault of Inceptus, I played as the viking-inspired Amon and was given access to plenty of skill points to flesh out my desired skill tree. Of the three options available, I invested in the Cybernetics tree that gave me access to the Crucible ability, which sees Amon wield a fire ax in one hand and an ice ax in the other, with either trigger on my controller letting me decide which one I want to launch. It was a high-damage option to get me out of trouble and, thanks to my expert (see: hurriedly selected) skill choices, it also had a generously short cooldown.

The three skill trees you can choose from for your Amon build look a tad imposing at first, especially when you hover over them to find some super-detailed descriptions fleshed out with exact damage numbers, multipliers, durations, and the like. Due to the time pressure of my session, I didn't fully analyze every option, but the combination I ended up with helped reduce cooldowns, awarded bonus ability damage, increased critical hit chance and damage, added elemental effects, and more. It's a remarkably deep system, and when not thrown in the deep end as I was, it should be far easier to navigate.

The decision to move healing from ground pickups to an actual item you can trigger is another huge addition. With the ability to add additional buffs and effects, it also becomes a valuable component of your build. My only gripe is that, playing on a controller, the decision to put it on the d-pad meant I often had to stop moving with the left thumb stick to quickly pop a heal, which broke the momentum. But that should be fixable with some remapping.

Movement also feels more dynamic than ever before thanks to the addition of new mechanics like dashing. I have to admit, as Amon, I didn't feel quite as spritely as I expected, so I was a bit underwhelmed that I wasn't zipping about like something out of Apex Legends. But there were certainly moments where dashes, in particular, helped me out of tough spots. Paired with some of the geysers littered around the Vault, which would boost you up in the air, it certainly felt a lot less static than previous Borderlands games.

So, we've got satisfying weapons, powerful abilities, skill trees galore, healing items, and enhanced movement - with this much freedom and choice, I genuinely can't see the combat getting stale. That's a good omen. However, I can't say the same about the Primordial Vault itself, which does concern me a little if these dungeons are meant to be desirable, repeatable activities. The environment of this rocky pass was pretty one-note and, dare I say it, boring. There was a good variety of enemy types to slay, which certainly kept me on my toes, but that was literally the only objective - kill enemies. Hop to one section, defeat everything in as much time as you'd like, jump to the next area, and do the same. There was a boss at the end, which, from what I've seen, provides a bit more variety, but I barely got to experience it due to the short length of my session.

The difficulty really surprised me too. I love a challenging FPS game, don't get me wrong, and this was of course my first time playing Borderlands 4. But there were some surprisingly beefy enemies and, at times, hard-to-read attacks that would eliminate huge chunks of my health. I'm hoping that's just a product of my inexperience with Borderlands 4, but if Gearbox's idea of increasing the difficulty is to just smack you with attacks that are very hard to counter, I can't see that being too enjoyable. I'll also caveat that I was playing this solo, which meant all enemy attention was on me, so it's likely to be more manageable with a co-op crew.

I have to hope that the full release offers more interesting activities to embark on, and that Gearbox's approach to providing more challenging fights doesn't hamper the remarkable work that's gone into this combat system.

Borderlands 4 feels great to play, mechanically, but if dungeons and other activities don't offer striking, memorable experiences, they'll simply become samey loot farms. I can't speak for the overworld and its story missions, but I didn't find the Vault of Inceptus a compelling place to be. I am more than open to being won over once the Borderlands 4 release date arrives in just a few days, but right now, I'm slightly worried that my axes will be left in their locker.