Quick Look: Borderlands: The Handsome Collection

This "remaster" (port)... doesn't look all that better to me. I'm sure if you put screenshots side by side I could easily tell the difference but this is the first modern console port I've seen where I get zero visual pizzazz out of it. Just looking at this video I can't tell you that this is for the PS4/X1.

Yeah, the next Borderlands needs to be a hell of a lot more fresh then what's been coming out and until then, I've save my money and skip this.

I'm playing this on PS4 now and I've got the platinum for BL1 and BL2 on PS3 and I can very easily tell how much better and smoother this is on the PS4. I've not tried BLTPS yet on PS4 but the free copy I got on PS3 had some bad slowdown that I didn't bother doing everything in it after getting to level 50. In my opinion for those of us who don't have a PC for playing games (of which there are far more than the GB crew believe there are) this is a great package. I'm intending to get the platinum trophy again on BL2 and intend to actually do everything on BLTPS this time round just due to how much better and smoother this version is on PS4.

I'm going to be the weird guy here and say that I like The Pre-Sequel way more than BL1 and 2.

I remember reading that this was originally just going to be a re-release of the Pre-sequel, but since Borderlands 2 used the same engine it was relatively easy to port it over as well. Since Borderlands 1 used a different engine, it would have been much more work to port over. That is probably why this collection is only 2 and Pre-sequel.

I am playing BL2 right now, but maaan, everything about this. Framerate, textures, FOV, enormous gun models...

It's pretty sad that PC ports of year old games can't run properly on the new generation of consoles.

BL2 >>>> BL1.

The guns felt better, the overall gameplay was improved and felt smoother, and say what you want about the characters in 2, but I don't remember a single thing from the first one - none of the characters, story, overall plot, just nothing.

2 did have a couple of annoying characters, but it is better in every single way.

Heck, the guns in 1 had awful hitbox detection. Yes, I know you had to level up your skills with the different weapon types, but if I get a line up a dude's head and get a headshot with a sniper rifle, I expect it to do headshot damage, not let a random factor decide that for me.

I think what may have happened with Jeff is that he played the shit out of BL1. Probably a few 100 hours at least. And when it came to 2, while it is better - it's not too different. He was probably expecting way too much and got burnt out on it.

Also, in a game with millions (or billions) of guns, why would you want to stick to one weapon for an extended period of time?

Guess they could uave locked the framerate at 30 for consistency, but i wouldn't go as far as to call it horrible.

Still think people are overestimating the abilities of the current gen. Or maybe devs aren't trying hard enough to optimize/take advantage.

I completely disagree, I loved the shit out of BL1 and couldn't even force myself to finish BL2.

It doesn't help that the characters in BL2 are insanely unlikable and the humour is a complete miss to anyone over the age of 13.

But hey, we are entitled to our own opinions.

As a huge borderlands fan, this video makes me cringe a lot. Jeff does not need a fire weapon for the quest. There are fire barrels that you can shoot.

And the PS4 version is a lot better than the X1. I have not noticed any tearing on PS4, but on X1 it is bad.

All right! Jeff is baaaack! I was worried about him after Axiom Verge.

But to be serious, I tried getting back into the Borderland games, including the pre-sequel, and I burned out. Something about the moon one especially, it did not click for me. But I believe like Jeff, my effort was inspired by how much I liked Borderlands !, and my first play-through of Borderlands 2 was enjoyable enough as well. I agree, it's time to ratchet Borderlands up....somehow.

For anyone who has never played these games, get this collection with your friends and have a hell of a blast playing co-op. If you played it before....DON'T BUY THIS CASHGRAB!!!1

You'd have to pay me to play this again, unless it's the Tiny Tina DLC. By the end of the Pre-Sequel, I had to mute the game because I couldn't stand Handsome Jack's endless yakking anymore. What an obnoxious character to base two damn games around.

I liked the first Borderlands, but didn't like Borderlands 2 at all, but there was something about the Pre-Sequel that clicked with me. Primarily the traversal stuff, I guess, but also that the random generator actually seemed to create useful weapons, whereas I only got totally useless junk in Borderlands 2.

Re-skin, resell, rebuy

I'm 37 and thought the game was really funny ... blunt statements like that are usually not a very good idea. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it bad, it just means you don't like it.

Also thats the only problem with the crew which I otherwise love with all of my heart. Blunt "game XXX is terrible/not funny/has a dumb story" statements ... wanna know why I think people love Vinny so much? Because he usually doesn't do that kind of thing.

There's some really rose tinted glasses going on in regards to BL1. The original game had awful replay and very little character. The only thing worthwhile was once they added the general knoxx dlc, and then they released the awful claptrap one right after it.

I played BL2 on Xbox 360, and the 60 FPS here is really off-putting.

"@brad! @brad! It's GTAV! Your cousin, GTAV on PS4?! You know when you were thinking about good rereleases? Well, remember this!"

You have to take Jeff's opinions on Borderlands with a grain of salt. He admits that he only ever plays as the Soldier type class.

Completely agree, probably because it was new and BL2 was not. BL2 is a far better game than BL1.

As obsessed as I was with the first two instalments, I had no problem skipping the Pre-Sequel. After playing a bit of Destiny, I feel like both franchises are dancing around the 1 solid game that most fans of this relatively new genre are looking for. I hope BL3 moves a little more in the direction of a full RPG when it comes to the player character, or that Destiny 2 gets the loot right.

About the complaining about remasters and re-releases. What it comes down to for me is that this "remaster" and most of them are contracted out to smaller studios, they are not taking the time and effort away from studios making proper new games, so I don't understand what they have to do with the lack of proper new big budget games. Yeah its concerning that there are not a ton of big budget new games coming out on the new systems, but I just don't see what the remasters have to do with it at all. It just sounds like playing the blame game because its an easy target, not because it makes actual sense.

Looking at the performance of TPS on xbone, I kinda wonder if they should have just had Iron Galaxy port both versions as BL2 seems to run quite a bit better.

I'd say that BL2 was a better game in every way EXCEPT for the combat and loot system. Gunplay most definitely did not feel better in 2. BL1 may have had some minor hitbox issues, but most of the guns in BL2 had ridiculous amounts of recoil and/or spread that, combined with enemies constantly moving all over the place, made hitting anything more than a few yards away a pain in the ass. Nothing ever felt like it did enough damage, either. I vastly prefer the feel of the aiming and shooting in BL1. It wasn't perfect, but it felt better and the guns felt way more balanced and appropriately tuned to the difficulty.

BL2 also kinda ruined the manufacturers. They did a lot to make each one feel unique and differentiated from the others, and in the process made some of them totally useless and predictable. Predictability is the worst quality in a random loot-driven game. I already knew what every Maliwan SMG would do, I knew that Torgue was almost total shit except for some shotguns. I knew that Jakobs went from being my favorite in BL1 to being one of the worst in 2 because all of their weapons worked the exact same way. There is not one reason to ever use even the most powerful Jakobs combat rifle. Not to mention that finding anything remotely cool was nearly impossible because of how broken the loot system and drop rates were. Putting 10 hours or so into TPS when it came it, I was happy to that this was fixed.

I love both BL1 and 2, but I will always find BL1 the better-playing of the two, and to me, that is by far the most important aspect of a game.

@arbitrarywater: If it wasn't for those cheap, practically un-soloable bosses, I'd agree with you. Pre Sequel had a lot of charm and the story was easily the best of the three.

I think its very clear after watching this video that jeff's console (and not the game) is indeed what makes Borderlands 2 lag for him and he has indeed had very very crappy (to the point of disbelief) luck with weapon drops.

I spent countless hours with Borderlands 2 (on pc though so naturally no lag whatsoever) and I was constantly getting amazing weapon after amazing weapon. By the end of my 2nd playthrough I had 30 epics and 10 legendaries, I literally had trouble deciding what I even wanted to use because it was all so good. Overall it was way way more fun than Borderlands 1 but I was still so burnt out after all the dlcs I didn't even look at Pre-Sequel. Seemed like a lazy cash grab selling on gimmicks to me, I'll patiently wait for the real next one.

I enjoyed BL1 because its design was more restrained, I spent the entirety of 2 wishing I could just get a gun that didn't fire scattershots of microrockets while making fart noises.

But then again I liked the original design of BL when it was announced, I really dislike the cell-shady cartoony look they've gone with so...

I enjoyed the little bit I played. It was basically Borderlands: Straya Edition and that's cool with me.

I found the mundane nature of everything in Borderlands 1 made the game hit harder when it was funny, and it made me actually interested in that world. Borderlands 2 is so incessant with its bad humor that it makes me want to get away, and it inclines me much more to think of the world as a shallow Mad Max ripoff.

I'm unexpectedly more interested in playing the pre-sequel than I was when it came out at this point. Probably not in this form, though.

"Do they just assume no one wants to play borderlands 1 at this point"

Actually they were going to port Pre-Sequel and since Borderlands 2 is the same engine it was minimal work to get that also up and running... Borderlands 1 is a different engine and would have required considerably more effort to include... basically this is not BL2 and BL:Pre-sequel, it's BL:Pre-sequel with bonus BL2 included for free. That is how Randy Pitchford has been pitching this bundle for some time now.

I feel like I want all content from the site to also be live streamed so they can at least check against chat to get the information they could use to better understand things as they go, rather than record entire videos of content working under assumptions that are slightly twisted from truth. It's not realistic to expect everyone to know everything, but it IS frustrating to watch stuff that's incorrect even if it's minor shit that doesn't matter. Live chat would alleviate this drastically, and in all cases where there IS live chat (during their live streams) they usually derive way more enjoyment for themselves when they get info from the chat that then can expound on.

Bring on live chat quick looks!

The weird thing about Borderlands 2 for me was that, even though I can clearly observe that it's a much better game the first, I got bored of it really, really quickly. Whereas I dumped tons of time in the first game, played all the DLC, and enjoyed myself; despite the fact that at this point, I can't tell you why I ever enjoyed that game and would not be able to play it again.

Also, I wouldn't fault anyone for being annoyed by the meme humor in Bordlerlands 2. Even if it's not a vast majority of the writing, when it bombs, it bombs HARD. The game's attempts at humor are more often misses than hits. Don't get me wrong, that game has some legitimately hilarious moments, but too many times it just kind of falls flat. And I absolutely hated Tiny Tina.

I am sort of with Jeff with the whole not many of the guns feel good in BL2.

While BL2 is technically a better game than BL1. It suffer from the needless single player balancing.

I seriously wonder when will people and developers finally caught on to the whole truly random loot is actually a bad idea. Needless counterbalancing is also more of a hindrance than anything else in a power fantasy type single player focus game.

In BL1 you can technically use only one type of weapon to get through the game (maybe except rockets...), and in a sense it has to be that way since each character is spec to excel with certain weapon type. A lot of the "crazy" guns were interesting and practical. Sniper that fires like a shotgun or a fully automatic sniper, a remarkably accurate burst rifle. SMG that fires like a shot gun, a strangely accurate shot gun, etc. Sure there were some useless gimmicks and odd weapons, but those were fun once in a while without being too intrusive. It might be cookie cutter, but it is functions. Early on guns handle like trash is a valid criticism, but once the weapon proficiency levels it becomes much less of an issue.

There were some writing on the walls when the later patches were hitting with the nerf on town chest farming (why does it matter!?), and the new highest tier of pearl weapons were mostly form over function. (never had one drop also)

BL2 runs with it from the very beginning with the odd, crazy, but sort of useless weapons and toss them everywhere, but the strange thing is there's actually a handful of very good weapons, and if you are able to find one it is actually more likely to get a good variant of it as compare to BL1 due to the way parts are generated in BL2 as oppose to BL1, but that also lead to cases where there are just some guns that will never be any good no matter the parts, which you will encounter a lot of.

Don't need a fire weapon. Shoot the barrels.

@katygaga: never got into Borderlands or Destiny, but Warframe... ah... that's the GAME

@hippie_genocide: True, but only when they have to do it publicly to act superior to others.

What!? i have borderlands 2 on ps3, and it looks like shit. I have it for ps4 now and it looks waaay better. its super smooth and the graphics is great. i have it on pc to, and i think the pc version looks like the ps4 version so i dont know what your talking about. i think borderlands the pre-sequel is better than borderlands 2.

why is everybody against remasters!!! thats great!! i dont want to use my old ps3 when i can play on my ps4. and if old games can look better on the new ps4, so why is that a bad thing. i love the idea that they are doing remastered of old ps3 games on ps4.

BL2, a game that's nearly 3 years old now, while possessing a nice aesthetic and some nice environments and vistas at times, was never a game that blew me away graphically, even on PC with settings maxed out. It's mind boggling that these 'next gen' systems still can't sustain 60 fps, and even suffer drops into the 30 and 40 fps range. It's not the frame rate drops that are so worrisome, it's the accompanying drastic changes in input response which totally fucks up the rhythm of the combat. Furthermore these console ports are completely devoid of a lot of physics and cloth simulations that the PC version has.

Are game developers getting mixed messages from gamers? Do they think we prefer the best possible graphics and as long as we have that then inconsistent frame rates, wonky input latency and torn frames are tolerable? Because, for me anyway, I'd take a hit in graphical quality to ensure a solid frame rate, whether it's 30 fps (I'm looking at you, Bloodborne) or 60 fps. Cut AA if you need to, 1080p games really don't need aggressive AA, if any at all. You can see jaggies if you look for them when the game isn't in motion, otherwise it's not an issue. AA is overrated.

I found borderlands 2 being an improvment in many areas over the first one, specially in the movement and the UI stuff, but i liked the weapons a lot more in one, specially how the proficiency mechanic worked, the more you used the guns the better they handled, the ARs were amazing, not the pile of shit they were in 2, most every weapon tipe was better in one really except rocket launchers and grenades, those were pretty bad in one , the mashers were great, the snipers were great too and they got rid of some gun manufacturers that were really missed

i also didn´t like very much the writting and the story in 2, i liked more one in that regard than 2 all that said i put nearly 500 hours in 2 and around 300 hours in 1

The presequel didn´t grab me i liked the ice weapons and the lasers, the double jump mechanic was fine i guess, the story was more of the same as in 2 for me so i didn´t care for it , and i have only made one playtrough wich is rare since i maxed the four chars in 1 and in 2.

I didn't particularly like Borderlands and the Borderlands 2 free weekend half a year ago (or whenever) made it look like more of the same except with worse writing. I still picked it up at some point for five bucks and it does run much better on my PC than it ever will on those consoles. But there's an insane amount of DLC for both games in this pack, so if it's all included I'd say that's a pretty good deal for people who haven't played this before. It seems to run fine, comparing console to PC the consoles will always lose (barring a shoddy port).

Glad I'm not the only one who never found a weapon they enjoyed in BL2.

After playing it on PC with all the physx stuff turned up to max the combat looks flat without all the pyrotechnics kicking off.

I was tempted to get get this on PS4 rather than replace the slowly failing PSU in my PC that has started to cause random crashes in BL2/Pre Sequel but functions well enough for day to day use. But I think its time to spend £100 on a decent PSU.

Just give me Borderlands 3 proper please

Jeff: It's not good enough!

Perfect description of this console generation so far.

I felt the same way about every gun I got in BL2. Even after cheating my way into as many purples and oranges that I wanted, I still didn't like anything and felt like it took ages to kill anything--especially on NG+ and beyond. Made it super clear that it wasn't meant to be played alone.

I love borderlands, this is a lot of content but how can they slap a remastered label on it with the graphical and fps issues. It just doesn't make sense. They just bundled it together there doesn't seem to be anything remastered. I play on PC and have both games and I'm very happy. I have Borderlands 2 and pre sequel. It just seems that this is a money go so they can fund their next project. I have nothing against gearbox, but this is a lame excuse at getting another dime. Gearbox you have a awesome formula here you just need a new concept. Its just getting to the point where you sell a 60 dollar game, pump out a bunch of sup par dlc, then bundle it months later all together, and then call it remastered, and it gets ported horribly, well maybe horribly is a stretch, but putting remastered on the label you would think it wouldn't have any problems.

Shame on you Gearbox.

I think it would be too, 'limiting', I guess is the word, to go back to the borderlands one skill trees. They are very slight compared to the borderlands two.

Come on guys, best HD remaster is obviously Resident Evil.