Borderlands The Handsome Collection Xbox One Review

Posted on: 2015-04-11

Our rating:

Borderlands The Handsome Collection gives you more than your money?s worth with two great games and hundreds of hours of content for you and your friends to take on. It?s a great way to get into the series if you haven?t played it before.


 

Borderlands The Handsome Collection is a great way to get into the Borderlands series if you haven’t played it before because it bundles not one, but two games with all the downloadable content that were released but this time in 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second for Borderlands 2 and The Pre-sequel (still a terrible title). However if you’ve played these games before and are looking for notable graphical changes then you won’t find it here and there is no point buying these games again for the Xbox One or PS4 in my opinion.

Borderlands The Handsome Collection review 4/5

The story of these games are that you play as one of 5 or 6 vault hunters in the case of this collection because it comes with more characters. Vault hunters are treasure/bounty hunters on the planet of Pandora which is a wasteland planet where people and insane bandits will shoot first and ask questions later much later. Handsome Jack hires you to find the new vault; well that is what you think he’s doing until he reveals that he really wants to kill you instead because he is completely insane. The plot sounds grim, but don’t worry this game doesn’t take itself seriously because it is a comedy game with pop culture references to other games, films and television from the psychos reciting Shakespeare at you when they are trying to kill you.

Borderlands The Handsome Collection review 4/5 scored from 365Bristol.com

The gameplay is a first person shooter mixed with an open world RPG with elements of dungeon crawlers such as Diablo III with its loot system which gets very addicting. The loot with the weapons randomised so each gun you find will not be the same as the last one you found, their gimmick for this game is there are billions of guns, which is exaggerated but there are lot of guns to choose from. You could have a weapon that shoots acid bullets to a shotgun that every time you reload you throw it like a grenade and it explodes, there is a ton of variety. This game has hours upon hours of content as it is package with over £100 worth content with the downloadable content so you really get your money’s worth and then some if you haven’t played these games before.

Borderlands The Handsome Collection review scores 4 out of 5 from 365Bristol.com

The game really shines when you team up with three other friends online where you can tackle the entirety of the campaign with 4 players and for the first time you can play Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel 4 player split screen co-op rather than two, which most games seem to neglect these days and doing couch co-op is fun rather than sitting on headsets.

Graphically the game doesn’t look that much different to the Xbox 360 or PS3 version besides it being slightly crisper with its 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second, but it's not mind blowing to the last gen counter parts. If you haven’t played Borderlands before it takes a cell-shaded look which purposely makes everything look flat and cartoonish so it looks like something you would see in a comic book even with the onamaterpier.  This graphical style will make the game age better over time because it doesn’t take on a realistic look, but a stylised look instead.

Borderlands The Handsome Collection Xbox One review

The major negatives that I have with this collection are that it doesn’t come bundled with the original Borderlands game and I don’t see why they couldn’t because the games that are in this collection are from the same generation of consoles. Another negative there is horrendous screen tearing in The Pre-Sequel so every time you move the camera left and right you’ll get lines across the screen, this wasn’t present in Borderlands 2 just that game. The final complaint is that you’ll get really bad slow down when you play 4 player split screen when you are in battles with lots of characters on screen or when one of your friends are in the menus.

Borderlands The Handsome Collection gives you more than your money’s worth with two great games and hundreds of hours of content for you and your friends to take on. It’s a great way to get into the series if you haven’t played it before, but if you have I don’t see the point buying it again.

4/5

Reviewed by Sam Coles - a.k.a. The Bristolian Gamer - for www.365Bristol.com.



Article by:

James Anderson

Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.