Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4 takes players to an entirely new planet, Kairos, ruled by the tyrannical Timekeeper and his army of overseers, and brings a quartet of new Vault Hunters with their own skill trees and markedly different combat styles. The series sticks to its proven recipe of a shooter with a massive amount of randomly generated weapons, armor, and rewards, but adds faster, more acrobatic movement to the base formula, fundamentally changing the pace of combat compared to previous entries.

The main new feature is character movement, which now includes a double jump, ground slide, a grappling hook, and, new this time, ledge grabs and climbing vertical surfaces, so combat plays out much more vertically than in older entries. Gearbox Software also designed a more open, continuously connected world with no more loading screens between individual areas, which also changes how players plan routes, cover, and escapes during large firefights against dozens of enemies. The game launched simultaneously on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series, and the PC version supports high refresh rates, a wide range of graphics settings, ultrawide monitors, and customizable controls, appreciated especially by players used to previous entries on keyboard and mouse. Story-wise, it's a standalone chapter that doesn't require knowledge of the previous games, but it carries over their humor and the mythology of the corporations ruling the universe, and it also introduces new enemy factions with their own armament style.

Why play: For series fans and newcomers alike who want the smoothest movement and the most open world Borderlands has ever offered, ideally on a powerful PC.