Analytic Dreamz: Notorious Mass Effect - "BORDERLANDS 4 EARLY HANDS-ON IMPRESSIONS"

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Linktree: ⁠https://linktr.ee/Analytic⁠Become A Patron Of The Notorious Mass Effect Podcast For Additional Bonus Audio And Visual Content For All Things Nme! Join Our Patreon Here: ⁠https://ow.ly/oPsc50VBOuH⁠Join Analytic Dreamz on Notorious Mass Effect for an in-depth segment reacting to Borderlands 4 early gameplay, set for release on September 12, 2025. Dive into the vibrant world of Kairos, exploring new Vault Hunters, dynamic action skills, and the battle against The Timekeeper. Analytic Dreamz breaks down gameplay mechanics, narrative shifts, and the game’s bold visual style, offering insights into Gearbox’s latest looter-shooter. Stay tuned for expert analysis, cultural context, and what to expect from this highly anticipated title across platforms, including Nintendo Switch 2.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

So of course, there's a lot of borderlands fans out there. And when it comes to Borderlands 4 specifically, being the fourth installment, it is going to release September 12th, 2025. So we have quite some time before the game comes out, which is why I wanted to give y'all a look into early gameplay from Jolt's Dude 139. Make sure to go follow him and subscribe. but I pull this up basically let me hit the like button you know always you gotta practice what you preach you know what I'm saying

as far as I subscribe this is a random channel so it makes sense about like I use other channels when I actually watch YouTube but y'all get what I'm saying anyways make sure you're gonna follow Joe's dude 139 because that's who we're getting into now as far as his early impressions on borderlands four so if you don't know

borderlands four is coming to every single platform even to switch too I mean goodness Shepard, just look at the state of gaming. Like, what is going on? Looking at the state of gaming, don't you love when a video game is able to come out on every single platform? I mean, that's insane.

So anyways, it's coming out on the Switch 2 later, though. So with that being said, Borderlands 4 is developed by Gearbox software and published by 2K. And it's a first person, looter, shooter, with RPG elements set on the new planet Caros. Six years after, man, what, nerdy? What in the nerdology is this? All right, my fault.

I got to put on my nerve voice for this. So anyways, um, borderlands four. It's a first person shooter with RPG elements set on the new planet of Caros, six years after Elpice teleportation. Okay, so we have Caros's shield collapsed, sparking chaos under the timekeeper. So the dictator opposed the crimson, Reservoir. resistance a dictator opposed by the crimson resistance the game has a darker tone than past entries so you play as one of the four vault hunters vex and syrian and cynical empath with vase powers you play as harlowe you play as amon um not amen like you're praying like amon you play as a raffa and each has three switchable

action skills um okay y'all get the point right so anyways let's get back into borderlands for so that's my nerdology breakdown borderlands for obviously there's a lot going on i don't even know if people really care about the story like that so people want to just hear gameplay so let's get into the gameplay first because of course a lot of people um well this game doesn't come out for quite some time but obviously a lot of people aren't able to for certain games which is why you watch reviews like this and of course you watch people's early gameplay footage like this so anyways let's dive into it right now Once again, shout out to Jolt's dude 139 for being able to play this game early. So let's get into the Borderlands 4 early gameplay.

So you want to hear my thoughts about Borderlands 4? Yes. Here it is. First off, I do want to give a big thanks to 2K for sponsoring this video. They allow me to play the game early. Now, I do want to mention that this does not change my opinion about... And I will be as transparent and honest in this. You say he's going to tell it like it is.

All right, so for the Borderlands 4 demo, we were able to play somewhat early game. And the choices we were given is to play either Rafa or Bex. For this video, I'm going to be focusing on Rafa because that's the character I chose. Ah. I'll listen out in a bit, but just know that Rafa is a lot of fun. First off, let's talk about the loading speed of the game. I am genuinely impressed. Look at this.

I'm at the main menu, and within two seconds, I am in the game. That is insanely fast. We're talking about like Borderlands 2. Okay, I'm not going to lie to you. I do like the fact that he highlighted that because at some point, I was thinking to myself, did we not get fed alive as far as the next-gen consoles having short to no loading screens? I mean, where was that a promise for the next gen console? So I'm glad that he actually said that that's one of the highlights for this game.

Monster PC load speed. This really caught me off guard, and I honestly wonder how they pulled this off on Unreal Engine 5. But yeah, they did it. The load speed's great, and I am super-duper happy to see that. Now, I will mention there is a lengthy 6 to 7-second warp tunnel, and this is one of the longest warped tunnels we've ever had in a Borderlands game. So I'm assuming a lot of the loading the world is happening during this animation. Okay, okay, so we're going to skip it here a little bit.

Obviously, we're just trying to get into the first, uh, or the early impressions for the gameplay. Eight seconds, which is, follow him. I'm going to be honest, I was so immersed into the gameplay that I kind of forgot he existed. So I don't use him until much later on. Down below, I find an alternate path and find my first fault symbol. And vault symbols are way, way better in this game. They actually reward you. When I find this one, you can see I acquire five of these things.

And these things are actually used to upgrade your STUs. So it seems like- Maybe I'm tripping, but why do people play music in background while they're doing a revoke? views. I was like listening to his words. I realized this man got a fire beat in the background going crazy. I'm like, is this a party or a review? All right, my fault. The spectables in the world are going to reward you with these SDU points. And that is how you can upgrade your STUs. And I did notice in this demo that they did tone back the visual pollution quite a bit. A lot of things in the trailer had a toned to it. But upon repeating those

things for myself, they were definitely way toned back. Good deal. That's a plus. All right, so we passed by this blinking blue thing. I had no idea what it was at the time. But these are actually your save stations. So, if you die, you respawn right there. Also, the radius for hitting these things is... Oh, that bike's pretty cool. I like that. You can trip a safe station from really, really far away. I like the art direction in this game. Looks like it's straight out of a comic book. That's a fire. It's a very nice edition. Up ahead, I find a bunch of red dots, so I figured, you know what? Let's do a little more combat. But before I do, I do swap over to a new action scale known as Apophis Lant. And that is going to be that gun zirk thing we've seen in the

trailer, which is your left-handed gun. And I will be completely honest about this. I didn't really feel this action skill that much. Like VR early game and don't really have any augments. They just started blasting. We're no talking involved. I've never been a huge fan of like charge, Malawan stuff and BL3. And that is what this action skill kind of reminded me of. You charge up and release shock damage. And I guess it's a good time to talk about the modifiers on enemies. As an extreme hater of modifiers from Borderlands 3, uh, the modifiers in this game really aren't that bad. They are way more like ARPG and they don't really drastically change the game too much. But it does have the extra

layer of difficulty on the enemy and they don't make you suffer like the mayhem modifiers did in BL3. On my way back, I found a body of water so I figured, you know what, let's check out the swimming mechanic. Turns out swimming seems to be only on the surface you can't dive under, so it's only going to be a way of getting around. I'm a little bit sad about that, but I guess it makes sense. I followed the compass to the next objective and you might- Um, this is an open world game, ain't it. Borderlands. Hold on, let me, let me, let me, hold up, hold up, ain't no way. Is this? because what open world game do y'all know well you can't dive under the water now maybe i'm tripping because you know technically in a lot of open world games if you jump into the water

you get taken out but if you can jump into the water and transverse the water um why wouldn't you be able to go under i mean that's just me like i feel like open world games such as this you know i guess it's not a huge critique but it's just like um that's kind of weird i don't see why you wouldn't be able to dive under but you know that's the same thing he's saying like it's kind of Kind of weird how you could just swim everywhere, but it can't dive at all. So, you know, it's like in the Sasakri, if he wasn't able to dive, he was just swimming on the surface. Definitely not the greatest. So anyways.

I noticed this giant blue barrier around the area. This is an end-the-world general waypoint. Basically, whatever needs to be done for the mission happens within the circle. I do think that's a pretty good addition. I find my second enemy with a modifier known as shielded, and it just gives them a second shield bar. Good challenge. I like it. Later on, I find a red chest sitting in the road and open it up.

Right away I saw Jacobs and I'm a huge man of Jacobs, so I'm gonna be doing Jacobs Also I see a throwing knife for the first time and thought oh I gotta try this thing So throwing knives are gonna be part of ordinance which is your heavy weapon grenade damage slot and the throwing knives are considered grenade damage ordinance damage. It is a little bit weird to think about but some throwing knives can blow up like grenades and Just just think of them like grenades pretty much now I get the experienced throwing knives and oh they f***ck So it really does give that vibe and makes melee feel a lot better for this game As for the random wacky weapons with their random parts, I honestly didn't stop and like read what they do too much because again limited time. But I will say every gun felt completely different even if it was the same manufacturer.

So the gunplay felt really good and quite diverse, like even more diverse than Borderlands 3. There is a lot to it. I do like how people started to give like people are grace when it comes to these early reviews. Because if you don't know, when it comes to you playing a certain game and the overall, mechanics being completely new, the time restraint is a big deal because now you only get an hour, sometimes maybe 30 minutes to hop into a game, collect footage, and now you're figuring all these things out on the fly. So I love how people are giving more grace to these type of things. As far as not killing their early reviewer, if he said something that's just completely wrong

when the game comes out. The Border Nines, two fans, I will throw this in here. No infinite vertical melee. All good, though, because we have throwing knives. Right after, I died. So we get to watch the research. Spawn animation. This free spawn animation is the longest one in the franchise so far. From fully bleeding out to completely having control of your character again, it takes about 20 seconds. Yeah, that's pretty long and I'm really hoping that gets changed before release. For Borderlands 4, they're pushing for fast-paced gameplay, but this really does kill the pacing. I do understand

that bleeding out is a punishment, you know, you should play better and not die in the first place. But being out of the action for 20 full seconds is a pace killer. I hope they speed it up and and make it a little bit faster. Then we come up on some vending machines. You might have noticed in the old trailer there was an item floating on the side of it. That is your item of the day, so you can actually buy it without going into the vendor. I do like that. Good touch. Also, the vending machines are way more packed.

There's a lot more to buy from. As for the ammo vendors, they are no longer shopable. They are only there for buying ammo and selling off your junk. Gun vendors, which you'll see later on are going to be for your guns and for your ordinance items. Health vendors are for your shields and for your rev kits. Moving on, we take on our first boss known as Horace. Alright, so then it gets into boss talk. So with that being said, that's the preview of the preview of the web kits.

of borderlands for obviously the full video is you can see right here on his uh channel he literally uh titled it i played border for a borderlands for early here on my thoughts and this jo's dude one 39 so shout to him for uh you know putting out this um solid video especially showcasing borderlands four early gameplay because i know a lot of people especially on the borderland side of things that they're looking forward to this newest edition because i've never been a huge borderlands fan but i can understand why people are into the franchise i mean y'all definitely been going through it though because uh wouldn't that borderlands hold on we definitely forget border lands movie when did that come out you know what i mean you got to talk about

that right quick so uh the latest borderlands movie was uh august night 2024 um i just want to let y'all know that as far as a fan base getting completely disrespected yeah this this is this is it right here like if you want to disrespect the fan base just make a movie of this quality. I ain't going to cap to you. So anyways, shout out to Borderlands for, you know, being a part of the worst movie of all time. Obviously, the creators of the video game

didn't have any type of control over that, but the director definitely has some type of vendetta against Borderlands because that was a terrible movie. Anyways, with that being said, click my link, share in my bio. Let me know one of my social media is. What do you think about the Borderlands for early gameplay? And just so you know, the game's not coming out for quite some

sounds. So this is all we're going to have for a minute. So the game's coming to that's September 12th of this year on every single platform but it's coming out later on the switch switch to so we'll be coming to the switch two but just later so click my link show in my bio let me know one of my social medias what do you think about borderlands for and at the end of the day are you excited for borderlands for