When my day-to-day is writing about video games, and with the sheer deluge of titles launching each week, it's often hard to find any permanence with what I'm playing. But I’ve found myself glued to Borderlands 4 in the last week, and it reminds me of how fun it can be to shoot and loot without worrying about arbitrary power grinds and season passes.
I'll jump into sports games regularly, but outside of playing games for work (a first-world problem, I acknowledge), the one game that I've found myself sticking with over the last few years has been Destiny 2.
Maybe it just hit at the right time, or maybe that dopamine rush of late-night raiding is a high I'll be chasing from games forever. Still, it would be fair to say that what was once the golden goose of the live service trend has fallen on hard times.
After capping off the Light and Darkness Saga that began back in 2014 with 2024's (excellent) Final Shape expansion, Destiny as a franchise has been almost aimless. In fact, the only thing it seems fixated on right now is working to keep players hooked - not through having fun, but through a sort of chokehold.
Destiny 2 isn't fun to play right now
Borderlands 4 has made it onto our roundup of the best FPS games
I don't need to recount all the details of why Destiny 2 is sitting barely touched on my console and PC right now (Austin nailed it better than I ever could) but the short version is that Bungie has put all the shiny new loot into the most ill-conceived grind which takes place across around 10% of the content in the game.
After vaulting old content, the studio has now essentially removed any reason to visit locations not in the new Portal system, and the complicated scoring system isn't something I have time to learn - or the desire to. Levelling is painfully slow, even if you can push yourself to spend more time in the mines of the Portal, and the latest update, Ash and Iron, has done little to fix things.
Destiny has often been described by the community and Bungie alike as a "hobby", but now it really does feel as though it's become a job of sorts. Log in, do the easiest-to-farm activity of the week, and wait for Bungie to drop more platitudes about how it's listening.
The final straw, at least for myself, was the latest incarnation of Iron Banner. I've loved the PvP event in the past, usually for its unique armor sets, but this iteration feels… off. Sure enough, the community spotted that what was intended to be an armor set for the event was (as had been rumored for months) too cool to be given away for free, and so Bungie slapped a price tag on it in the game's ever-expanding Eververse store.
The studio later changed the free armor to be more appealing, but by then, the damage is done. This is Sideshow Bob stepping on an endless supply of rakes, only unlike that classic Simpsons episode, here he's turning to the camera every time and explaining he won't step on them again before doing just that.
A new challenger
...Whether I'm playing Borderlands 4 or not, it's not going anywhere. There's no FOMO, and there's certainly no specific way to play it
So, why do I mention this now? Partially because Ash and Iron has gone down like a, well, iron balloon, but also because for the first time in a long time there's a genuine, bona fide loot shooter rival.
Borderlands 4 is, in many ways, Destiny without the baggage. I know, I know, Gearbox's first-person answer to Diablo was here first, but technical issues aside, I've had more fun in a week of Borderlands 4 than I have in the last six months of Destiny 2.
I'm not filling a meter to earn watered-down cosmetics because the devs decided the better ones should be paid for, and I don't give a hoot about my power level. I'm earning fun perks like a rocket punch that deals flame damage to everyone around me, and my gun can be thrown like a grenade.
Part of that is down to perspective: Gearbox will keep players invested with loot, its Shift code freebies, and the eventual expansion, but whether I'm playing Borderlands 4 or not, it's not going anywhere. There's no FOMO, and there's certainly no specific way to play it.
Of course, Borderlands isn't a live service game, but I do think a challenger such as this gives Bungie something to mull over. Does it want to be remembered for making a sci-fi shooter feel like work? This is a studio that once rewrote the rulebook for first-person shooters, and despite the first Destiny not landing for everyone, there was clearly some semblance of that early magic there. Sadly, it’s been sanded down in the years since as the company bounced between publishers and worked to turn the game into what often feels like a full-time job.
Destiny is a franchise that means an awful lot to me, but I just can't justify playing it right now when there's so much out there. And, judging by the subreddit and the Steam Charts numbers, I'm not alone.
I don't play Destiny to watch a number increase once every hour or two. I play Destiny to get some slick new weapons and take them into missions to buildcraft and tailor the experience to how I want to enjoy it. And, until Bungie can hold up its end of the bargain, you'll find me on Kairos pummeling opponents with my big, flaming fist.
Borderlands 4 review: "Undeniably an excellent looter shooter, but one that requires a bit of tunnel vision to fully enjoy"
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