What is the point of early reviews from critics? After all, we all value our own opinions, for better and for worse, more than others more often than not, so what is the true value of these views? Simply put, they are a method to “gauge something” before we attempt to try it out ourselves. Sometimes, hearing that so many people liked, or didn’t like, something can give us the push we need to try it out ourselves, or save us the trouble and money before we waste either. In the case of Borderlands 4, though, people have noticed a rather curious thing about its early reviews that just dropped.
On Metacritic, over 60 reviews have so far been given for the game. Yet, if you look closely at the main page for the game, you’ll notice that the only reviews that have been dropped were for PC. This was backed up by other sites, which only just recently got the review codes, like Rock Paper Shotgun, and those that didn’t get one at all.
Why is this such a big deal? First, it’s incredibly odd for a AAA title to do this. When you think about the “state of PC ports,” they either play really well, or the team hasn’t optimized things as best they can, and it doesn’t play as well as console versions do. Second, many developers focus on the console versions to get reviews of because that’s where the “bulk of their sales” will be. Indie games would be able to get away with PC reviews being the focus of early insights, but for companies like Gearbox Software? That’s odd.
Furthermore, the PC version of Borderlands 4 has gotten some “question marks” put around it thanks to the PC requirements that were stated by Gearbox and the messages from CEO Randy Pitchford about “what you can expect.”
So what is the deal here? Why the sudden shift in things? The easy answer is that this was “what the team felt was the best version and they gave that to reviewers.” One could also argue that the PC version was the one possibly least affected by the “Day One Patch” we know is coming, and they used that to their advantage to not get dinged for certain issues that the patch was going to fix.
In the end, it’s really hard to say why things went down like this, but the review scores were positive, so maybe it was the right call.
