Summary
The quality of each game in theBorderlandsseries is subjective, and there are proponents for each instalment. However, the broad consensus is that the series peaked with Borderlands 2, and Gearbox hasn’t quite innovated enough on the formula since then to keep each new game feeling fresh.
Gearbox head Randy Pitchford doesn’t necessarily agree with this sentiment, however. Pitchfordrecently polledhis X (formerly Twitter) followers on what metrics are more useful for measuring which game is “better” — positive user reviews or play time. The poll ended with 62% in favour of play time.
Pitchford followed this up by revealing that Borderlands 2 has a lower average play time (by 5 minutes) than Borderlands 3 and a smaller percentage of players who have played over an hour (92% versus 87%).
All the Metrics
“What is meaningful here is that Borderlands 3 seems to engender a meaningful degree more average playtime than Borderlands 2,” Pitchford writes. “Earlier, the folks responding to a poll seemed to believe that actual play time is a better correlation to quality than user reviews.”
“So, it suggests Borderlands 3 is “better” than Borderlands 2 by the standard people who responded to my poll favoured,” he continues. “Obviously, individual tastes vary and entertainment is subjective. We are all edge cases. I tend to be in line with the crowd for most things, but I sometimes love some things others do not, and I sometimes don’t prefer things others love.”
This checks out, given Pitchford’s love for the widely panned Borderlands movie adaptation, commonly referred to as one of the worst movies of last year.
“In any case, by any standard we’ve thrown at it, we are confident thatBorderlands 4is turning out to be better than Borderlands 3 by every measurement we have, including subjective ones, so that makes us very excited about the launch!” the post concludes.
Taste is certainly subjective, but we can gather a consensus from review aggregators like Metacritic, where Borderlands 2 outperforms Borderlands 3 in both critic and user scores.
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Pitchford has made a recent habit of posting emotionally on social media, havingrecently come under firefor saying “real fans” would find a way of paying $80 for Borderlands 4.
Borderlands 4 releases September 12 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2.
