Thinking about buying Borderlands 3 and playing it with a friend or significant other on the couch? Well, you might want to hold off for the time being. Split-screen co-op is currently a trainwreck on the standard PlayStation 4, and it's pretty bad on PS4 Pro, too.
Players across the web are reporting significant issues. Plummeting frame rates, textures failing to load in, input lag, short, sharp bouts of freezing as the game loads in assets, and frustratingly lengthy hitches whenever someone opens a menu. At their worst, a combination of these problems makes Borderlands 3 local co-op near unplayable in its current form.
We say current form because 2K states that it's working on a fix. The publisher told IGN that it's aware of the issues and is looking to sort them out as soon as possible. Let's hope that we're not still reporting on this disaster weeks down the line.
Of course, there's controversy surrounding all of this, mainly because sites like Push Square weren't given review code before launch. Some sites did review Borderlands 3 prior to its release, but they were granted access to a specific PC build of the game. Now we're perhaps starting to see why.
Oh, and if you're looking to find out how Borderlands 3 performs on PS4 in general, be sure to take a look at our first impressions article.
[source uk.ign.com]
Comments 36
That's a shame. It's ran fine for me playing solo on the Pro.
Now you know why most sites weren't given review code before launch. They are a devious lot, nothing new there.
"...they were granted access to a specific PC build of the game."
This seems really weird to me. Really really weird lol.
Hopefully they get the problems fixed. Real shame that couch co-op has to have so many problems.
Shooting and looting is 'decent' in split screen. But as soon as the wife and I are in menus all hell breaks loose. If seen anything so far as names loading inside characters. Entire assets cocked at a 45 degree angle, even dialog or descriptive boxes lol. Its a wonky trainwreck. and then it struggles to catch up when you exit the menus
Was never going to buy this game anyway (hate the idea of giving Randy Pitchford money) but the way they and 2K have handled things with review copies (only allowing those to publish early if they gave good scores) and now this. But again it's 2K and Gearbox and they've had previous. At least they didn't use Sega's money to make this one.
But does the taskbar show Borderlands 2's logo on inspection?
Aware of the issues but released it anyway!! Disgusting working practices but can't be surprised nowadays. Just seems it's in the consumer best interests to wait several days or weeks after release before purchasing to find out whether its riddled with issues or loot boxes.
The crap is becoming the norm. Ship it broke, patch it later.
People say buy physical, just imagine 15+ years later, put this in and no patch available.
How can they F this up, not like the game is doing anything new for the series/industry in general and heck it barely looks any better than the previous games?
@ShogunRok Alot of people are mad too that there is no vertical splitscreen unlike the other 3 games in the series, myself included. Horizontal splitscreen is just bad for splitscreen.
@AdamNovice What’s this about only being allowed to publish a good score? I haven’t heard of this but I’m curious about the source now.
@jaz007 I can't remember the exact source but YouTube channels like Jim Sterling & YongYea have talked about it. The sites that did get early review copies, nearly all gave high scores ( which we now know was based on a specific PC build and not the consoles).
Giant Bomb even said that they weren't getting early review copies because they were told that the publisher wasn't happy with their "less then enthusiastic coverage of the game at E3".
For a game that's co-op focused, where's the vertical split-screen? Seriously. All the other games ran and played great with this. It's almost unplayable in horizonal. Even the text is unreadable.
This is a must fix for the Devs.
Also the frame rate tanking when the other player his their menu is just unacceptable. Just make it a stripped down interface if need be.
No wonder there was a partial review embargo 🤣
Come on Gearbox, sort your game out.
Glad I preordered Greedfall instead.😉
How can sites give such high rates when its that bad? Now i know which sites i cant trust with reviews anymore. I should have listend to Jim well ill go play Greedfall instead what a ***holes at Gearbox and 2K. I should have known that where the guys who are selling gambling too 3 year olds.
Also an issue on online co op. Beyond lag.
I guess the bright side is that I don’t play co-op and so it should be fine for me playing solo, and it looks like the price is likely to drop real fast on this one. Likely will be seeing a lot of second hand copies out there soon, so I’ll pick it up in a few months.
Asking people to sign petitions is against the community rules - Quintumply
Randy Pitchford is like an incompetent and dodgy Keyser Sozer.... and like that, he’s gone (dramatic puff of smoke effect).
how were they not "aware" that co-op was a technical mess before they shipped it?!
I’m not even kidding, I thought the subheader meant PS was willing to bet 2k pounds that the devs were aware 😂
I realized later that 2K IS the devs 😂
@leucocyte I'm sure they were, but it's not like we can count on companies to self-report when they know the product isn't fully optimized. They're not going to give themselves bad press. Good things we have sites like this to report on it within the first two days of release.
Good thing I hold off buying the game I knew things were gonna need to be patched, but no biggie for me by the time the game is ready with dlc and everything I might be able to buy it cheaper
On PC the game has DRM that requires a constant 250kb/s upload to their servers (in single-player too).
@OmegaStriver You said it all.
I Can't believe that 2K QAs didn't test this and knew about the problem.. They just didn't have enough time to fix it. (I love to give The Division 2 as an example of this since it came out completly broken in terms of textures on consoles and kinda still is..)
Also I think that most fps games are Pc oriented, so the main efforts are on pc developing..
Companies will continue to do this because there aren't any big consequences..
But hey, here's an idea: What about game reviewers giving lower scores saying "this game would be grate, like an 8 or a 9 IF this thing wasn't broken.. Clearly not thinking about console players. So, from us, is a 5".. Maybe they would start making things better, idk?
Don't these companies play-test these games before they release them anymore??? :-/ + no 4 player split-screen mode is disappointing to These consoles are more powerful blah blah blah, but can't even do a 4 player split-screen modes :-/ Well they can but game makers can't be bothered to do them. Oh well.
@Matroska isn't that because of the echo cast for Twitch streamers? I've read about people testing that who weren't streaming and had no such uploads
Specific PC build? Textures not loading properly? This doesn't happen with Gearbox. It all sounds a bit Alien to me.
@Carl-G I agree. How can these newer consoles not run 4-player split? My Wii U can run a five player split screen and take those five online at the same time. Baffles me.
@LowTech I discussed this exact conversation on Reddit regarding how reviews should really reflect these performance issues, MTX were included as well but that is another conversation, but all of these factors should have an effect on the review score.
Like your example, yeah, whatever game, has the potential to be an 8 but due to these issues my experience was more of a 6.
@LowTech 2K only gave review copies to sites that would give it a good review score. Many companies do this nowadays pretty much if a site or YouTube channel or whatever doesn't pretty much give a game a great score, review they company blacklists them from getting review copies. Either that or they put a review embargo stating that reviews can't come out till after the game is released.
Push Square never got a review copy for example.
@Tasuki Yes, I know that. Which is what you would expect.. No company wants bad reviews. But still, reviewrs can not be "afraid" to tell the truth. I think that PushSquare does a really good job scoring the games but most of the times doesn't talk much about technical issues (expecting that they would be crushed fast, I think).
But I have 2 games that I wouldn't have bought if I knew the technical state of them: Kingdom Come deliverance and The Division 2.
Both really great games. Both don't work really well on a playstation..
So, as @OmegaStriver said, the game score should be affected by the bugs. (I'm not talking about Fallout 76 or Anthem since those are completely broken games).
@LowTech And as I said if reviewer do give a bad review they get backlisted and as result they have to wait till launch day like everyone else to get a copy then a few days to get a review out by then thousands of people have the game already and don't care about a review.
With a website it's all about those articles hits and timing is the most importance. Sites, videos etc will almost always get higher number of visits/views of a review days before a game is released then they will after the release which is turn means more revenue and such for the site/video. I am sure Sammy can tell you how much views we lost by not having a BL3 review before the release.
These companies know this and that's why they backlist sites/content creators from review copies who give a bad review.
While I agree it's not right, there's nothing anyone can do about it. I will be honest if I knew there was no splitscreen in Borderlands 3 I wouldn't have bought it. As it is I took the game back a day after I bought it.
This game better get low reviews for this. I keep telling people not to trust the reviews because you see how shady this is? Only allowing good scores to be posted. Imagine how many websites changed their review score to publish early. The media are sellouts.
@Tasuki I totally get it. But If a review is not honest, what kind of review is it? also, if readers feel that they're reading "bs", they'll stop reading..
I can only talk about myself: yes, I read reviews before the game launch date, but I rarely buy them on the day they come out based on reviews. (red dead redemption 2 and the division 2 were the last exceptions.. totally regret the last one)
And never, ever ever, ever ever ever, pre-order..
Randy Pitchford strikes again!!!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SuIpIDxHtwQ
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