20 Beloved Video Games That Have Aged Terribly

3. Borderlands 1

Most fans of the Borderlands series like to harp on the recent releases, whether it’s for the lacklustre storytelling of Borderlands 3 or the hellish optimisation of Borderlands 4.

This said, the first Borderlands game is also not without its flaws, and those who come back to it with rose-tinted glasses tend to learn this the hard way.

Borderlands 1 was definitely the biggest looter shooter of its time, so much so that it pretty much defined the genre, inspiring the gameplay of many similar titles that came out after 2009.

The game felt quite big at the time of its release, featuring a huge map and a nearly infinite set of procedurally generated weapons.

Perhaps if you never experienced any other Borderlands game, the feeling would still be there. However, if you played Borderlands 2 going forward, the scale of the original will feel minuscule almost immediately. The map is tiny in comparison with later titles, with barely any variety in biomes and enemy types.

Most of the game looks very bland and colourless, and gameplay-wise, the combat is very simple and bare-bones, lacking the many improvements of later titles.

It’s not a bad game by any means, but these days the only reason you’d come back to it is to experience the story.