Borderlands: The Handsome Collection

Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is essentially the Handsome Jack director's cut - two full FPS-RPGs (Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel) bundled together with every piece of DLC released for both, which is a genuinely staggering amount of content to hand someone in one go. For the uninitiated: these are first-person shooters with deep RPG loot systems, procedurally generated weapons in the millions, and skill trees that let you carve out a playstyle whether you prefer lobbing grenades as the Gunzerker, summoning a Digi-clone as Zer0, or summoning mechs and turrets depending on which character you choose. The hook is the loop - kill things, get better loot, kill bigger things, repeat - and it still holds up. Borderlands 2 is the star here and it earns that status. Handsome Jack is the kind of villain who makes you genuinely hate him while also finding him hilarious, and the writing around his arc is sharper than the series gets credit for. The main story moves well, the side quests range from forgettable fetch runs to genuinely clever comedy set pieces (Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC, included here, is legitimately one of the best pieces of RPG-adjacent writing Gearbox has ever produced). Skill tree variety holds up past hour 40 if you are willing to experiment with builds rather than defaulting to whatever drops highest numbers. The Pre-Sequel, set on Pandora's moon Elpis, adds low-gravity traversal, an oxygen management mechanic, laser weapon types, ice elemental attacks, and a ground-slam move the game calls a butt slam with complete sincerity. Classes like the shield-throwing Athena, the cyborg Wilhelm, and the wonderfully unhinged ClapTrap bring genuine personality. The moon setting creates more gameplay variety than BL2 in places, but the overall campaign is lighter in narrative weight and the pacing wobbles in the back half. Critics and players broadly agree: it's good Borderlands, not great Borderlands. The package includes the Claptastic Voyage DLC for Pre-Sequel, which is actually where that game's writing peaks - a surreal trip through ClapTrap's mind that serves as a clever bridge between the two titles and features some of the sharpest dialogue in the collection. It also carries all the BL2 DLC including Campaign of Carnage, Hammerlock's Hunt, and the aforementioned Dragon Keep. Where the bundle stumbles is in scope: the original Borderlands 1 is absent, so newcomers will walk into lore mid-stream. Solo play is functional throughout but the game clearly breathes better with co-op partners, and some of the XP grind between major story beats will feel padded if you are playing without the distraction of a friend to roast your build choices with. For PC players specifically, the bundle is effectively the same games that have existed on Steam for years, just collected under one purchase. There is no dramatic technical difference from the standalone PC versions, but as a single entry point for someone who wants everything at once it remains one of the more content-dense bundles the genre has produced. If you have never touched this era of Borderlands and enjoy loot-driven shooters with co-op support and writing that occasionally punches above its genre's weight class, the hours-to-content ratio is hard to argue with.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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