Final week, Borderlands 4 acquired a Steam Deck Verified badge. This could suggest that the sport is a good expertise on Valve’s moveable PC. However that’s not the case. And worse, Gearbox eliminated the choice to regulate the sport’s superior visible settings on Steam Deck for some unusual purpose.
It’s no secret that when Borderlands 4 launched late final 12 months, it had every kind of efficiency issues on each console and PC. Patches helped so much, however these first weeks had been tough, with frequent crashes, FPS drops, and different points making it arduous to benefit from the open-world looter shooter. Since then, issues have improved so much. I’ve been replaying the sport on PC and have had a good time. So I used to be hopeful that the latest information that Borderlands 4 is now Verified on Steam Deck meant it could be an effective way to play the sport away from my desk. Properly, that ain’t the case in any respect.
As documented by a number of totally different channels on YouTube, Borderlands 4 on Steam Deck is technically playable, however appears extraordinarily tough, options loads of enter lag, runs poorly at its default settings, and doesn’t in any respect appear worthy of Steam’s Verified badge. That’s speculated to sign to gamers {that a} sport shall be an excellent expertise with no tweaking wanted on the growing old moveable PC. However that’s merely not true of Borderlands 4 on Steam Deck.
However the weirdest a part of Borderlands 4 on Steam Deck is that for some odd purpose, Gearbox has eliminated the superior visible settings submenu from the sport when enjoying on the moveable PC. Yeah. I don’t know why Gearbox would do that, because it simply makes it trickier to your common person to tweak Borderlands 4 and make it presumably run a bit higher on the Steam Deck. You’ll be able to’t change the sport’s decision, shadow high quality, draw distance, and so forth. It’s a baffling selection that makes an already unhealthy solution to play this sport even worse.
Whereas Gearbox deserves some blame, I additionally assume Valve must overhaul or replace its Verified system. It’s turning into increasingly frequent to search out Verified Steam Deck video games that don’t appear to deserve that inexperienced checkmark in any respect. And because the Deck will get older, this drawback is simply going to worsen.
Seeing how Borderlands 4 runs on Steam Deck would possibly present some perception as to why Gearbox and 2K have indefinitely delayed the Swap 2 port that was introduced forward of the sport’s launch. Perhaps that model will sooner or later see the sunshine of day, but when it does, I actually hope it appears and performs higher than what I’m seeing on Steam Deck.
