This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

Among the trio of titles 2K are bringing to Switch this month is the acclaimed shooter series Borderlands. As well as the first game, the Borderlands Legendary Collection contains Borderlands 2 and the spin-off title that takes place between the two mainline games, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

This is the first time the series has surfaced on a Nintendo platform, so we thought we’d give you the lowdown on what to expect from the games, and why the franchise is so beloved by those who play it.

New Beginnings

Released all the way back in 2009, Borderlands brought a new approach to an FPS genre that was starting to feel a little stale. Combining the run and gun action that had been in vogue for some time with RPG and loot-drop mechanics found in dungeon-crawlers like Diablo, Borderlands successfully heralded a new style of game developer Gearbox dubbed a “role-playing shooter”.

The open-world sci-fi western garnered positive reviews across the board, with it’s current Metacritic average sitting at a very respectable 81. It also garnered Game Informer’s ‘Best Co-op Game’ award that year, thanks to the excellent multiplayer that allowed up to 4 people join forces to explore the desolate world of Pandora.

Four different playable characters offered variations in play-style. Each representing a separate class, they all have certain abilities unique to them, and specialise in the use of particular weapons.

Ah the weapons. Borderlands actually entered the Guiness Book of World Records for having the most guns in any game at a whopping 17.75 million. That’s down to the procedural generation that adjusted each weapon’s stats. There’s some procedural generation employed in enemy stats and characteristics as well, and although their strength tends to ramp up in tandem with your own, it keeps things varied as you progress.

As you can imagine, all that variety offered plenty of replayability, and you could even play through the game again once you’d finished it with all your gear and progress in tact from the get go.

Rounding off the unique gameplay was a cool comic-book aesthetic and oddball humour (delivered by some great voice acting) that was both adult and juvenile, yet always hilarious. The combination of the novel gameplay and excellent presentation made the series a hit.

Polished Guns

Borderlands 2 came along a few years later and basically buffed everything that made the first game so successful to a wondrous shine. There were four new players for fans to get to grips with, and a host of new quests, loot and challenges to tackle across what was a more vibrant and diverse Pandora.

Where the first game could occasionally be accused of being a little empty, Borderlands 2’s Pandora had a much more ‘lived-in’ feel, with an abundance of chatty NPCs delivering plenty of laughs via excellent voice acting once again.

Impressively, the game featured even more guns, but whilst the shoot-and-loot gameplay was as solid as ever, the biggest advances aruably came in the game’s narrative. No longer just on the hunt for alien treasure, players were treated to a slightly more engaging story as they battled with Handsome Jack. The megalomaniacal CEO of an evil corporation seeking to take control of Pandora’s resources offered a captivating villain for players to point the guns at.

The combination of all those things culminated in a critical high-point for the series, with an average metacritic score of 89 (across the various platforms) and a host of awards to its name. It swept up at that year’s VGAs, taking home Best Shooter, Best Multiplayer, Character of the Year, Best DLC (for the Psycho Pack which is included in the Legendary Collection), Best Xbox 360 Game, and Dameon Clarke scooped Best Performance by a Human Male for his portrayal of Handsome Jack.

Narrative Space

Seemingly in response to the positive feedback on Handsome Jack, Borderlands’ third entry was a spin-off of sorts. Set between the events of the first and second game, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel centred around the antagonist of 2012’s critical darling.

With such a compelling character acting as the nucleus of the game’s plot, the story was much more enriched this time around, helped in no small part by Anthony Burch’s excellent story telling. Following Jack’s journey from hero to psychopath made the trip around Pandora’s moon of Elpis a hugely enjoyable one.

The spacey location added anti-gravity jumps to proceedings too, bringing another element to combat (as well as some rather cool abilities). Another four characters to take control of kept things fresh too, with the tried-and-tested gunplay and skill-tree aspects all present and correct.

Worth A Shot?

Borderlands’ looter-shooter mechanic hasn’t changed all that much throughout the years (something that’s apparently true in Borderlands 3 released on other systems too) but there’s arguably a reason for that. The core gameplay was nailed on right out of the gate, so Gearbox merely had to polish and refine as they went.

Hunting down legendary weapons amongst the myriad of procedurally generated shotguns, pistols, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and more is incredibly entertaining - not least as you’ll use that loot to blow alien monstrosities, human bandits and robotic bullet-sponges to smithereens.

The combination of RPG stat building with nailed-on FPS gunplay made Borderlands a unique experience in it’s own right, but the idiosyncratic presentation and near-the-knuckle humour elevated the series to the revered heights it continues to enjoy.

Switch fans who’ve neglected to pick up an entry on another system will soon get to understand what’s so entertaining about Vault hunting, and Borderlands will be another welcome, critically-acclaimed entry to the Switch’s library.