Despite seemingly escaping the Embrace(r) of death through their sale to Take-Two at the end of last month, Gearbox Entertainment haven’t quite emerged unscathed. The studio has confirmed a number of layoffs shortly after the announcement of the sale, while clarifying that no positions related to the development of games were affected.
]]>Alongside announcing plans to buy Borderlands developers Gearbox from the collapsing wreckage of Embracer Group, Borderlands publishers Take-Two overnight casually mentioned that they are "in active development on next installment in Borderlands series". This isn't a formal announcement as much as a businessblast to hype shareholders, so it didn't have anything specific to say about what Gearbox are up to with their wildly popular and deeply unfunny looter shooter series. It had seemed curious that the much-delayed Borderlands movie was coming out five years after the latest main series game and with no new one in sight.
]]>It's looking increasingly likely that Gearbox Entertainment is going to be sold by Embracer. In a town hall with staff earlier this week, CEO and co-founder Randy Pitchford reportedly told staff that a decision had been made regarding the studio's future, with more details to be shared in March.
Embracer bought Gearbox for $1.3 billion (around £1.02 billion) in 2021, but it was reported that they were looking to sell last year as part of ongoing layoffs, closures and divestments.
]]>Following the sudden closure of veteran Saints Row devs Volition earlier this month, the next storied video game studio owned by mega-conglomerate Embraver Group to be facing an uncertain future is Borderlands makers Gearbox Entertainment, a new report claims.
]]>Based on the shooter series of the same name, the Borderlands film now has an official release date: August 9th, 2024. The action-comedy adaptation wrapped principal shooting in 2021, but it’s been somewhat stuck in post-production limbo ever since with several rounds of reshoots pushing out the release further than expected.
]]>The Borderlands movie has been in post-production since principal photography wrapped in June 2021, but in the years since it has undergone re-shoots under a different director. Now one of the film's original screenwriters, Craig Mazin - most recently known for HBO's Last Of Us adaptation - has opted to have his name removed from the project. Instead Mazin will be credited under the psuedonym Joe Crombie.
]]>We’ve known for a few years that Gearbox’s sci-fi shooter Borderlands is being adapted for the silver screen, but shooting on the movie is now almost finished. Director Eli Roth, known for grisly stuff such as Cabin Fever, has jumped off the project ahead of schedule though. Deadline report that Roth has handed Borderlands over to his friend Tim Miller, the director of Deadpool. Miller will oversee a few weeks of reshoots for Borderlands while Roth begins work on a horror movie called Thanksgiving.
]]>Gearbox Software are making an “all-new” follow-up to Telltale Games’ Tales From The Borderlands episodic graphic adventure set in the Borderlands universe. It’s out this year, Gearbox revealed at this week’s PAX East event.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford – who stepped aside as head of Gearbox Software last October – dropped the existence of the project right at the end of the PAX East presentation while wearing some shockingly Borderlands-yellow chinos. You can watch for yourselves below. Skip to about five minutes from before the end if you’re just interested in the Tales From The Borderlands announcement.
]]>After being pulled from store virtuashelves in 2019 following the demise of Telltale Games, Tales From The Borderlands finally returned to sale to today. It's an episodic story spin-off from Gearbox's looter shooters, and both better and funnier than the source material. If you already owned it, hey, you still owned it anyway. But if you missed it, now you can get in.
]]>Embracer Group, a vast web of European developers and publishers which includes THQ Nordic and Deep Silver, today announced they've swallowed up Gearbox. The gang behind Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines are merging with Embracer to become the seventh operating group within the family. The deal's worth $363 million (£262m) to start. Gearbox say this is cool, and they're planning to grow.
]]>So long, Civilization. The latest freebie over on the Epic Games Store is Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, a rather handsome pairing of two Borderlands games to blast your way through without dropping a penny. But Epic's feeling generous this week - today also marks the surprise release of grimy graffiti sandbox Sludge Life, and this filthy bonus is going free for quite a bit longer than a week.
]]>The long-forgotten Borderlands film might actually be making some headway, as Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford tweeted that Eli Roth has joined the team to direct it. Roth is known for making a fair few horror flicks (as well as that one weird family film where Jack Black plays a warlock that saves the world), so, yeah, no idea what his link is with Borderlands really.
Pitchford deleted the tweet announcing all the new film stuff this almost immediately - but the internet never forgets, Randy.
]]>10 years of Borderlands, is it? A whole decade since four cel-shaded bounty hunters hopped off a bus and murdered their way across a planet to the whiny twangs of Cage The Elephant? Blimey, where does the time go? Well before Destiny, Borderlands married Diablo's gear grind with run n' gun blasting in an open-world romp, kicking off a generation of shooting bloody numbers out of heads. To celebrate a decade of cartoon carnage, the next five weeks of Borderlands 3 will crank things up to 11, starting with a week of better boss loot drops.
]]>Gearbox fully unveiled Borderlands 3 during a livestreamed event earlier today with an hour of largely-uncut co-op footage, showing off a brighter and more colourful sequel than I was expecting. Combat is more mobile, weapons have alt-fire modes, bosses look more interesting and players can now leave the dusty wastes of Pandora to go shooting and looting on other planets. You can see the full presentation below, and they're setting streamers loose on the game now for three hours of freeform play, so Twitch will be flooded with footage later today.
]]>As this is my penultimate edition of Steam Charts, before I return to nuzzle into the warm infinite belly of Horace for all of time, I thought it might be fun to take a bit of a look behind the scenes of Steam Charts, to see how this weekly column comes together.
So, hey, join me as we step behind the curtain, and learn a little bit about the magic of Rock Paper Shotgun.
]]>Steam’s updated approach to review bombing, which prevents “off topic” reviews from counting towards a game’s overall score, has kicked in for the Borderlands series. It seems to be the first time that the (optional) filter has been applied by Steam, after users flooded the series’ reviews following the announcement that Borderlands 3 will be a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store.
Viewing the games with the option turned on puts a little asterisk next to the mark of how positive the game is, which leads to a note that reads: “Period(s) of off-topic review activity detected. Excluded from the Review Score, based on your preferences.” It doesn’t seem to actually hide those reviews, however.
]]>There ain't no rest for the wicked, a video game once told me, and Gearbox Software certainly have been busy. Today they launched remastered versions of Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, coming to PC as free updates. They're all prettied-up a bit, while the first game also now includes all the DLC as well as features borrowed from later games in the looter-shooter series. These updates are probably more for the benefit of the latest consoles, jazzing 'em up for a fresh audience before Borderlands 3 hits in September, but hey we benefit too. Thanks, Ian Microsoft and Ian Sony!
]]>Borderlands 3 wasn't the only looty shooty announcement Gearbox and publisher 2K had lined up today. They also announced yet another re-release of the original trilogy (including Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel), this time with a few technical improvements, some optional 4k textures and some quality-of-life improvements for the first game. The good news for us PC folks is that if you already own the original Borderlands or either of the sequels, these upgrades will be entirely free. Below, a pair of predictably bombastic trailers for the polished-up loot n' shooters.
]]>Gearbox Software are, as expected, headed back to a beat-up alien planet for more looting and shooting in Borderlands 3. They announced their third game in the FPS action-RPG series, which has also seen a prequel and spin-off from other developers, at PAX East today with a flashy trailer. A trailer which looked like heck during the big announcement presentation due to technical difficulties. Though the technical difficulties were more exciting than the slow card magic trick. Oh dear. But the handy-dandy YouTube version of the announcement trailer works just fine so hey look come and see.
]]>It seems Gearbox Software are winding up to announce Borderlands 3, or a cooperative looter-shooter which is effectively Borderlands 3, later this month. They've posted an unsubtle tweet with an unsettling ? emoji and a cartoony, Borderlands-lookin' image saying "March 28." What about March 28? Oh, nothing. Perhaps they're simply celebrating the feast day of Saint Guntram, which is the sort of name Gearbox would go wild for. All we know is that this involves someone named Boston Ma. She sounds formidable.
]]>Back in November, the Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines studio Gearbox Software filed a suit against their former lawyer, Wade Callender, accusing him of "exploit[ing] Gearbox’s generosity and trust for his own personal gain." The suit was not particularly interesting, alleging that Callender did not fully pay back a loan he borrowed to secure his house, and that he used a business credit card for personal expenses.
Then, last month, Callender counter-sued, accusing Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford of "siphoning" a $12 million (£9.34m) "secretive 'Executive Bonus,'" as well as a number of significantly more salacious details that have rocketed the case into the public eye.
]]>Utomik! Sounds like a stiff drink, but no. Utomik is a subscription-based games service that launched yesterday, angling to be ‘Netflix for games’ (sound familiar?) It’s currently offering a library of approximately 750 games for either $7 or $10 per month, depending on whether you want to share the account with your little sister or not. I signed up and took a stroll through its library, fingering a few tomes here and there. And while it was fast and performed well, there wasn’t a lot I wanted to play. It’s less Netflix for games and more “Spotify for older games you already own or don’t want”.
]]>Strange now, when Borderlands is as big as it is and as synonymous as it is with bug-eyed shrieking, to think back to the transformative and ambitious promises of the first few times we glimpsed it. The idea of an FPS with the mentality of Diablo was ahead of its time, and at the time seemed thrilling rather than, as is the case now, the most lucrative business model. And that cel-shaded look in the era of Gears of War? Woof-woof.
]]>Gearbox Software have opened up a little more about the next Borderlands, after yonks of mutters and murmurs. Well, about some of its technology. Potentially. Gearbox head honch Randy Pitchford showed off some of the Unreal Engine 4 tech "that will power the next Borderlands game" during Epic's 'State of Unreal' presentation at the Game Developers Conference yesterday. Gearbox have been working on lighting with black outlines, cross-hatched shadows, all that jazz. He showed a few scenes but did stress it "is not a video game, it's a technology demonstration". You can watch it online.
]]>Gearbox will be turning its attention to Borderlands 3* once the team has finished off work on their upcoming team co-op shooter Battleborn [official site] and its DLC.
I thiiiiiink Borderlands 3 had already been confirmed in a bunch of "yeah, in the future" and "we want to" ways but this time there was mention of actual project staff by Gearbox's CEO Randy Pitchford and that there will likely be little references to the game in Battleborn DLC so it's more concrete as information goes…
]]>You probably haven't heard of Borderlands Online [official site], because the spin-off from Gearbox's FPS-RPG was only ever announced for China. You probably won't hear from it again, as Take-Two Interactive have cancelled the game and closed 2K China, the studio making it. Two things to take away from this [please note, this isn't intended to be any sort of 'Take-Two' pun]: yes, it probably would've been a F2P FPS you didn't care about but huh, only learning about something after its death is weird; and dang, how many more studios will Take-Two close?
]]>Gearbox Software's toon-styled bro-shooter Borderlands [official site] is getting the Hollywood treatment with a new movie based on the franchise, in some form or another anyway. The news comes from Variety, who write that Lionsgate is developing the flick with the help of producers Avi and Ari Arad, although details beyond that remain scant. So here's what we know so far:
]]>'Humble' is not a word I would rush to associate with Borderlands, given the chest-thumping, max-volume mania of 2 and the recent Pre-Sequel, but in this instance it means you can lay hands on the bulk of Gearbox's FPS/RPG series for few-pennies.
]]>Tales From The Borderlands Episode One is the funniest adventure game Telltale have released in years. Given that The Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us are the most recent offerings that might not seem like such a big deal. Throw in Back to the Future alongside those two and the average number of decent jokes actually goes down.
But Borderlands would stand out as a winner in any company and you don't need to know, or be amused by, Gearbox' games to enjoy it.
]]>I don't enjoy Borderlands. I find the core first-person shooting unsatisfying, and I don't enjoy how its action-RPG side augments that with boring incremental skills and randomised weapons.
I do, however, dig the idea of a weird west planet on the outskirts of known space filled with chancers, treasure-hunters, weirdos, and gangs of murderers. That's nice, that. And gosh oh golly, I have very much enjoyed watching the new trailer for Telltale's episodic adventure game series Tales from the Borderlands. It's got all the griftin', cheatin', sneakin', and rootin' tootin' robot shootin' I would want from a game set in that world. Come see!
]]>With every new release, the Borderlands universe becomes increasingly ridiculous. It's been happening for a while now, with the puns, the slapstick and the hidden pop culture references that pepper Borderlands 2 and further season its DLC. I'm hardly complaining, because I've gradually disengaged from the first-person shooter over the last few years, confronted again and again by far too many po-faced, monochrome military affairs. Borderlands 2 has been a welcome exception.
Like a sudden burst of ketchup from a thoroughly-spanked Heinz bottle, even more of that often unsubtle flavouring is set to season our PCs very soon. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel comes out in two weeks. Developed in conjunction with 2K Australia, the Pre-Sequel is exactly what you'd expect from the series: more jokes, more cartoonish violence, more character diversity and a further expansion of a gun collection that would already make any Tom Clancy fan spurt like... well, like a sudden burst of ketchup from a thoroughly-spanked Heinz bottle.
]]>Borderlands! Apparently lots of people like it, I just happen not to know many of them. A quick RPS-chat whip round revealed a startling apathy for its cell-shaded comedy and endless weaponry. I feel like I really should love it, but just can't get past how boring it is to play. It gains a little from co-op, clearly the supposed strength of its formula, but a game would need to be extraordinarily bad not to be fun with a group of friends.
The baitingly-titled Pre-Sequel doesn't look to be changing much of that. It's low-grav gimmicks and the series' best-known characters placed in what we've seen before. As lazy as it is to say: if you liked that, presumably you'll feel similarly about this. Check with the Gamescom trailer below.
]]>Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is called Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, which should already tip you off that it's a game trying extremely hard to out-zany its predecessors. In the press release that accompanies the release date trailer below (it's out on October 17th on this side of the internet oceans and on the 14th in the US), several characters do a dance on the moon. Crazy, right? I can't think of anything more hilarious than lunar choreography set to ironically terrible music, except maybe exactly the same thing but with a gun that shoots bees dropped in the middle of the whole show. Borderlands 3 will probably be announced by a troupe of clowns spilling out of a tiny car at your front door and rubbing a cream pie into your face.
]]>You might well cheer the demise of GameSpy Technologies, but an awful lot of games will lose official online multiplayer support when the service shuts down on May 31. Publishers scour the battlefield running triage measuring pulses peeling eyelids shining lights flexing smashed bones jabbing fingers in wounds licking blood. "We've got a live one here!" they cry occasionally and haul the game up on their shoulder, but all too often stand up, brush themselves down, then step over the grasping bloodied hand as they quietly walk away.
2K Games shall save Borderlands, Civilization III, Civ IV, and Civ IV: Colonization, the publisher has confirmed, along with their expansions. A dozen of its less popular games will be less lucky.
]]>GameSpy, a relic from times long before the modern Internet - or indeed, games and spies - existed is closing down. This on its own is not surprising as the multiplayer service is, by modern standards, buggy and kind of a joke, but it leaves a startling number of games with their e-wings clipped and their online-heaving hams strung in its wake. How many, you ask? Well, Reddit's /r/Games board compiled a massive list, and the results aren't pretty.
]]>Yes, "the" Borderlands. The relentlessly silly blast-fest from Gearbox, as opposed to, um, that other Borderlands. Telltale might not seem like the most natural fit for a spinoff of the action-heavy RPG (which is less conversational and more often gunversational), but it's happening, per Spike's abysmally awkward VGX "award" show over the weekend. Also fired from the dudebro-centric network's Big Fucking Announcement Gun: a Telltale Game of Thrones series, which was first rumored last month. Scant details on both below.
]]>Jim spent the past ten days in hyper-hyped mega-sequel Borderlands 2. He has killed many things, with many, many guns.
Here's wot he thinks.
]]>Here's today's scandal, then. The Mechromancer, a post-release DLC character for Borderlands 2 has been revealed, and one of her skill trees is aimed at making the game more accessible to people who don't play shooters. Officially, this set of abilities is called 'Best Friends Forever', and includes skills such as missed shots having a chance to auto-ricochet into their intended targets - i.e. allowing some victory from imprecise aiming. That's fine. That's even quite a good idea for anyone who wants to play the game with someone who isn't well-versed in such things. I quite want to play it with my Dad, in fact.
The trouble is that a dev at Gearbox unofficially dubbed it 'the girlfriend mode' when talking to Eurogamer, which is clearly all kinds of offensive and quickly caused online outrage - definitely justified were the skills truly called 'girlfriend mode' but rather less cut and dried if it turns out to be just one guy's personal (and foolish) nickname for the real title of Best Friends Forever. Gearbox are claiming the drama stems from misinterpretation and sensationalism.
]]>Randy Pitchford is but one of many developers behind upcoming frenzied shoot'n'loot odyssey Borderlands 2, but as the garrulous bossman of Gearbox he's the natural guy to talk to about the game, its manic mood, its team, its sub-quests and, of course, the physics of the moon. No, I didn't ask about DNF, every other site in the known universe did that.
]]>‘Manic’ is the word that lurked spider-like atop my forebrain after an hour or so with Borderlands 2. It had been a sustained torrent of colour and noise, the slaying of small armies of bandits, insectoid aliens and flying buggies interspersed with frenzied, light-speed jabbering from a psychotic teenage girl. Borderlands 2 is attention deficit disorder incarnate, a whirling, gnashing Tasmanian devil of hypercaffeinated gags, shouting and violence. I won’t lie – I felt a little exhausted after playing it.
]]>Excellent news, troops. Reinforcing the ranks of impending PC games show Rezzed - orchestrated of course by Eurogamer and this here website - is lord of the Borders Randy Pitchford. The Gearbox head and former magician whose surname isn't but should be Pitchfork, veteran of Borderlands, Brothers in Arms, Half-Life: Opposing Force and Ukeday Ukemnay Oreverfay, will take to the stage in Brighton on Friday 6th July at 2pm for a live demo of Borderlands 2, followed by a bout of answering your questions. Randy's company Gearbox will also be presenting Aliens: Colonial Marines at the show, incidentally, so I guess you could also shout "yeah man, but it's a dry heat!" at him and he won't be too confused.
]]>Ah, here's a spot of good mini-news for platform mini-zealots such as you and I. We've become all-too accustomed to PC versions of games being cursorily ported cast-offs of the console editions, riddled with references to X buttons and triggers, but Gearbox aren't thinking that way for Borderlands 2. While the game's still, at best guess, around a year from release, already they're plotting on how the PC version needs to differ from the console version.
]]>Gearbox have got some explaining to do. No, nothing to do with Duke Nukem Forever – but because, back when they were first promoting Borderlands, they emphasised what a risk it was, how unusual to have something new rather than a sequel, and why the media and gamers should thus give their RPG-shooter their full attention even though it wasn't a known quantity.
Now, of course, they’re making a sequel, and once again asking for our full attention. Should we give it?
]]>Eurogamer had already called it, now 2K and Gearbox have officially announced it: Borderlands 2 will be revealed at Gamescom later this month (I'm just about to pester them for an appointment) and released at some point beetween April 2012 and April 2013. Almost no details whatsover - this is how the games industry rolls - but there will be a"ll-new characters, skills, environments, enemies, weapons and equipment, which come together in an ambitiously crafted story. Players will reveal secrets, and escalate mysteries of the Borderlands universe as they adventure across the unexplored new areas of Pandora."
All of these things are good things, though it puts paid to that rumour a couple of years back that 'Borderworlds' was the direction Gearbox were heading in. A PC version is confirmed, by the way, as well as the inevitable playboxes. The first image from the game is below.
]]>Borderlanders! Gearbox has revealed that next month's 1.41 patch will up the game's level cap by 8 levels, and owners of the General Knoxx DLC can achieve an increase to a maximum level of 69. The game's enemies and loot will scale accordingly, too.
It was RPS' opinion that Borderlands was only really ever any good multiplayer. Do we have any brave, lonely lone wolves out there who are still dutifully playing it singleplayer? Or have you and your friends now become an elite unit? And who remembers what the game looked like before they applied that cell-shading effect? You'll find the game's very first reveal trailer after the jump. Man. I wonder if Gearbox could release a patch that let you play in the old art style.
]]>Or Loving, Gift-Laden Zoo, depending on whether or not you've already bought Gearbox's pretty good RPG-shooter Borderlands yet. If you haven't, you might be planning on buying its upcoming Game Of The Year edition. (I chortle whenever a re-release of a game call itself that. By whose authority, exactly? I might buy a new hat and start referring to myself as Gaming Blogger Of The Year). If you do, you will have the earliest possible access to the demo of Dukey-Nuke Nukem Not-Never-After-All, once it lands next year.
If you already own Borderlands and all its DLC... well, back of the queue, buddy.
]]>The fourth piece of Borderlands DLC has trundled into our crosshairs. It's Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, which is available via Steam or the Gearbox store for about $10, or £6.30 in Imperial cash tokens. I'll download it in a minute, and will try to have a look and update this post tonight with some thoughts on its worth.
Gearbox have produced a mildly amusing trailer for this, which you can see below.
]]>Game endings, then. They’re crap, aren’t they? Even games that tell engaging and creative stories have a habit of foundering abruptly instead of providing a satisfying finale. Maybe it’s because statistically, developers know less people will see the ending than any other part of their game, and a finale is a lot of work. Maybe it’s because creating closure is an entirely different discipline to holding someone’s attention.
We could have sat theorising in the RPS chatroom all day, but instead we collaborated on something far more proactive and arrogant: rewriting the endings of five of our favourite games. Check out our maddened riffing on Borderlands, Half-life, The Longest Journey, Morrowind and System Shock 2 after the jump.
]]>2K Games just fired a rocket of scalding-hot news through the RPS postbox. After waiting for it to cool, we read that a fourth piece of Borderlands DLC, Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, will be released this September, granting players 20+ new missions, 10 extra skill points and 3 more backpack slots. Exciting! Or is it? I'm not sure. I lost interest in Borderlands after the first six hours or so. Additional screenshots and the full announcement after the jump.
]]>New Borderlands DLC, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, will be out on Thursday, priced at $10. Apparently this new pack is even bigger than the previous Island Of Dr Ned, and continues the game from where it ended, raising the level cap to 61. There are reportedly thirty new enemies in this expansion, and even a 4-player vehicle (pictured above). Some trailers below.
]]>Probably our major gripe with Gearbox's many-weaponed first-person-roleplayer Borderlands was that hosting/joining multiplayer games was more complicated than painting a ceiling with a live scorpion. Four people dicking around with router settings is hardly gung-ho adventuring. A mere four months after release, they've finally fixed the networking problems that made the game's super-fun co-op mode super-unfun. Or so they say. Actually they say this: "Multiplayer connectivity has been improved; users should no longer be required to forward ports to host or join multiplayer games." Which is excellent, if depressingly tardy news. Does this 1.21 patch solve the problem for you? Tell us! Oh - that link in the sentence before last is purely for boxed copies of the game - Steam et al will update automagically.
]]>Gearbox have announced, but not dated, another piece of DLC for Borderlands. Here's the blurb:
“This DLC extends the Borderlands experience, providing new challenges and opportunities for growth for characters from around level 34 to level 50. Growth for characters at 50? Yeah, that’s right, we’ve raised the level cap; even players who think they’ve seen it all have tons more to do! The Secret Armory of General Knoxx offers hours of thrilling shooting and looting for Borderlands players!”
Quick comments poll: How many of you bought some Borderlands DLC? Will you get more?
]]>One Emcee Slick brings us Borderlands: the rap. "When you've got seventy million guns / why use swords and knives? / I chose the hunter Mordecai / and now I'm level 45." He knows it.
]]>The second piece of Borderlands DLC is now available. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot introduces a new "riot" mode, in which you face "endless hordes of menacing antagonists, thirsting for carnage in tournaments where the rules of warfare are constantly changing." It seems that the add-on provides a series of tournament matches in the new "Underdome" arena, which is presided over by the titular Moxxi, a sarcastic lady. The battles will drop lots of high spec weapons, but not allow you to grind XP.
You can get the DLC for $10 at the Gearbox Store, or on Steam, but I can't say I'm that interested in this one. Trailer below.
]]>I've not even had time to starting playing the first bit of expansionising DLC for Borderlands and another one has been announced. Titled "Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot" it will apparently feature "an intense single-player or cooperative experience that expands the mayhem by adding three new Riot Mode arenas where players will endure an onslaught of Pandora’s baddest enemies." Hmm. Additionally: "Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot also adds a new bank feature, which allows players extra storage capacity for when they encounter one of the more than 16 million weapons that Borderlands has to offer; and the ability to acquire two additional skill points as quest rewards, making their characters even more powerful than before." So that's good, but shouldn't a bank or locker system have been patched it anyway? Wasn't it one of the most obvious oversights in the basic game?
]]>The Zombie Island Of Dr Ned, Borderlands' first piece of downloadable content, is now available. You can get it here (link dead at time of writing, which is a lot of use...) for retail versions of the game, and here for the Steam version. I'm not sure about other digi-download versions, but I'd assume the retail patch will work? Any ideas about that, comment below. I'll have a play and report back if it's worth paying the $10/£6.30. Trailer below.
]]>Last week you'll have noticed young Mr Rossignol doffing his hat and offering you some footage of the forthcoming Borderlands DLC, The Zombie Island Of Doctor Ned. Which is a very splendid name, and released this very day. Now you can enjoy the official trailer for the new content should you be so bold as to look below.
]]>UPDATE: Patch ahoy!
Zombies, zombies, zombies. We might as well rename the PC the Personal Zombie Slayer. Borderlands' zombie island DLC expansion, The Zombie Island Of Dr Ned, is out on consoles on the 24th of this month, and should be available for PC shortly thereafter. We're still chasing the exact PC details from 2K. It features some freaky-looking zombies, Borderlands style, as well as "were-skags" (?) and promises to add another "six to ten hours" of game time.
]]>Borderlands 2 is probably going to happen, if comments made in this interview are to be believed. Mike Neumann told the award-looting VG247.com that “Everyone here loves the franchise, and it seems like the public is really coming back with praise and love. So yeah, if everything makes sense, Borderlands 2 seems like a no-brainer to me.”
]]>I've been meaning to put up some Borderlands tweaking instructions all week, but I don't think I could have done it better than this thread on the Gearbox forums. Thanks to Mr Berry for pointing that out to us. Crucially, one of the commands in there allows you disable the voice-comms for the game, so you can use something more sensible. We've had no word back from 2K/Gearbox on whether there will be a patch for that stuff, but I guess we'll find out soon enough. If you are tweaking, don't forget to back up the relevant files before you start editing, as there might be some problems with loss of keybinds and such. The other issue is port forwarding, the instructions for which are in this thread. If you're having trouble hosting/connecting to co-op games then you probably need to get busy with that stuff. Sigh.
]]>We've played Gearbox's fancy-lookin' "role-playing shooter", Borderlands, and we're ready for a verdict. What will we have to say?
Jim: Who wants to try to define the game in a single sentence then, eh? Kieron: Hellgate in a desert, but not shit. Alec: There's some sort definition involving the words "Diablo" and "guns", but I can't work out how to stick them together.
]]>There's still a week until the thing goes on sale, but seems Gearbox/2K are confident enough in their impending shooty-bang-bang/looty-grab-grab game that they've already confirmed its first DLC.
You'll never guess what it's about. I mean, it's not like it could be zombies - that undead horse has already had a brutal flogging everywhere else.
It's zombies.
]]>There's been a lot of people asking questions about Borderland's intricacies over in the Co-op impressions thread yesterday. Specifically, how much of an RPG it actually is. Well, the what-is-an-RPG always opens a particular can of debate, but in terms of character development, that they've lobbed the character skill tress online can give you a handle of the whole action/RPG mix. Here's sneaky-lady Lilith , heavy-frenzied mouthbreather Brick, camping-bastard Mordecai and the hilariously inappropriately named Roland. And some further explanation follows...
]]>This week we've had a chance to play through the beginning of Borderlands, courtesy of 2K Games. What follows are some preview impressions of that co-op experience. We expect to unleash a full RPS Verdict on the game later this month.
]]>Bah: The PC version of Borderlands has been delayed until October 26th in the US and October 30th in the rest of the world. Why WHY? "Optimization", that's why. Perhaps even optimisation. Stupid PCs and their different cogs.
]]>The latest Borderlands trailer is turgid with game footage: terrain, buildings, vehicles, bad-dudes, 'splosions. It also takes an opportunity to introduce the four characters, with the soldier seemingly being all about guns, the siren doing stealth and area-of-effect stuff (possibly?), the hunter doing headshots, and Brick having some bolt-encrusted fists. Four-player co-op is the new two-player co-op, it seems. And I'm firmly in the pro camp on that art style. I even wrote an article about it.
]]>Gearbox have released the first in what purports to be a series of making-of clips for Borderlands, starring the comedy robot, Claptrap. In this opening skit it seems that Claptrap might be not-so-gently mocking the ill-tempered Christian Bale, while also revealing that monster stats in Borderlands will be procedurally generated, just like the guns. Go take a look...
]]>A montage of Borderlands footage has appeared at Games Trailers. It doesn't look the most official of videos, but it contains excellent examples of the frenetic nature of the game, as well as showing off the concept art-style graphics at full speed. Borderlands is one of the games to brave the pre-Christmas storm, set to appear on the 23rd October, which is four days before my birthday and thus ideal. You can see the frantic action below.
]]>Hyper-stylised FPS-RPG Borderlands is shaping up to be one of the best action games of the year. In case you missed it, I previewed it here. A couple of days back, I also sat down with Gearbox's garrulous bossman Randy Pitchford; I was there on behalf of a magazine, but saved some time at the end for something a little different - a few questions from our goodly readers, conveyed to me via our Twitter. Read on for this absurdly loquacious and infectiously enthusiastic veteran PC developer's thoughts on PC vs Xbox Borderlands, what might be in store for DLC, the reasons for and problems with all those grey'n'brown shooters, and a ton of insight into the thinking behind Borderlands. Also: his verdict on who would win in a fight between CliffyB and Gabe Newell. IMPORTANT JOURNALISM.
]]>A little while back, I spent a few hours playing Gearbox Software's upcoming, toon-styled, free-roaming FPS-RPG. I was horribly, desperately hungover at the time, and was almost sick on Randy Pitchford while he was cheerily explaining the thinking behind Borderlands to me. I am the most professional of all the games journalists.
But that doesn't matter. Only the game matters. Here's how it is.
]]>Looks like Gamespot managed to get first dibs on the new Borderlands trailer - I've posted it below. Lots of splattery monster killing, some bits and pieces of game footage, and plenty of random post-apocalyptic carnage. There also appears to be a comedy robot. Borderlands is, as someone pointed out in the previous release-date post, being sold as a role-playing shooter: an RPS.
Does that bode well? Go take a look.
]]>You know how often it goes like this? "Super-Exciting Game IV was due to be released for PC in three months, but publishers Idiotsoft have announced it's now to be exclusive for Dreamcast and not released in the UK until the new millennium." So when it doesn't, I think it's worth noticing. 2K have announced a release date for Borderlands, 23rd October for Europe, and three days earlier in the US. This year. Despite other games coming out in the run up to Christmas. 2K told Gamespot they aren't afraid of a little competition.
]]>Gearbox big chief Randy Pitchford was grabbed by GameTrailers and he unloaded his explanation of Borderlands, which you can see below. What's interesting about this is how the pitch for the game has subtly changed. Originally it was much more "co-op shooter with loads of guns", and now it's "concept art shooter with RPG elements". Pitchford flags up Fallout 3 and Bioshock, but the game footage that accompanies his chatter demonstrates that the game is nothing like either of them, in fact it's got more of a multiplayer feel going on, and I wonder to what extent the FPS-Diablo-with-guns principles of it are actually going to make the game into a kind of co-op dungeon crawl. The persistent character stuff still intrigues me, and although I'm less excited about this game than when it was announced, I'm looking forward to the October release.
]]>We've finally seen Borderlands running. And how. The new graphical overhaul has received a lot of attention, but so far only been seen in screenshots (and the very brief glimpses in this trailer). It's good news to report that it looks even more splendid when it's moving. The concept-art-as-graphics design has completely won us over. But what about the game itself?
]]>Continuing the coverage of the E3 event in Los Angeles, which somehow seems to have started on the internet almost a week before it's due to start in the real world, we have the Borderlands trailer. I rather expected them to remake the original trailer in the new engine, but they did not. Shame. And I am totally doing a trailer poll at the end of all this, and not for the best one, for the worst. Who made the biggest waste of corporate airtime this year? You can decide. I think this will be somewhere in the middle, because it does at least show fragments of game footage. And don't get me started on this increasing footage-free teaser-trailer trend! (Chokes on pickle sandwich, oh God, must post before unconsciousness...)
]]>We got our first look at the internet-dividing redesign of Gearbox's open-world shooty/drivey game a couple of weeks back, and now the venting's mostly out of the way (because it is out of the way isn't it, shouty men?), we can all enjoy a whole host of screens. Personally, I think it's looking pretty bloody spectacular, and a blessed relief from what's threatening to become a homogenous look for shooters. Also: LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING. Er, that thing beneath the cut, I mean.
]]>Gearbox have revealed the first online screenshot of the Borderlands' not-cel-shaded-but-a-bit-like-that style. Just one shot, the meanies, and peculiarly they've stamped a big advert for the forthcoming PC Gamer US June edition all over it. Peculiar because the current ish of PC Gamer UK has the same shot. Meanies because PCG UK has seven more in its pages that aren't online. But shitting crikey, we're looking forward to this. There's an advert-cropped version of the shot if you click on the pic above, and you can see the whole thing at the game's site.
]]>This week we had a chance to put a few questions to the producer fellow from Gearbox's upcoming sandbox science fiction shooter, Borderlands. Simon Hurley, for that is his name, talked a little about the game world, the vehicular combat, the four-player online co-op campaign, how the story will unfold in a non-linear environment, and the testing nightmares involved with having half a million weapons...
]]>This is a really poor quality video, but the developer voiceover does reveal quite a lot more than the constant reiteration of there being "500,000" weapons in the game. It talks about the persistent nature of Borderlands characters, the level-based system, the nature of online co-op, and the wide-open, exploration-rich terrain.
]]>Much info appeared in Ubisoft and Take-Two's press releases that appeared last night, which were full of words like "fiscal" that confuse and scare me. They also include the slippy-slidey nature of a bunch of their PC releases. So what do we know?
Ubi's Assassin's Creed is going to take an extra couple of weeks before it's on our machines. Sneaking out of March, it's now hiding in a hay cart until April 11th.
]]>When I was a kid any film that featured a large disc of rock, embedded with mystic symbols, that would suddenly release dazzling white light, was perfect. That's all it took. I'm older now, but importantly, no different. So the Borderlands trailer from December makes me go all stupid.
Gearbox seem to have a habit of being brilliant without making a big fuss. After dabbling with the Half-Life franchise, they then became the supply teachers of the gaming world, filling in when developers were off sick, pregnant, or too busy to make their own sequel or add-on pack. But then came Brothers In Arms - their first, eurgh, unique brand, and it was really rather splendid. That's kept them busy for a while, but oh golly gee whizz look what's next! Borderlands really does look like it might be spectacular.
]]>There's a new video of Borderlands to enjoy.
]]>Good Afternoon, Internet. I hope you all had a lovely weekend, because we certainly did; awash in videogames as we are. Still, there's no resting on laurels round these parts and so we've been making some inquiries about that rather interesting Mad Max-in-Space project from Gearbox: Borderlands. We're hoping to deliver a splendid interview in the near future, but to quench our info-thirst 2k Games were kind enough to send over a batch of screenshots. They're not particularly new, but blimey, we're excited about this game.
The screens show some suggestive detail, such as the alien beasts in combat, some vehicle stuff such as bandit garages, a mysterious teleporter, and some FPS shootery. Click through for more...
]]>Being one of those gamers who regularly reacts to games by saying "Wouldn't It be Cool If..." I responded to Grin's last original game, Bandits, by saying "Wouldn't it be cool if there were some more ambitious sci-fi MadMax vehicular action games out there". (My mum would be so proud, okay.) Bandits, you see, wasn't particularly good, but it was good enough for me to want more racing across scorched alien desert and blasting other vehicles into tumbling shreds of wreckage. There was the potent kernel of an idea in there, and a pretty solid mouse/keyboard control method for speeding death-buggies too. And so I dreamed of high-speed action games. Then, all of a sudden there there was Rage, and Borderlands. Now, assuming that Rage is a very long way off, and doesn't quite fit the Bandits template that inspired my gleeful pipe-dreaming (we'll see why in a bit), then that leaves me with one focus of interest: Borderlands.
It's a science fiction desert-world FPS with vehicles, randomised missions and ubiquitous co-op. It also features bizarre alien fauna - possibly a bad thing, given Auto Aborto Assault's mutant debacle - and lots of motorised fighting with desperate bandits. What it does do is try to create a thriving world, with lots of unexpected encounters - a little like that other open ended shooter I can't stop talking about: Stalker.
Gearbox being the blokes who made Brothers In Arms, and 2K being Bioshock's publisher, of course. Borderlands is a post-apocalyptic shooter with vehicles (yes, a bit like Id Software's recent announcement, Rage) delivered in a sci-fi Mad Max style. The game will feature randomly generated missions and even some RPG-style character development, with customisable characters, weapons and vehicles. Best of all, however, is that it's going to be focusing on co-op multi-player. (Also a bit like Rage).
]]>
