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.
]]>Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon Keep was originally a Borderlands 2 DLC, but now it's available as a standalone release called Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-shot Adventure. It functions as a taster of what's to come in its successor, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, due next year.
While Dragon Keep will cost monies on Steam, it's available for free on the Epic Games Store for a week.
]]>FPS games are a classic PC gaming staple, and whether you've been playing them since the 90s or started your journey more recently with the boom in battle royales, there are plenty to choose from when it comes to the all-time greats. To help you narrow down what to play next, we've created this list of the best FPS games to play right now, from single-player epics to team-based shooters you can play with mates. Heck, some don't even necessarily have guns in them at all, and you may find the odd boomerang or bow in here too.
]]>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.
]]>Telltale Games' episodic Borderlands spinoff story Tales From The Borderlands was removed from sale after the company closed along with many of their other games. Gearbox, developers of the Boderlands series proper, have now announced that this particular narrative adventure is making a comeback next week on February 17th.
]]>The Borderlands series is aesthetically and tonally consistent. Borderlands 2 has the same exact mood as its predecessor, and its sequel, and whatever you'd call Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel in that scheme of reference. It's one of those series where even though there's only four main installments (admittedly with near-infinite DLC), it becomes very difficult to remember which particular bits or characters appeared in which games, without spending time thinking about it.
]]>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.
]]>As with last year, Valve have posted a look back at all of the changes to Steam in 2019 with a brief look ahead to 2020 squeezed in at the end. There are plenty of features you may or may not remember being added to Steam last year, among them changes to User Reviews. Valve claims they have utilized the new system for excluding anomalous barrages of negative reviews quite a chunk of times since implementing the new policy last year.
]]>Thanks to various life events, illnesses, and an awesome TV show called The Magicians, I’ve barely played Borderlands 3. I’m still in the opening area while my co-op buddy is off looting things I can only dream of. The real horror here isn’t Bloody Harvest, the upcoming Haloween update that I've been tasked to write about. It's the FOMO I’m feeling as life goes on without me.
]]>Borderlands 3 is on the way, and developers Gearbox really want everyone to know, so they've launched one final piece of epilogue story DLC for enduringly popular looter-shooter Borderlands 2. Commander Lilith And The Fight For Sanctuary is free until July 8th brings the cast back together (including folks from Tales From The Borderlands) for one last fight. They've also slashed the price on Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (Containing Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and all their DLC) to under a fiver. Below, a trailer for the new stuff, featuring a gun that shoots exploding unicorns.
]]>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.
]]>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!
]]>April Fools silliness, or just a foolish slip-up? Hard to tell, but a message went out from Gearbox's official Borderlands 3 twitter account earlier that was swiftly deleted. "Mayhem is Coming September 13. Pre-order now for the Gold Weapon Skins Pack!" says the tweet, now archived on The Wayback Machine, so you can verify for yourself. Also tweeted was a new video containing the Epic Store logo in the bottom-left corner. It was captured by "Wario64" and embedded below. While not confirmation of exclusivity, it seems likely that the over-the-top loot n' shooter is headed to the new storefront.
]]>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.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>I'm not sure if Valve's latest promotional wotsit on Steam knows whether it's coming or going. On one hand, it's nice that the Spring Cleaning Event (running until Monday, 28th May) is nudging players into trying out games they may have bought in sales and never touched, but pairing that with nine simultaneous free weekend events does somewhat undermine the message.
Ah well, it's an excuse to play videogames all weekend. Can't grumble about that. Plus, there's an actual free game giveaway running - take a peek within. Oh, and yesterday's big Steam giveaway is still live until tomorrow, so try that too. Oh dear, there's just too many games.
]]>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.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>Meer stared at himself in the mirror. Was he really a man anymore? Or was he just a machine made of meat that endlessly pasted the same handful of game-names into a CMS post, week after week until he died?
Or was he dead already? Was this hell? Yes, that must be it. What else could writing "a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/Grand-Theft-Auto-V" for an eternity possibly be?
Yet still, there was faint hope in those dim, anguished eyes. Hope that one day there might be new games, new hyperlinks, new opinions to be expressed. One day. But not today.
]]>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.
]]>Not every RPG has to be a roguelite now, y'know. Sometimes it's nice to kill and kill and kill without having to overly worry about getting killed. The hyper-violent Bloodsports.TV is the toon-styled sequel to post-apocalyptic Diablolike Krater, whose setting made it catnip to Jim back in 2012, but he came away feeling let down. The unpleasantly-named (at least, if like me, you grew up in an area mostly populated by wealthy farmers who positively revelled in vulpine slaughter) Bloodsports.TV is an amped-up sequel/spin-off which appears to borrow liberally from Borderlands' aesthetic. The manic tone too, it seems. Will this a more characterful ARPG make?
]]>There's no such thing as a free Borderlands 2 weekend on Steam, my grandmother used to say. Well, granny, look who's the "stupid-faced, manchild, crushing disappointment to the Walker family" NOW. Gearbox's cel-shaded gabbling co-op ARPGFPSOMGWTF is currently experiencing rather big discounts, and is available to fart around in (after a fashion) from now and all weekend without your wallet shedding a single tear. And indeed save a bunch on all manner of 2K games from now until Monday, including XCOM Enemy Unknown for £3.75 and Enemy Within for £6.60. Or all three BioShocks for £6.80.
]]>Yesterday I was shown around half an hour of footage from the new Borderlands game, which everyone already knew about as it got leaked on Monday. Here's what it's all about.
I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to take the messy portmanteau 'Pre-Sequel' too seriously, given Borderlands' traditionally derisive-about-everything tone. So while it's playful rather than the latest 'expandalone' or 'freemium' or whatever the latest newspeak horror someone's marketing department has retched up, let's just hope no-one else is inspired by it and we don't find ourselves drowning in pre-sequels by this time next year.
Yes, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a brand-ish new Borderlands game, and due out somewhere around the tail end of this year. More importantly, it's set on the moon and features jetpacks.
]]>The latest Borderlands 2 video reveals the sad plight of Krieg, the playable psycho character whose troubled mind you can enter for $9.99. Disconcertingly, Krieg's inner monologue reveals him to be a thoughtful and frustrated individual. The words that come out of his mouth - words like 'poop train' and 'meat bicycle' - do not reflect his thoughts, suggesting there has been a breakdown between brain and mouth. Or between brain and other parts of brain. It's a bit like the time I approached a bar and inadvertently ordered a pint of Carling even though I wanted a beer. You'll undoubtedly recognise some parallel to your own life when you press play, below.
]]>Tomorrow will see the release of another Borderlands 2 playable character, this time hailing from the howling cast of its deranged bandit antagonists. Krieg The Psycho - whose scenery-gnawing behaviours can be seen below in a video I borrowed from VG247 - is a character who is supposed to emulate all of the absurdly dangerous attack actions the bandits perform in Borderlands 2. So expect to run screaming toward your enemy with a big rusty sharp thing, while on fire. Being on fire, of course, is central to his skill tree. Not sure if that will be worth $10, but I will probably take a look tomorrow and see.
]]>IGN carry the news that Gearbox are raising the level cap in Borderlands 2, and adding a new difficulty mode and item tier. There is also a short video showing the latest Vault Hunter murdering bandits - he's a psycho by the name of Krieg. The level cap will be raised to 61, the new mode scales monsters to the highest level in your party and the item tier provides ultra-rare pearlescent gear. That all makes sense, but the prices and distribution are slightly more confusing. The new difficulty mode is free to all but the level cap rise costs $4.99, unless you're a season pass holder in which case it's free. Kriege isn't included in the season pass though and will cost around $10. You can see him below.
]]>The gaming guide is something of a lost art form. Back in the day, they were the only way to find out how to get past that bloody goat in Broken Sword, aside from phoning Uncle Charles and asking him on his goat hotline. Now it's all Google, Youtube, wikis, or skywriters. You can't look at a sunset without the best StarCraft 2 build orders getting in the way. Valve are as angry as I am at those damn pilots, and have just un-betafied their newest Steam Community creation: Steam Guides.
]]>Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is the next wedge of DLC for Borderlands 2. A big game hunt could be a sort of man-shooter shooter, but spiffy old Hammerlock is more concerned with blowing the pelts off the hordes of beasties that populate Pandora. The new post-campaign story content will introduce a new villain and, most exciting, a new continent that is covered in jungles and swamps. Although any 'Sir' worthy of the title is sure to doff a cap occasionally, the DLC won't be raising the cap. The level cap that is. In an interview with IGN, 2K did suggest that the level cap will increase in the first quarter of 2013, possibly in a second season of new content. A video-trailer follows, as is customary.
]]>BORDERLANDS 2 TORGUE DLC TORGUE EXPLOSION TORGUE BADASS CRATER TORGUE OUT NOW YEAH. I apologize for the all-caps barrage, but Borderlands 2's new DLC is very loud, and I felt that my words would be woefully unable to capture its essence in a minuscule, easily-stepped-on state. So right then, TORGUE TORGUE TORGUE TRAILER BOOM POCKET ROCKET DRAGON CAR GIRAFFE RAINBOW WAFFLE.
]]>I appreciate a winding narrative arc that twists and turns and writhes and eventually chokes down its own tail in an Ouroboros-like fashion as much as anyone, but every once in a while, direct is best. On those occasions, I want to get right to the point. No muss. No fuss. I guess what I'm saying is, sometimes I just want to shoot a bunch of dudes in a place called the "Badass Crater of Badassitude." And hey, what do know? That's exactly what Borderlands 2's "Torgue's Campaign of Carnage" DLC is about. Score one for me. I should idly muse about the fickle whims of my desires more often.
]]>That's what it would sound like if Dracula was a fan of Borderlands 2. Imagine that. He wouldn't be able to say the word 'Vault' without everyone imagining he's actually attempting to say 'what'. But then 'Vault' doesn't make much sense in that context. That is the tragedy of Dracula. I am not tragic in the slightest, so when I do it is actually a pun. What it means is this post has more than one Borderlands 2 trailer. In fact it has two: one showing off the new campaign being released today, and the other finally explaining what the new class, Gaige The Mechromancer, is capable of. She was released last week, a week before her set release date, and I imagine the video people doggedly finished her trailer as a a form of protest.
]]>The UK game retail charts are about as relevant to PC gaming - and indeed gaming as a whole - as Mars Bars are to the red planet, knickers are to a fish or kindness is to the Murdoch dynasty. Nonethless, I feel compelled to mention this week's, purely because they suggest that even the most mainstream field of games isn't as resistent to new ideas and thoughtfulness as the moneymen who think Call of Honor is the only profitable game in town might believe.
While the deathless Fédération Internationale de Foot-to-ball Association retained the number one spot, Dishonored snuck straight in to 2 and XCOM to 7. Hurrah for new things doing well!
]]>You can imagine my disappointment when I heard about this. Not the unparalleled mega-classic of science fiction drama Captain Scarlet, featuring the indestructible captain of the near future, but Captain Scarlett (pictured above), featuring some kind of hook-handed lady buccaneer of the wastes. Oh well, it might still be an entertaining expansion, what with it being hi-tech happenings in the Borderlands 2 world and all. The Verge reports that Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty "includes a new sand skiff vehicle", and presumably a lot of guns, quests, and other B'lands DLC type stuff. It will appear next week for the attractive sum of $10.
Needless to say, I've posted the first part an episode of the one true Captain Scarlet below.
]]>If you like games about shooting and collecting and shooting and collecting and shooting and collecting and being yelled at all the while, you'll be glad to hear that the first major DLC for Borderlands 2 has been released a week earlier than planned. Gaige The Mechromancer is a new playable class/character for the game, and the one who offers the vaguely notorious newbie player-orientated skill tree. Though that is in addition to abilities that offers precision, brutality, robo-biffing and all that good stuff. You can play with the tech tree to see the various builds here, in fact. Also, she gets a pet robot who has the head of Shockwave from the Transformers.
]]>I've barely begun to scratch the surface of Pandora and I'll never actually shoot the handsome off Handsome Jack's face. I like finding weird guns but actually shooting my way through the missions feels like sticking my head into a beehive. BUZZ BUZZ BUZZZZ, go the bees, and even if I manage to eat some honey while my face is being perforated, I'm still going to have a headache afterwards and there are a lot of dead bees piling up around my chin. I certainly don't feel the need for more Borderlands 2, but for those who do there's that Season Pass. Four episodes of new content for £19.99. And there will also be new characters and vehicles to buy. Those won't be included with the pass.
]]>Yesterday we reported how gamers in Russia and bordering countries had received a peculiar version of Borderlands 2. It was in Russian only, and region locked so it was not possible to play with people from other countries. That was strange enough, but more odd was that this was also being distributed to non-Russian-speaking former USSR nations, which didn't much impress people. The good news is, it's now all being sorted. 2K have ensured that customers both in and neighbouring Russia will have access to the international version of the game as well.
]]>Something seems to have gone terribly amiss with the Russian version of Borderlands 2. For reasons that are so far unknown, 2K have released a version of game that's Russian language only, and only playable with others with the same version. And they've released it to, er, the former USSR.
]]>Not because I've given it permission, mind you. No, no - I don't possess that kind of power. I can, however, pave the way for the final domino in the promotional procession - that most mighty of Silver Surfers: the launch trailer. Without it, the delicate videogame hype ecosystem would crumble, and we'd have no way of knowing that our games were coming out tomorrow, or a few days from now, or in, like, two months sometimes. It'd be total pandemonium. Countless lives would almost certainly be lost in the chaos. We need this structure, is what I'm saying. Launch trailers are totally and completely necessary. So here's one for Borderlands 2. This one tosses wub-wubs and wimowehs in favor of in-your-face "epic"-ness, but it's still quite a sight.
]]>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.
]]>Peter Molyneux is building a cube that contains Powermonger 2*. Tap away to win! In what I assume is an intentional act of satirical imitation, 2K send word of a promotional webgame that bestows Borderlands 2 prizes on players. Instead of a cube, Mount Jackmore has players click on a sculpture of Handsome Jack's head,which is divided into sections, each of which will turn gold after a certain amount of bullets have hit it. The player who fires a shot into a gold part of the head destroys that section and receives a prize. This is a spoof, right? Either way, it's live now and prizes include badges, clothing, figurines and copies of the game. The game lasts four weeks, with the head regenerating every seven days.
]]>At first glance, you wouldn't expect a big loud shooty bang bang game such as Borderlands 2 to be the type who wears a pocket protector and hangs around for the after school mathlete competitions, and yet here it is, polishing up its statistics term paper. The Borderlands 2 character class skill tree is available online for your perusal, allowing you first to see exactly which class gets what abilities, and secondly to get down to the all-important task of minmaxing stats and specialisations.
]]>Borderlands 2 looks as barking mad as Cujo strapped to a chainsaw-juggling Salvador Dali in zero gravity and the latest video, a seven minute introduction to the game narrated by machinated manly man Sir Hammerlock, is quite deranged. Through all the mischief and mayhem there's a remarkably decent outline of the game's actual features, which is actually more surprising than the gun that further weaponises itself by blowing up whenever somebody reloads it. If all game trailers could be this entertaining and informative, I'd be much more inclined to say, 'oh, look at this'. And that's precisely what I'm saying right now. Oh, look at this!
]]>Yes, the 2D demake thing has been done many, many times before, and yeah, retro-nostalgia-mania is currently sweeping the planet so thoroughly that the Louvre has recently undertaken a project to update all its most priceless pieces of artwork with Instagram filters, but damn it, I sort of like this silly little 2D version of Borderlands 2. I mean, it's called "The Border Lands." That alone is weirdly brilliant. Also, in spite of being extremely limited and simple, it's actually sort of fun.
]]>Borderlands 2 will have guns. Of all the things in the entire universe I'd be absolutely, un-hesitantly comfortable staking my life on, that'd rank only behind "Texas is warm" and "Borderlands 2 will have lands." Gearbox, though, wants to set its more-than-87-bazillion guns apart from the rest of the industry's comparatively tasteful collection of 63 trillion, so it's attempting to infuse real personality into brands this time around. If you delve into the vault beyond the break, you won't find some bizarro squid god, but you will come away with three very silly gun "commercials" and (bonus!) an impressive showcase of BL2's PC-only PhysX features.
]]>There's been some recent awkwardness out of the Borderlands 2 camp, but the game proper is still looking quite handsome. You will not, however, see it getting all high and mighty about its rugged Wild Wild Space West charms - largely because it is an inanimate object only capable of communicating through Wimowehs and dubstep. Its main villain, on the other hand, puts the word "handsome" right in his name, because he's a bit full of himself thanks to that whole "tyrannically ruling an entire planet with a legion of 87 bazillion robots and a weaponized moon" thing. See just what you're up against after the break.
]]>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.
]]>The latest Borderlands 2 trailer is very silly. It features "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as it shows off wildlife and ultraviolence, together as intended on the surface of an alien planet. And is that an observatory the size of the moon/in the moon?
We're pretty excited about this, frankly. I had an excellent time when I played it a couple of months back, and it was looking just as solid when we saw it at Rezzed. It's out September 18th/21st.
]]>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.
]]>Perhaps you would be mildly interested in seeing the handsome men of Rock, Paper, Shotgun strolling by the sea in Brighton, or perhaps you are more interested in being among the first in the UK to play Borderlands 2? You could also see XCOM: Enemy Unknown in action, with a 15-minute demo being presented by one of the brains behind the game. But where and when do such wonders occur, I hear you ask. The clue's in the header image. Rezzed, the two-day PC-only show arranged by Eurogamer with assistance from these parts, offers this and much more. It takes place on July 6th and 7th at the Brighton Centre, and tickets are available now.
]]>Borderlands 2 is going to have all the guns. Hundreds of thousands of the things. 87 bazillion! Probably. Gearbox's unabashed ode to all things projectile will - as it turns out - also have five character classes to wield them. There is, however, something of a catch: the Mechromancer (which I was crushed to discover in no way involves candle-lit dinners) won't be working its robotic voodoo on day one. Instead, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford is estimating the robo-armed girl and her controllable robo-everything-ed sidekick will be finished "60 to 90 days" after launch. On the upside, she'll be yours for free if you pre-order and join the shadowy Premiere Club. Otherwise, though, you'll have to fork over 87 bazillion dollars. Or, you know, a fee "comparable to most DLC."
]]>And now for the sequel. That's the trick, isn't it? If a game is successful then the studio end up being required to do it again, and it must be the same, but more so and different. Getting that right can be a peculiar challenge. There's a stack of shortcuts available, of course, because you're building on existing technology, fiction, and art, but there's also the challenge of not throwing away that advantage and actually making something better, or more interesting. That's the challenge that Gearbox now face with Borderlands 2: to build on the relative success of their left-field post-apocalyptic space frontier, and to carve out wider horizons for one of the most interesting hybrid-FPS projects in mainstream gaming.
]]>The time: Autumn 2009. The place: My PC, Jim's PC, John's PC, Kieron's PC. The game: Borderlands. The situation: staring at router configuration screens, weeping, screaming, failing to make co-op work.
The time: Spring 2012. The place: The internet. The game: Borderlands 2. The promise: Not to screw up the PC version.
]]>Start getting excited, because Rock, Paper, Shotgun will soon be releasing its trailer to celebrate the announcement of a release date for the reveal date for its next trailer! But in the meantime, why not enjoy the trailer released to announce the launch date for Borderlands 2? Which is the 18th September in the US, then after a long swim the 21st Sept in the UK/EU. Which is aaaaaages away.
]]>That sounds flippant, but for a loot-driven game like the Borderlands sequel it's actually pretty important. It is, as concept designer Scott Kester explains in the first episode of a new video series about the forthcoming game (below), about making a loot-chomping shooter less repetitive by making the content more interesting, and more distinct. No new game footage in this video, sadly, so you'll just have to make do with Mr Kester explaining the "it's the same but better concept" over several minutes.
]]>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.
]]>VG247 have spotted that fourteen minutes of Borderlands 2 wobblecam footage has leaked. It's not great quality, but it shows quite a lot of the game in action. You can watch it below.
]]>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?
]]>I just saw over at VG247 that the Borderlands 2 livestream over at Gamescom has just started. Now. Let's kick back and watch it together. I'll go stick the kettle on. Right now they are talking about guns. GUNS!
Update: It's now over, read on to find a summary of what you missed.
]]>There's really not much to the Borderlands 2 trailer, I'm afraid, but it's below if you want to see it. The trailer shows the beardy man (above) shooting monsters and robots. Something crashes in the background. There's some grass. All clues, perhaps...
]]>Game Informer are doing one of their big, slow reveals for Borderlands 2, and some details have already begun to trickle out. The characters from the first game are apparently now NPCs in this game, and robo-host Claptrap will also be making an appearance. The new game will have a currency and resource system, based on an element called "Eridium", and there will apparently be a big overhaul of the weapons. These will now be customisable and more visually distinct. There's also going to be wider range of vehicles.
]]>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.
]]>Eurogamer, the crazed news sniffing addicts they are, have caught wind of the development of Borderlands 2. There have been rumours for a while, and Randy Pitchford even told EG that they would likely be returning to it at some point post Duke Nukem Forever. But how do they know it is definitely being developed now? A "source" told them. Suspicious. The real truth is below.
]]>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.”
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