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.
]]>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.
]]>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'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.
]]>Irrational Games as we know it closed in February, though the BioShock studio lives on in a way with a small group of survivors under Ken Levine at a new team within 2K. Once upon a time, though, there were two Irrationals. A Canberra arm of Irrational was founded in 2000, then later renamed 2K Australia. It mostly worked with Irrational and other 2K studios, on games from Freedom Force to BioShock Infinite, but most recently was behind Borderlands: The Pre-sequel. And now it's gone too.
Parent company 2K Games have confirmed that they're closing the studio and laying off the staff. Sounds like it was too expensive for them, and too remote.
]]>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?
]]>It's a little tricky to avoid feeling that a review of The Pre-Sequel (!) is superfluous. Surely everyone in the world has had a taste of Borderlands at this point, and have made their minds up about it? This is very much more of that same formula, with zaniness turned up to... What's that, Steve? You've never played a Borderlands game? Wow.
Well then, I'd better explain!
]]>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 this, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel that. Personally I'm waiting for Borderlands: The Post-Sequel, which is like regular Borderlands but without lyrics. For now, though, Pre-Sequel looks a fair deal like regular Borderlands, except it's moon-flavored. That means enemies that freeze and shatter, low-gravity airborne (not to be confused with Battleborn) antics, and other such space-defacing shenanigans. Also, you won't actually find 87 bazillion minutes of footage below. Only 14. But close enough.
]]>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.
]]>Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel has me interested in Borderlands. So far I've found the series a so-so FPS and a so-so action-RPG, and throwing the two together didn't help either, but the Proquel (I can invent words too, see) at least has some fun ideas, mostly thanks to being set on a good old moon. Low-gravity is interesting to me, after years of server admins turning gravity down for jollies, and so's introducing oxygen as a resource to be collected, created, lost, and exploited. Watching 15 minutes of it in a new 'gameplay walkthrough' trailer doesn't make me want to play the game, but those ideas have given more enjoyment than playing Borderlands ever has.
]]>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.
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