By the time you read this post, the idea has been batted around that the first “Mystery Trailer” from Spike TV’s VGAs is 2K Games’ new shooter, Spec Ops. Do I personally know anything about this game? Ha ha ha, that’s adorable that you would ask such a question. This is the first I’ve heard of this game, but seeing as 2K Games is a pretty solid studio when it comes to shooter, I am understandably interested especially since this looks like it is set in a not-so-distant future Dubai. This will be the second time 2K has taken paradise and turned it to to Hell, the first being Rapture. We don’t know anything specific about the game, but tune into the Spike TV VGAs on December 12 to find out. Better yet, check in with us after the VGAs and we should have the trailers up, along with a few of our own views.

Check the Mystery Trailer right after the post break

Stronghold Collection Not Going Very Strong and Fails to Hold Attention

I remember playing the first Stronghold and having a lot of fun with it, despite some of its shortcomings, like the AI’s penchant for troop rushing and building flawless estates (communities plus castle), thus ensuring the computer was never assailed by the sort of social and logistical problems that players run into. These shortcomings meant that, despite the fun I initially had with the game, I grew tired of it quickly and moved on to greater and greener RTS pastures.

Not much has changed, really.

The Stronghold Collection includes the first (2001) Stronghold release, Stronghold Crusader (taking you to the Medieval Middle-East), Stronghold Crusader: Extreme (an add-on and upgrade to the previous version), Stronghold Legends (adding mythic campaigns, such as that of the Arthurian legends), and Stronghold 2. Of these, the first stronghold is so dated at this point as to only have nostalgic value. I also found it odd that Firefly Studios (the games’ producer) didn’t unify the two Crusader games considering that’s what was done when Extreme was released, but it was likely a matter of marketing (“Hey, look! We’re giving you five games rather than four!”) Still, one can’t really complain that this choice is wasteful considering all five games fit onto a single DVD, a fact that is itself very telling regarding how out of touch they are with recent releases that utilize graphics and game engines necessitating more space.

Despite all the issues I’ve had with the various iterations of the Stronghold franchise through the years—graphics that fall well short of the then-current industry standard, choppy animations that make your units seem to shimmer as they move, overbearing AIs, an incredibly high screen brightness that can’t be adjusted in-game (to the point of losing graphic details and definition), too much micro-management (such as having to build facilities for removing an estate’s feces)—I can’t say I didn’t give the collection a try without knowing what to expect. Still, in today’s competitive video game market I was disappointed to see Firefly Studios didn’t do anything beyond repackaging the old games together.

There is no effort made to boost the graphics or engine to meet today’s capabilities and standards, for instance, nor to even elevate the earlier releases to the standards of the latest (Stronghold 2), as other companies have done when re-releasing their earliest classics (Valve’s upgraded release of Half-life using the Half-Life 2 engine comes to mind.) There are no additional patches or the like to tweak the commonly known game play, feature, and AI problems that have been around for years, and there were no special additions available solely with the collection, such as so much as a soundtrack CD (which is a shame, as I always considered Stronghold’s soundtrack to be one of its stronger attributes.) I was especially annoyed to see the older games weren’t upgraded to at least get rid of the desktop resolution change that happens when exiting the game to accommodate today’s available screen resolutions (I was playing on a 22” widescreen LCD at 1680×1050 resolution), thus leaving your desktop displaying the game’s resolution rather than reverting to your own settings. Nope, the Stronghold Collection is just all five games pressed onto a single DVD (without any hard copies of so much as one of the manuals, I might add—all the manuals are on the disk in PDF format, making learning the game more inconvenient to newcomers) and nothing else.

So, what else is there to say here? While I give Firefly Studios two thumbs up for putting everything together at a great price for newcomers looking to try their hand at the Stronghold franchise, I have to turn one of those thumbs back down because of how they chose to do so. I admit to squeezing several hours of enjoyment from the Stronghold Collection, but the games’ failure to impress me with anything new or special made me turn away from it again fairly quick, and so I find myself giving this Firefly Studios’ release a mere 5 out of 10. STEVEN T.

Bethesda Softworks‘ fourth installment in the TES franchise was Oblivion, published by 2K Games in 2006. The game was received extremely well by critics, who praised it for its cutting edge graphics and general size. Like its predecessor Morrowind, Oblivion kept the free-roaming playing style in which the player was able to freely explore a huge world map and was even able to ignore or postpone the main storyline. There are dozens of side quests to complete and many secrets to uncover, which increased the game’s durability and replay value drastically. The story is basically your average “low-life-person-saves-kingdom-story”, in which the kingdom of Cyrodiil is threatened by a secret cult which opens gates to a different dimension, called Oblivion. Slowly the creatures from this other plain enter Cyrodiil and start wreaking havoc, and it is up to the player to close all of the Oblivion gates before it’s too late.

The soundtrack was composed by “the John Williams of video games”, as critics like to call him, award winning composer  Jeremy Soule, who also conceived the soundtracks for games such as Dungeon Siege, Guild Wars and Neverwinter Nights. What makes his music so good is the orchestral approach Soule takes on his work, giving his songs this certain “Lord of the Rings-esque” feel to it.

The first song is of course the title theme…

Main Theme

And we continue with a variety of other great and beatuiful songs which just make you want to pick up your sword, bow and spell and travel the great land of Cyrodiil…

Wings of Kynareth

Watchman’s Ease

Minstrel’s Lament

Glory of Cyrodiil

King and Country

For an added bonus, I’ll throw in the main theme of Oblivion’s predecessor, Morrowind, aswell. Enjoy!

Morrowind Main Theme

The upcoming DLC pack for Borderlands, titled The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned is downloadable today on 360 and PS3 for 800/$9.99.

Esta expansión lleva por título The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned y esta disponible ya en XBox Live y pronto [tal vez el Jueves...] en PlayStation Store.

Tendrás que ayudar al Dr Ned a curar a las criaturas que viven en esta isla junto con tus amiguitos para que vivas en su plenitud esta bonita y nueva experiencia de juego llamada Borderlands, creada por GearBox y distribuido por 2k.

¿El precio…? Naah, cosa de niños; 9.99 Dólares en PS3 y 800 Microsoft Points en 360.

No lo he jugado pero se me antoja… será posible con mi conexión bizarra de 512Kb que actualmente no me deja jugar a Uncharted 2 online… F U C K!.

Fuente | ºlaps3.comº

Usually I’m not into cosplay ’cause I find a lot of it borderline pedophilic and sexually creepy, but this is pretty damn awesome. The photos were taken at the Georgia Aquarium and that amazing Big Daddy suit is actually for sale on Ebay. An interesting note from the ebay listing: “Its difficult, though not impossible, to fit into a hotel elevator.” I would have enjoyed watching that.

Our frag-happy pals at MEGamers posted a link to a mysterious new video of an FPS depicting Dubai as a sandy post-apocalyptic wasteland, complete with cameos of Emirates Towers, the Burj Al Arab and the Burj Dubai.

We’ve contacted our sources at 2K Games (who are allegedly publishing the game) for an official response, but as yet have received no word.

In the meantime head over to MEGamers to check out the video and wonder along with us what the PR implications for our fair city will be.

What is it?

Borderlands is an FPS-RPG hybrid, with four-player cooperative gameplay, developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games. Players can choose between four different characters, each having various qualities and pseudo roles to play–though these are not strictly enforced. Loot is a significant part of the game, as there are thousands (millions?) of potential weapons, artifacts, grenade mods, shields, and class mods that are procedurally generated. There are hundreds of missions to go on as players (if coop, player if not) kill baddies with said potential weapons, collecting loot, and dying…frequently. Think of it as Diablo meets first person shooter.

What’s good?

The cooperative game play. Sure, you can play through the game alone in traditional single-player fashion, but doing it with three other people is much more enjoyable. That’s just the way coop is, and why it’s a significant trending feature in modern gaming. Borderlands is the epitome of that. The more people playing, the more difficult the game is as baddies are given more health and spawn in greater numbers. And discovering loot is better when there are others around to see it.

The addictive loot system. Thousands of weapons are procedurally generated, and all weapons fall under several classes in color coded fashion a la MMOs like World of Warcraft. Each weapon has a manufacturer, of which there are several and they all have certain traits–some manufacturers make weapons with high damage but slow reload rates or lower magazine sizes, and another makes weapons with guaranteed elemental damage but with generally lower overall damage. There is no armor to collect, but there are character mods which effects a character’s skills or offer team bonuses, shields, and grenade mods. Sticking around in game to find that next chest full of weapons or killing the next “named” mob to see what goody loot it drops makes it addictive. Ask any World of Warcraft or Diablo player.

The RPG elements. Borderlands has four character “classes,” and each class has three specialization paths players can spend points in–points that are collected after leveling up. Each weapon type has a skill that is leveled simply through using that type of weapon. Think Oblivion or Star Wars Galaxies (pre-NGE, of course)–you level up what you use. Why don’t all RPGs use this system? It makes the most logical sense. Anyway, these RPG elements add just enough depth to the game to make it interesting, but it’s not so much that it might put off fans of first person shooters who don’t like RPGs.

Awesome art direction. Borderlands runs on the Unreal Engine, though it doesn’t look like it because of the art direction. In fact, the art direction was changed completely late in the game’s development from a more mundane, realistic approach to the beautiful, artsy cel-shaded design it wields now–Gearbox made the right decision. Borderlands is gorgeous, though the animation could have used some work.

Great shooting element. It’s very solid, well polished, tight…blah blah blah…and all those other cliched utterances I would just love to use to describe how wonderful the shooting is. I’m not creative enough to avoid those cliches. Borderlands is about what you’d expect from Gearbox. And because of the RPG elements, the shooting gets a nice touch–feedback when shooting enemies. The damage done to enemies shows up above the enemy’s head in RPG fashion. I like this so much that it makes other shooters seem more numb and lifeless when shooting at baddies.

What’s bad?

There’s essentially no story. Okay, there is, but it’s uninteresting. It’s a ghostly existence. The story in all the quests, whether vital to the overall narrative or not, mimic those of MMO quests–or, rather, players mimic how they play MMOs when accepting and completing quests in Borderlands. Either way, it all exists for the sake of pushing the player in this direction, or that. Granted, Borderlands holds up just fine with the pew-pew and cooperative bits, but a deeper narrative and more immersive application of quest giving would have only made the game that much better.

Crappy multiplayer connectivity (PC version). For the PC version, the server browser (powered by GameSpy) seems lacking, and players must configure their router in order to host games–which means most of the games you see in the server browser cannot be connected to. Here’s a game I wouldn’t mind having matchmaking, though I realize it would require a revamp of how the entire cooperative experience works. I figure something akin to Left 4 Dead could work.

Too much traveling. Sure, there are vehicles. Sure, there is infinite sprint. And sure, there are teleportation terminals through-out the world (not accessible when the game starts), but players still run around a lot. And the world, while interesting in some areas, a bit boring in others, and still amazing looking no matter what, is pretty large. Perhaps if the teleportation system worked better, or it was easier to determine where to turn in completed quests…and the teleportation system worked better…it’d be a bit more enjoyable. It’s not a major drag on the game, but I have to fill up the negatives somehow. (Kidding. Traveling in this game really can be annoying).

Recommendations:

I recommend Borderlands for anyone looking for a wonderful coop experience to play with friends, and a great shooter with RPG elements snugly attached, and who doesn’t care too much about story while they’re at it.

I recommend it for console over PC despite my own preference for keyboard and mouse as I’m sure it’s much easier to connect with and play with others compared to GameSpy’s game browser and the routing problems.

Highly recommended if you know other people to play with. I won’t fault the game for all the many bad experiences I had in pub games (gaming with complete strangers online), but I won’t recommend the game with as much enthusiasm to players that won’t be able to play with friends.

Grade: B

No se sabe nada, y cuando digo nada lo digo enserio, bueno si sabemos algo, 2K Games es el culpable y será revelado en los premios Spike TV Video Games Awards, por el momento habrá que conformarnos con ese teaser y con el rumor de que podría ser un nuevo Spec Ops. Los VGA’s son el 12 de Diciembre solo queda esperar.

¿Que creen que sea?

В shacknews.com се появиха малко детайли относно специалното издание на BioShock 2, което за моя радост ще се появи и за PC!

Тъ, за какво си говорим?

Пакета ще съдържа:
- BioShock 2
- 164 странична книга с твърди корици, съдържаща арт от играта;
- 180г плоча със SCORE-а на оригиналният BioShock (180г плоча може да не говори много на средностатистическият потребител, но ако сте маниак на тема звук, би трябвало тукощоо да сте се подмокрили);
- аудио CD с SCORE-а на BioShock 2;
- 3 автентични плакати от дълбините на Rapture.
Цялото това нещо ще е прилежно опаковано в специална черна кутия с пеперуда отгоре!

АБЕ изродщина. Аз лично харесах първият BioShock доста, и определено чакам вторият с интерес (а вече ще имаме и сериозно мулти така че). А колекционерското издание… е страхотно
Разбира се, в момента в които имам информация за това колко ще струва цялото това нещо в България (и ще се продава ли въобще), ще ви информирам, а до тогава ви оставям да точите лиги.

В нормалните държави BioShock 2 Special Edition излиза паралелно със стандартната версия, т.е. на 9-ти февруари, 2010!

2010 Şubat’ında PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, ve PC için çıkacak olan BioShock 2′ nin PS3 versiyonun kabı gösterildi.

The Game Eye has uploaded the details of 2K Games’  “Bioshock 2 Special Edition announcement”. To read the announcement, go to this link

Bioshock 2 Special Edition announced

Bioshock is my favourite game of this generation, so I was already pretty damn excited for the second installment, but after seeing the great swag that comes with the Collectors Edition I’m jumping up and down like a school girl.

As announced on The Cult of Rapture the Collectors Edition will cost approximately $99.99USD for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, and $89.99USD for the PC. That’s a fair bit of coin, but you also get a fair bit of swag including…

* BioShock 2
* Vinyl 180g LP featuring the orchestral score from the original BioShock
* CD containing the BioShock 2 orchestral score
* A 164 page 8-inch x 11-inch hardbound artbook chock full of developer commentary
* Three posters featuring vintage ads from Rapture (rolled)

Of course you’ll need a record player to hear that Vinyl glory, but regardless it would make a fitting decoration for any bedroom or den. The collectors edition will ship the same day as the normal version of the game, which is set for a Feb 9th 2010 release. 2K Games have said that this is a single production type deal, so get your pre-orders in early.

Unsure if this will ship to Australia.

GT също пуснаха геймплей кадри от първото DLC за Borderlands – Zombie Island of Dr. Ned

и

Буууууу

just finished reading two amazing books. first off, part six in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy: and another thing…. it was written by eoin colfer, the dude who wrote artemis fowl, and he did a stellar job at keeping up the comedy.

also sat down and finished the graveyard book by neil gaiman in a day as well. it’s about a boy named nobody who lives in a graveyard, raised by various ghosts and goes on numerous adventures. gaiman totally works his magic craft with it, making it both a childrens book and an adult novel, with awesome art from dave mckean.

gaiman at his best

last but not least, i finally finished up borderlands for the xbox 360, by 2k games and gearbox. a really strong and funny fps mixed with role-playing elements. to do everything it only took about 20 to 25 hours and it was totally worth it. a great amount of fun, like a fallout and diablo mix.

enjoyed it thoroughly

What?  Another Wasteland?  Another Vault you say?  Sweet another Fallout! Oh wait whats that, its not another Fallout game?  What the heck is it then?

Ahhh Borderlands Its only been out for a short while but in the end I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.  This game is an Action RPG.  What makes this game an Action RPG?  Well in this game when you shoot something little numbers pop up when you do damage to a creature.  The part that makes it an action game is that the controls are all based on how you would play a shooter.

If you’ve ever seen me broadcast any FPS games you’d get a nice visual of me stumbling around lost.  I love to run into things, get stuck on things and back myself into walls.  But because I suck at shooter does not make me shy away from them.  Actually In Battlefield Heroes I think I’m quite good.

Borderlands is pretty tough, I’ve seen people run out of bullets in the first battle only to die and I had to revive them.  The toughest part about the game is managing your loot.  If your weapons and shields are not up to par with where your at in the game, things are gonna get really tough.

Yes I said that I was fighting with other players.  This is a Multi player game which you can play co-op with up to 4 people.  With the 2 or 3 games that I played in co-op mode I can tell you that the action gets pretty crazy when you hit more than 2 people.  I was playing solo and went into an area and it was pretty calm.  But the same area with multi player was tough with some crazy monsters I had never seen before.

You can drive vehicles with this game and each vehicle can hold up to 2 people, one driver and one gunner.  It can be pretty fun with 2 vehicles going around slaughtering monsters.  I especially love to drive over them, who doesn’t like roadkill?

I can’t emphasize enough about how much I love the loot system.  I see one of the red cases that I know has guns in it and I get all tinglie inside.  It does help that when you find a case of weapons your character talks.

I’ve been having a blast with this game and suggest it to everyone who asks me about it.

So grab a gun, jump on the bus to Pandora and get ready to duke it out with some ugly skags.

Тъй като не успях да приключа с Borderlands преди излизането на Modern Warfare 2 е ясно, че отрочето на Gearbox ще остане за един по късен етап от геймърското ми ежедневие, но все пак няма как да не спомена, че онзи ден IGN показаха чисто нови кадри от първото DLC за играта – Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.

DLC-то ще струва $10 за Xbox 360 и PlayStation 3 и излиза на 24 ноември, а PC версията ще се появи малко след това… предполагам на същата цена. Ето матряла на IGN:

Gearbox Software adds another excellent title to the First-Person Shooter genre with the recent release of Borderlands.

I imagine this is what it's like driving around Oliver's house.

Borderlands takes place in the far future on the planet Pandora, long since abandoned by its settlers, and now just a haven for criminals and castaways.  The player fills the shoes of one of these castaways, all with a special ability: a former solider who can throw out a turret gun, a hunter with a trained hawk, a female assassin with the ability to become invisible, and a hulking brute who can go into a bloodlust rage.  The player is tasked with finding a mysterious vault, rumored by the inhabitants of Pandora to be full of treasure.

The gameplay is quest driven, with each main story quest leading the player closer and closer to the vault, and with side quests to help the player gain experience in between.  Killing enemies, such as hostile wildlife and bandits, also gains the player experience.  Much like in most Role-Playing Games, this experience is used to help the player get stronger and gain levels.  With each level the player can also add a special point to his or her skill tree, which will upgrade the damage dealt, decrease damage taken, or upgrade the character’s special ability.

The presentation and shooting elements of the game make it stand out among some of the other FPS’ out now.  The background information on characters is scarce, allowing the player to make his or her own assumptions.  The already worn down feel of Pandora is made even more so with the inclusion of rare encounters with friendly NPCs, towns with buildings that look like they are made out of random sheets of metal, and mountains of garbage at every turn.  The whole game has a Mad Max feel to it, and humor to go along with.  Gearbox is known for their ability to make good shooters, and the shooting is just as tight and well done as most other recent FPS’.

I'd make some joke about Oliver observing his next dinner, but in real life no girl who looks like that could ever get that close to him without puking.

There are only a couple negative parts to the game, and they are more design flaws than anything else.  The game lacks the ability to have multiple quest icons on the player’s map at once.  While this may not seem like a big deal at first, it gets to be a bit annoying when completing one quest leads the player to discover that an objective to another quest is close to another quest objective the player just finished.  Some of the environments are quite large, and traversing across them multiple times can become quite time consuming.  Another design flaw is the lack of accuracy of some of the quest icons on the player’s map.  A few of them claim to be in the exact area where the player is currently standing, only to be found a few yards away away, with the quest icon clearly showing it in the previous spot.  However, this most likely can be easily fixed by a simple patch to the game.

Borderlands is an excellent game for anyone looking for a good FPS/RPG hybrid.  The shooting and presentation of the game are excellent, rivaling that of some of the best FPS’ ever.  The addition of over three million guns adds to this, and makes the player play with the new “toy” over and over again.  While there are a couple design flaws, they should not turn away any interested players and are overshadowed by how good the rest of the game actually is.

A journey of danger, gore and heaps of weapons makes this one of the most enjoyable games you could possibly play this year.

You are on Pandora, a hostile unforgiving planet full or secrets, extreme events and some angry looking monsters. You are a mercenary sent to plunder this planet of all its riches and to discover the location of the mysterious Vault and along the way quests, objectives and violence! The intro scene will have you in that groovy killing mood in no time and gives you an exciting , new, quality feel right from the word go. So you’ve enjoyed the intro scene now you must pick your mercenary and there are four to choose from:

Roland: Soldier and former Crimson Lance mercenary, able to deploy a Scorpio Turret, a weapon that attacks automatically while shielding Roland. Rifles and shotguns are his standard-issue weapons.

Lilith: Siren Phasewalker who can fight invisibly with extreme speed. She prefers guns firing incendiary, shock and corrosive rounds.

Mordecai: Hunter whose bird of prey Bloodwing follows him into battle. Mordecai is a sniper rifle master favouring the revolver as a side arm.

Brick: Berserker who annihilates adversaries with his fists while in an almost indestructible rage state. When not pulverizing enemies by hand, Brick fights using explosive weaponry.

The four mercenaries are very different from each other giving you four unique and different ways to play the game, you can however use whatever weapons you like with each character, their classes have more favoured weapons and different abilities. When I first started I chose the Siren for her speedy but stealthy attacks, you can change the colour of your characters clothing by visiting the New-U-Station screen, they look like gas burners for your back yard and glow neon green when nearing them and will save all your stats when used so when you die you will respawn at these points.

Your “guardian angel” will appear telling you to get off the bus, your tutorial will start here. A small cheeky robot will welcome you to fire stone, these robots are called Clap Traps and they will appear throughout the game offering extra backpack spaces if you can locate a tool box to repair them. He will give you a heads up display showing you your experience, heath, ammo and a compass at the bottom in white, after an interruption by a group of bandits in vehicles you will be introduced to some enemies you can kill. You will start with one weapon but weapons come in abundance so I wouldn’t worry about not finding more, the controls are smooth and getting around is easy which is important as you have a whole new exciting but dangerous world to explore.

After you’ve killed the small nest of bandits start looking around and picking everything up, enemy’s drop a variety of things from ammo to cash and weapons, always do this as you will need the cash later on for ammo upgrades and shields. There are so many things to find and explore in Borderlands it will keep you more than happy all the way through if you fancy just treasure hunting yourself off the beaten track. When you pick up some weapons press the back button to access your character menu, scroll to your inventory to find you weapon slots and assign one extra weapon for the time being more will open as you play. When you’re out of the character menu the D-pad is used for short cuts for your weapon slots or press Y button to scroll through your last two weapons you used, making combat very enjoyable as you can switch weapons quickly also saving you and, if you choose, your buddies from hairy situations.

As you progress you will be introduced to all those locked spaces in your inventory like Grenade Mods enabling you to throw them and also to change the ability on the grenades you throw. You will also unlock Shield Mods which is self explanatory and when a shield is equipped an extra bar will appear above your health bar giving you an edge on your enemies. Even further on and you will unlock Class Mods, these are devices to boost  your character class’s stats and come in many variety’s and ranks. The game gives you enough time to become proficient before introducing you to another feature or ability which makes the transgression through training to the main plot smooth and seamless, you will start to notice more and more quality and ideas to challenge you as you progress and will carry on to the end throwing some unexpected things your way, it is Pandora after all.

To start your first missions in fire stone you must first find Dr. Zed, the Clap Trap will give you a mission involving getting to Dr. Zed. Mission objective show up on your compass and are indicted by a green and white flashing triangle, it’s very easy to use and follow especially over the wastes of Pandora and your compass will also show other things like car depot and mission spots making navigation painless, and if you’re still stuck or lost you can always consult your map with the back button and scroll along the menu tabs. After a violent introduction to Dr. Zed you can start to pick up more and more missions eventually opening up new ways to other areas and new missions.

The map is huge and has many areas extending from it giving you expansive areas to explore, also you can open up short cuts in certain areas making trekking back for missions a little bit less time consuming. The level design is high quality with nothing looking out of place and various chests and caves make for good exploring, there are also some amazing sights to be had around Borderlands standing on top of buildings or areas you have scaled can be rewarding as you can see far and wide. As you explore and complete missions you will gain access to vehicles which makes all the difference as some areas are right down the bottom of the main map, you can also use the travel posts marked on your map to instantly travel to other areas you have explored making exploring the whole game a strong possibility and why not you have alot to discover.

As you progress you will notice there aren’t just bandits on Pandora but hardy looking monsters too, there is a good variety of life on Pandora all of which are trying to kill you or eat you but some other forms of life that are harmless should have been added for the cheap kill factor and for more depth, mutant cows always go down well, just seems like there’s too many hostile enemy’s to survive on Pandora but it is entertaining when bandits and monsters try and murder eachother, it gives you a Borderlands perspective of the fight for life. All AI is detailed well for the cell shaded look Borderlands has and the gore effects make combat what is it, very violent and exciting even when you’re a high level you still will be challenged by hordes/villages of bandits or huge flying creatures that breath down elements. There are also bosses and mini bosses, these may have a short cut scene but be warned they normally have much better abilities than your average bandit or monster and often have strong Hench men to protect them, these parts of the game are normally in some kind of arena and will test your skills. You must use all of your powers and probably most of your ammo but these tests in the game keep you looking out for bigger bader enemy’s and get you really involved in the game.

The story progresses well,  I won’t spoil it buts definitely worth seeing through to the end even if your short on time these days and with excellent side missions to boot will keep you focused in game if that’s what you feel like doing, but you can also explore in your own time giving you options to fit what killing mood you’re in. 

The game is solid all the way through and fans of this genre will be very happy, the game expands as you play leaving you wanting to play more and not trading it in after two days. It also has online co-op for four people which is fantastic, you and your friends pillaging and murdering on a Saturday night, you just can’t beat sharing experiences with friends online or offline. Split screen however is a huge fail, there’s too much going on screen for small/medium TV’s and scrolling menus across your screen to see them just doesn’t work sadly, larger TVs I expect may reduce this problem. It’s nice to see more “worthy titles” especially being advertised well on TV as they’re not misleading the customer in anyway this has quality running all the way to the end and more, this is definitely a game to be proud of.

Buy, Rent or Pass: Big Fat Buy

Gamer Rating: 9.7

Every good game deserves a good DLC. Couple that DLC with zombies and you’ve got yourself a great bit of content. 1up is reporting that the previously announced Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC for Borderlands is being released on November 24th for Xbox 360 and PS3. Sadly PC owners may have to wait a bit longer as 2K chose not to mention a version for them.

Just to recap – Dr. turns locals of Jacobs Cove into zombies and it’s up to us to find a cure while no doubt destroying a few of them along the way. Of course there will be oodles more loot to collect, keep or sell which is something that has been keeping me entertained for the last few weeks. For only 800 Microsoft points or around £6, more loot, zombies and even were-skags – oh yes, were-skags – sounds like a pretty good deal to me.