Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Very soon now, XCOM will launch. Much like a Skyranger emerging from an underground base it will cause people to point at it and go ‘ooooo, that’s spectacular’, of this I am sure. But unlike a Skyranger it won’t fly to a petrol station, unload a group of frightened human beings and then return home hours later with an empty hold and a pilot with a lament for fallen soldiers on his lips. Or maybe he just whistles nonchalantly and says he dropped them off at a party or at a beach resort. One without lobstermen. To celebrate the impending release, here are two videos. One uses footage of the game to make it look like a different game, while the other features lead designer Jake Solomon going undercover to sell the game. That’s the one to watch.

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Well, it may have become a third-person shooter, rather than the first-person shooter 2K Marin’s divisive XCOM was originally billed as. \Kotaku have seen a opinion-monitoring survey allegedly allegedly allegedly sent out to punters by 2K, which contains apparent screenshots of a third-person view that seems to have a heightened focus on squad play.
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Aha! If you’ve been fretting about whether XCOM Enemy Unknown is the second coming or an act of outrageous vandalism, now you can – partially – find out for yourself. A two-mission plus base-browsing demo has just arrived on Steam, which sounds like it’s primarily tutorially but should give you a flavour of Firaxis’ 21st-century reimagining of the classic 90s TBS. Get it from the link on the right of this page. Be warned it’s a chubby old six gigabytes, however.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The billow of their shorts makes it seem as if I could reach out and touch the fabric. For a long time I thought basketball games were part of my childhood, never to be visited again. I hadn’t enjoyed a bout of ball-to-basket since the days when a particularly impressive dunk would cause the backboard to shatter into a thousand glittering celebrations and scoring streaks would cause my player to wear a halo of flames. One of 2K’s recent NBA releases rekindled some of my appreciation for the courtly conflict though, mainly due to its exceptional My Player Mode. With all that said, NBA 2K13 looks spectacular as you can see below.

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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!

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