Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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.

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.
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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.
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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…
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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.

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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.

Hurrah: While talking to MTV Gearbox creative director Mikey Neumann said it took him a rather long time to get through the game. “It took me about 100 hours. More the second time, actually, and that was to find every single little mission. I wanted to do everything.” (How long until the 20-minute speedrun, eh?)

We’re probably going to get to play the game before release, and “preview” it. Soon thereafter: judgement.

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…
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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.

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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.
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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.
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