Who wants to be Salvador's Midget?

One of the many things I was extremely excited to see at PAX Prime was Borderlands 2.  I love all kinds of games, but at times like this it becomes obvious that at heart I am such a FPS girl.  2K set up camp in “FPS Alley” as I coined it.  Once you entered the far right gate of the convention center there was Battlefield 3, Counter Strike,  and 2K with Xcom, Borderlands 2, and Darkness 2.  So many shooters, so little time!  The line for Borderlands became epic within a few minutes.  They were checking IDs since this game will be rated M and so was the developer discussing the game.

It’s been five years in Pandora and things have changed.  Handsome Jack has teamed up with the Hyperion Corporation and created a base on the moon. Who is he you might ask?  One of, and probably the most important, in an unknown number of villains bringing the pain in Borderlands 2.

The demo starts about a third of the way into the game and we see a Gunzerker, Salvador, ready to battle an arctic Bullymong.  Gunzerkers are a modification of the original Berserker class capable of dual wielding.  The Bullymong, which I can’t really describe, but sort of seems like a gorilla mated with a skag and then sprouted two extra arms, just for kicks, or punches in this case.

The Bullymong has its own AI and thus there is no pattern to its behavior.  He will throw snow, rocks, stalagmites, or even your own car at you, all at a rapid pace with his many arms, to which you have to be ready to dodge. Salvador hurts the Bullymong and for the first time we see that the enemies show a different behavior when they are wounded than when they are at full health. Once the Bullymong was defeated, the loot left behind was a completely redesigned Tediore firearm.  This particular Tediore was “The Wal-Mart of Guns” because it is disposable. Instead of reloading your gun, you just throw it at the enemy.  A level of strategy needs to happen with this particular weapon, as you can either shoot until your clip is empty, or you can toss it at the enemy to cause damage. The more bullets you have in the gun, the greater the damage.  As the gun exploded on the Bullymong, it showed a ridiculous amount of blood and gore, as expected  from Borderlands. The next gun we got to see was the Bandit brand.  Clearly, you could tell that it came from a group of bandits as it was put together with “nuts, bolts and used condoms” and hand painted or perhaps that was old blood… who knows.  I particularly enjoyed the sight on the gun as it was a screw, mounted upside down with a nut turned on its edge as a reticule. Not the most accurate gun in the game, but with a magazine of seventy two bullets, no one complains  and it is a fairly low level gun.

We moved on in the demo and Salvador encounters the new Borderlands car. 2K and Gear Box are aware of how bad the driving was in the first game, enough to quip, ‘because the driving in Borderlands was the best driving ever’ with sarcasm dripping out of every pore of that sentence. So they started from scratch and improved the driving in a number of ways:

• Party Truck: driver, gun turret and two in the back.
• The suspension and physics were all redone, adding the ability to power slide and hitting a rock won’t stop you dead in your tracks anymore.
• Now when you hit an enemy or skag it will not automatically kill them, unless you squish them or cause enough damage the enemy won’t die.

The mission we were watching was about infiltrating a camp of the Bloodshot Bandits as they have taken one of our friends.  Using the bandit gun, Salvador shoots the gate and it opens, letting loose a ton of psychos running directly at you.   These psychos were a bit more nimble than in the first game, as they took dive rolls and moved out of the line of fire, but they are still psychos after all is said and done.  We also see that if you can climb up or down an structure, so can the AI.  Long gone are the moments where if you found high ground the AI will have no idea how to work stairs or climb boxes. After the area had been cleared, a huge nomad, another new enemy, jumped into view and said, “It’s time for the big guns” showing a shield with a midget tied to it. The comedy of Borderlands was definitely still intact as the audience burst into laughter at hearing the midget screaming while trying to get out of his predicament.  This boss battle required a bit of strategy.  The strategy used was to carefully shoot the chains off of the midget as the nomad approached, so the midget comes loose and starts attacking the nomad.  This way, the nomad is distracted with the midget and you are free to go behind him and kill him, not dealing with the shield he carries.  You have to be fast, as the midget does not have much life and the nomad just crushes him.

After the battle was over, Salvador received a skill point and we got to see the new user interface for leveling.  To be honest, anything would have been better than what Borderlands had, specifically when playing split screen, but Gearbox took it a step further and made a nice, polish, easy to use UI.  At this point, a character I am dying to find out more about, Maya the Siren, entered the game.  Unfortunately, besides being able to see her, no more detail was given about her. She carried a sniper gun at all times, which seems odd, unless there is another character class twist coming, and we never saw her fight.  At points I wondered if she was really helping Salvador at all.

The friend we had been going to save was none other than Roland, the soldier from the original Borderlands, who had been captured by the Hyperion Corporation and the Bloodshot Bandits. So now we were encountering a three way fight and as our presenter put it “S**** is about to get rowdy. ” The W4R-D3N, a floating cell, moved around carrying Roland, and Salvador needed to put as much firepower in it as possible.  The missions on Borderlands are far different as you can destroy the W4R-D3N early on or you can mess that up and fight it many missions later.   Salvador shot at anything in his path and the Hyperion sent in reinforcements from the moon base.  It basically launches robots at you like bullets; fully equipped bullets that can fire more bullets.  As the robots got hurt, they called for repair. If the repair units were not dispatched quickly enough, they repaired the damaged robots which were back attacking you as if nothing had happened.  Salvador was in a bind and at this point the Gunzerker special ability made it’s appearance.  He can duel wield any two weapon, and he quickly got the upper hand from the psychos and the robots, but the W4R-D3N escaped with Roland.  Salvador kept pressing forward, shooting robots and eliminating them limb by limb. If a robot got both of its legs blown off, he would crawl towards you so it could explode near you to cause more damage.

Salvador put more and more pressure toward the W4R-D3N but the W4R-D3N quickly generates a robot in between. So Salvador had to defeat the robot and destroy the W4R-D3N so it didn’t escape again.  As we watched Salvador gunzerking on the W4R-D3N, a huge explosion occurred, causing Salvador to fly off a cliff.  As he falls he flips the W4R-D3N the bird with both hands.  We then saw Salvador spraying guns all over the place, showing us that, yes… this is Borderlands and we have TONS of guns in the game.

The game looked finished, but we have to wait another year for its release!  It’s not going to be out until late 2012.  It is a safe bet that if you love Borderlands 2 and want to go to PAX, you better save the money and buy your tickets as soon as they become available for next year, since I am sure that 2K will bring a playable demo for the next show.

"I made a B2 class 4 @ GamingAngels"

Borderlands 2, expected to release for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC,  features more than just new weapons — there’s new enemies, locales, skills, characters and loot (of course).

Right now, the release window is pretty large. How large? Well, as of now we only know that Borderlands 2 will come during Take-Two’s 2013 fiscal year. So that’s anywhere from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013. I’m sure it’ll get narrowed down a little more in the future.

Sad that this time period feels so far off? Don’t be, especially if you’re going to PAX Prime. Gearbox is taking this game on the road — first to Gamescom 2011 in Germany from August 17-21, then to PAX Prime in Seattle from August 26-28. You could get your hands on it pretty soon.

Meanwhile, I’ll probably be hitting the 360 later this month to get back into the original.

For the twelve months, net revenue grew 65% year-over-year to $1.16 billion. GAAP income from continuing operations increased to $49.7 million, or $0.58 per diluted share, as compared to a loss of $130.4 million, or $1.70 per share, for the year-ago period. Non- GAAP income from continuing operations increased to $97.5 million, or $1.06 per diluted share, as compared to a Non-GAAP loss of $90.4 million, or $1.18 per share, for the year-ago period. Non-GAAP income from continuing operations excludes certain non-cash and non-operational gains and losses identified on the attached reconciliation of GAAP and Non-GAAP measures.

For the three months, net revenue grew 32% year-over-year to $373.7 million. GAAP income from continuing operations increased to $54.2 million, or $0.58 per diluted share, as compared to a loss of $7.9 million, or $0.10 per share, for the year-ago period. Non- GAAP income from continuing operations increased to $64.0 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, as compared to $7.9 million, or $0.10 per diluted share, for the year-ago period.

New titles were the strongest contributors to net revenue and profits in the three month period, including NBA 2K11, Mafia II, Red Dead Redemption, Sid Meier’s Civilization V, Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete and New Carnival Games. Catalog titles that contributed to the strength in the recent period included Borderlands, Grand Theft Auto IV and several Nickelodeon titles. In addition, digitally delivered content has continued to be a meaningful component of Take-Two’s sales.

“We have achieved our goal of profitability in a year without a new release of Grand Theft Auto. Our better-than-expected revenue growth and margin expansion were driven by strong demand for our diverse portfolio of games, including the hit new titles Red Dead Redemption and NBA 2K11, as well as strong sales of catalog titles and digitally delivered content. I am also pleased to report that our 2K Sports division was profitable during the period.”

~ Ben Feder CEO of Take-Two

“As we finish 2010, our Company is better positioned for success than ever, creatively, operationally and financially. We plan to build on the talents of our world-class creative team to deliver an increasingly diverse portfolio of high-quality titles. We will also pursue opportunities to enter newer areas of the interactive entertainment business, such as digitally delivered content and the expanding Asian and Latin American markets. In addition, we will continue to optimize our efficient operating infrastructure and sound balance sheet to support our future initiatives for profitable growth.”

~ Strauss Zelnick Chairman of Take-Two

Take-Two’s lineup of future titles announced to date includes:

L.A. Noire (Xbox 360, PS3) in Spring 2011

Top Spin 4 (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii) in Fiscal 4Q 2011

Major League Baseball 2K11 (Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, PC) in Fiscal 4Q 2011

Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) in Calendar Year 2011

Spec Ops: The Line (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) in Fiscal Year 2012

XCOM (Xbox 360, PC) in Fiscal Year 2012

BioShock Infinite (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) in Calendar Year 2012

For more corporate and product information please visit their website at www.take2games.com.

If you’re not on an Intel machine running Snow Leopard, you’re pretty much out of luck, but the other minimum requirements are pretty easy to meet these days.

As of now, we don’t know if there’ll be cross-platform multiplayer, or even if this will be available on Steam (Oh, I do hope so!), but those are answers we might have to wait for.

The game releases on December 3 for $49.95 in the United States.

• A level cap increase of eight levels, making the new maximum for all base Borderlands players 58
  • If you own The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, you’ll be able to level up to 69
• If you’ve played through the game twice, enemies will scale up to the new level cap
• Item drops (minus COM Decks) scale as well, so higher-level enemies drop better items
• Bug fixes, including fixing a problem with Achievements and Trophies that will allow players to get these achievements “out of order”

“Borderlands Game of the Year Edition is the perfect way for you to experience everything that last year’s surprise hit had to offer and more,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “With more than 17 million weapons to enjoy in Borderlands Game of the Year Edition, as well as early demo access to the King of All Shooters – Duke Nukem Forever, there will be a lot of explosive action emanating from consoles and PCs around the world.”

So here’s how the certificate to the Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club will work:
After entering the one-time use code from the certificate on the website, fans will get access to several bonuses, including demos available before the game launches. These First Access Club members will be the first to play the game.

For more information, please visit www.borderlandsthegame.com and www.dukenukem.com.

*All downloadable game add-ons are accessed via a redeemable Microsoft token or voucher included in every copy of the game, standalone product required to operate.

The Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition comes with the entire Borderlands DLC catalogue (including Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution). It also costs exactly the same as a brand-new game – $59.99 for consoles, and $49.99 for PC. That much is what we’ve come to expect from GOTY Editions.

However, this version gets a special treat – a free membership certificate to the Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club, which gives you access to the DNF demo…as soon as it’s available. Not immediate, but as early as possible. The game itself will be out in 2011, so that year is probably your best bet to play the demo, as well.

Full Games

Halo: Reach – For those who are unfamiliar with the monster that is Halo: hello, welcome, please take a seat, 2001 will be with you in a moment. For the rest of you, Halo: Reach is making waves as the darkest Halo yet. Though I’m sad that no one from Firefly is starring in this installment, I’m still holding out hope they’ll be supplementing my nerd desires with other cult TV heroes.

Fallout: New Vegas – While 2008 was seriously a phenomenal year for gaming (both Bioshock and Left 4 Dead debuted that year, wow), Fallout 3 led the pack by bringing back the franchise with a vengeance. Two autumns later and we have another pleasant stroll through a post-nuclear wasteland, which looks to rival the sheer awesomeness that is Fallout 3. If it’s possible to love something so much, but still want subsequent releases to be even better, then I’m afraid that’s just how I feel, Fallout. Don’t let me down.

Victory!

Costume Quest – Though it doesn’t have a colon anywhere in its name, Double Fine’s Costume Quest is going to be super amazing. I wish I could just fill this blurb with adjectives on how fantastical and wonderful it’s going to be, but I’ll restrain myself for your sake. From the mind of Double Fine’s lead animator comes this potential classic, which I’m hoping will successfully fill the obvious Halloween-themed-games hole. I’ve been overwhelmed with excitement at the thought of becoming your Halloween costume, in addition to the magical unicorn (sweet, dude). Support creativity! Get this when it comes out!

Add-ons

Bioshock: Minerva’s Den– Don’t let the trailer for Bioshock: Infinite lead you to believe that 2K is done with Rapture just let. Minerva’s Den finds Rapture crawling with an all-new type of Big Daddy, and once again the crime fighting team of Player 1 and Brigid Tenenbaum is called back on the case. I’m thinking it’s going to be brilliant, and I’m sure I’m right.

Borderlands: Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution – Borderlands is, ironically, like a cockroach, in that it will keep releasing DLC until we’ve all joined them in their post-apocalyptic Mad Max world of the future. Not that I’m complaining about being on the receiving end of more stuff that I love, goodness no. I just hope that an add-on based entirely around the most annoying character in the game (or any game, really) is much more fun than it could be.

Ten bucks says this one takes place in the woods as well.

Alan Wake: The Writer – The Signal was the first Alan Wake DLC released this year, and it was quite enjoyable because they continued the story beyond its ambiguous ending. While there’s no closure yet, Alan is still locked in a fierce mental battle with his inner crazy and the Darkness, so hopefully we’ll see some resolution to that and much more Barry.

When I say “claptrap,” I don’t mean pompous speech, either. This September, Borderlands is getting its fourth add-on, “Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution,” and you can buy it for either 800 MS Points, or $9.99 (depending on your platform of choice, of course).

The single-player and co-op campaigns involve suppressing a revolution of Claptraps. You’ll play as one of four vault hunters in the midst of a brutal civil war between Hyperion Corporation and the giant army of Claptraps, led by the Ninja Assassin. You’ll have to put aside any hate you have for Hyperion to bring down the robot army (and Ninja Assassin) for a hefty paycheck.

Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution offers co-op opportunities, just like its predecessors, and brings together the worlds of single-player and multiplayer seamlessly. This add-on brings you more than 20 new missions and more enemies to blow to pieces.

No, you won’t get a level cap raise, but there are 10 more skill points up for grabs, bringing the series to a total of 71 available. This add-on also gives you three more backpack slots, so you can carry more weaponry.

2K is obviously pleased with Borderlands’ success. “A year ago, Borderlands was an untested brand that through hard work and a lot of passion, turned out to be one of the best-selling, claptastic and skagtacular games we have ever created,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K.

Just goes to show that taking a chance on something awesome might just pay off, huh?