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In what is the most significant gesture in recent times from a developer to their community the above video shows why gamers have good reason to put their faith in Gearbox. For they are not just a mere game developer.

In addition to this incredibly moving eulogy they have confirmed that Michael John Mamaril, who recently succumbed to cancer at the age of just 22, will feature as an NPC in Borderlands 2.

This is the sort of developer respect that all publishers should be promoting.

I’m off to play a quick session of Borderlands. In Memoriam…

Hats off to Gearbox and a moments silence for Micheal John.

- Richard “Rax” Burley
@Raxous

This fresh trailer from Gearbox & Sega promises some serious alien based havok for us all to sink our teeth (both sets) into.

With various other games having some success in similar implementations the world still waits for a game to fully deliver on the promise of the “Alien” universe.

With Gearbox & Sega in the mix, this iteration could well finally deliver on this promise.

- Richard “Rax” Burley

Welcome back my crazy gun-toting, turret deploying, flame sniping amigos!

Someone, possibly from within the mighty Gearbox themselves, has “let slip” that Gearbox are already knee deep in Borderland 2 fun and frolics.

It seems that all their secretive hard work is paying off as XBox, PS3 & PC can all expect to be welcoming Claptrap back in mid 2012 and looking forward to some SERIOUSLY randomly generated guns and such…

- Richard “Rax” Burley

Game: Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
Format: Xbox 360
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games

The Newb Review Game of the Year nominee Borderlands received it’s third piece of downloadable content last week, and to cut to the chase, it is brilliant. After the shambolic mess that is Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot which cut out all of the fun aspects of Borderlands: exploration of vibrant open areas, looting, and levelling up, we are treated to a lengthy new campaign, complete with expansive environments, new enemies, new weapons, and a further 11 experience levels to unlock.

Taking place directly after the events of the main game story, your character is contacted by Athena, an assassin who has recently quit working for the Crimson Lance and asks for your help bringing them down. Summoning you to T-Bone Junction, an entirely new town that you can access from any fast travel station, you are tasked with destroying the last stronghold of the Crimson Lance, in particular the titular Armory of General Knoxx.

T-Bone Junction and the surrounding area is large. Each area is linked together by Highways that are overrun with Crimson Lance soldiers. Your main objective is to destroy roadblocks in order to gain access to new areas such as a Prison and Deep Fathoms, which is a dried up lake. During your travels you will meet a number of memorable characters, and while the story is not exactly great, the dialogue is as fantastic as ever. General Knoxx in particular shines with his apathetic messages regarding his superior officer who send him taunting orders written in Macaroni and Crayons. As well as excellent new characters, a number of old faces make a return including Scooter and Mad Moxxi, complete with amusing dialogue.

New vehicles and enemies are abundant in this add on

In order to access the new areas you will need to construct new vehicles to break through the Crimson Lance’s road blocks. The three new vehicles comprise of The Racer (a speedy version of your standard car), The Monster (a Jeep armed with machine guns and homing missiles) and The Lancer (A four person tank armed with mines, machine guns, a laser canon, and a pulse blast). Each of these vehicles has their own strengths and weaknesses, such as the Racer being incredibly fast but vulnerable to damage. The vehicles are very useful when facing off against the new enemies that have been added to the game.

As well as the elemental shock troopers; armoured soldiers that have weapons that inflict either shock, explosive, fire, or corrosive damage, there are a number of new bandit types and new creatures called Drifters: towering spider like creatures. On top of the new enemies and environments, a new super rare class of weapons has been added. These Pearlescent weapons (coloured a sort of turquoise blue in your inventory) are incredibly rare and devastatingly powerful.

The enemies you face are very tough

Due to the fact that the main story of this add on takes place after the ending of Borderlands, you cannot access any of the missions until you have completed the main game’s story. Consequently, the enemies that you will fight are pretty tough. It is very clear that this pack has been designed with multiplayer in mind, as there are a large number of enemies on screen at any one time.

There are a number of side missions included in the game, ranging from simple assassination missions to general Fed-Ex quests. One mission in particular “the Super Secret Final Boss”, is actually impossible to beat on your own as the boss is a level 64 character. The level cap has been raised to 61 in this game, which means that even if you completely upgrade your character, this boss is 3 levels stronger than you are. The only way to beat him is to team up with other high levelled characters and work together to take him and his minions down. You will be rewarded with some of the rarest items in the game for beating this boss, but it is no mean feat.

General Knoxx is an apathetic bastard.

As with every other mission in Borderlands, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx can be played through twice by each character; once on playthrough one, and the final time on a second run. The second play through features stronger enemies of a higher experience level, which should keep this add on challenging even for those with exceptionally strong characters.

Review Round-Up

Graphics: 5/5 Brilliant character designs with bold, colourful, expressive graphics. Very stylish overall.

Sound: 4/5 The strong voice acting you would come to expect from a Borderlands game returns. The music remains as strong as ever, and the sound effects are as varied as usual.

Gameplay: 4/5 A wide variety of missions ranging from simple assassination missions, to your typical fetch quests. The three new vehicles shake things up a bit, with each of them having their own strengths and weaknesses. Although it is easier to play this add on with other players, and probably more fun, it is possible to play through it in single player so long as you have a strong enough character.

Longevity: 5/5 The main story missions will last a good few hours, and there are a number of optional side missions. The inclusion of a further 11 experience levels could also provide enough reason to go back and complete more missions in order to get as much experience as possible.

Overall: 4 Pearlescent Shotguns out of 5 It seems Gearbox have listened to the critics of Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot and delivered an incredibly strong add on that builds on all of the original game’s strengths. Exploring a large open world populated with memorable characters and a ton of new equipment has brought new life to Borderlands.

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx is available for download now on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

[starreview tpl=16]

Game: Borderlands
Format: XBox 360
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games

At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking that Borderlands is a fairly derivative game. Sure, it appears to have taken the wasteland setting and RPG elements of Fallout 3, mixed it with the “proper” first person shooter controls of your Call of Duty and Halo games, and even added in the cell shaded visual style of games like Jet Set Radio and Crackdown. You have got to give it to Gearbox, they’ve taken elements from some of the best games in recent years and created something entirely new, and frankly quite fantastic. Borderlands is not only an excellent shooter, it is a brilliant RPG, with the option to play through the entire thing with up to three friends, or go all the way on your own.

Missions range from the bright sunny surface, to dank dark caves

The game takes place on the planet Pandora, far in the future. Pandora is a desolate junk yard planet, populated with mutant creatures, bandits, and frontiersmen. So if Pandora is such a hell hole, why would any sane person want to go there? The answer lies in the legend of The Vault, an alien treasuretrove just waiting to be discovered by any adventure hunter brave enough to search for it. You take control of one of these treasure hunters. There are a total of four types of adventurer and each is armed with their own special ability. Roland, the Soldier, is your all round character, who is especially good with combat riffles and shotguns and can use a turret if things get particularly sticky. Lilith is a Siren, and is able to turn invisible for short periods of time, giving off an energy pulse. Mordecai is a Sniper who possesses a hunting bird that he can send to attack his enemies. The final character to choose from is Brick, who is proficient with explosive and shotguns, and is able to go in to a blind rage and punch the daylights out of his enemies. Unlike many other RPGs you cannot really customise the appearance of your characters, beyond changing the colour of their clothing, which is a shame but it does not harm the overall experience. As you level up your characters you are able to customise your character’s abilities through a fairly expansive skill tree. You can also equip various types of energy shields, squad modifications that bestow special abilities such as ammo regeneration, and modifiers for your grenades. It sounds complicated, but the game slowly eases you in to the customisation of your character through the first four or five missions or so.

Meet the cast: Roland the Soldier, Lilith the Siren, Mordecai the Hunter, and Brick the... errr... Brick.

At first Borderlands can seem quite daunting. At the start of the game your standard weapon is fairly weak, but you should not have any problems dealing with the bandits and creatures called Skags, a weird cross between dogs, lizards, and rhinos. As you kill more enemies and explore more regions you discover more loot, including better weapons and shields. The developers proclaimed early on that there were millions of weapons in the game, and that is easy to believe. For the most part the differences between the weapons are subtle, with the main differences between guns being a few points in the damage capabilities, accuracy, or firing speed. However, as you progress further in to the game you discover weapons with elemental damage bonuses which can cause serious damage to your opponents. Yet, it will take more than a cool gun to get you through the game. Each mission is labelled with a recommended experience level for you to be at in order to succeed, and in my experience I found these guidelines were very strict. For instance, early in the game I was a level 7 and a mission required me to be level 10. Feeling confident in my abilities, as I had discovered an excellent sniper riffle, I decided to go ahead with the mission anyway. As you can imagine I was utterly obliterated every time I attempted that mission until I reached level 10. At this point I was able to succeed, as if by magic, by meeting their guidelines. At first this felt a little cheap, like an artificial way of increasing the game’s length, but those feelings soon subsided as I progressed realising that it was a lot of fun running around doing the side missions in order to boost my experience level.

There are plenty of enemies to keep you occupied as you travel the land

The world of Pandora itself is fairly large, and while it is very open, it is not entirely an open world. Each section of the planet that you can access is more like a large arena, with mountains and valleys stopping you from straying too far instead of artificial walls. To progress through one area to another you must travel through a gate, which prompts a loading screen, taking you to the next area. In some ways this is a little disappointing, but for the most part it actually makes the game less daunting and gives it a decent level of structure, as you are mostly unable to wander too far away from your objectives. Being a wasteland, the world is mostly made up of barren deserts, but there has clearly been enough thought put in to the design of each section to prevent the world from becoming boring. The world is densely populated with hostile forces, so you will often find yourself being attacked as you attempt to travel from one place to another. If you see an encampment, or run down building, chances are that the bandits have taken control of that area, so you will have a fight on your hands if you dare to explore or go looking for loot. Each section that you visit is fairly large and expansive, and takes a long time to traverse on foot. Thankfully cars have been included, allowing you to quickly drive around, and shoot at enemies with either a mounted machine gun, or a rocket launcher. Each vehicle can hold two people – a driver, and a gunner – so if you are playing multiplayer you will probably need two vehicles. Vehicles are fairly easy to come by, with several garages in each section of the world, all you need to do is press a switch and a vehicle will appear. Upon reaching the second main area in the game, you unlock the fast travel ability, which lets you teleport from one section to another, avoiding all of those nasty enemies.

Vehicles can make things a lot easier for you, but they are not invincible.

As for the story itself, I do not think that it would be unfair to say that it is pretty weak. Each story mission merely serves as a way of progressing you from once place to another, rather than enriching the story. Yet the writing for the individual character’s dialogue is often hilarious, with some of the incidental side characters being very memorable. The story revolves around your quest to discover the vault, and prevent the evil corporation that claims to own the planet from getting there first, but to be honest, it all seemed fairly generic and uninspired. The real fun in this game is in the exploration, the discovery of loot, and the combat. The action is fast paced and frantic, especially when you are playing in four player co-op. Thankfully you can play in co-op with any combination of character types, so you can all be soldiers, or whatever you want, with no penalties. If you choose to play the game in single player, then you are entirely on your own, with no AI controlled team mates. It is clear that this game is designed with 4 player co-op in mind, as the more players you have, the more enemies you will face, and the better loot you will find. There is a very handy feature in the game that takes place if you are killed – before actually dying you drop to your knees and are given a few seconds to try and kill an enemy. If you are successful you spring back to life with a little health, and can continue. There is no real punishment for dying apart from a small fine, as you merely respawn at health stations, and can continue from where you left off, although any enemies still standing will also have their health refilled if every member of your team dies. As an overall experience, Borderlands is fantastic fun and incredibly hard not to recommend.

REVIEW ROUND UP:

GRAPHICS: 5/5 Originally Gearbox were going to go with fairly generic “realistic” graphics for this game, and thank god they decided not to. The thick black lines and bright colours gives the game a charming and distinctive comic book look.

SOUND: 5/5 Some of the voice acting is superb, and the sound effects for the guns are impressive. The screams the bandits make when they are killed with a corrosive gun, and turn in to a pool of ooze, are incredibly haunting but satisfying. The music is subtle, but memorable, and can create a sense of tension when you are bombarded with enemies.

GAMEPLAY: 4/5 The missions usually revolve around collecting items, or going to a certain location and killing someone. While some missions can become a little tedious, the experience is overall a very positive one. The enemy AI is pretty stupid for the most part, as they just tend to charge at you. A lot of the time gunfights involve you walking backwards slowly and emptying your gun in to a crowd of enemies. Thankfully there are no times racing events, and no escort missions!

LONGEVITY: 5/5 The first play through will probably take over 20 hours to complete, especially if you aim to complete as many of the side missions as possible. Upon completing the game you will be a level 30ish character and can start a second play through, keeping all of your attributes and loot, facing much tougher enemies. The inclusion of 4 player online co-op, and 2 player split screen co-op can potentially keep you coming back to the game for a good while to come.

OVERALL: 5 Critical Hits out of 5. Borderlands is a surprisingly fun experience, especially when playing online with friends. If you are the sort of person that enjoys hunting for treasure in games, always trying to have the best equipment possible, then you will find a lot to enjoy here. Those looking for a deep and lengthy story telling experience may be left a little disappointed, but the dialogue of the characters makes up for that particular shortcoming. The RPG elements are slowly introduced to the player so that even a novice will quickly pick up the complexities of the game and be equipping modifiers with the best of us.