Borderlands 3 is due to arrive later this year, but if you've never played the previous games (we won't judge too harshly), catching up on the series has never been cheaper. The Handsome Collection, which includes Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel, and all the additional content for both games, is now just $6.02 on Steam.

There's a massive amount of DLC bundled up here, including "hundreds of hours" of extra story missions, various cosmetic items, and other goodies. All it's missing is the original game, which is "only" on sale for 33 percent off.

To get the deal, just visit The Handsome Collection's page on Steam.

While you wait for Borderlands 3, which is coming to the Epic Games Store in September, you might fancy returning to the first two games and the moon-based Pre-Sequel. They've all been given a bit of a makeover today in the form of Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, a definitive and remastered version of the original, and HD texture packs for Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel. 

Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, not to be confused with the old GOTY that just collected all the DLC, will contain tweaks to the final boss, the addition of the Borderlands 2 minimap, a visual upgrade and more. If you already own Borderlands on PC, this will be a free upgrade.

The Ultra HD texture packs for Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel are also free, updating the games for 4K monitors. You'll also see the benefits of the nicer textures on other resolutions, of course. 

I haven't played Borderlands in years, but I confess I have an itch. The tone exhausts me now, but god damn were they fantastic co-op shooters. I'm tempted to return. But if it's just the upcoming sequel you're interested in, check out everything we know about Borderlands 3. 

Summer Games Done Quick 2018 is officially over. The annual charity speedrunning marathon raised over $2 million for Doctor's Without Borders and featured over 168 hours of speedruns. If you weren't able to tune in, it's a full week of mind-blowing glitches and intense head to head races. But with the stream running 24 hours a day, it's almost impossible to see everything.

That's why we've rounded up our favorite PC speedruns from Summer Games Done Quick 2018. It's a relatively new roster compared to last year's selection, featuring indie hits like Cuphead and Celeste. But all of these runs are remarkable in their own way.

Cuphead (0:50:14) 

This run is an example of a Games Done Quick speedrun at its absolute finest: An incredibly tough game, an extremely skilled player, and a great cast of couch commentators. 'TheMexicanRunner' keeps his cool throughout each of Cuphead's insanely tough boss battles, but I particularly love the silly voices he uses while reading dialogue. His supporting cast of couch commentators are just as fun to listen to because of their impressive knowledge of the game. Not only do they explain techniques during each phase of the run, but they're bursting with cool trivia about Cuphead's development, artstyle, and more. It's just a great all-around run. 

Celeste (0:36:26) 

SGDQ 2018 was dominated by tough-as-nails indie platformers, but this Celeste head-to-head race is a remarkable display of videogame mastery by its two runners. It's not much of a competition, as runner TGH clearly has the upperhand, but watching both navigate Celeste's intimidating gauntlet of trap-filled levels is exhilarating. Some of the jumps each runner makes has to be pixel perfect, which isn't an easy feat when you're already blitzing through levels at this pace. It's indicative of the high level of skill that Celeste demands that even nailing some of these jumps is impressive on the second and third attempt. 

Enter the Gungeon (0:18:08) 

At every Games Done Quick event, there's always one run where everything just goes to hell despite the runner's best attempts. And this year, there is no one who failed more spectacularly than Teddyras—though it's not his fault. The RNG gods of Enter the Gungeon had an axe to grind with Teddyras, as evidenced by the mountain of bad luck that plagued him all the way from the very start. Sure, he makes a few mistakes here and there, but not once does Teddyras get a good weapon drop that is so crucial to surviving the Gungeon's harder floors. Keep in mind that, unlike most games, dying in Enter the Gungeon means having to start over from the very beginning. When it finally happens just shy of the final boss, it's heartbreaking. Fortunately Teddyras gets another shot, and things go much better the second time around. 

TASbot plays Celeste (0:34:19) 

But Steven, you say, didn't you just recommend a Celeste speedrun? Yes, I did. But you know what's better than watching two humans try to beat Celeste? Watching a friggin robot beat Celeste. That's what TASBot is, a tool-assisted speedrun where each button input is meticulously scripted beforehand and then executed in real-time. Of course, no human can ever match the precision of a robot, but that's what makes TAS special. With Celeste's breakneck pace and complicated level design, TASBot is able to blaze through each zone with remarkable speed. It took DevilSquirrel months to program TASBot to be able to run each level, finding the optimal path to create the ideal, superhuman speedrun. 

Borderlands: The Pre-sequel (1:56:46) 

I love this run for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel doesn't feel like a remarkable game to watch a speedrun of. Gearbox's loot-shooter isn't exactly what comes to mind when I think of great speedrun games, but Amyrlinn and Shockwve's commentary is just so damn funny. Throughout the length of the Pre-Sequel, both runners abuse a ton of glitches like duping items and clipping through walls, but it's made all the more enjoyable by their irreverent digs at Borderlands' world and fun back-and-forth quips. 

Tomb Raider (1:13:56) 

If you're not a fan of the bombastic commentary that often accompanies Games Done Quick runs, this Tomb Raider run is for you. Beckski93 executes many of Tomb Raider's complicated glitches effortlessly, but I really enjoy her laidback commentary, which is a nice contrast to the sometimes abrasive energy of other runners. There's also just a lot of fun glitches to watch, like one named after the game QWOP because of the way it breaks Lara's running animation to help her glitch through surfaces.

FEAR (1:03:24) 

Maxylobes run of 2005's FEAR is great because it's always fun to see such scary games disarmed by speedrunners. FEAR terrified me the first time I played it, but watching Maxy rush through levels with no regard for the tense atmosphere or jumpscares is just so silly. He also kills entire squads of soldiers by rushing and punching each one in the head systematically, which is ridiculous for its own reasons. I wish I had realized how strong punching was when I first played. 

Borderlands 3 hasn't been announced, but it almost surely exists. In 2017 Gearbox's Randy Pitchford got on stage during an Unreal Engine 4 presentation to show what, hypothetically, a new game that happened to look a lot like Borderlands would look like running on that shiny new engine. E3 is coming up; could this be the year that Gearbox decide to show their major new shooter to the world? As Destiny 2 struggles along, there's certainly room for a shiny new loot-driven shooter to steal the crowd.

But what would Borderlands 3 have to do to win out? Here are a few features we'd love to see in a new Borderlands game.

Less playable Claptrap

Actually, less Claptrap period, please. Borderlands' little robot mascot was always a bit grating, intentionally so, but over the course of three games became a bit of an Urkel: that obnoxious minor character who somehow gets so popular they show up more and more and before you know it Reginald VelJohnson can't even find a moment's peace in his own house. Claptrap is like that, but for our ears while we're playing Borderlands.

Less is more. Borderlands 3 could do with some fresh characters, so let Claptrap run a shop somewhere we can talk to him once every 10 hours or so.

Bungie-caliber shooting

Okay, this is a big ask, cause just about nobody does guns like Bungie does guns. But Borderlands has always been a shooter where the feeling of pulling the trigger and killing an enemy was fine, but not amazing. The fun comes from the wild variety of weapons and their outlandish effects, like an SMG that fires 43 lightning bullets a second, or a grenade launcher that fires grenades that explode into yet more grenades and blanket an entire area. The effects of the weapons were fun, and so were combining them with abilities that upped your crit damage or sent you into a melee-killing god rage.

But how much better would Borderlands' procedurally generated arsenal of wacky guns be if the feedback and punch of each gun was as satisfying as it is in Bungie's Destiny 2? Or in 2016's Doom? Or Tripwire's Killing Floor 2? Those are lofty goals to aspire to, especially with procedurally generated weapons, but Gearbox has a big opportunity to buff up the fundamentals of its trigger-pulling, bullet-firing animations and physics. Make each weapon archetype feel incredibly good to shoot, and then figure out how the random modifiers would tweak those sensations. Make Borderlands 3 a shooter we'd want to play even without all the lootin'.

Broken builds

The best payoff in loot-dumping RPGs is to find loot that actually matters. In Borderlands 2, it was possible to make some ridiculous builds (remember when literally every shotgun pellet was counted in damage multipliers?) that took down endgame bosses in seconds. We’re not asking for a buggy, easily exploitable stat system—we just want loot stacks that actually get better the more you play. Don’t scale the challenge and suck out the expressive traits of classes and weapons like Destiny 2.

Channel those wack-ass late-late game witch doctor Diablo 2 builds where molten frogs and jars of spiders cloud the screen, pulling loot from corpses like water from a loaded sponge. Hell, how about a gun that shoots loot?

Raids

Borderlands’ sturdiest leg was its co-op play. Without a buddy or two to lean on, the massive empty worlds felt far more massive and empty, and the more challenging combat encounters felt too onenote without other players to synergize with. But even with friends, the only time close cooperation was required was during the endgame boss encounters and those synergies played out similarly every single time—you just had to play your damn class. With full-blown raids, the rest of Borderlands’ mechanics could get put to the test in areas designed for a specific amount of players.

Imagine big dungeons that match (or surpass) the sophistication of Destiny 2’s first-person platforming ballets and phantom-realm symbol memorization, but with Borderlands much more diverse classes, skill trees, and weapon types. I can’t wait to hate my friends all over again. 

Leave Pandora behind

Look, Pandora's great. It shows that the Sanford And Son aesthetic works well in almost any environment—be it deserts crawling with skags or decrepit hamlets ripped out of Dungeons & Dragons. But after three games, piles of DLC, and Tales From the Borderlands, it's time to move on. A new Borderlands would do well to set its unique brand of shoot-and-loot on another planet entirely, or for that matter, on multiple planets. It's a big galaxy out there, and letting us explore it would not only give us a welcome change of scenery, but also let Gearbox experiment with different physics and elemental loot.

Planet hopping could be an especially cool twist, making your ship home base along the lines of a 3D Starbound. However Gearbox chooses to handle a new setting, it should feel free to detach itself from the history it's built up on Pandora. We're ready for entirely new adventures.

Improved character customization

Since Borderlands, similar shooter/RPGs like Destiny and Warframe have placed a huge emphasis on character customization, because they know RPG players love to look fashionable. Borderlands 2 had some light customization options, but didn't go nearly far enough. Borderlands is best enjoyed in its cooperative mode, and extensive customization would allow players to distinguish themselves from their party.

We'd like to see more options besides swappable heads and color variations for outfits—instead, let's have entirely different costumes for each character. Just imagine, for instance, how much better Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep would have been if you were allowed to put on a robe and a wizard hat.

Improved enemy AI

You know the drill: You encounter an enemy in either Borderlands, and then they go nuts, either rushing you with makeshift axes or pelting you with bullets while they saunter from right to left. In time, the only thing that makes non-boss fights different from one another is how many bullets to takes before the baddies fall over. That's not going to cut it for the next game.

Enemies need to be more responsive and less bullet spongy, and more varied in their behavior. We're not asking for tactical geniuses, here, but the occasional flanking maneuver wouldn't hurt. Make playspaces arenas that enemies will intelligently navigate, rather than rushing at us like maniacs over and over again. Just because the enemies are psychos doesn't mean they have to be idiots.

Improved difficulty balance

The Borderlands games are definitely built for co-op, and they're a blast that way, but that ends up meaning some sections are almost trivial with a full group, and maddeningly tough solo, depending on your class. Better scaling for number of players could help smooth things over. Going further, we'd love to see more nuanced difficulty in Borderlands for New Game+, which is a crucial part of the Borderlands experience. Most of the time, that New Game+ difficulty just means enemies have much larger health pools. Give them new attacks, bring out surprise new enemy types, shake things up. 

Smoothing out the difficulty curve for various player numbers is important, but so is keeping that difficulty interesting for the entire run.

Make your own bounty hunter

Customizing premade characters would be cool, but we wouldn't mind seeing Borderlands lean into its RPG side even more and let us completely design our own characters from scratch. Let's be honest—we're not playing Borderlands for the story, even though Borderlands 2 did have some fun twists and turns. But the point is, we don't need to play predefined characters. Let us create our own and fully customize their looks and playstyles.

A broader, more open-ended skill tree for a range of character classes would be a huge task to balance, but would make us more attached to our characters and make Borderlands even more replayable than it already is.

Better inventory and bank space

What's the most heartbreaking moment in Borderlands? You'd think it's the death of a major character, but it's not. It's tossing aside your legendary Fashionable Volcano with a 44.5 percent chance to ignite because you had to make room in your 27-slot backpack for some new specimen of badassery. Borderlands 2 remedied that problem a bit when it released a patch for new slots (among other things) back in April of 2013, but even then it seemed like a sin to toss aside legendaries that couldn't fit.

While we're at it: Gearbox, give us a place to display some of that cool loot that we may have outgrown but we're still proud of. It works for Skyrim, and there's no reason why it can't work on Pandora.

PC gaming has a long and storied history of menu and customization sliders. So long and storied, in fact, that I can't be bothered to research it. Instead, I'm just going to post gifs of some of my favorite game sliders, be they sliders that adjust a character's facial features, body parts, or accessories, or ones that let you tweak some element of a game from zero to 100, and beyond!

Okay, not beyond. Typically, they just go to 100.

Here are PC gaming's best sliders. If I missed one of your favorites, just slide into the comments and let me know.

Foot Size: Reign of Kings

Open world survival game Reign of Kings has a lot going for it—including the ability to kill yourself by bashing your face with a rock you can store in your own butt—and that includes a surprisingly robust character creation utility, which allows you to adjust nearly every aspect of your avatar.

Of all the sliders you can use to lovingly or comically sculpt your character, my favorite is the foot size slider. It's notable, I feel, that when maxed out it actually and appreciably changes the height of your character by about six in-game inches. More games should allow this: just imagine Geralt sitting in that tub dangling a pair of size 75 feet over the side.

Sex Appeal: Saints Row The Third

Saint's Row The Third's character creation menu is refreshingly unrestricted, allowing you to create any sort of character you like. This isn't one of the standard "You're a dude, so you have a dude voice and can't wear makeup" type of utilities: you can pretty much do whatever the hell you like. It's wonderful and inclusive and literally every game should follow its example.

The best of all its many sliders, however, is the Sex Appeal slider, which lets you embiggen your boobs or your junk, as seen above. Feast your bulging eyes on some bulges.

Flex Scale: Garry's Mod

Memes, comics, machinima—there are all sorts of wonders (and horrors) Garry's Mod can be used for. The Face Poser tool is just one of many useful gadgets, but it comes with an amazing slider called Flex Scale. Amazing, that is, when applied to a model it wasn't meant for.

As any comic creator can tell you, the TF2 models, while compatible with Garry's Mod, don't quite work the same way as the HL2 models when using the Face Poser. Still, the results are bizarre and disturbing and certainly entertaining. And if you're looking to create actual, usable facial expressions on TF2 characters, there's one or two mods for Garry's Mod that make it much easier.

Brightness: Every Horror Game Ever

As a huge scaredy-pants who doesn't like being scared in his pants, I'm always appreciative of the brightness slider that comes with Every Horror Game Ever. While its intentions are to make sure you can't see the dark and spooky places very well, and thus heighten the scares, I use it for the opposite reason. To make things as bright as possible. So the scares aren't so scary.

So no, Every Horror Game Ever, I will not fall into your trap by adjusting the brightness so the mark in the center is barely visible. I will use it so all of the marks are as visible as humanly possible. Thanks for the warning, though.

Eyelashes: Black Desert Online

I've never personally played Black Desert Online, and after tinkering with its character creation menu for a bit, I probably never will. That's no diss, it's a compliment: there are so many options in BDO's character creation menu I can't imagine ever completing the process of building my avatar. It's amazing.

Among the umpteen various sliders, however, I'm picking the eyelash length slider as my favorite. I'm used to selecting eyebrows for my character, but never lashes, and not only are there several type to choose from, you can dictate how long they are. That's customization.

Body Oil Intensity: WWE 2K17

Why yes, I did just buy a $50 game simply so I could use a slider to coat a beefy hairless man with oil. The character customization is pretty great in WWE 2K17, and even includes sliders for enhancing veins in your wrestler's chest and stomach, if you're looking to create a wrestler suffering from acute thrombophlebitis. But, I'm going with Body Oil Intensity slider as my favorite, probably due to the word 'Intensity.' I think it's a great word to describe the amount of oil one has smeared on their body.

Body Oil Assistant: "So, Bob The Wrestler, how much oil should I slather on your veiny, hairless body before the Very Important Wrestling Fight?"*

Bob The Wrestler: "An intense amount. The most intense amount there is."

*Sorry if that's not convincing dialogue. I don't watch wrestling.

Endowment: Conan Exiles

Well. I guess won't post an animated gif on this one, though if you want to see a naked man's dong getting rapidly bigger and smaller you can check it out in this post or contact me on Skype very late in the evenings (if anyone but me answers, hang up immediately). Conan's Endowment Slider is so great it's even been set to music!

I suspect players either opt for setting the endowment slider either all the way to the right, or all the way to the left. There's simply no middle-ground when it comes to video game wieners. Though, with modding tools now available, I suspect we'll see more options for genital sculpting sometime soon.

Dialog Volume: Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

When I'm asked about my feelings on Borderland's Claptrap—note that I've never once been asked—I'd have to gently say I'm not a fan. The bot's got gusto, but when it comes to the mathematics of humor, the equation volume + quantity = comedy simply doesn't add up. To put it bluntly, Claptrap talks too much, too loudly, and I hate him.

While Borderlands 2 didn't have a separate slider for dialogue volume, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel did. I can only assume the reason for it is fan feedback. Shush, little robot. You're trying too hard.

Borderlands creator Matthew Armstrong has left Gearbox, he confirmed on Twitter over the weekend. As both creator and writer of the first game in the series, Armstrong was also involved in Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel in various capacities. 

Things changed. No longer working at @GearboxSoftware. I will always love Gearbox, but it's adventure time.

— Matthew Armstrong (@MisterArmstrong) April 17, 2015

News of Armstrong's departure follows the closure of 2K Australia last week, the studio responsible for last year's The Pre-Sequel. With work complete on both The Pre-Sequel and the recent Handsome Collection for consoles, Armstrong told Game Informer that he'd taken the opportunity to leave at a time when he was "non-vital".

"I could leave without damaging Borderland or Gearbox too much if I did it at this moment, so now was the time," he said. "I think Gearbox will do great in the future, and I think Borderlands will stay strong and awesome. I've been thinking about it for a while. I'm not quitting out of anger or getting fired. It's just time for new adventures. I'm an inventor. I'm ready to make something new. Not just new to me, but new to everyone."

We're likely to see a Borderlands 3 at some point but probably not for a while: Gearbox only started recruiting for it in January. 

At Gearbox s panel at PAX East, the Borderlands developers showed off a new trailer for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel s final piece of DLC, entitled The Claptastic Voyage. Launching March 24, Claptastic Voyage will feature ten new levels set in that most horrifying location imaginable: inside Claptrap s mind. Even more horrifying: the only video we could find online was hand-recorded by a member of the audience. Enjoy.

We really wanted to make the most annoying thing we can think of, 2K Australia s Jonathan Pelling told the crowd at PAX East. We wanted to drill into his character more and see what makes him tick. We ll be experiencing first-hand his neuroses, hopes, dreams, fears, and stupidity.

The new story campaign picks up after the pre-sequel, forming a bridge to the beginning of Borderlands 2. Handsome jack discovers that a powerful new data archive has been hidden in the last place anyone would ever look, inside Claptrap s code. Jack calls his vault hunters, digitizes them, and sends them inside Claptrap s software.

The panel also discussed a new weapon rarity type, glitch guns, digitized versions of existing guns that malfunction in very powerful ways. Submachine guns randomly start shooting like shotguns, machine guns suddenly shoot giant bullets very slowly, and so on. We basically went with the idea of the whole bug problem and ran with it, Pelling explained.

Looking for more PAX East news? Follow our PAX East 2015 tag for all of our reports from the show floor.

Steam are having a Valentine's sale later today, and for once we know about it in advance. You'll find the list of discounted games here, although the discounts themselves haven't been detailed yet. Still, it should give you a bit of time to safely lock away your wallet, delete your saved bank details, and throw your computer into the sea—alternatively, you could pick up some lovely games for not much money.

This sale's all about Valentine's day, which is either a sickeningly commercial fake celebration of love, or an excuse to go out for a meal, depending on whether you're in a relationship or not. Maybe this year, Steam says, you could get your loved one what they really want: a cheap co-op game or two. This weekend sale is dedicated to games featuring co-operative multiplayer, including the Borderlandses, the Saints Rows, Towerfall, some Sanctums, Don't Starve Together and Magicka.

It's a pretty good list, even if I can think of loads of great co-op games not featured. Maybe more will be added when the sale goes live at 10am PST/6pm GMT today?

Ta, VG247.

Gearbox says the most recent update to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, which launched today alongside the Lady Hammerlock DLC pack, has an "unforeseen issue" that's causing the game to crash for some players.

The problem occurs when players put three items of purple rarity into the Grinder, which "has the potential to cause a crash," Gearbox wrote in a Knowledge Base notification. The studio is working on a fix, and in the meantime it recommends that you use the Grinder at your own risk, although I think the wiser recommendation would be to just avoid using it at all until the patch is out the door.

The update, unfortunately, is automatic, and required for online play and access to the Lady Hammerlock DLC. You can avoid it, however, if you're prepared to do without those things by putting Steam into offline mode before you play—not the most elegant solution ever, but hopeful also a very temporary one. Gearbox said it will post information about a fix on the Knowledge Base as soon as it confirms that the problem has been solved.