Borderlands Zombie Island Trailer


An upscaled version of Resident Evil: Code Veronica headlines this week's PSN Store update. It's available for £15.99.


FIFA 12 arrives to download on Friday - for the privilege of saving yourself a walk to the shops you'll pay £54.99 on PlayStation 3 and £31.99 on PSP.

Battlefield 3's open beta rolls out on Thursday, while gamers can help themselves to PSN-exclusive shooter Rochard, freemium role-player Free Realms and new Dead Nation DLC from today.


There's still no sign of the MIA Mortal Kombat: Arcade Kollection - it arrived on time for its XBLA launch almost a month ago and has yet to materialise on PSN in Europe.


2D adventure Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, out in the US, is also missing.


PSN Plus subscribers get 20 per cent off metal pouring puzzler Mercury hg this week, and Resi Evil: CV for half price.


Anyone who bought Resident Evil 4 HD last week also gets Code Veronica at 50 per cent discount.


But European Plus payers have seemingly missed the glut of Uncharted 2 DLC gifted to US Plus accounts in North America's latest PSN update, alongside new Nathan Drake avatars and themes.


European gamers do get a hefty price drop on Borderlands' Game Of The Year edition though - it's more than half price this week only. Cut from £27.99 to £11.99, it includes the full game plus all four DLC packs: The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned, Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and Claptrap's New Robot Revolution.


The full update, courtesy of the EU PlayStation blog, lies below:

PS3 Games

  • Arkedo Series - 03 Pixel! (£1.59/€1.99)
  • Child of Eden (£23.99/€29.99)
  • Crysis 2 (£31.99/€39.99)
  • De Blob 2 (£19.99/€24.99)
  • Elemental Monster (£0.95/€1.19)
  • FIFA 12 (£54.99/€69.99) - Available Friday 30th September
  • Free Realms (free)
  • Homefront (£27.99/€34.99)
  • Max and the Magic Marker - Gold edition (£7.99/€9.99) - Trial & Unlock
  • Mercury Hg (£3.99/€4.99) - Trial & Unlock
  • Rochard (£7.99/€9.99)
  • Resident Evil: Code Veronica (£15.99/€19.99) - Discounted to £7.99/€9.99 for purchasers of RE4 HD until 12th October
  • Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters (£57.99/€69.99)
  • Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (£7.99/€9.99)
  • Saints Row 2 (£15.99/€19.99)

Video: Rochard.

PSP Games

  • FIFA 12 (£31.99/€39.99) - Available Friday 30th September

PS minis (PS3 and PSP)

  • Galcon Labs (£1.99/€2.49)
  • The Treasures Of Montezuma (£1.74/€1.99)

PSone (PS3 and PSP)

  • Gubble (£2.99/€3.59)
  • Snowboard Racer (£3.99/€4.99)

PS3 Demos

  • Battlefield 3 Beta - Available Thursday 29th September
  • Stardrone Demo

PS3 Add-Ons

  • Dead Nation - Road to Devastation (£3.49/€3.99)
  • Free Realms - 30 Day Membership (£3.99/€4.99), 90 Day Membership (£9.99/€12.99), 180 Day Membership (£19.99/€24.99), 365 Day Membership (£23.99/€29.99), Lifetime Membership (£27.99/€34.99)
  • Champion Jockey: G1 Jockey & Gallop Racer - Comedy Pack (£1.99/€2.49)
  • Duke Nukem Forever - Hail to the Icons Parody Pack (£6.29/€7.99)
  • Elemental Monster - Battle Tickets -Set of 4 (£0.95/€1.19), Battle Tickets -Set of 21 (£4.79/€5.99), Battle Tickets -Set of 45 (£5.49/€6.99), Battle Tickets -Set of 100 (£10.99/€13.99). Booster Box -Ancient War (£4.79/€5.99), Booster Box -Birth of Deities (£4.79/€5.99), Booster Box -Emperor's Revenge (£4.79/€5.99), Booster Box -Legendary Dragons (£4.79/€5.99), Booster Box -Otherworldly Visitor (£4.79/€5.99), Booster Box -Sacred War (£4.79/€5.99)
  • Elevator Action Deluxe - Additional Stage 1 (free)
  • Fallout: New Vegas - Courier's Stash (£1.59/€1.99), Gun Runners Arsenal (£3.19/€3.99)
  • NBA Jam: On Fire Edition - Time Is Money Pack (£2.39/€2.99)
  • SkyDrift - Gladiator Multiplayer Pack (£3.99/€4.99)

Rock Band & Yoostar

  • Rock Band Network - Ship With No Sails - Neonfly (£0.99/€1.49), Stabbing The Drama - Soilwork (£0.59/€0.79), The Window - Raven Quinn (£0.99/€1.49), Trying Hard - Loni Rose (£0.59/€0.79), Pendulum - After the Burial (£0.99/€1.49)
  • Rock Band 3 - Slipknot Pack 02 (£3.49/€5.29), (contains the following songs also available separately) Left Behind - Slipknot (£0.99/€1.49), Pulse Of The Maggots - Slipknot (£0.99/€1.49), Wait And Bleed - Slipknot (£0.99/€1.49), Snuff - Slipknot (£0.99/€1.49)
  • Yoostar 2 - Fireworks Over City Scape (£0.59/€0.75), A Woman Who Will Arouse My Intellect (£1.39/€1.75), Live Long And Prosper (£1.39/€1.75)
Eurogamer


Grand Theft Auto 4 has now shipped a gargantuan 22 million copies worldwide since its April 2008 release.


That doesn't mean they've all been sold, but it's an indication of its enormous success nonetheless.

Company chairman Strauss Zelnick revealed the figure during a talk at ThinkEquity's annual Growth conference, reported IndustryGamers.


Take-Two (owner of 2K and Rockstar) said the Grand Theft Auto series has now shipped a total of 114 million units to shops around the world.


In comparison, breakout console success Red Dead Redemption has shipped 12.5 million copies. That game became the first of Take-Two's fleet to demonstrate anything like the success of GTA.


The two BioShock games have combined to ship 9 million units. A third BioShock game, BioShock Infinite, is being made for a 2012 release.


The Wii Carnival Games series shipped 8 million units.


The entire Midnight Club series shipped 18.5 million units. The Civilization series shipped 11 million units.


The Max Payne series managed to ship 7.5 million, and will also welcome a third instalment in 2012.


The two Mafia games shipped 5 million copies.


Borderlands, alone, shipped 4.5 million. Borderlands 2 will be released sometime between April 2012 and March 2013.


Last but not least, The Darkness, which shipped 1 million. Whether weak or not, it too is due a sequel, and that's also coming in 2012.


Notably absent from the Take-Two list was L.A. Noire, which we know to have shipped 4 million units.


Rumour has it that Take-Two is close to announcing Grand Theft Auto 5. But will Take-Two wish to detract attention from its already packed 2012 slate?

Video: Max Payne 3 now has Rockstar's full attention.

Borderlands Game of the Year - Valve
Implemented new opt-in stat-tracking service, BTest, for Steam players.

- The result of ongoing work within Gearbox Labs, BTest is a limited-time experiment that offers you the chance to help us tune and improve our games.

- By choosing to participate in BTest, you help us learn more about the world of Borderlands (what guns are the most popular and effective, what areas are being played the most, etc.) just by playing the game!

- You will be able to compare your characters to your friends and other players throughout the world through the Gearbox Labs site.

- For more information on BTest, visit http://labs.gearboxsoftware.com

Added new EULA and opt-in / opt-out menu choices for BTest functionality.

Save games now sync with Steam Cloud for remote backup.
Fixed crash issue when connecting to Gearbox Labs

Borderlands Game of the Year
Borderlands 2 To Be Announced
Keen eyed players of Borderlands might have noticed that the Steam version recently updated itself, bringing Steam Cloud save synchronisation and something called BTest. According to the update, BTest is a stat tracking system that will record what guns and areas are most popular with players, in order to help Gearbox improve their games. The software also includes a leaderboard at Gearbox Labs, which will let you compare your stats to other players.

With Borderlands 2 announced for April next year, it seems likely the data collected will have some influence on the development of the sequel.
Borderlands Game of the Year - Valve
Implemented new opt-in stat-tracking service, BTest, for Steam players.

- The result of ongoing work within Gearbox Labs, BTest is a limited-time experiment that offers you the chance to help us tune and improve our games.

- By choosing to participate in BTest, you help us learn more about the world of Borderlands (what guns are the most popular and effective, what areas are being played the most, etc.) just by playing the game!

- You will be able to compare your characters to your friends and other players throughout the world through the Gearbox Labs site.

- For more information on BTest visit http://labs.gearboxsoftware.com

- Added new EULA and opt-in / opt-out menu choices for BTest functionality.

- Save games now sync with Steam Cloud for remote backup.

Kotaku

Borderlands 2 Takes Your Suggestions for Its Special Edition PremiumsWhat would you like to see in a Borderlands 2 Collector's Edition? A box that opens up like a Crimson Lance chest? A psycho mask? Fake skaggy poo? A life-size rakk hive?


That last one might be a little tough, but Gearbox Software is taking suggestions for what premiums Borderlands diehards would like to see in a collector's edition when Borderlands 2 releases in 2012. They've opened an official thread on the Gearbox forums, so go in there and sound off. It's a studio that's very well known for its fan service, so maybe your idea will fly.


As someone who pumped at least 60 hours into that game, let me weigh in with my preferences. Realistically, they need to give a code for a truly balls-out in game weapon, as that's been one of the franchise's creative calling cards. Unrealistically, I want a See-n-Say Claptrap. Pull the string, and a Claptrap spins in the center, coming to rest on one of the game's many catchphrases, or Claptrap saying "The Skag goes ... 'Hlarglrbrfrgh.'"


Borderlands Collectors Edition Suggestions [Gearbox]


Kotaku

Borderlands 2 Dev Talks New Art, Improved AI, and Why PC Gamers Will Get More Love This Time AroundBy now, you've probably seen the leaked footage of the most recent Borderlands 2 demo, and read our own Michael McWhertor's impressions of the game from Gamescom. Last weekend at PAX, I caught up with Gearbox's art director Jeramy Cooke to chat with him about the new characters, guns, and art tech in Borderlands 2, as well as why PC players will be getting a much more customized version this time around.


For starters, there will be an entirely new cast of characters in Borderlands 2, but Roland, Lilith, Mordecai, and the rest of the gang from Borderlands will still make the occasional appearance. "We decided to bring back all the original playable characters as NPCs in the new game," Cooke told me, "because everyone is so connected to them. I keep doing interviews where people tell me, 'Oh, I played the game for 300 hours.' These people spend so much time with these characters, but then, they don't really know who they are. This game is five years after the vault was opened, and we wanted to show what's happened since then."


The new demo has the player raiding an enemy compound to free Roland, the soldier from the first game; one would imagine this means that afterwards, Roland will be around for players to interact with, theoretically getting to know him beyond "This is the guy with the healing bullets."


Borderlands 2 Dev Talks New Art, Improved AI, and Why PC Gamers Will Get More Love This Time Around"We're also trying to put a lot more variety into the actual zones themselves," Cooke continued. "There was a lot of repetition of the same brown rocks last time, and we said, 'We're not doing this again.' We want people to see the whole rest of Pandora. We had made a map a long time ago for Borderlands one, and it had grasslands, it had volcanic areas, it had icy areas, and we just never really got to build them all. So for Borderlands 2 I said, 'We are going to go see the rest of Pandora.'"


One of Borderlands's most distinctive aspects was its huge and varied arsenal. It's not a huge surprise that there will be even more weapons in the sequel. "There are a lot more guns this time," Cooke told me, "like, several orders of magnitude more. Our core gun system that we had last time we revamped the base code system for that to make it more efficient so that we could add more parts. So, in the past game we might've only had like five or six parts for a gun, now there can be more like twelve, fourteen parts in a gun. We paramaterized the scope views as well—before, it was all static art, so you might've only seen one of six scopes, but now you're going to see eighty-seven bazillion scopes, because they're all paramaterized. Guns dropped by bosses are going to have much more personality."


Borderlands 2 Dev Talks New Art, Improved AI, and Why PC Gamers Will Get More Love This Time AroundCooke said that the various gun manufacturers would be much more distinctive, as well. Bandits' guns would be all about ammo, while other manufacturers would focus on rate-of-fire, ammunition type, and more. (And of course, the hilarious exploding disposable Tediore gun from the demo.)


The team has also been hard at work updating the game's art style. "I think I've helped evolve the art style for Borderlands 2", Cooke said. "We've added a lot more shader work. We've always seen ourselves as concept-art style instead of cartoony or anime or any of those things, because we do a lot more rendering. If you look at some of the ice, it's not just a 2D texture with lots of lines in it, it has pretty complex shader stuff, depending on how something catches the light." He went on to describe how when light catches various objects in the world, they each react differently—in essence, he and his team at Gearbox are building a world of living concept art.


I mentioned to Cooke how often, I find that I prefer a game's promotional concept-art to the way the game eventually looks. "That was how we made the switch. We were like, 'We're doing this high-realism thing, but the game has this crazy zany fun aspect to it, and it doesn't make any sense.' And we had all this awesome concept-art and we looked at it and said, 'Why don't we make it look like this? This is so cool.'"


"[Changing the art style for Borderlands] helped us find our voice, it helped us realize what kind of game we were making. There was a connection between the art and the game design, and suddenly they started riffing off of each other, and we ended up with crazy midgets strapped to shields… we realized that yeah, we're badass, but we like to have fun, too.'"


Borderlands 2 Dev Talks New Art, Improved AI, and Why PC Gamers Will Get More Love This Time AroundOne of the chief criticisms of Borderlands was the repetitive enemies and somewhat simplistic AI—most enemies would simply charge at the character headlong, and combat frequently became an exercise in backpedaling and blasting. The AI was fairly easy to exploit in the first game, and Cooke says the team has addressed that, as well. "We saw people in the first game exploiting the AI," he said, "hiding around a building, getting the AI stuck and stuff like that, so now AI can completely navigate where players can navigate. They can jump from rooftop to rooftop, climb ladders, they can kick barrels down stairs... they have a much better sense of what's going on in the world. There's a whole new layer of communication, there's a whole new layer of states—we have wounded states, all these awesome buff states where guys hulk out. The AI is totally new from the original game."


"The other big area is user interface," Cooke continued. "We had a ton of fans who played the game on PC, but they honestly got a port of the console game. We heard a lot of fans say, 'Hey, you didn't really take care of us here.' So, we completely ripped out the UI - there's a completely new UI for PC, it's mouse-driven, supports drag-and-drop, all of the things that you would expect in a PC title. It'll be a lot more fun for people."


The first Borderlands managed to go from "oddity" to "obsession" to "dark horse GOTY candidate" - it was a flawed title that still managed to create an enjoyable experience simply by way of its strong mechanics and unique look. Listening to Cooke talk about the sequel gave me the impression that the dev team has listened hard to player feedback and is methodically addressing their concerns one by one. Very promising, to be sure.



You can contact Kirk Hamilton, the author of this post, at kirk@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Kotaku

An intrepid tipster has sent in a video s/he shot of the latest demo of Gearbox's upcoming shooter Borderlands 2, and so of course we thought we'd share it with all of you.


Unlike the last leaked footage we ran, this video is taken not from a possible pants-cam—it's clearly in-bag. Though it wasn't shot at PAX, it's basically the same demo (as well as the one that McWhertor checked out at Gamescom), so if you weren't able to make it to the show (or didn't want to wait in the ginormous line), now you can watch a slightly janky version of it at home.


At PAX, the presenter was sure to point out that everything seen in the long view seen at 5:45 was fully explorable, which… yeah. Cool.


Enjoy, and do stick around to the end.



You can contact Kirk Hamilton, the author of this post, at kirk@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Kotaku

You get a Borderlands 2! You get a Borderlands 2! This is Randy Pitchford and other top people from Gearbox Software giving away a copy of Borderlands 2 to every one of the 900 people who showed up at their community panel at PAX. Everyone got a card that includes a redemption code for the game (redeemable when the game launches.)


Randy then made everyone take an oath, which you need to see and hear to believe. It was a madhouse. (Good thing I had my camera!)


Technically, they said that Borderlands 2 publisher 2K Games was giving the games away, but it was clear that this was a gift inspired by Gearbox, one that went over pretty well. The codes are valid in the U.S. only, though Pitchford said he hopes to be able to accomodate non-U.S. attendees as well.



You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at stephentotilo@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Kotaku

New Borderlands Patch Will Test Borderlands 2 Tech, Adds SteamworksA new patch coming September 9 for the PC version of Borderlands will add Steamworks support and will begin to test some new systems development studio Gearbox Software wants to incorporate into Borderlands 2.


"This technology, dubbed B-Test for this patch, is about increasing the relationship between you and us, " Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said as he announced the patch at a Gearbox panel at PAX. The new tech will send data back to Gearbox, letting them know "which guns suck", which areas aren't being visited and other info that, presumably, Gearbox can tweak.


"This will allow us to make better games," he said.


It wasn't clear if this tech would allow Gearbox would be able to use that data to update the first Borderlands will influence the second, or will actually allow Gearbox to track Borderlands 2 play habits and keep that game in a constant state of improvement even after it has launched.


The addition of Steamworks support, Pitchford said, will help people not lose their saves, which people will be able to save in the cloud.


[UPDATE: I spoke to Pitchford after the panel and he clarified that the B-test may be used to test a two-way connection between players of that game and Gearbox, the intent is to test that tech so that we'll see it actually work and affect change and interaction post-launch in and around Borderlands 2. Pitchford emphasized to me that it would be a two-way connection but doesn't want to divulge more details or over-promise.]


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