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Borderlands 2 Mechromancer available October 16 for $10
Borderlands 2's Mechromancer DLC should be available October 16 for $10. Eurogamer reports Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford dropped the current date and price estimate this weekend at PAX Prime.The Mechromancer will be the fifth playable class in Borderlands 2, which you can still get bundled at no extra cost with a pre-order of the game. Publisher 2K Games also recently announced there are four $10 DLC packs planned for the game by next June, which are also available through a $30 "Season Pass." Immediate upsell, upsell, upsell.
Borderlands 2's exposition trailer
If you're the type of person who has been avoiding details on Borderlands 2 as to not spoil the freshness of the experience... do not watch this trailer. At almost seven minutes, this introduction to Pandora covers a lot of ground. Those salivating for more? Enjoy!
'Borderlands 2 Season Pass' announced, all four DLC packs for $30
Borderlands 2 will have at least four downloadable content expansions by next summer. 2K Games announced a $30 season pass this morning, available at launch, which will make the four pieces of $10 DLC accessible for the price of three. The season pass is available for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.Pass holders will be able to download the new content as it goes live, with all four "scheduled to be available by June 2013." Borderlands 2 – and the Season Pass – will cooperatively roll into retail September 18.%Gallery-160312%
Dress up like XCOM's Thin Man, skip the lines at 2K's PAX booth
The lines at PAX Prime can be the show's biggest pain. It's all open to the public, so playing a much-anticipated game like XCOM: Enemy Unknown can have you standing around for ages. Fortunately, the folks at 2K have cooked up a cheat to help you out: Just dress up as the game's Thin Man character and you'll get a VIP badge when you show off your costume at the show.That badge will grant you access to play XCOM and Borderlands 2 without waiting, plus you'll be able to duck into the XCOM panel on Saturday. You can see what the Thin Man looks like above, and study some concept art on the official blog post, if you need it.If you don't want to wear a costume but still want some quality hands-on time with Borderlands 2 (and some Joystiq staffers), be sure to stop by the PAX party tomorrow night. The bar is open there no matter who you're dressed as.
Reminder: Play Borderlands 2 at the Joystiq, Gearbox and Amazon PAX party
Hey, whatcha doing on Thursday night? If you're in the Seattle area for PAX Prime, join us for a little shindig featuring Borderlands 2. The folks at Gearbox, 2K Games and Amazon are taking over the PNK Ultra Lounge in downtown Seattle from 7pm until 11pm, and you're invited.PNK is located on the 4th level of the Pacific Place Shopping Center at 600 Pine Street. Need a map? Boom.You'll have to be 17 or older to get in, and over 21 to partake in the open bar from 7pm until 9pm (cash afterward). Tell them Joystiq sent ya!
GameStop's exclusive Borderlands 2 DLC is loot thunderdome
GameStop is sending out a Sirin call for your money with the "Creature Slaughter Dome" pre-order bonus for Borderlands 2. The thunderdome of skag slaughter will only be available at the retailer during launch. All XP and weapons earned in the arena can be brought back to the main game.
Play Borderlands 2 at the Joystiq, 2K Games and Amazon PAX Prime party
Heading up to Seattle, Washington for PAX Prime next week? Well, your pals at Joystiq – along with Gearbox Software, 2K Games and Amazon – have a party on Thursday night that we'd love for you to attend. You like being invited to party-type things, yes?On Thursday, August 30, from 7pm until 11pm, 2K Games and Amazon are taking over the PNK Ultra Lounge. PNK is located on the 4th level of the Pacific Place Shopping Center at 600 Pine street – here's a map – in downtown Seattle.There will be demo stations for Borderlands 2 set up at the event, and in-between furious bouts of loot farming you'll be able to chat with a few Handsome Jacks (or a Mike) from Joystiq and Gearbox. If you're old enough you can also enjoy the open bar, which goes on until 9pm. We'll see you there!
Borderlands gets demade, is playable in your browser and totally rad
You wanna play Borderlands, but you're stuck at your job. Also, the new Borderlands still isn't out, and you've played so, so much of the first one. Or maybe you're only into 16-bit games? The Borderlands remake – an official part of the Borderlands 2 marketing campaign – is here, and it's pretty boss.Well, okay – it's as boss as a top down, 16-bit, browser-based rendition of Borderlands could possibly be. Incidentally, that's far, far more boss than we had imagined. What're you still doing here? Go play it!
In Borderlands 2, heavy weapons need you
Borderlands 2 is approaching and you need to familiarize yourself with its hardware if you hope to survive. Here are two videos promoting two in-game weapon manufacturers: the Soviet-inspired gear from Vladof and the element-loving weaponry from Maliwan. Now, pick one!
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti review roundup: impressive performance for around $300
No one's saying that $300 is "cheap," but compared to the GTX 670 and GTX 680 before it, the newly announced GeForce GTX 660 Ti is definitely in a more attainable category. The usual suspects have hashed out their reviews today, with the general consensus being one of satisfaction. A gamechanger in the space it's not, but this Kepler-based GPU managed to go toe-to-toe with similarly priced Radeon GPUs while being relatively power efficient in the process. That said, AnandTech was quick to point out that unlike Kepler reviews in the past, the 660 Ti wasn't able to simply blow away the competition; it found the card to perform around 10 to 15 percent faster than the 7870 from AMD, while the 7950 was putting out roughly the same amount of performance as the card on today's test bench. HotHardware mentioned that NVIDIA does indeed have another winner on its hands, noting that it'd be tough to do better right now for three Benjamins. Per usual, there's plenty of further reading available in the links below for those seriously considering the upgrade.
Borderlands 2 bundled with GeForce GTX 660 Ti, Nvidia's cheapest Kepler card yet
Borderlands 2 will accompany Nvidia's latest graphics card, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, as a PhysX-enabled freebie in the US and Europe. The bundle should be shipping to stores today in multiple SKUs, and the included code will enable a free download of the game when it's released on September 18 (September 21 in Europe). Prices may vary between Nvidia's manufacturing partners, but the GTX 660 Ti is meant to hover around $300 – a hundred bucks below the more powerful GTX 670.The GTX 660 Ti shoots for a sweet(er) spot between affordability and Nvidia's Kepler architecture, which has been praised for its brutish performance and energy efficiency. The company claims the 660 Ti trumps ATi's $350 Radeon HD 7950, and outperforms the GeForce GTX 560 Ti by 41 percent. It runs at a base speed of 915 MHz (boosting up to 980 MHz), carries 2GB of GDDR5 RAM and probably emits a mighty fine whirr.Kepler also makes a case for TXAA (Temporal Approximate Anti-Aliasing), a rendering technique that examines visual output and then attempts to predict and compensate for jagged edges in upcoming frames. According to Nvidia, TXAA is superior when it comes to producing anti-aliasing for scenes in motion. The first game to make use of TXAA is Funcom's new flagship MMO, The Secret World (demonstrated after the break.)Nvidia didn't announce TXAA support for Borderlands 2, but did peg the cel-shaded shooter's maxed-settings performance on the 660 Ti at an average of 78 frames per second, on a high-end rig and a resolution of 1080p. The video above highlights the physics-driven flair added by PhysX, though not nearly as well as the insightful quote from Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, which we've taken verbatim from the press materials: "you can get some crazy awesome physics simulations."
NVIDIA announces $299 GeForce GTX 660 Ti, lets Kepler walk among the people
It's taken NVIDIA a mighty long time to squeeze its Kepler GPU into something more affordable than the GTX 670, but it's finally happened -- the mid-range GTX 660 Ti is out and available to purchase for $299 on boards from EVGA, Gigabyte, ASUS and the usual suspects. Some buyers may complain that's $50 more than the 560 Ti, while others will no doubt be reeling off their CVV codes already. For its part, NVIDIA claims the 660 Ti is the "best card per watt ever made" and that it beats even AMD's higher-priced Radeon HD 7950 at 1920 x 1080. Check out the slide deck below for official stats, as well as for examples of what the card can do with its support for DirectX 11 tessellation, PhysX (particularly on Borderlands 2, which you may well find bundled free) and NVIDIA's TXAA anti-aliasing. We'll wait for independent benchmarks in our review round-up before making any judgment, but in the meantime it's fair to say that this 150-watt card comes fully featured. For a start, it has just as many 28nm CUDA cores as the GTX 670, the same base and GPU Boost clock speeds, the same 2GB of GDDR5 and indeed the same connectivity. The only sacrifice is memory bandwidth: all that computational performance is limited by a 192-bit memory bus, compared to the 256-bit width of the 670. Judging from those specs, we'd expect it to be almost 670-like in performance, and that's going to be pretty impressive.%Gallery-162585%
Borderlands 2 trailer sells us on the everyman's weapon line, Tediore
Sure, you've seen plenty of gameplay from Borderlands 2, but we've got something a bit more refreshing for you: an animated short advertising a cost-effective alternative to protect yourself from all those "psychos and perverts."
Claptrap Photobomb App available on Facebook
We all know Claptraps like to dance. It is known, Khaleesi. So, when a bunch of the robots showed up at the club across the street from our hotel during Gamescom, we couldn't help but snap a pic. For those who aren't so lucky, there is now an app available on the the Facebooks that will do such a thing for you.2K Games has put out the Claptrap Photobomb App on Facebook. It allows one to put Borderlands' mouthy robot into any photo – the app can also take immediate webcam pics. Uploading the photo to 2K will enter budding photojournalists into a contest to win an "ultimate loot chest," but the contest is available to US residents only. Shame we can't submit ours then.
Borderlands 2 Mechromancer poised to ship ahead of schedule
The Mechromancer, a fifth playable class free in pre-orders of Borderlands 2, was initially announced to launch at least 60 days after the full game drops on September 18. Gearbox, apparently, is ahead of schedule."We're going to beat that estimate," producer Randy Varnell tells Joystiq at Gamescom. He is unable to specify a new release window for the new character, but he is confident the team can complete its build faster than previously thought. Gearbox finished Borderlands 2 and sent it off to certification in July, which is when it began focusing on the Mechromancer herself.
Handsome Jack taunts the Vault Hunters in this Borderlands 2 trailer
With a name like Handsome Jack, we can't imagine the dude's got much to complain about. But sure enough here he is, rattling off reasons why he hates Borderlands 2's heroic foursome and discouraging their vault-hunting ways. Hey, Jack, ever hear of "live and let live?"
Your new BFF, the first skill tree for Borderlands 2's Mechromancer
The Mechromancer's first fully formed skill tree is called Best Friends Forever, and while it won't hand out charm bracelets or stay up all night gossiping, it will hold your hand. Best Friends Forever offers a series of handicaps for the friends of players who might say, "I love Borderlands and I want to share it with someone, but they suck at first-person shooters," lead designer John Hemingway tells Eurogamer.One skill in the Best Friends Forever tree is "Close Enough;" it makes bullets that miss their targets ricochet off surrounding objects toward the intended enemy. "Can't aim? That's not a problem," Hemingway says.Another skill tree may end up as the counterpoint to Best Friends Forever, offering a hardcore mode, and the third might be a "shock gameplay tree." Gearbox is still playing with the Mechromancer's tree, but "you'll definitely see a few things with the robot hand in her skill trees," Hemingway says.The Mechromancer's main skill is to summon Deathtrap, a giant robot, and her tree will include skills that teach him new abilities. One new ability is called Explosive Clap, which has Deathtrap rush enemies and clap his hands together to knock them down.Hemingway wouldn't give away the Mechromancer's name, and Gearbox is still working on her final build. The Mechromancer is planned to launch 60 days following Borderlands 2's launch on September 18, as paid DLC or free for those who pre-order the game.
Borderlands 2 third highest pre-ordered game for Take-Two behind Grand Theft Auto
Take-Two announced during its first quarter conference call that Borderlands 2 is doing incredibly well in terms of pre-orders at retail."Consumer anticipation is phenomenal," said Karl Slatoff, chief operating officer of Take-Two about Gearbox's shooter. "Pre-orders are currently the third highest of any title in Take-Two's history, behind only Grand Theft Auto 4 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."For context, Grand Theft Auto 4 made $500 million in its first week, selling 6 million copies, with 3.6 million on its first day.
Borderlands 2 baddies are smarter than you think
Well, at least the AI programming behind each enemy in Borderlands 2 is smarter than anything in the first Borderlands – the baddies themselves are victims of the rancid planet Pandora and probably wouldn't pass a first-grade spelling test. They will, however, blow your brains out.Jasper Foreman, lead AI programmer at Gearbox Software, sat down with us (on the floor in a hallway of the Hard Rock Hotel, right outside of San Diego Comic-Con central), to describe a handful of enemies we can expect to see in the new Borderlands and the tech that makes them smarter than ever.There are 15-20 separate enemies in Borderlands 2, but each type has numerous variants, bringing the total number of foes somewhere between 200-300. Foreman once tried to count them all by running a script, but with the complex descriptors composing each enemy it was impossible to locate every one. Suffice it to say, there are a lot.%Gallery-161206%
Borderlands GOTY for PC 75% off on Amazon, sequel discounted with purchase
The downloadable PC version of Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, which includes all the game's DLC, is down to $7.49 (75 percent off) on Amazon until July 30. Those who purchase the GOTY edition – or have purchased the GOTY edition in the past through Amazon – will receive a credit toward their Borderlands 2 pre-order and 10 percent off.If you're looking to pool with some buddies and go for the Borderlands 2 4-pack, the GOTY purchase will net you an $18 credit toward the pre-order, and that 10 percent discount stacks with the current 10 percent sale going on now. Those who prefer to go solo on the pre-order receive $6 credit, along with the stacked 10 percent discounts.Update: Steam is now holding the same deals. Borderlands is also free to play this weekend.%Gallery-160312%
