B3yond the Report 10.20.09: Borderlands Leads the Charge this Week

Posted by Jon Seddon on 10.20.2009

The first reviews are making Borderlands worthy of your attention and those Naughty Dogs at Naughty Dog are spreading rumors about cross game chat. Nippon Ichi want to bring their crazy games to UMD whilst many others refuse to support digital distribution



Another week devoid of anything other than a continuing stream of great games to play, which means I get to talk a lot about what I've been playing and hopefully you've been getting some time to play the likes of Uncharted 2 and Demon's Souls. With a killer game every week until December, I don't expect things to pick up news wise or let off games wise.

Other than that, I'd like to influence you to look at Borderlands and give a couple of

Top Stories

Borderlands Out This Week

The most important game for Gearbox since the original Brothers in Arms game nears release and even though they have managed to find a very small space in a busy holiday season I am worried about whether it will sell. This is one of the few new IPs this year that will rely purely on selling you an idea; Brutal Legend is an original IP, but having the likes of Jack Black, Tim Schafer and a very public legal battle made sure that it was at least on people's radar. The game gets a free run this week on PS3 this week with only WWE providing any diversion for your dollars, but on 360, which it needs to succeed on, it's facing off against Forza 3.

I can't tell you it's a brilliant game, because I haven't played it but the reviews are putting it in the solid 80% range. I would never recommend a game I haven't played, but please take a look at this game, read those reviews and consider picking it up this holiday season. The future of original IP and a competent developer will be affected by your decision.



One of the reasons I'm worried about it is how little content I find on the Internet, but I've done my best to find what's worth reading. To begin with let's cover what's worth knowing about the game. Borderlands is set on a planet called Pandora which is host to a rag tag bunch or human and not so human characters with most of them out to do you harm. What distinguishes the game are the graphics, the procedurally generated weapons and the fact it mixes RPG and shooter with 4-player co-op.

If you haven't seen it in motion, here's a video to bring you up to speed

Video Games | Borderlands | Windmill Camp Gameplay HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

It's not a complete promotional black hole for this game though, even if 2K Games aren't splashing the cash. The developers will be at two Gamestop locations from Monday night, which will be in the past by the time you read this. Come on 2K, this is your one and only big release of this holiday season, unless you count.....actually that's about it. Perhaps, they are saving the big bucks for Bioshock 2, which will probably sell decently anyway. I guess decently might not be enough for them though as they need the motherlode after delaying eveything till next year.

As with most big games now, the first DLC has already announced and will be titled The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and will cost you $10 around Halloween. It will include new quests, new enemies and new locations, so will be ideal for the keen amongst you that get through the game this week. Assume some of those new enemies will include the zombies from the title and that's another gaming convention ticked.

There might be some easy Trophies to pick up as well if a recent interview with Mr Pitchford has any bearing. He was talking Achievements with an XBox magazine and said that easy Achievements could add 40,000 sales to a game. Presumably this happens as the ease of the Achievements/ Trophies makes it way onto sites like PS3Trophies.org and the 40,000 Trophy fiends think, "wow, easy Trophies. I should pick this up". Anyway, that's just a little tip that this game might have some easy pots to collect and looking at them on PS3Trophies they don't look too bad

So, if you want a game that's a mash up of Fallout 3, Mad Max and Diablo, then check it out.

Your Chance to get Badman on UMD

What did you think about NIS's PSP game, Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What did I do to Deserve This? If you thought I should really pick that up, but I really want a UMD version, then NIS America feels your pain. They do however want some guarantee that they won't be burying tiny discs in the desert. If you really want the game and can find 999 like minded friends then you may just get your wish. If NIS get 1000 pre-orders for a limited edition run of the game they will indeed make the virtual a reality. You only have till November 13th to find those friends though. You could just import the UMD from Europe, but then I wouldn't have a story if you all did that.

Pre-order your copy here.



For those of you that don't know Badman is a 2D almost puzzle game where you create a dungeon and breed monsters in order to take it out all those annoying heroes from other games. I like to think of it a cross between the Bullfrog favorite Dungeon Keeper and Comet Crash.

Whether this means that lots of other game will go the purely digital route or whether this signifies that digital sales have been very disappointing, I don't know, but for the moment I think it makes sense to continue to give consumers the choice. If this particular bit of marketing is successful, expect a similar approach for the sequel. For a look at what's on offer second time round go here.

Don't expect the PSPgo to be fully supported by 3rd Parties

I'm not sure if you've noticed that some games have been released on PSP recently at retail and still haven't seen a digital release? I guess there aren't that many PSPgo owners out there, but those guys can't play the likes of Undead Knights or NBA 2K10 yet. It's bad enough, even if it's just a delay between retail and digital, but once again Sony is doing it's best to to undermine it's own digital future. SCEA's Eric Lempel even went as far as saying that, "It's up to individual third parties to decide if and when to publish their UMD releases on PSN". Apparently companies like Namco do not currently have plans to support digitally distributed games.

This is the other end then of the digital debate, as some publishers avoid using this channel altogether with once again the consumer being the ultimate loser in this situation. Surely, it must be cheaper to produce digital content and you would think that you would end up with more of the money as a digital publisher. It leaves us to speculate on Sony's terms for PSN store space. We already know that they charge publishers for each megabyte for the demos on the service, so maybe they are being greedier than the retailers. At least Rockstar are supporting digital content with their own store front coming to PSN soon.

As sites like VG247 have said, Sony could make it mandatory for publishers to produce both versions of their games, which certainly wouldn't hurt the uptake of the PSPgo. I'm not sure whether they could legally do this, but it makes a lot of sense, which seems to sometimes escape Sony.

Clarification on ESRB ratings for Minis

This is just a quick update for last week's story about the cost of ESRB ratings. In a statement to Kotakuthis week, the ESRB stated that "[we have] a reduced fee of $800 for games that have development costs under $250,000". $800 sounds pretty reasonable and I guess if you're spending more than a quarter of a million dollars on development the higher price of $2000 is almost lost in the noise. The finger is once again pointed at Sony or the publisher as to why PSP Minis are working out so expensive.

God of War Collection Trailer

I thought it worth sharing this with you as it's the first footage of the God of War Collection which has now been confirmed for November in North America. The only thing I thought when I saw the footage was that it looked very similar to the original PS2 games, but way better than most PS2 games. This probably points to fact that the God of War developers managed to squeeze more than most out of the hardware, making games that looked better than some first generation PS3 games.

And Finally....One Last Game of Calling All Cars?

Remember the early days of PS3? David Jaffe's Calling All Cars was shown off as one of the killer apps of the PSN and a departure to smaller games from one of the creators of God of War. Perhaps it turned out a bit of an unbalanced free for all, but when you're options were limited this game got a few hours of my time. According to psnstoresanyone logging in today will see this message, "On January 14, 2010 the servers for Calling All Cars will be taken off-line. We would like to thank ya for yar support".

If anyone wants to spend an hour or so reminiscing about the early days of PSN, then message me (strictlybeats) on PS3 and we'll spend a couple of hours whacking each other with mallets as someone else snatches the prisoner for easy points.

Rumor of the week - Cross Game Chat in next PS3 Firmware Update

Apparently, a Naughty Dog developer with the name of RecklissAbandon posted on a PlayStation forum that the much wished for cross-game chat functionality will be added to the next firmware release. The post was obviously swiftly removed, but not before sites had posted it elsewhere. I guess that's one Naughty Dog that'll be spending time in the dog house.

The post was: I think they wanted people to have fun and enjoy the show since all dead players can talk to each other no matter what team you are on. But I will suggest it anyway. Not to mention that the next PS3 firmware update is going to allow cross game chat. So if players use that instead of in game communication then they would also be able to communicate enemies positions.

Whether the guy knows this to be true or he's just repeating other rumors that I've heard and posted about on previous weeks will soon be revealed if the regularity of firmware updates continues. I think Sony must know that many people hold this as the last big differentiator between XBox Live and PSN and so they have probably been trying to get it done for a while. Again, they are trying to get their console to do things that it was never designed for and hats off if they finally do it. I'm going to mark this rumor as true, if only because we've been waiting for so long.

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Not much out there this week, but then it's not a good time to be pumping out new downloadable titles with all of those triple A titles hogging retail. I took the plunge on .detuned, but you might want to be more cautious. You might want to check out Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty

For the PS3 there are 4 new games this week, but you might want to temper your excitement, as you're getting .detuned, BUZZ! Junior: Monster Rally, Mushroom Wars and topatoi: The Great Tree Story. Mushroom Wars looks like an interesting little real time strategy game, but the others are probably best avoided. Another PS1 game sees Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation wrap up Lara Crofts adventures on the first PlayStation and was the last decent Tomb Raider until the current gen-versions saw a revival in her fortunes. For demos you just have NBA 2K10, which is obviously worth a download if you're a fan.

Here's Mushroom Wars in action

Popout

PSP gets another slew of full games added to it's library with highlights being SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Tactical Strike and Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, which are available for $16 and $20 respectively.

Full list at the PlayStation Blog

PlayStation at Retail

North America finally gets the PSP Gran Turismo bundle this week. That's the one with PSP 3000, Gran Turismo, a 2GB memory card and a few other goodies, which looks like a good deal at $199. The other big release this week is Borderlands, which is Randy Pitchford's RPG shooter. Good luck to a new IP a week after Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2. It's also worth mentioning that the PS2 gets most new releases this week, which makes it a crazy old world. Who would think that a 10 year old console would still be getting new releases, let alone big budget titles like Smackdown. A few years ago younger brothers were given PlayStations and a library of games and that was it, but now there's still something new to play for them. This also includes those gamers still not ready to pay $299 for a PS3.

PS3
Borderlands
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010
Bakugan
FIFA Soccer 10
Madagascar Karts

PSP
PSP Gran Turismo Bundle
Secret Saturdays: Beast of the 5th Sun - based on the Cartoon Network series
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
AstroBoy: The Video Game
Mytran Wars
FIFA Soccer 10
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010
Marvel Super Hero Squad

PS2
AstroBoy: The Video Game
Bakugan
FIFA Soccer 10
Motor Storm: Arctic Edge
Backyard Football '10
Secret Saturdays: Beast of the 5th Sun
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010
Marvel Super Hero Squad

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What I've Been Playing

Uncharted 2.I guess this is the big one and I couldn't actually stop myself from having a quick go. I played through the first couple of levels and also played a little co-op even though I still have the first game on my backlog. You've read the reviews so you don't need me to tell you it looks good and it plays really well. I just wanted to see what all the hype was about; there's no way that a couple of levels can tell me whether this is game of the year, but I know I need to get back to it as soon as I can.



I have a better view of the co-op though as these are all pretty self contained levels, which is a micro trend this year, what with Modern Warfare 2 eschewing co-op within it's campaign. The level I played had us trying to free villagers who were being held in a number of buildings in streets teeming with bad guys. It's not Nazi zombie mode as you are moving through levels rather than trying to defend an area, but I guess we've seen enough of that type of gameplay, especially if you have a 360. Regardless of what it isn't, it is a lot of fun as you use the superb range of weaponry and the level's verticality to wreak havoc. The range of bad guys surprised me, especially when the heavies with chain guns turned up who were the spitting image of those guys from the last level of Medal of Honor: Airborne.

.detuned. Two things you must know about this cheap little item from the store. The first is that it's not a game, but an interactive demo that allows you to "control" the actions of a guy in a chair, whilst music plays. The other thing you should know is that it has Trophies and they are ridiculously easy to pick up. Just watch the demo and you'll get a Trophy or perhaps just press a button. I didn't know this when I downloaded it, but I'll happily pick up cheap Trophies.

Demon's Souls. Initially, I was struggling to understand why people were calling this game uber difficult as a sliced through foes as my Temple Knight equipped with my particularly offensive halberd. However, by the time I'd restarted the same level for the 5th time, I starting to understand how this game was going to play out. As you play and slay, you collect the souls from your victims which count towards your experience and count as the game's currency. Each time you die, you're stripped of your souls, but you get one chance to get them back. If you find the bloodstain, which marks the site of your previous slaying, you recover the souls, but if you die again before you get there, you lose that opportunity and effectively lose all of that experience. Even though, I've had to restart the same level numerous times I'm still finding it an addictive experience as I get just a little further each time, before I blow it all by falling down a pit.



Then there's the online component, which has some very interesting elements. As you play you see the ghostly spirits of other characters running through your levels fighting enemies only they can see. You also see other players bloodstains, which when activated show you the last few minutes of their lives. This can often give you clues about traps and challenges. You can also see and read messages, which give you other clues about what's to come. That's not even considering the co-op and pvp elements, which I haven't explored yet. This will either be one of the best games I've played this year or I'll just get too frustrated by it and will never see what it really has to offer.


FIFA 10. EA's annual soccer game tempted me again with the new 360 degree player movement - previously you could only run in the eight directions of a directional pad. In play, I haven't really notice much difference, but that's more to do with my ineptitude with the beautiful game. It's still joyous to fire a shot to the back of the net, even if most of the time it's more to do with luck than skill. Sports games get ever more realistic, but seem to require an encyclopedia to explain the control system. In terms of skill level, I'm probably more suited to the Wii versions, but then I feel like they dumb down the whole experience. There are also some problems with this version. The Live Season feature, which constantly updates player stats doesn't seem to be working at the moment or at least claims to be unavailable when you try and switch it on. Apparently, EA are patching it this week.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance. My brother an I try and always have one game on the go that we play co-op and our chosen game at the moment is the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which was a launch title for PS3. It's age is apparent in not just the graphics, but also the online interface. Creating a co-op game is about as complicated as it can possibly and it took us a good few minutes to work out how we continued from a previous save; the option being buried in the lobby menu. This is one of those games that responds to button mashing, which I do with some gusto, often having lost sight of my character in the confusion, whilst I keep hammering away on the buttons.

Persona PSP. Still trying to get through this one, which doesn't mean it's a bad game, but it's certainly not a short game. Getting the hang of combat system and the Persona's thanks to Atlus who sent me a manual.



Namco Museum Virtual Arcade. I picked this up for next to nothing at my local game store this week. I guess everyone should have a copy of Pac Man in their collection. The last time I played Pac Man was on an Atari 2600, which I used to love as a kid. I was blissfully unaware of how bad a conversion it was.

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This week is a waiting game for either my copy of Borderlands to turn up or for the reviews to arrive and tell me whether its any good. Next week I'll take a look at Tekken as the 6th edition of the game hits shelves.