GP: What anti-cheating measures have you got planned for the PC release?

RP: Well, you know, cheating is like an arms race. It’s very difficult to anticipate what these guys are going to do. So our strategy is to see what they’re going to do, then go from there. For example, Borderlands as you play it now, it’s a shooter. You know, you can play it by yourself, or it’s a co-operative game, you can play it with friends. And it’s about growing your character and getting loot. You know, I remember when I played Diablo – did you play Diablo?

GP: For sure.

RP: I loved that game. I played like 300 hours. But one thing that really pissed me off – I played that game single-player and I finished the game. Then I’m like, I want to take my character online now. So I went to play multiplayer and they said no, sorry, multiplayer is totally different and you have to start a new character. And I’m like, what the hell is that crap? So I kind of dug into it a bit, went on the forums, and said why are you guys doing this? And they said, by making it a separate thing, we’re able to control the server. And it helps us fight against cheaters. And guess what? There were still cheaters. It didn’t protect anything.

 

A gay bar in the heart of Sydney’s Kings Cross is hardly the typical place for a video game show-and-tell session. But then, Borderlands is hardly a typical video game.

Upon descending the flight of stairs and discovering a cavernous space with brightly lit LCD screens and an open bar, it was immediately clear that 2K Games were pulling out the stops for the media. Having the improbably named Randy Pitchford, founder and CEO of Gearbox Software in attendance, along with vice president Steve Gibson, allowed us to learn about this much anticipated title directly from the people who have nursed it through a difficult inception.

In production now for four years, Borderland’s development could hardly be called swift. Although the artwork was largely finished halfway through 2008, a minor revolt from within caused the design team to drop the ultra-realistic look they had originally gone with for Borderlands in favour of a more laid back, hand-drawn approach. Despite being somewhat at odds with the brutal, gritty game world, this was a fortuitous move, as the laconic and over-the-top NPC’s manage to simultaneously inject the title with humour and charm, as well as seamlessly providing a point of differentiation with pretty much every other shooter out there.

 

2K Games announced today that their RPS shooter title Borderlands will be released in New Zealand on October 23rd 2009. Borderlands will be available for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Borderlands is a new original intellectual property from Gearbox Software, creators of the Brothers in Arms franchise. Among other new features, Borderlands will allow players to freely join or leave each other’s games at any time for collaborative gaming, or the freedom to choose to play in full single player mode to experience the world on their own. Borderlands will also include a content generation system that adds nearly infinite variety in the amount of weapons that are available to the player. You can learn more in our E3 preview article.

More information is also available at the official site.

 

One of the games on offer at 2K's E3 booth is Borderlands, the title from Gearbox Software that has that funky cell-shaded look about it, and it’s looking pretty darn sweet - although, I’m not 100 per cent sure about the merging of first-person shooting with strategy elements.

The guys from Gearbox ran us through the game world, showing how gathering experience points from kills will upgrade your character, who is like a fortune hunter. Creatures and enemies have names like "berserker" and "mutant midget psycho".

The strategy elements come from experience points that you can get for killing enemies, and you can loot bodies and locations for objects. It seems to be a game that will play much better – and be more fun – as co-op, rather than a straight single player campaign by yourself.