Borderlands 2′s Extra Money Editions

2k Games has announced two fancy expensive editions for Borderlands 2 - the Vault Hunter’s Edition and the Ultimate Loot Chest Edition.

The Vault Hunter’s Edition is your standard collector’s edition affair:

• Borderlands 2 game (duh)
• Authentic Marcus Kincaid Bobblehead
• 4 stickers
• Map of Pandora
• Digital comic book download
• Inside the Vault: The Art of Borderlands 2 hardcover book
• Bonus digital content

On the other hand, the Ultimate Loot Chest Edition (exclusive to EB Games in Australia) really brings the thunder. You’ll get all the stuff listed above, plus:

• Replica Borderlands loot chest (picture here, dog sold separately)
• Numbered certificate of authenticity
• Steelbook game case
• Creatures of Pandora wide format ID chart
• 4 lithograph postcards
• Field notes from Sir Hammerlock

I keep telling myself I’m not going to buy another ridiculously expensive edition of a game just to get stuff I won’t care about in a years time, but damn – look at that chest. I can probably fit all the stuff I got from other collector’s editions inside it for safe keeping.

While you’re figuring out how much you can save by eating vegemite sandwiches for lunch for the next 6 months, check out the Playstation Blog’s Q&A session with Matt Charles, Producer of Borderlands 2. He answers questions about framerates, character customisation options, voice chat, the Mechromancer DLC character, and a unique reward for Borderlands 1 players.

Good Guy Blizzard Saves GAME Customers

Some developers might hear about their loyal customer-base getting a raw deal the day before the launch of their game and say “That’s unfortunate, but what can we do?”

Upon hearing that GAME Australia has entered administration and may not honour some Diablo III pre-orders, Blizzard said “No, this simply will not do.”

Blizzard has announced via an official forum post that they can purchase the digital download version of Diablo III and receive full credit from Blizzard for their original pre-order with GAME:

Australian GAME customers with a valid preorder/prepurchase receipt dated before May 15, 2012 can do the following:

1. Purchase the digital version of Diablo III from http://www.diablo3.com now or anytime before May 21, 2012.

2. Download and start playing when the servers go live!

3. Submit your GAME Australia preorder/prepurchase receipt to us before June 30, 2012.

4. Receive a credit from Blizzard, for the amount you paid in advance to GAME Australia for Diablo III. This credit will be applied to the payment method used for the digital purchase.

Blizzard Entertainment: Champion of the People

PS Just 17 minutes to go until the Diablo III servers launch!

Diablo 3 Digital Installer Unlocks Tonight

Just a quick reminder for those who purchased their copy of Diablo III through Battle.net, the digital install client will unlock at 11:00 PM WST / 1:00 AM EST tonight and finally allow you to install the game!

Once you have finished installing, you’ll then be able to download the initial launch day patch (under 100MB) so that you’re ready to go when the servers open at 3:00PM WST / 6:00 PM EST tomorrow.

While you’re installing, you should probably run through a few sets of the Diablo III exercises suggested by Nerdnightmare.com:

Sigon’s Press

Tancred’s Lift

Don’t forget to breathe properly.

15 Minutes of Mechwarrior Online

Months after teasing us with just a few concept art images and snippets of video, developer Piranha Games has met with IGN to release over 15 minutes of Mechwarrior Online gameplay footage.

The 6 videos show each class of Mech in action, from the lightly armoured Scout class to the mighty Assault class behemoths, and a full 6 minutes looking at the MechLab where we’ll be customising and crafting our mechanised dogs of war.

Mechwarrior Online is set to be released later this year as a Free2play PC game, but no specific details about their business model have been released yet. I’m expecting news of their micro-transaction options for various Mech hats any day now.

Check out the overall preview video below, then read on for the rest.

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Portal 2′s Perpetual Testing Initiative

Valve has announced their new free Portal 2 DLC, which is effectively a map creator kit, in the best way possible – a memo from Cave Johnson.

TO: All Aperture employees
FROM: Cave Johnson

COMPANY MEMORANDUM

Cave Johnson here. Your boss. It’s come to my attention that some of you are concerned after receiving my all-staff memo yesterday (“You: Design Test Chambers or You’re Fired”). So to put your minds at ease, let me clarify: You are not mentally ill and you did read the memo just fine. It was real. You should be designing test chambers, right now and at all times, or by God I will fire you.

To celebrate the release, Portal 2 is on sale for $6.79 from Steam which is a bargain for how much time you’ll spend solving, and now creating, the ingenious puzzles it contains.

Check out the trailer for the new Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC below.

Diablo III: Wrath Animated Short Released

After weeks of developer diary videos and custom banner sigils, Blizzard has unveiled the final unlock of their build-up campaign for Diablo III - an animated short titled Wrath.

Wrath focuses on the Archangel Tyrael and his angel buddies, most of whom we’ve only heard of and never seen, and their war with the denizens of Hell. It seems the angels are going to play a bigger part in Diablo III than they have in the previous games, so Blizzard wants to make sure we’re all familiar with how they roll before things kick off on the 15th.

The animation is a collaboration between Blizzard, cartoon studio Titmouse Inc. (of Metalocalypse fame) and Peter Chung (creator of Æon Flux *nerd gush*) so you know it’s going to be packed with beautiful, stylised imagery and awesome action. Once you’ve watched it, check out the behind the scenes episode where they discuss the process that went into creating Diablo III: Wrath.

Diablo III’s Launch Approaches

Time is a funny thing. “One week to go” could be considered short, such as one week to go until your holiday ends, or it could be an excruciating expanse of time that never seems to end and makes you want to freeze yourself.

With a whole 7 days to go until the gates of Hell open and Diablo III is unleashed on the world, I’m open to anything that makes the time pass quicker. I’ve already chosen my class, booked time off work, run through a refresher course on Diablo’s lore and now it’s time to prepare for launch day.

Blizzard have just announced that they will be unlocking the Diablo III client install at 11:00PM WST on May 14th to allow everyone to install the client, download the initial patch and get everything ready for when the game goes live.

The article also explains the process for reserving your Battle.net username (if you haven’t already) and mentions that any congestion problems with the login server on launch day will be identified by the innocuous “Error 37″ description.

Clearly Blizzard is a company that’s had plenty of experience in dealing with the zerg nerd rush associated with launch days. Hopefully they have more plans in the works to make the next 7 days go as painlessly as possible.

Elder Scrolls Online Details & Screenshots

Skyrim is still going strong on Steam’s stats at #3 in the past 48 hours, but Bethesda already has the next game in the pipeline. Game Informer‘s cover story for June confirms the Elder Scrolls series is taking it’s first step into the MMO market with the development of Elder Scrolls Online.

Because it’s not like the MMO market is oversaturated already or anything like that.

Zenimax Online Studios has been hard at work on ESO for the past several years and is finally ready to reveal all the cool stuff they’ve been doing. The Game Informer article will reveal their plans for solo and public quests, and huge PvP content between 3 factions vying for control over different regions with hundreds of players battling it out at once. Could be the best thing ever, could be the most derivative thing ever – only time will tell.

ESO will take place 1000 years before the events of Skyrim, as the daedric prince Molag Bal attempts to bring Tamriel under his demonic rule.

Read on to check out the first screenshots from Elder Scrolls Online.

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Diablo III Class Overview Videos

Hello, my friend. Stay awhile and listen.

Diablo 3 hits the stores in less than 2 weeks, so it’s time to get things in order. Pre-order, check. Time off from work to “visit Uncle Deckard”, check. Which class to play first, not checked.

This is a big problem, because I really can’t decide. The Wizard has lasers, the Monk gets to fly-kick stuff in the face, the Witchdoctor throws exploding frogs, the Demonhunter looks like Vayne and the Barbarian has a sweet loincloth.

Thankfully Blizzard have finished their series of Class Overview videos showcasing the backstory and the abilities of each option. If that’s not enough, you can also look through all the different skills and abilities of each class using the official Skill Calculator.

Hit the magic button below to check out all five Class Overview videos.
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The GTX 690 Will Make Credit Cards Cry

NVIDIA has announced their next GPU to use the same Kepler architecture of the GTX 680, and this one’s likely to send your credit card limit into a shame spiral. The GTX 690 will offer close to the performance of 2 GTX 680′s in SLI, but will set you back a whopping $1000 to pick one up.

The full announcement on the NVIDIA website includes all the sweet bar graph action you could want, and a kickin’ rad animated break down of the new form factor.

This is where Kepler’s fanatical focus on power efficiency pays off most handsomely. The GPUs on the GeForce GTX 690 have a boost clock of 1019 MHz, just a hair (2.8%) shy of the GeForce GTX 680 at 1058 MHz. What’s more, all other specs are identical; the number of cores, memory speed, and memory bandwidth per GPU are the same on both cards.

What this means is that the GeForce GTX 690 performs more or less just like a pair of GeForce GTX 680s in SLI; almost nothing was compromised in bringing two Kepler GPUs to the same board.

Head over to the NVIDIA website to check out the full announcement and begin planning how many pints of blood you’ll need to sell to be able to afford this new behemoth.