It had been a while since I had felt like writing here, and then Borderlands came around. Hailed as Diablo 2 meets Fallout 3 and introduced as a success where Hellgate: London so blindly failed, Borderlands was last week’s big news release, and is by far the best game I’ve played in a while.

First off, let me do away with assumptions: Borderlands is really nothing more than a loot game. In fact, if you’ve played Diablo or Titan Quest, you know almost exactly what to expect from the genre. But what sets Borderlands radically apart from other such genre clones is that not only does it mimic Blizzard’s patented formula, it improves on it; your expectations are not only met, but raised substantially. Borderlands is more than just a game, it’s an experience, and it makes sure you’ll never look at these types of games the same way. Deviating from the mold, Gearbox developers intelligently chose to deviate from the medieval setting, throw in their own brand of humor, add a screen full of dynamic cell-shaded graphics, and finally a dash of seamless gameplay to create what is possibly 2009’s game of the year—bugs aside.

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The database is back to up to the wonderful Leslie. We’ve transferred servers and a new layout is coming eventually.

We’re alive, sort of.

The blame is solely me. I stopped writing and I stopped managing my other writers and now, somewhere, a tumbleweed blows by. There’s this thing with achievements, with Sartharion 3 Drakes (I’m officially “of the Nightfall” and a “Twilight Vanquisher,” with a rare mount to boot!), another thing with a full-time job in the video game industry (want a review copy of our latest game?), Left 4 Dead (Versus in CAL?), Fallout 3 (I haven’t even started it despite owning it), the holidays (I like turkey), college (compsci major)…

Well, you get the point. To top it off, my old PC fried and I built a new PC and I have next to nothing on this PC besides games.

Anyway, this is a quick heads up that things will change and regular posting will resume at some point. Apologies, hope you didn’t kick us off your RSS, and if you did, we’ll just re-earn our spot. I hope 2009 is treating you well and you’re as excited about the upcoming release of Resident Evil 5 as I am.

The Olympics are going on right now. Phelps is winning gold metals like there’s no tomorrow, China and the USA are duking it out on the uneven bars, and it’s all very intense to watch—but so is Flash versus Jaedong.

I’m talking about the Averatech-Intel Classic finals I stayed up until 4am to catch with some of my former guildmates last Saturday. For a forty thousand dollar prize, hundreds of Starcraft players climbed a ladder and the final rung gave way to two players: Flash (Terran) and Jaedong (Zerg).

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The biggest conundrum of the gaming world isn’t whether video games inspire real life violence or the ongoing console wars. It’s not controversy about Fat Princess being, well, fat either. Honestly, gaming has always been about the relationship between fans and developers—the semantics of when a company should listen and when they shouldn’t.

It’s about the acknowledgment that a company can be right and wrong; the realization that change isn’t always a bad thing, but isn’t always good either. And the simple fact that the angry lynch mobs of gaming should not always be heard.

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“Listen. You are not your Redemption, Cryptstalker, Bonescythe, Frostfire, Dreadnaught, Plagueheart, Faith or Dreamwalker. You are not your Thunderfury, your Ashkandi, or your Scepter of the False Prophet.”

Two years ago, when I quit Death & Taxes, I wrote a rant titled that. I was angry and childish. I felt like I’d spent over a year in one of World of Warcraft’s top guilds, and all I had to show for it was a Redemption Ring—and one of the best geared characters in the world.

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