Many have made the comparison of Gearbox's Borderlands to Diablo. Cliffy B certifies it with this unsolicited Tweet: "Borderlands, I adore you. You're Diablo for a generation raised on first person shooters. I want a Claptrap statue."

That can be arranged, Cliff.

Cliff Bleszinski's Twitter [via Hot Blooded Gaming]

Sorry, no more updates from cliffy_b about doing one-armed push ups, physically abusing Epic VP Mark Rein or, in general, how awesome it is to be Cliff Bleszinski on a daily basis. The gentlemen responsible for the 166 fake Twitter updates from the fake Cliffster were informed that their account had been renamed, locked, and was being investigated for "allegations of copyright violations."

Wait... seriously? Or is this just one of those baseless threats that companies like to toss around hoping someone's just as clueless on the receiving end of the e-mail?

According to the twosome behind the fake cliffy_b persona, Twitter reps explained that the account cancellation was in violation of the site's terms of service, noting "Impersonation is against our terms of service unless it's parody."

I suppose if someone at Twitter had seen the "approved" Cliff PR photos, they might not be able to make the distinction between real and fake. We, however, know that Cliff's not a one-armed push up kind of guy — he can do 'em with zero arms.

If you'd like to relive all the great cliff_b memories, they're still available at the updated link below.

Fake Cliffy_B [Twitter]

Figuring that Soulja (or is it Mr. Boy?) would pick Gears of War 2 or Halo 3, Stephen solicited Epic's Cliff Bleszinski and Bungie's Luke Smith for some protips on how to take down the mouthy rapper, as he's not too good handling teh FPS.

Here's Dude Huge's advice:

• Use your smoke grenades to incapacitate him and then rush in with a chainsaw finish.
• The one two punch of melee plus shotgun is always a good thing.
• When in doubt, bring up “Braid” and how trippy it was. He’s likely to start spouting and become distracted.

On to Bungie, whose analysis of Soulja Boy's tactics and tendencies is spot on and filled to the brim with win.

In a one-on -one scenario with Soulja Boy, you’re dealing with a guy who barely pushes a 1.0 kp/d (kills per death) at level 14. Contrary to his self-professed cranking, Soulja Boy ain’t no Robocop.

Let's all pause to laugh heartily, before continuing:

His primary tools of destruction are melee and AR (like a lot of Halo 3 players). Most of his gameplay is going to center on getting close to you and thwacking you with a melee.


Douse his fire in water. Super soak dat oh! Play a ranged game. Learn where the scoped weapons are and find the right place to set up a perch. Remember to crouch-walk if you want to stay off of his radar. When possible, pair your Battle Rifle with a close-quarters weapon. Grenades don’t always have to be offensive, you can throw grenades in places you’ve been or places you don’t want him to get to. Soulja Boy is probably going to chase you a lot. You should go all Ice Tea on that azz.

Bungie provides even more advice, which, considering how common a gamer Soulja Boy seems to be, you might find it useful for taking down the non-rapper blowhards you face.

Bungie and Epic Offer Me Tips To Beat Soulja Boy In ‘Halo,’ ‘Gears’ [MTV Multiplayer]

It's pretty damn funny, and touches on a lot of the current issues without being pedantic. Here's 'CliffyB's' advice on streamlined writing:

4.) Treat Words Like Lovers, Be Picky: If you don’t choose your words carefully you will piss off readers and they will leave unproductive comments like “U R MR GAY.” Even if you are Mr. Gay, which is totally fine, you want a discussion in the comments, not aggressive statements.

For example, say a journo writes, “I think CliffyB’s friggin neat and he does neat stuff.” In reality, the journo knows I’m fan-friggin-tastic, I have perfect hair, and I make for a solid best friend. Now, don’t be verbose, but try to express yourself entirely and concisely with charm and wit. And if you’re lucky, your readers will want to be your friggin best friend too.

Welcome back, guys at Hardcasual — this piece is definitely good for a read, as are several of their more recent pieces.

The Cliffster’s Badass Plan to Fix New Games Journo [Hardcasual]

"A beta is like hooking up with a girl just to say, 'yeah, I f*cked her,'" Cliff waxes. Furthering the Gears boning metaphor "Once you play a beta, you can check it off your list — you can say, 'yeah, I played it.' Then you might not feel motivated to get that initial cherry popping from the proper, final game."

That's an excellent point. One opportunity to "look at all that juice" wasted!

Cliff also explains why there is no Gears of War 2 demo on the horizon, pointing out "stuff takes [time] to put together." If stuff were put together "Gears of War 2 wouldn't be out until February of 2009." And then you'd have blue balls.

Cliff Bleszinski dishes on Gears and games [Gamepro]

And who should be there but Dude Huge – in town to promote his new game, Gears of War 2. At first I didn’t think it was him, but after spying the Iron Maiden shirt and confirming with other games journalists, I waltzed up to the man. And apologized that I wasn’t halfway across town, playing his game.

“Yeah, shouldn’t you be playing your own game, Cliff?” a passing PR rep quipped.

“Play my game,” Mr. Huge said to me. “You’ll like it, I promise.” He elbowed the PR rep. “Give me a controller!”

I’m not sure if they let Dude compete (I’m not even sure who won, since I had to leave early), but the four players with the best times went home with engraved iPods, while the rest of us scored sweet messenger bags and two MP3s off the soundtrack.

Time Trial mode in Mirror’s Edge is interesting because it 1) forces you to rethink a level you’ve played in the story mode and b) you can see how other players thought it out. For example, you’ll run through the level and slide below a railing. Then you hop a fence and race up a ramp to nail a cross-building jump. You score a time of, say, 1 min and 3 sec. The next time you play the level, you can turn on the ghost mode and race against yourself – maybe vaulting the railing, skipping the the ramp for a shallower angle on the jump to the building (padding it out by pressing the slide button so Faith rolls on impact instead of smacking into the side of the building).

Above: Doesn't this view just make you wanna jump off something? Like, in a Parkour way?

Soon, you’ll find all sorts of shortcuts, bypassing stairs in favor of wall-jumping or discovering a different way to jump the fence from a higher spot. The only thing that’s hard to think around is the cross-building jump; if you miss it, you’re fucked. Luckily, you can pause and restart the trial, if you come a point where you know you’ve blown it.

The level we played was broken into four parts tracked by a line on the right side of the screen. While running, when I hit a check point, a time was given to me – turning the bar for that portion of the level red if I was behind time or green, if I’d gained time. I only got green on one part, where I found a path that lead straight up over an air shaft. If I caught enough air on the jump, I’d clear the railing and the stairs, arriving at the jump to the final building a whole two seconds faster than if I’d taken the stairs.

After three tries, I got my initial time of 1:10 down to 1:03. This was nowhere near good enough to be in the top four as I saw guys getting as few as 53 seconds (the time to beat was 50 – set by one of the programmers, I think). I think Dude Huge eventually got his time down to a minute flat.

A cool feature about Time Trial is that you can go online and upload your best time and also download other people’s ghosts to race against. Seeing how other people handle the course in completely different ways really makes you re-think a level you’ve played a billion times.

I’m just happy this game is coming out at all. I even dragged producer Nick Channon aside for an “interview” just so I could tell him how happy I was to play a game where the main character was 1) a chick and 2) an A cup.

“That was the biggest thing for us,” Nick Channon says, prompting me to stifle a laugh. He quickly realized the pun and added, “We wanted someone who stood out – but in a normal way.”

I suppose that’s what Time Trial is – a game mode that stands out because it’s so “normal” (like, standard, with every racing game), and yet it feels… new. Dynamic. Awesome.

The game hits shelves November 11 for Xbox 360 and PS3. PC should arrive in late January.

If you pre-order the Lancer, you even get the standard edition of Gears of War 2, free of charge. And that's not a bad deal at all.

Gears of War 2 Amazon.com Exclusive Lancer [Amazon]

Yet another release date dropped during Microsoft's E3 2008 press conference as Cliff "Dude Huge" Bleszinski took the stage to show off the next chapter in the Gears of War story. After extensively showing off the game in action, Dude Huge took the stage to announce the release date for the title...Gears of War 2, launching worldwide November 7th. So we have Fable II in October, Gears 2 in November, and the Resident Evil 5 in March. It's release date-o-rama!

The best part of the article comes at the end, where they mention the people they want to hear more from. They need to just sit Tim Shafer down in front of a PA system and have him deliver a running commentary for the entire length of the show.

The 10 People We Hope Will Shut the F*** Up at This Year's E3 [Crispy Gamer]

We wanted a blockbuster pace [in Gears of War 1], and in doing so, we lost the story a bit. So that's one of the lessons we learned. This time round there's more repetition. Games aren't movies and aren't consumed in a single sitting. So secondary characters will remind you about stuff, which is re-established in plot cues. Metal Gear Solid is our example of the game we're not doing. Passive entertainment is on its way out — you need to hook up with this web 2.0 stuff.

The ironic thing? Kojima Productions was influenced by Gears of War's controls for MGS4.
Gears of War 2 Multiplayer Hands-On [IGN via ripten]

Gears of War 2 designer and, apparently, part-time aviator Clifford Michael Bleszinski dishes loads of details to 1UP on the multiplayer portions of Epic's next Xbox 360 game. It's full of satisfaction, from info on Gears 2's new maps to new gameplay types like Guardian and Meat Flag. Mr. Bleszinski spends ample time discussing the various ways one can now disfigure and deform one's foes. Fans and nitpickers of the original Gears of War multiplayer modes will definitely want to check out Dan Hsu's interview with the faux-hawked one.

* May not actually cover everything.

People loved it but they didn't like the host advantage [in Gears 1 multiplayer]. They got tired of the shotgun inconsistencies. We're fixing all of that. They didn't like the randomness of the chainsaw, so we put the chainsaw duel in — may the best man win! A lot of players wanted respawning, but we added in some modes for downloadable content on Gears 1 that added respawning, but even then it was a 15-second cue. So we have game modes now, like Guardian, where players cycle in and out a lot more often. And Wingman, which is kind of like our version of Last Man Standing Free-for-All, where you have five teams of two each. So it's you and a buddy versus the world, which feels really good. We've added a lot more depth to the multiplayer.

Thanks for that Mr. The Cliffster! Always keen for making stuff better.

Gears 2 Interview [GamePro via NeoGAF via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

I often feel that when a developer says ‘This is a trilogy’ right off the bat I think, ‘Shouldn’t they do the first game and see how it goes before you begin to think about a sequel? ...The market is incredibly tough. You never know how a game is going to fair, so we take it game by game...　If Gears of War 2 is a success then naturally we’ll look at a third. The same applies if number three sells well, then we’ll have to consider a fourth.

The Cliffster sure seems like a sensible dude.

Gears of War 2 Interview [Game Reactor via videogaming247] [Pic]

I think if you've played Gears of War 1, it's clear there's stuff you'd want to improve on in Gears of War 2. The story wasn't necessarily as robust as it could have been, and that's stuff we're really going to blow that out in Gears of War 2. We've got Josh Ortega who's a great comic book writer, and he's totally focused on the story. We want to do a much better job of that... If you look at the character line-up from Gears 1, they were very stereotypical characters. There wasn't much variety between the different types. That's something that not only in the development of existing characters we're changing up, but also adding some new characters that add their own individual flair to it... From a game-making perspective you want to get as much uniqueness and variety with the characters as possible, for them to have individual flair and for people to identify with them. You don't want to build stereotypical characters, not just racial stereotypes but stereotypes of any kind.

Seems rather retroactive at this point, but whatever.

Tsunoda Interview [Eurogamer] [Pic]

Done with CliffyB [Multiplayer] [Pic]

A popular video game for the Xbox 360 is getting a sequel this year - and it seems to be raising eyebrows with its level of gore and detail... The game certainly attracted attention for its realistic visuals and battle scenes, but caused some pause when game designers showed off a new attack players can use in the game.

The game presents the player with a number of projectile weapons, but also features a chainsaw for melee attacks. In the demo, the player can use the chainsaw to cut a person in half, starting at the groin and moving upwards. Also, players can pick up the corpses of fallen enemies and use them as a "meat shield" to protect themself from enemy fire as they engage in battle from behind the corpse.

Meh. This is nothing compared to the mainstream media shit storm Resident Evil 5 will cause.
Players Can Use Corpses As "Meat Shields" [AZ Family via Game Politics]

The reason [it] exists is because our characters are so bloody expensive to draw...

Awesome... I've had a chance to read the Game Informer story now and I think when people get a chance to read it they'll see that [Gears 2 is] really good. And we told the Game Informer guys just a tidbit about the game. We showed them some stuff, obviously, but we're keeping a lot of information back that will make people go, 'It's even better than this.' As good as they say it is, and they really, really like it, there's still a lot of story to open up between now and when the game ships in November... I think people will really enjoy this game.