What does one get for the 800 Microsoft Points investment? The all-new Riot Mode challenges, offering new things to loot and a bank in which to store all that loot. It may not sound like much for ten bucks, but the description "like Smash TV in coop FPS" seems to actually have some truth to it, making the DLC potentially priceless.

You can read our impressions of the new downloadable content if you're on the fence or, if exceptionally cautious, wait for our upcoming review.

Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot hits the PlayStation Network beginning January 7, 2010 for $9.99 USD and Windows PC in "early 2010." Anyone grab it yet?

Miller, quoted in the "first printed issue of Gamesauce," says "the next few years should see a strong resurgence in Duke." Shacknews, which spotted the article, says Miller remains sanguine about the prospects of a franchise with one published title since the Clinton administration.

There are numerous other Duke games in various stages of development, several due out this year. We are definitely looking to bring Duke into casual gaming spaces, plus there are other major Duke games in production.

Miller says "almost all" of those projects are unannounced, but, Shacknews points out they likely include:

• Two Duke iPhone games Miller previously announced.

• A Duke Nukem Trilogy for DS and PSP, from Frontline Studios.

• The Xbox Live Arcade port of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project.

• A scrapped project called Duke Begins, alluded to in Take-Two's lawsuit against Miller and Broussard.

And, of course, Miller repeated the obligatory tease that Duke Nukem forever is not dead. "We've never said that Duke Nukem Forever has ceased development. ... Yes, we released the internal team, but that doesn't correlate to the demise of the project."

Sorry, but at this point, games or GTFO.

3D Realms Teases 'Numerous' Duke Nukem Games, 'Looking to Bring Duke into Casual Gaming' [Shacknews]

Catch Pitchford on all that, plus his take on the game industry's crediting practices and the two design imperatives behind Borderlands' Lilith character on today's show. Oh, and Owen Good has another good rant that we bring Randy back on the show to address.

If you're pressed for time, check out the last 15 minutes. I think they're the best, though it's all good.

Host: Stephen Totilo
Guest: Randy Pitchford

Download The Show Through These Means:
Chatting With Borderlands' Randy Pitchford [Blog Talk Radio]
Chatting With Borderlands' Randy Pitchford [iTunes]

Ask good questions!

To listen, head over to our BlogTalkRadio page. Unfortunately, you can only listen live on the BlogTalkRadio website.

Want to be heard on Kotaku Talk Radio? Call us on the air LIVE at (347) 857-3782 or use Skype to dial in!

Listen to the show here.

Mr. Pitchford will be on hand to discuss anything and everything Pitchford and Gearbox related, from Borderlands to Brothers in Arms; that one Half-Life game they did to that other Half-Life game they did. Did you know he was once a professional magician in Hollywood? Well now you do, and you can ask him about that. If we're lucky, he'll be so caught off-guard he'll fall over, because "Randy Pitchford Pitches Forward" would be an amazing headline.

Pitchford joins Amy Hennig, Ken Levine, Tim Schafer, Cliff Bleszinski, and Michael McWhertor as the latest in our all-star and McWhertor cast of Kotaku Talk Radio guests, all of which are merely placeholders as we prepare the ultimate all-Fahey edition that will only be airing in my head.

Join us at 11am Kotaku Time (that's 1pm ET, 10am PT) tomorrow, when you will be able to call in grill Randy about anything your little heart desires - his games; his career; his favorite food - you name it.

Look for a reminder post about the podcast at 10:55 AM mountain time (12:55 ET) on Wednesday. The post will include call-in info so you can ask your questions. The show will be live at 11am MT, 1pm ET, which would be an excellent time to call in.

Pitchford will be talking about, well... just about anything you ask him, I figure. He can speak to Borderlands, Brothers in Arms, Samba De Amigo, his ridiculous collection of arcade machines, his absurd gamerscore, likely dance around questions involving his company's Aliens game and who knows what else. Call in and make it happen!

Pitchford follows the Kotaku Talk Radio guest-appearance trail-blazing of Amy Hennig, Ken Levine, Tim Schafer, Cliff Bleszinski, and, oh yes, Michael McWhertor. Soon we'll have to list who HASN'T done this show.

On Wednesday at 11am Kotaku Time (that's 1pm ET, 10am PT), you will be able to call in and ask Pitchford anything you want about his work, his games and who knows what else.

Look for a reminder post about the podcast at 10:55 AM mountain time (12:55 ET) on Wednesday. The post will include call-in info so you can ask your questions. The show will be live at 11am MT, 1pm ET. I'll expect to hear you calling our switchboard then.

Perhaps most notable are fixes focused on the loss of skill points and character data. Equally as welcome are changes to the display of item attributes, letting players see a weapon or shield's full specs, more skills that actually work as intended and the option to turn off auto-aim. As in really turn off auto-aim.

The update is available now for the Xbox 360, "soon" for the PlayStation 3 and "in progress and in testing" for the PC version.

There's a lot here. Read the full change list below.

• * Characters that have lost skill points will have them returned the next time they are loaded
• * Most instances involving character data loss when playing online should no longer occur
• * Item cards now display the intended five lines of text
• * Achievements should now unlock properly. Players should automatically receive achievements that did not unlock correctly
• * Fixed a progression issue in the Find Steele mission – characters affected by this issue should now be able to continue progressing
• * Some issues involving external data manipulation of the backpack and character level have been addressed
• * The auto-aim option should now fully disable auto-aim properly
• * Fixed a bug that kept challenges and achievements from unlocking for the rest of a session after visiting arenas
• * Fixed some formatting issues with the server list screen.
• * Fixed an issue causing servers to report the incorrect plot mission.
• * Proficiency progress to the next level should no longer be lost when leaving a multiplayer game as a client
• * Lilith's "Silent Resolve" skill now works as intended
• * Fixed a bug that allowed Mordecai to spawn multiple Bloodwings
• * Mordecai's "Loaded" skill now increases mag capacity by 20%
• * Roland's "Scattershot" skill has had its spread adjustment corrected, and damage now increases at +5 per level

According to official word, Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot offers three new Riot Mode arenas, the option to store more of your loot in an all-new bank and the ability to score two additional skill points, potentially making your level 50 character two notches more bad-ass.

Now, based on the announcement, it doesn't sound like Borderlands second downloadable episode will offer the same caliber of single-player experience that the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned did. Three new arenas sounds fine, but I spent about 0.1% of my time in Borderlands hanging out in the arenas, so I can't say I'm too excited about the possibility of making that 0.3% of my time.

If you feel like this is the kind of content you've been dying for, watch for Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot to hit the Xbox 360 on December 29 for whatever the Microsoft Points equivalent of $9.99 is. PlayStation 3 owners get it a little later, January 7. PC gamers get it... some time.

Update: Gearbox Software says that Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot is "not just new deathmatch areas." CEO Randy Pitchford notes "This is an ENTIRELY NEW GAME MODE."

"Think [Halo 3] ODST's 'Firefight' or Gears of War's 'Horde Mode.' Cash, prizes and competition!" Pitchford said in a statement from Gearbox. "It's like Smash TV in coop FPS, but in the Borderlands."

Gearbox reps say the new Borderlands downloadable content "expands greatly on the possibilities of combat as well adding a ton of new rules such as vampire mode or low gravity mode..."

Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said during today's quarterly earnings update that the role-playing shooter, which had a "successful launch," shows signs of "becoming an important long-term franchise" for the company. That's not official confirmation of a Borderlands 2, but it's about as close as we're going to get.

Given Borderlands development delays and Take-Two's increasing inability to ship many of its "AAA" caliber titles on time, just don't expect that Borderlands 2 to show up any time soon.

The draw in The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned are new locations in which to adventure, loot and shoot, plus new enemy types of the zombie variety at which to shoot. The downloadable expansion brings with it a new suite of missions and a new, self-contained story about Dr. Ned and his beastly creations. And did we mention zombies?

Does the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned expand the Borderlands experience enough to warrant a download? Or is this new content just death warmed over?

Loved
Loot Goons, Wereskags & Tankensteins: While much of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is teeming with slightly more rotting versions of the psychos and midget psychos Borderlands players are no doubt familiar with, the new area is home to many a unique species. Some of these, like the vomit-spewing Defiler and charging Tankenstein, while unapologetic in their unoriginality, will require new tactics to combat and present a noticeable challenge for higher level characters. Others, like the dexterous Wereskag, explosive Suicide Zombie and lootable Loot Goon just add welcome variety to the mix of new things to shoot. The rest of the stuff, the rank and file undead, are merely cannon fodder, but perfect for going after those killstreak chain challenges.

Hated
Location, Location, Location: During my playthrough of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, not once did I come across a vehicle or "Fast Travel" teleportation beacon, ensuring that one of my prime complaints about Borderlands—its excessive foot-based travel and reliance on frequent map-checking—was still an annoyance. While the valleys of death the player must walk through are attractive, a moody change of scenery from the bright and arid Badlands, the expansion's go here, fetch this, cash in tedium is the same as it ever was.

Where'd All Those Brains Go? You'll harvest zombie brains throughout the game. Who knows how many I'd collected over the five to six hours worth of scouring Dr. Ned's island of the undead? Probably hundreds, considering how many headshots I'd accumulated. Too bad that at near the end of the downloadable episode's experience, when I need all those brains for a particular mission, my stock of brains was a whopping zero. And speaking of brains, the enemy AI is just as artificially brain-dead as ever, with path-finding issues making two of the game's more voluminous bosses—including the final final boss—a joke to take down.

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a fine addition from a content perspective, offering a gigabyte sized slice of Pandora to explore and exterminate. If more of Borderlands' addictive brand of gameplay is what you're looking for—now with more of those zombies the kids are so crazy about—this downloadable episode should suit your needs.

What the downloadable content is lacking is anything substantive beyond that. There's no adjustment to the level cap, so anyone looking to grind on zombie flesh will rack up experience points that go nowhere beyond level 50. While the content is fresh and probably worth the ten dollar ticket to get to Dr. Ned's island, don't expect much beyond reanimated, recycled corpse looting.

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 24. Retails for $9.99 USD. A download code was given to us by the developer for reviewing purposes. Completed all story missions and bounties on Xbox 360 with the exception of the extended "Braaaaaaaaaains!" series of missions.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Gearbox Software released a batch of new media for the Borderlands expansion, content that looks like it would've been great to play on or around Halloween and will give my Siren a bluish hue that I'll really enjoy. More reanimated screens in the gallery below.

The first in a series of downloadable content packs for the multi-platform game will arrive on November 24 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, priced at $9.99 USD or 800 Microsoft Points, depending on how you spend. Details on the same content for the PC version were not provided, but 2K Games reps say "We will have more information for the PC version at a later date."

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned features "ferocious brain-eating zombies, carnivorous Were-Skags and more," if that'll get you to venture into the Borderlands again later this month.

An ongoing list of the game's technical shortcomings, ones that may reduce you to crying or controller throwing, is being regularly updated at Gearbox Software's forums. Many of them appear to be tied to the game's multiplayer cooperative mode, with incidents of players losing skills, weapon proficiencies and loot, but it's the "Save file is corrupted" issue that you should watch out for.

Gearbox has also listed a few performance hiccups that can be corrected using workarounds, should you be experiencing issues. For everyone else who has yet to jump into Borderlands and is planning on doing so, keep an eye on this thread, and tread carefully.

Known Issues Status Update [Gearbox Forums]

When we played Borderlands for our review, the number of people playing numbered in the dozens, maybe the hundreds. Good enough to get a taste, but not indicative of real world performance. That's why we do the Online Status Check. Our thoughts and the thoughts of others, after this.

Finding Games: Fairly easy today, considering the Kotaku readership was nice enough to flood my Xbox Live Account with friend requests. Even before that explosion of Live friends, finding a Quick Match didn't take too long, about 30 seconds to find a game, then another 15 or so to join.

Sending requests and inviting friends via the pause menu is straightforward and generally reliable. What wasn't reliable, however, is getting an invite before having loaded my character. I could accept game invites that would do nothing. There were a few instances of trying to join games, this time after loading my save, to no avail. The game would save, indicating that I was about to join a co-op game, then... nothing. My single-player game would continue as normal.

Matchmaking: Joining up with other Borderlands players at your level isn't as big of a concern, but when I did join a Quick Match, I was usually within 10 levels of my partners. Since Borderlands' draw isn't multiplayer versus, joining games with lower or high level players isn't as much of a negative, but it definitely helps.

Reaction Time: Playing Borderlands via Xbox Live was certainly playable, but I did experience some lag during my play time. It wasn't bad, especially considering the more laid back speed of the game, but lag did have an impact on timing jumps in the game. Bothersome, when trying to jump up to a treasure that rests on top of a building.

General Consensus: The folks that I played with didn't have many bad things to say about the multiplayer experience, but I know I wasn't the only one have a few game invite issues today.

The Gearbox Software tech support forums for Borderlands aren't lacking in technical issues surrounding the game, many of them related to the online experience. The PlayStation 3 friends list issues that cropped up at launch may not have been resolved for everyone, according to the forums. Some folks appear to be having custom game matchmaking issues at higher levels and on second playthroughs. Regrettably, the number of issues affecting the PS3 experience appear to be higher.

PC owners can't weigh in on the experience yet. The game won't be available for them to play until the Windows version officially releases on October 26. You can experience the rage at 2K Games' forums.

Overall Personal Experience: Outside of a few failed connections to invites, the experience has been good. Not great, considering a bit of lag and an inability to play with Owen Good earlier today, but good. Certainly good enough to hoof it around the Pandoran wastelands and get some XP with our friends.

Obviously, we'd like to hear what you think about the experience so far. Since we don't have access to every version of the game, we're relying on you to help your fellow Kotakuites with information about the online portions of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions.

I'll be playing some Borderlands on Xbox Live throughout the day to see how well the multiplayer co-op is holding up under the strain and we'd appreciate it if you could join us. That includes those playing on the PlayStation 3, but probably not anyone on the PC side, unfortunately. We want to hear about your experiences joining up with friends, getting into public games, whatever. Problems? Praise? Put 'em in the comments, please!

If you'd like to join me in an Xbox Live game—I'll be popping in and out of private and public games—add me, Meat Bun Mike, as a friend. Maybe I can give you a nice gun or grenade mod. Or I can just slap you around in a duel.

For everyone else, please feel free to use the comments as a means to hook up with your fellow Kotakuites. Let's go kill some Skags!

In addition to problems with the PSN friends list, Borderlands is reported by users to have issues finding public games, with waits of 30 minutes or more for a list of available games. Since we feel that Borderlands' biggest strength is its co-op mode, that's two very serious problems for PS3 owners.

Fortunately, Gearbox software engineer Scott "vatoloco" Velasquez writes on the official Borderlands forums "We've identified the problem and are working on a fix."

"Believe it or not, the friends feature was heavily tested by Gearbox and 2K," Velasquez writes. "However, this particular issue we found could have never manifested itself in our or 2K's test environments."

"We'll find out very soon if the issue exists for the PS3 International versions of the Borderlands. If it does, we'll hopefully have a fix implemented before it affects those customers," he says. "We are doing everything we can to get this problem addressed as quickly as possible."

Velasquez addresses the timing of that fix later in the thread, saying "The only thing I can say is that we're exploring all options of getting the fix out ASAP!"

Thanks to Mike for the heads up.

Update: Well, that certainly was "ASAP." Gearbox reps say they've fixed the issue, no client side patch needed: "We are very pleased to report that using PSN friends lists with the game should now work properly for all PS3 customers. The fix has been released invisibly and should work automatically for all PSN users on the PS3 platform. No special action is required by PS3 customers to apply the fix - just play the game and you'll find that everything works fine now. We thank you all for your patience and for making us aware of the issue!"

PS3 Friends list issues [Gearbox Software Forums]

Along the way, from the bus that drops your player off at the nearly deserted town of Fyrestone to the final showdown at the secretive Vault, a lot of looting and a lot of shooting is gettin' done. That constant collection of Halo-esque recharging shields, stat-boosting artifacts, character class modifiers, grenade types and "bazillions" of guns is as much of Borderlands appeal as the four player, drop in, drop out cooperative multiplayer mode.

There are four classes to experiment with: the burly, melee-skilled Berserker; the turret-spawning Soldier; the Siren, whose Phasewalking skill makes her fast and invisible; the Hunter, who favors his sniper rifles and his pet Bloodwing. Each class comes armed with dozens of customizable skills and Borderlands packs in over a hundred missions to play through, so the game can't be knocked for its lack of variety. Is everything else in place?

Loved
Co-op Is King: Borderlands is at its best during co-op, when the mix of enemies becomes more varied, when the challenges are made more difficult, and when you've got a partner to take the gunner position in one of the game's vehicles. When player skills and capabilities complement each other well, you can churn through some of Borderlands' less interesting fetch quests, hauling ass as a team to the next bounty, power leveling each other with quickness. Credit to Gearbox, who made the process of getting into a game relatively painless, minus a bit of confusion surrounding completed or half-completed quests from the game's single-player mode.

A Magical Wasteland: To get the superficial stuff out of the way, Borderlands looks damn good. The "concept art" shading adds personality to what otherwise might have been flat, barren stretches of desert land. The Xbox 360 version holds up relatively well, only slowing down when things get really hairy and when the bad guys get really big—things drag a bit more noticeably during the game's last hour, when some heavy action goes down. Player characters and enemy designs look sharp—we just wish there was a little more room for additional character customization.

One In A Bazillion: With randomly generated weapons, especially when almost everything is a gun of some sort, there's valid concern that the variations will be difficult to notice, that every shotgun or machine pistol will feel the same. Fortunately, that's not true in Borderlands, as weapon manufacturers, elemental attacks (fire, electricity, corrosion) and a long list of attributes make many guns feel surprisingly unique. The same is true for the one-off guns, typically picked up from a major fallen foe or given as a reward. These uniques, like the sub-machine shotgun Boom Stick or a burst fire rocket launcher, tend to be the most interesting variations, if not always particularly useful. You'll likely settle into a quartet of reliable favorites that complement each other well, as well as come to appreciate the handy and illustrative "compare" option in the inventory screen.

Quickly Addictive: Borderlands' reward system, granting you big bonuses in cash and experience for completing quests, kept me coming back for more, even when I had planned to take a break. Just one more quest, I'd say, in search of new loot, new levels and new areas to explore. This quick addiction to the game's frequent pay-offs was made more intense during co-op, when the rewards come much more frequently thanks to cash and experience sharing. (Warning: while the money and XP are shared, the rest of the loot is first come first served. That, and the lack of a secure player-to-player item trading option, means you should play with trusted friends.)

We Got A System: The game's attribute system, focusing on elemental modifiers, reload times, clip sizes, and other weapon functions, works quite well. It's not as complex as many of the role-playing games and massively multiplayer online games that it clearly borrows its weapon/shield attribute system from, but there is depth to it. For the most part, it's easy to understand why one shotgun or shield is better than another, even if the naming system for items can be cryptic.

Second Wind: Second Wind lets the player keep firing with their dying breaths. Should they take out their killer before the screen fades to black, they'll recover a fraction of their health and shields. Not a groundbreaking innovation, but something that saved my ass more often than I'd care to count. And I love it for that.

Hated
Getting There Is None Of The Fun: You're going to spend a lot of time in Borderlands going from point A to point B. And for the most part, all that hoofing it around is going to suck. Here's a long list of reasons why. The game's map is sometimes confusing, meaning I too often had to check and recheck and recheck my location via the menu screen. There is no mini-map overlay, unfortunately. Maps are lacking in key information, things like the locations of main characters, where town-to-town "transitions" actually go, and the ability to place your own waypoints. One of the faster travel concessions, the teleportation between "New-U" respawn points, is made less useful, because most missions don't tell the player where to go to collect rewards, so teleporting can be kind of a crapshoot unless you're taking good mental notes. Finally, vehicles, while much faster than walking, can sometimes get stuck on world geometry, resulting in a very long jog to your destination.

More Like Bore-derlands, Am I Right? Alright, Borderlands is fun, so that may be a little harsh. But at some point, between collecting 24 bottles of booze and scouring six Dumpsters for... whatever and running on foot all over the damn place, monotony can set in. Borderlands, especially when played solo, can get a little... dull. There's plenty of grind here for those who like it, but there's also plenty of grind for those who don't.

Suspect AI, Suspect Aim: I saw the AI do some pretty dumb things during my time with Borderlands—about 22 hours, if you're curious—which usually worked to my advantage. Granted, Pandora's wildlife and lowlife probably aren't that smart or they'd have found a way off this rock, but they'll often forgo cover for standing in front of it or even on top of it. Some of the more difficult boss characters can act thickly as well, getting stuck in behavior loops that make them so much simpler to kill. Dumb though the AI may be, it has an amazing ability to keep its sights trained on you, unfairly in some situations. Like those son of a bitch turrets.

Borderlands gets a lot of things right, in particular the balance between being a first-person shooter and being a role-playing game. The shooting mechanics are sound, as are many of the role-playing aspects, save for a few design quirks. Growing and customizing my level 35 Siren was a great deal of fun, when the tedium of all that walking around didn't spoil it. But where Borderlands excels is in offering a functional four-player cooperative loot-hoarding experience, with gorgeous environments to adventure in and smartly crafted items to collect or covet.

The game has a few faults, including its traveling inefficiencies—a weak map combined with plenty of long-range fetch quests—and its easily forgettable story line, but it's still relatively easy to recommend, provided you can tap into the best portions of Borderlands, its cooperative multiplayer modes.

Borderlands was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 20. Retails for $59.99 USD on consoles, $49.99 on PC. A copy of the game was purchased by Kotaku for reviewing purposes. Completed single-player mode, played 20 co-op missions on Xbox Live with groups of two and three players on Xbox 360. Tested splitscreen co-op mode.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Why the harsh words? After all Gearbox and Valve have been tight in the past, with the former developing Half-Life expansions for the latter. Pitchford tells MaximumPC that, even though he loves Valve games, "There's so much conflict of interest there that it's horrid."

"It would be much better if Steam was its own business," he says. "It's actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win."

"I love Valve games, and I do business with the company," Pitchford notes. Borderlands is currently available for pre-sale through Steam. "But, I'm just saying, Steam isn't the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it's also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that's not totally fair."

Maybe Randy got up on the wrong side of the bed the morning of the interview. Maybe this is just one of his eyebrow raising "tall tales" of Valve. Maybe he's just got a game promote.

Pitchford's answer about who might be a better solution than Valve and Steam might surprise you. You can enjoy it at the full interview linked below.

Randy Pitchford Talks Borderlands, Piracy, and Why He Doesn't Trust Valve [MaximumPC via VG247]

But after all of the time spent in Borderlands, collecting weapons, finding upgrades, earning experience all of the way to level 17, I'm still undecided about whether I actually like the game.

One thing I do know: I keep coming back to it.

Gearbox's Borderlands isn't due out until this October for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, but I've spent the past few weeks playing through an introductory section of the game as the game's sniper character, Mordecai.

Moredecai is a specialist in long-range shots, of course, and eventually earns a winged-pet named Bloodwing. As you make your way through the game as the sniper you have the opportunity to upgrade your character or Bloodwing. Your character's upgrades include things like increasing the damage your weapons deal and making it easier to hit enemies. The upgrades for Bloodwing allow him to attack faster and more targets and increase the sort and amount of loot dropped by his victims.

My time with the game was limited to the areas I've already mentioned and single-player gaming only. While the game walked me through the early training missions, it didn't deliver any sort of plot. I'm told this is a product of it being the press demo and that the retail game will open up with some backstory.

What I did get a great sense of was the game plays and feels, and how missions are dealt out and completed.

The controls are fairly tight, allowing you to play this hybrid action-role-playing game as a first-person shooter. Aiming, sniping, movement are perfectly suited for quick pick-up and play for any fans of shooters.

The ability to hold a number of weapons and quickly hot-swap between them is another nice bonus that will appeal to fans of running and gunning.

The damage modeling, too, is a big plus, allowing you pinpoint precision in how you take an enemy down. I was able to snipe off a bandits foot from across a map. Yes, that means there is plenty of gibs and gore. And for awhile I was satisfied running around shooting things, playing Borderlands essentially like a first-person shooter map packed with bots.

But overtime that grew a little dull. The enemies aren't altogether that intelligent, and the spawn points can be, no matter how random the results, very predictable.

So I jumped into a few missions and the game really started to trudge. Why would I want to run out and hunt Borderlands version of feral dogs? Do I really need to clear out the gangs in this dust bowl? Why do I care about the garden of an amiable loner?

Without much of a plot to anchor the missions too, I was losing interest quickly. Fortunately, I eventually started to hunt down some missing logs and journals for a couple of missions and the audio recordings began to fill me in a bit on the backstory.

Perhaps, there will be a reason to make me want to move forward in what now seems like a mostly blank canvas, but this build certainly doesn't provide that inspiration.

Don't get me wrong, I've been playing the hell out of it. Enough to finish every single available mission in the game and level up to 17, something I expect isn't typical of the relatively confined demo.

What keeps me intrigued, makes me want to come back again and again are all of those weapons. Those glorious weapons. There are, by some accounts, more than 3 million variations of weapons in the games. And some do some pretty amazing things. All of them have great, randomly generated names like my machine gun "Bone Shredder", my electrified-bullet shooting sniper rifle "LB20 Static Wrath" and my brutal six shooter "MAL31-B Blast Law".

While the other weapons are pretty neat, and took me quite a time to find, it's Blast Law that renewed my interest in the demo just when I thought I had had enough.

Prior to stumbling across this seemingly innocuous revolver I had to plug away at enemies for a few seconds with Bone Shredder before taking them down. Out of curiosity, mostly because Blast Law's name is written out in a rare purple, I decided to check it out.

The first thing I noticed was that this tiny pistol has a pretty hefty zoom feature: A must for any sniper. It also has a very fast fire rate and reload rate. Then I aimed the gun at a dog-like Skag and pulled the trigger. The creature disappeared in a cloud of red mist. Holy shit!

Amazed by the tiny gun's shocking stopping power, I made my way over to a known bandit spawn point to try it out on some larger, more crafty targets.

Pygmy bandit: Mist

Lunatic bandit: blown in half

Skulking, armed bandit: Legs blown off with a low shot.

Finally, brutish hulking chain-gun toting bad guy: Three shots then dead.

What was beginning to feel routine and a bit monotonous suddenly had new life and I spent another few hours and gained another level playing around with my new weapon.

With another 3 million or so weapons to discover, I imagine Borderlands will, story or no story, manage to keep me engaged for quite awhile.

Here's hoping there's a bit more to the final game though to satisfy more than my bloodlust.

In addition to opportunities for John Q. Gamer to go hands-on with Borderlands, Gearbox will be holding a panel at PAX "premiering brand new content." For those heading to PAX or keeping a minute-to-minute eye on the news, that's happening at 6:30 PM in the Serpent Theatre this Friday. Watch for it!

PAX attendees, let us know if your opinion of Borderlands jibes with our own.