2K Games and Gearbox Software's Borderlands (trailer embedded above) aims to be a marriage of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Diablo -- a Mad Max-inspired open world shooter with RPG elements such as character classes, level progression, and system-generated loot.Those features were put on display during a live gameplay demonstration at E3 this week, the video of which we've embedded on the other side of the jump. It's tough to see what's going on in too much detail because of the quality of the video, so the developer commentary is the real meat. The commentator spends rather a lot of time bragging about the random weapon generation, but there's some good stuff in there about the setting and character advancement. And hey; it's first-time live gameplay footage. That's something, at least....

Gearbox Software released several details on their upcoming post-apocalyptic shooter Borderlands during the Take-Two Interactive E3 press conference earlier today, reports Shacknews. Gearbox president Randy Pitchford touted the game as a cooperative shooter with randomized elements such as items and level-based progression.Set on the planet Pandora, Pitchford showed a cavernous mine filled with "trives of humanoid enemies to destroy," according to Shacknews. The game will contain over half a million weapons, all of which are supposed to be procedurally generated. "A revolver sniper rifle was spawned during the demo that even surprised Pitchford," says Shacknews. Many of the weapons contain wild explosive effects, prompting Pitchford to promise significant gore and limb loss.Before the demonstration concluded, vehicles were shown via a dune buggie that was driven by two players working in tandem. Two classes, the Hunter and the Solider, were revealed....

If you really want a long detailed trailer showing off a lot of gameplay from Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, then you have hit the jackpot today. Developer Gearbox Software and publisher Ubisoft have released a new gameplay trailer that has many. many minutes of filmed gameplay from the WWII tactical shooter.As we have reported previously, the game is due for release in August for the PC and other platforms and follows a US Army group in the Operation Market Garden battle near the end of the war. We hope to see the game at Ubisoft's booth at E3 this week.Download the new Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway gameplay trailer from Big Download now....

Developer Gearbox Software and publisher Ubisoft have released a new trailer for Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, offering a look at the tanks -- and the wanton amounts of carnage they'll offer -- in the game. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway will be available for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 later this August.Download the HD Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway tanks trailer from Big Download....

It's become something of a trend to dismiss the revamped and invite only Electronic Entertainment Expo as no longer relevant. The truth, however, is that there is still no one event in the United States that brings together more game developers and publishers than E3 even in its smaller version (as the E3 Media and Business Summit). We are now just one week away from the start of E3 2008 which after last year's detour in several Santa Monica, CA hotels will once again take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center). Despite what other articles might tell you the PC game industry will be represented very well at the expo this year with a number of highly anticipated game titles due to be shown to the invited press (and there may very well be a few surprise announcements in store for E3 that we don't know about yet). So what PC games are we most looking forward to seeing at E3 2008 next week? We've compiled a list of our top 25 picks and we will reveal our list over the next week (with an article on honorable mentions and wild card picks on Saturday). We wanted to make this list heavy on PC game exclusives or games that will have the PC as the lead or major platform if it also appears on game consoles....

Some people might not be excited about Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway from developer Gearbox Software but it seems that every time new info or screens of the game drop we get a little excited. Continuing its tradition of a first-person shooter with a light, tactical strategy overlay, Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway is based on the historic WWII battle, Operation Market Garden. Other than the squad-based mechanics, BIA:HH is unique for its focus on a battle that famously failed due to strong opposition. As the brave men of the 101st Airborne Division dropped into the German-occupied Netherlands expecting little resistance, they were ambushed by one of the fiercest battalions of German soldiers the war had seen. Known as the final victory for the Germans in the last Great War, Hell's Highway promises to retell the intense battle when it releases this August. We've added 12 images (which include a handful of new shots) to our existing gallery for the Ubisoft published shooter....

Gearbox Software's hotly anticipated Borderlands will be among the games presented by publisher 2K Games at this year's E3 conference. The game, which was first revealed late last year in Game Informer magazine, is an (apparently) open-world first-person-shooter with cooperative multiplayer, randomly generated levels ala Diablo, and some RPG elements. It's set in a Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic wasteland. Gearbox and 2K have high expectations for the game; they hope it will birth a franchise. It's scheduled to release sometime in 2009.2K will also be showing Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization at the show. If you haven't been keeping up, just know that it's a remake of Sid Meier's original Colonization, which was released back in 1994. It uses the same basic technology as Civilization IV, but it's a stand-alone game with decidedly different gameplay. Oh, and it's a PC exclusive, so hurray for that! For more on that one, check out our hands-on impressions.[Via videogaming247]...

Sometimes people forget at a press event that they are being recorded. This seemed to have happened at a recent media gathering for the upcoming Treyarch-Activision WWII shooter Call of Duty: World at War. Eurogamer.net has a video interview where an Activision rep was asked about comparing their game to Gearbox Software's upcoming Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. His response? "We don't want to look at someone who's just making a crappy war game. I watched the trailer and I'm like 'these guys aren't even in the same league."Ouch. That's pretty brutal, especiallly since Gearbox's previous Brothers in Arms games have gotten far better reviews than Treyarch's previous Call of Duty titles. Thankfully Treyarch's community manager made a post on the Xbox.com forums apolgizing for the statements made by the Activision rep, saying, "We want to let everyone know that we found those remarks offensive, and they do not in any way represent the feelings of any developer at this studio or at Activision. We hold all of our peers in the development community in the highest regard. We have nothing but respect for the guys and gals at Gearbox."...

It's been a comparatively slow week at Big Download. Most of the huge new files will coincide with E3 and other conferences in the next few weeks. We still have a few items of interest for you to check out this weekend, though. The most obvious choice is the Call of Duty: World at War (or Call of Duty 4.5, if you prefer) trailer. Treyarch is trying to take a different approach to World War II; download it and judge for yourself whether or not it has succeeded. We also have a lengthy preview for Gearbox Software's Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. If that intrigues you, be sure to also check out our recent interview with Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford. Call of Duty: World at War TrailerCall of Duty is returning to World War II in Call of Duty: World at War. This time the focus is on the Pacific theater of the war. WALL-E DemoThis Pixar animated movie-based game has garnered some positive feedback from some of our readers. At only 219 MB, you don't have much of an excuse not to try it, do you? Stronghold Crusader Extreme DemoWe hear that this historical real-time-strategy game from Firefly Studios is extreme in some way. Look at the title! Download the demo and judge its extremeness for yourself. SAGA Game ClientSaga is a massively multiplayer real-time strategy game that borows gameplay elements from collectible card games. Consider this free client a starter deck. Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway Behind the Scenes TrailerThis five minute-long video explains the rich historical basis for Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, as well as the narrative implications of telling a darker, less hopeful version of the World War II story. ...

Dallas based Gearbox Software got its start by making expansions of Half-Life for Valve but the developer has expanded its reach in recent years doing games for a wide variety of publishers, from a James Bond shooter to the PC port of the first Halo game. It really hit its stride with the creation of Brothers in Arms, a WWII shooter series for publisher Ubisoft that was more historically accurate than other games in the genre and had an emphasis on tactics and strategy rather than run-and-gun shooting.Gearbox's successes with the Brothers in Arms have lead to other things like a comic-book mini-series, a non-fiction TV series, an upcoming novel and even a proposal for a Brothers in Arms feature film. But Gearbox isn't resting on its laurels. In addition to the latest game in the series Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (due out in late August) It has three other announced games in development and two of them will see PC versions released (the sci-fi action game Borderlands for 2K Games and the FPS Aliens: Colonial Marines for Sega). And there are rumors of even more games in the works. Big Download got the always friendly Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford to chat with us about Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, and he also gave us hints about their other games. He also talks about their views on PC gaming in general and the fate of a game that was announced but so far has yet to come to pass....

Given that this summer's new Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway will be flanked by both a novel (pre-release) and a history book (post-release), it's not too surprising that a movie might also be in the works.Hell's Highway covers Operation Market Garden, a mission in which the Allies tried to seize a bridge in the Netherlands, which, in 1944, were under Nazi control. Colonel John Antal, who wrote both of the aforementioned books, says that the mission lasted ten days, but only eight of those days will be covered in Hell's Highway."Those two days that are not in the game, I made the story for the novel; we filled the gap," he told Eurogamer. "I think the novel will be a movie."...

We may have to wait until sometime in August to play the next Brothers in Arms game but the Gearbox Software-Ubisoft WWII tactical shooter series is about to debut as a comic book this Wednesday via publisher Dynamite Entertainment.Newsarama has posted up a six page preview of the first issue in the series which is being written by David Wohl and Mike Neumann and drawn by Davide Fabbri. The 40 page first issue will center around D-Day as an American army squad is shot down by anti-aircraft fire over France. The first issue will feature two covers, one by Stjepan Sejic and the other by Fabbri....

Developer Gearbox Software and publisher Ubisoft recently revealed that their long awaited WW II tactical shooter Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway has been pushed back to August. Today the publisher released some new screenshots to keep us occupied for a little while longer.Reportedly the game was pushed back to put in some more multiplayer features and support. Of course it could be that Gearbox has one of the busiest game line-ups around. In addition to Hell's Highway they are working on Aliens: Colonial Marines and the Wii game Samba de Amigo for Sega and Borderlands for 2K Games. In the meantime these terrific looking (and Unreal Engine 3 powered) screenshots from Hell's Highway make waiting for the game just a little harder to take....

Gearbox Software continues to be one of the busiest game development studios around. The Dallas based company has no less than four games in various stages of development. Two are for Sega; the movie based shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines and the Wii exclusive casual game Samba De Amigo. There's also their own original property, the sci-fi action-RPG Borderlands for 2K Games.Their flagship property continues to be their WWII tactical shooter series Brothers In Arms. Gearbox has been working on the third game in the series, Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, for some time and recently the game's publisher Ubisoft revealed via a new trailer that the title now has an August release date. The title was originally schedule for release last fall but Ubisoft pushed the release date back along with a number of other games (as it turned out the huge sales for the console version of Assassin's Creed last fall more than made up for the other games' absence). Gearbox took some extra time to beef up Hell's Highway' s multiiplayer modes; reportedly the game can now support dozens of players. Sounds good to us....