The New Borderlands (3rd DLC installment) entitled ‘The Secret Armory of General Knox’ is en route to your download station this year. Gearbox states that this package is “bigger and better than the previous two installments” and is aimed at levelling and skilling out your level 20-50 pandora stomping toon. Gearbox is also promising a level cap rise, but have not yet indicated how high, and expects to deliver “brutal, never-before-seen enemies in a huge new environment complete with tons of brand new missions, entirely new weapons and items.”

Rumors are also floating around of a new ground vehicle to roll around in (see pic), and possibly even a new character to power up. Either way, the last episodes have well extended our fun at BusyGamer, and we are certain this one will too. Still no price or confirmed date, just some gnarly press screen shots.

Check out our BusyGamer review of Borderlands while your here.

VOTE 4 BusyGamer's RIKA! CLICK IT!

For those of you who might not be familiar with one of our newest writers, Rika Hollinshead Stead (and if you’re not, where the hell have you been?), you may not know that Rika is currently competing in an XFX contest to be chosen as their XFX Girl 2.0. This is an opportunity for Rika to represent the XFX product line (which includes some very high end motherboards, one of which is currently in my personal gaming rig, and video cards) as their spokesmodel/gamer girl and we’re very excited to be letting you, our readers, know about this. You can see more about the contest, including videos and photos of the different phases of the contest here.

Rika and five other girls were selected from all the entries XFX received as finalists and were flown to Los Angeles for the final phase of the competition. The challenge was a photoshoot, a meet and greet with the folks from XFX, and to take a camcorder, a friend, and some cash and see “What Can a Gamer Girl do in L.A. with One Day and $500″. There was a limo and some pretty cool clubs involved that night and you can catch the part one of Rika’s video here and part two here.

Currently the competition is focused on the individual contestants’ involvement in the competition and we’re asking our readers to give Rika some Busy Gamer props by visiting the contest’s Facebook page here and leaving some comment love about how we all think she should be the next XFX girl. Even if you don’t comment, at least click on that little thumbs up on one of her posts to show your support.

Rika’s involvement in the gaming community alone would warrant her selection as the XFX Girl 2.0. She currently writes for Charismaplus2.com, her own blog Pixelain Skin, and writes and does reviews for some little site called BusyGamer.com… Oh, that’s us. Awesome. And if that wasn’t enough, she’s also smokin’ hot.  You’ve got eyes though, you can figure that out for yourselves.

So get started already. Help us help Rika win this thang. Yes, I just said “thang”, it’s not a typo. The contest goes on till 2am so I expect everyone to get over there and make Rika Stead become XFX Girl 2.0. I mean it. Otherwise the Reckon Crew goes to your mom’s birthday party and drinks all the cooking sherry. We’re more than capable.

Not convinced?  Here’s some of Rika’s info to help sway your vote:

Playing right now:
Dragon Age Origins, Borderlands,Zeno Clash, Quake Live, COD MW2. I’m a bit ADD when it comes to gaming, can’t stick to just one at a time.

Does she play WoW?
Yes, she does. I’m not currently in a raiding phase though. I was hardcore in BC, but it kept me from playing any other games. Now I play my main casually and am playing on a reroll too. I’m planning on hitting the Cataclysm xpack hard though.

Nerd heroes:
Kevin Smith as the Warlock in Live Free or Die Hard. Jay and Silent Bob. Trillian in The Hitchhiker’s Guide (the book not the movie). The narrator on
Space Quest IV.

RIKA by Tim Bennett Photography

All time favorite game:
Probably Legend of Dragoon or Chrono Cross.

Ambitions:
To write about games! Wait, I already do that. To be more famous for writing about games. To expose more girls to gaming. To be the next Olivia Munn. To kick ass across all genres of gaming.

About being a hot chick:
“I’m not a hot chick in real life, but I do play one in a video game.” I use my looks to draw attention to my talents and skills, not to replace them.

The coolest part of the contest:
I love that a lot of my supporters are people I don’t know personally. And I also dig that a lot of them are female! I’m all for girls being included in and involved in gaming. I am now addicted to vlogging.

The coolest part of the trip to L.A.:
Meeting the other girls! And meeting all the industry people. Driving all over LA in a mad search for nerd hangouts was cool, too.

Has been gaming since:
Nintendo controllers had only A and B buttons. But I came by my nerdiness honestly- no one ever really pointed me in that direction or encouraged it in me. My parents never even bought me a console, although my dad did unintentionally open the door to Space Quest when he bought our first PC. I’ve always loved games… I just didn’t realize that I loved them more than other people did until I was about 17 or 18.

Is excited about:
Gaming becoming part of the larger culture! Games are starting to be respected as an art form. And gamer culture is becoming prevalent- I <3 gamer t-shirts and other clothing, crazy products marketed towards gamers and even crazy nerd crafts that people are selling on Etsy these days.

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Borderlands earns a Busy Gamer 3

First Glance:
Gun down some baddies in a futuristic wasteland, level up, gun down bigger baddies.

The Short Story:
Borderlands doesn’t try to do everything all at once. At its core, it’s an FPS with role-playing elements and it seamlessly combines those elements for a thoroughly enjoyable experience. You take missions and bounties as you wander the Borderlands as one of four classes. Level up as you shoot your way to your goals, making your character more powerful for the bigger fights. Team up with up to three other players to get the full experience.

The Score:
This game has quickly become a Reckon Crew favorite and even made it into our top five picks for 2009. Hardly a night goes by without a quick round of Borderlands being played. Cel shaded graphics bring the world of Pandora to light and some of the best voice acting in any video game to date helps to unfold the story of four adventurers who have come to this world to search for treasures beyond imagining. There’s a well told story here and it’s worth the time investment to see it to its ending. The multi-player feature of Borderlands allows for short play sessions and the controls are easy enough to learn and not forget after an absence from the game. Unfortunately, it is ultimately the length of the game and the necessity of some form of time commitment to see the game to its end that bring down the score. An utterly fantastic game, sadly Borderlands scores a Busy Gamer 3.

Body of review:
I’ve mentioned on occasion that there are games I shouldn’t be allowed to play due to their ability to make me lose track of time completely and utterly. Borderlands may very well be added to that short list of games in the very near future.

I had seen the commercials back when the game was released and I knew I was going to pick up a copy eventually. When I did, I was expecting the gorgeous cel shaded graphics and FPS controls. What I wasn’t expecting was how engrossed I would find myself with the game after only a few hours.

When beginning the game, you are offered the choice of four characters, the soldier, hunter, siren, and berserker. As we’ve come to see in games where you have to choose a class, each character has their strengths and weaknesses along with a unique special skill based on your choice. For example, the hunter, Mordecai, is primarily long ranged with the ability to summon his companion Bloodwing to help him fight for short periods of time while Brick, the berserker, is a terror in hand to hand combat and can, naturally, go berserk which allows him to heal rapidly and deal massive damage with his fists.

Our character finds themselves outside of a settlement called Fyrestone where we are brought up to speed on what our ultimate goal is and a brief tutorial which allows us the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with our character choice and then it’s straight into the action. The control scheme is easy to learn and the HUD provided is informative without being distracting. The inventory set up can be a bit daunting at first but once you’re familiar with it, you’ll breeze through it quickly enough.

As you progress through the beginning of the game, the tone is set quickly with the voice acting. Each character you interact with is voiced superbly and there is a humor to the conversations that is endearing. It quickly becomes obvious that the planet you are on is akin to the Wild West with the only law being one of might makes right… and most of the people who inhabit the backwater planet soon begin to contact you with tasks and bounties to complete as you make your way through the impressive landscape.

Where Borderlands truly excels is the multi-player experience. Setting up a game session is quick and easy and you can choose whether to allow just anyone to join or if you simply want to play with friends. The more people you have in the game (up to four) the more difficult your enemies become. At the same time, however, the more lucrative the rewards become.

The multiplayer is where Borderlands shines

The multi-player also allows for lower level characters to catch up relatively quickly to friends who may be higher level. While the lower level characters won’t be much help in the bigger fights, the experience awarded is substantial and may be the easiest way to help a friend get to the same point in the game as you.

Missions and bounties are typically fast paced though there are a few that have you wandering all over a map. Areas tend to scale to the level of your character so you don’t struggle when first entering a new map. The areas are self contained which means you can’t accidentally wander into another area without meaning to but the areas tend to repopulate fairly quickly so any place you take your time fighting into may mean you have to fight your way out again.

The weapons available in Borderlands are numerous and are pulled from “loot” tables in order to provide variance. The names of the weapons will typically indicate what traits they have while still managing to look and perform differently. There’s enough weapons to choose from that you will very rarely see the same weapon in a loot pile more than once, excluding unique weapons. And even with the unique weapons, there may be an elemental effect on yours that your friend’s doesn’t have.

Time constraints may become a factor as you start to enjoy the games. Typical multi-player sessions for the Reckon Crew often go longer than an hour as we help one another complete missions or just load up and go patrol an area and lay waste to some baddies. There’s a good sized world to be explored here and you may find one playthrough isn’t enough. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t play this game but you may want to postpone buying anything else for a while if you’re a typical Busy Gamer.

Gorgeous graphics, excellent voice acting and sound effects, beautiful scenery, and two DLCs since the launch of the game with a third on the way this month make Borderlands a solid addition to any gamer’s library, Busy or otherwise.

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This fella needs to loosen up abit..

(Rueters) – Japanese game maker Sega, which won the publishing rights for the official 2010 Winter Olympics video games, has two releases out aimed at extending the Winter Games beyond a few weeks.

Sega released “Vancouver 2010 – The Official Video Game of the Olympic Winter Games” on January 12 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, with 14 events like alpine skiing, speed skating and snowboard cross, giving fans a taste of the real experience.

“The fact that so many kids are playing video games these days, this game allows them to discover these sports in a different way,” said Kristina Groves, a Canadian speedskater.

Groves shares the cover of “Vancouver 2010″ with Lindsey Vonn (U.S. alpine skier), Seth Wescott (U.S. snowboarder) and Matthew Morison (Canadaian snowboarder).

“Growing up it was watching the Olympics on TV that inspired me to try speed skating, but if video games can entertain kids and hopefully inspire them to try these sports, I’m all for it,” said Groves.

Last fall, Sega also released “Mario & Sonic at the Vancouver Winter Games” for Wii and Nintendo DS.

The first partnership between once-rivals Sega and Nintendo, “Mario & Sonic at the Beijing Summer Games” sold over 10 million copies worldwide.

The new “Winter Games,” which has already sold over 800,000 copies in the United States, introduces events like ice hockey, curling and skiing to the mix.

“We wanted the entire family, including the mom and dad who don’t play games and even grandpa and grandma, to enjoy this experience with their kids,” said Osamu Ohashi, the producer who oversaw both the Wii and Nintendo DS versions of the game at Sega’s Team Sonic development studio.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bookworm for the DSi scores a Busy Gamer 5

First Glance:
PopCap’s Bookworm in a portable format. Grab the dictionary and the thesaurus… The pocket versions.

The Short Story:
PopCap has a tendency to make games that I can waste countless hours on. This isn’t a complaint. I used to spend hours expanding my vocabulary on the free web version but now I can blow that time on the DSi and the latest rendition of one of PopCap’s flagship games.

The Score:
This is a no brainer. My DSi is with me on every Reckon Crew outing that involves travel and hotels… Which is most of them. The DSi version of Bookworm is as good as it gets for short or long sessions. Exiting to the menu, as with most PopCap games of late, saves your progress and lets you pick up where you left off. Ease of play, quick loads, and stat tracking earns Bookworm a bilio-tastic Busy Gamer 5.

Body of Review:
It’s safe to say I’m a puzzle fiend. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll keep saying it till someone tells me to shut up. That’s not an invitation… So take a puzzle game and let me flaunt my somewhat impressive vocabulary or at least my encyclopedic knowledge of word structures and I’ll bite every time. That’s why I was so pleased to see the Bookworm title make it onto my lastest favorite portable gaming device, my Nintendo DSi.

Curious about how many three letter words you've used? There's a stat for that...

If you’ve played any rendition of the Bookworm franchise, the controls are easy to pick up when the game starts… Touch the letter where you want to begin and then add on to it until you’re satisfied with your choice. As you use letter tiles, they are removed from the game board and new tiles fall in at the top of the screen. The surprisingly comprehensive in game dictionary tracks whether you’ve entered a valid word and then awards points based on the length of the word and any bonus tiles you might use. You can also shoot for the bonus words as you go to crank up your score.

As you score points, you are awarded levels and titles. With each new level comes the increased chance of a flaming word tile dropping onto the game board. Flaming tiles burn down through other letter tiles when they aren’t used and if they reach the bottom of the board, your game is over. This can add a bit of a panic when they drop into a section with no vowels but there is a scramble button you can use to help out a bit. Unfortunately, using the scramble button can produce more flaming tiles.

Rank up, show your friends you could have finished first in that 2nd grade spelling bee.

Scoring a particularly good word will result in the addition of bonus tiles, letters that can be used to increase the point value of any given word. You’ll be awarded a green, gold, or diamond tile based on the score of the previous word. Use them at any time, they don’t go away unless a flaming tile burns through them.

The only drawback of Bookworm for the DSi is that there is only one play mode. The mode available is untimed, scoring strictly on the words you spell. This can be dangerous as you can lose track of time if you get caught up in trying to spell out twelve letter words…

Bookworm tracks your stats so you can see what your longest or highest scoring word was or you can see how many three letter words you’ve created versus longer words. This allows you to mock your friends who play when you point out you actually were able to make a twelve letter word and they just burned through their entire repertoire of three letter words in the English language. And we all know I wouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to mock my friends…

Overall, the game is a great buy for only 500 points through the DSi’s online game store which also conveniently downloads and plays immediately on your device. The purchase was painless (aside from having to use the whole points thing, ugh) and once the download was done, I was playing in a matter of moments.

It’s a great value for the price, a great game to play when you have a few minutes, and it won’t ask you what “extraneous” means… HA!

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