When a Crackdown 2 trailer (here) appeared at Microsoft’s E309 press conference plenty of people - including myself - got immediately excited. Unfortunately it was little more than a teaser trailer, with absolutely no information at all. Thankfully Microsoft has seen fit to correct this, filling us in a little on what the sequel has to offer.

Microsoft says that the sequel to 2007’s underappreciated open-world riot will support four-player co-op and sixteen-player competitive multiplayer. Apparently this will take “multiplayer gaming to unprecedented levels”, but whatever the press blurb says it should add even more fun to the world of Crackdown 2; providing the game is actually good of course.

I had a lot of fun with Crackdown’s two-player co-op; so four-player co-op should theoretically be fun, right? I do have some concerns with how the game will handle four-players causing mayhem in a big rendered city, as the first game suffered from occasional lag problems even with two. Fingers crossed the developers will be able to make it work without too many problems (I know GTA IV had more than four players in a big city, but if you threw a lot of exploding cars, gunfire and players into a single area the game played like a slideshow).

Crackdown 2 should be with us sometime next year.

(Image source: VG47)

Shouldn’t every post begin with an ass shot? No? Just me then I guess.

Here are a few new screenshots (click to see them at full size) of the upcoming first-person shooter/RPG Borderlands fresh out of E3. You may remember that the art style for the game took a drastic change in direction since the initial reveal, with many saying that the game was now ‘cel-shaded’. Gearbox president Randy Pitchford was quick to deny this in saying “No, Borderlands is not cel-shaded — it’s a gritty and serious world after all,” (Source). While he may be technically correct in saying that Borderlands isn’t cel-shaded it has far more in common with Crackdown then, say, Fallout 3.

To be honest I’m loving the new art style, just as I loved the art style in Crackdown. The new screenshots look like something I would see if I opened a well-drawn comic book, until I remember that these screenshots will actually translate to motion. Hopefully we will see some gameplay video pretty soon.

Head on over to Kotaku if you want to read some hands-on impressions of the game. Apparently it’s a cross between the shooting elements of Fallout 3 and “Diablo-esque looting and weapon generation” with four player co-op thrown in.

Borderlands is coming to PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 and has planned release date of later this year.

UPDATE: Gearbox has told Shacknews that they’re planning an October release date.