The gaming industry has a “strategy” of releasing almost every major A+ title between October and December. The reason behind this is obvious: get the titles with the highest development costs into the marketplace when consumers are rushing out in a buying frenzy. There is one major problem with this strategy though: good titles often find themselves ignored because they can’t compete for attention in the press, marketplace, or communities because they’re released too close to a “killer app” title. Gearbox Software’s Borderlands is the case in point for this phenomenon. Borderlands was released in late October of last year, sandwiching it between Halo: ODST (late September) and the highly anticipated release of Modern Warfare 2 (mid November). This makes it very easy for gamers to miss out on a good game that isn’t a sequel and isn’t backed by a huge ad and press blitz. I picked up Borderlands mainly because it was described as a FPS-meets-Diablo title. That alone sounded interesting, and I’ve really needed a change from the standard shooters I’ve been playing (Call of Duty, Halo, etc). Borderlands did not disappoint, and it has been eating up most of my gaming time in the last month.

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