For those who don’t know, the Video Game Awards were held this weekend. But instead of being the VGAs, as people were familiar with, they were instead called VGX (the “next generation of video game awards”). And instead of being a traditional awards ceremony with big new game trailers and announcements (which is really all anyone cares about; fan-voted awards are a waste of everyone’s time), as most look forward to, it was instead people hanging around and trying to be funny (followed by immensely awkward silences), with winners announced here and there in odd order. At least that’s what I gather from those who did watch the event. I personally decided not to even bother watching as soon as I found out they were only going to stream the awards, not air it on Spike TV like usual (COPS was on! Yeah…). A truly disastrous attempt at unnecessary change.

All of that said there were a couple bright spots in the one area you can rely on: the new gameplay videos and new game announcements. Last month it was rumored that The Walking Dead and Fables game The Wolf Among Us developer Telltale Games might be working on a Game of Thrones project. Not only was this rumor confirmed with a teaser trailer, but a second teaser trailer was shown for another interesting Telltale project, based on the hit Borderlands series. You can check out both announcement teasers below.

After reading my recent Borderlands 2 article (Gearing Up For Borderlands 2 September Launch), I got that warm and fuzzy feeling that comes when I read one of my published articles, but then I realized that in my furor I neglected to go over some of the key points of the upcoming launch. I aim to remedy some of that with this article.

First and foremost Take 2 Interactive is offering up two special editions at the game’s launch. For the price of $99.99, you get the Deluxe Vault Hunter’s Collector’s Edition which in addition to the game includes a Marcus Kincaid bobble-head, an art book, stickers, a digital comic, and a yet-to-be-announced DLC for the game. This constitutes some mighty fine swag.

If you are a gamer who didn’t play Borderlands you either have terrible friends, or hate having insane amounts of fun. Borderlands was a weird mix of space western, comedy, and RPG, with loot drops akin to a Diablo-type game. There are four playable characters, each with a unique style of play. This all added up to one unexpectedly awesome game.

Since its release in late October of 2009, it has sold over 4.5 million copies, on PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the Mac. In this writer’s humble opinion, it might be one of the single most fun experiences you can have on any of those platforms.

So now that you are up to speed on all the awesome, it’s time to talk Borderlands 2. Its launch date is September 18, 2012, and instead of a sleeper hit in-the-making, Borderlands 2 is officially a must-watch game. Expect it to be big.

Amazon is running a 19 Days of Deals sale on video games this month, with today’s entry being RPG & MMORPG Day, where you can save up to 50% on select games like Dead Island, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Kingdom Hearts, Borderlands, and more, with some titles as low as 14.50, and up to 80% off on game downloads.

Here’s a sample of some of the sale items:
– Dead Island PC & Download – $19.99 | Xbox 360 & PS3 – $29.99
– Deus Ex: Human Revolution PC & Download – $19.99 | Xbox 360 & PS3 – $29.99
– Dungeon Siege III PC – $19.99 | Download – $4.95 | Xbox 360 & PS3 – $24.99

The first images for Borderlands 2, the upcoming sequel to Borderlands, will appear in next month’s issue of Game Informer Magazine. We are going to be treated to 12 pages of exclusive content and screenshots, including how they are going to be changing the mission system to give us a better story. Thank god, because while the first game was fun, the story was absurd to put it lightly.

Borderlands 2 will bring us back to the fictional planet of Pandora. Even though it’s the same planet, there is said to be more diversity in the environments. This is something I thought Borderlands did well. The locations you went to had quite a bit of variety, and I’m excited to see how else they mix things up.