Randomizin' Guns With Borderlands

Randy Pitchford has boasted that his first-person rpg Borderlands (think Diablo meets Quake, then try to forget Hellgate: London) will feature somewhere around one billion guns, give or take a few infinity plus ones. This works out to roughly 1,500 guns per bullet that the average player will come across, making the "throw gun" button an invaluable addition to the game.

How can there possibly be that many guns in a single game? Borderlands features a generator that dynamically spits out weapons based on a variety of random properties. Many of these are variables you'd expect, such as damage, ammo capacity, range, and rate of fire.

Additionally, there are rare modifiers that will imbue weapons with additional attributes, many of which have never been seen in video games before. These attachments will number in the thousands, but only the following have been officially announced:

• Silencer (two earbuds that plug the shooter's ears)
• Oscar Wilde Quote Speakerbox
• Super Soaker-Style Pump (100 pumps make bullets travel five feet farther than normal)
• Garage Door Opener
• Superfluous Chrome Plating
• Extremely Useful Chrome Plating
• Stick Shift (while firing press the clutch hotkey and gesture the mouse to shift to the next gear, missing will cause the gun to stall)
• Salt/Pepper Shakers
• 2nd Amendment Launcher
• De-Randomizer (makes every piece of loot a stock 9mm pistol render with no skins or animations)
• Scopeglass Wipers
  
• Boomerang Rounds (every shot curves up and off to the side, never to be seen again, no matter how hard you practice trying to make it come back)
• Gunsmoke Detector
• Oversized Grand Opening Ribbon Scissors
  
• Baseball Card Attachment (only available on fully automatic weapons with rotating ammo feeds that will smack the card when fired, producing a cool sound)
  
• Air Quotes (to let victims know they've been "shot")
• Laser Sight, The Sight That Lets You See Lasers More Easily
• Incendiary Rounds (etched with controversial opinions about abortion and religion)
  
• "More Accurate" Button (use sparingly, depletes nitrous reserves quickly)
  
• Hair Trigger w/ Comb
  
• Chainsaw Attachment (not a ripoff of Gears Of War, this is inside the barrel to saw each round)
• Edible Gun Lubricant
  
• Old-Timey Stock Market Ticker (complete with glass bubble and neverending stream of thin paper)
  
• Tripod + 15 Second Delay Button
• Mood Trigger Guard Ring (turns red if you're angry, green if you're firing)
  
• Gunedex (a Pokedex for randomly generated guns)
• Compass (if you get turned around in an intense firefight, this will point toward the end of the gun)
• Flamecatcher (the perfect counter to enemies with flamethrowers)
  
• One Of Those Bidding Paddles They Use In Fancy Auction Houses
• Two Pairs Of Shades (one for you, one for the gun)
• Chinese Finger Trap (thwarts finger-in-the-barrel attempts)
• Tracer Rounds (follow the thick black outlines around enemies, tracing their silhouettes on the scenic backdrop)
  
• Separate - Yet Identical And Overlapping - Trigger For Nose Hair Trimmer

Clutch
A $30 reminder to reinstall Carmageddon 2. 5/10

Memento Mori
When your lead characters are named Lara and Max, your game really shouldn't be this boring. 3/10

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
A decent anime-styled fighter based on the Proust book of the same name. 7/10

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra
Staying awake is half the... no, it's all of the battle. 4/10

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)