Guides And Walkthroughs

So you've finished Borderlands 2. Then you did it again on True Vault Hunter Mode. You ground your way to the level 50 cap with at least one of the game's four characters. DLC is coming, but it isn't here yet... so what's next? Farmville!

No, not that ridiculous Facebook sensation. At the moment, the endgame in Borderlands 2 is centered on one thing in particular: farming. There are orange-colored Legendary weapons, armor, shields, grenades, and relics to be gotten, and the best -- nay, the only -- way to do that is to farm the enemies that drop these rare items until they're actually dropped.

• Borderlands 2 True Vault Hunter Mode Guide -- The End Was Only The Beginning

Equipping yourself with level 50 Legendaries serves two purposes: they'll help you prepare for the coming DLC releases and they'll also give you the tools you'll need to effectively squash the two big endgame boss creatures that can be found on Pandora. Read on for some farming tips that point you in the direction of some of the more useful Legendaries as well as individual boss strategies for the two invincible boss beasties.

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NBA 2K13 is all about My Player mode. As one of the best player simulators out there, it makes sense why 2K Sports put so much of their focus on My Player this year. But just because it’s good doesn’t mean it’s easy. So we put together a pile of tips to make sure your player is an all-star in no time.

Making the man

Right when you boot the game up, you’re directed to the player creator. This simply deals with aesthetics. However, after you finish this, select My Career from the main screen; this is where the real character editing takes place. As a rookie, you’re already at a disadvantage, but don’t fall for the temptation to choose “All-Around” for your play style. Instead, choose a certain skill set (shooting, passing, athleticism) instead.

Truthfully, the best and most fun skill set is shooting. Even though this may mean your player suffers in other areas such as his passing skills, these can be fixed later. It’s much better to excel in shooting and be able to earn more skill points quicker than it is to have a low rating for every other attribute. In this same vein, it’s good to expend points on one attribute and get it really high out of the gate. More on that later.

As far as the physical attributes of your character, this again is somewhere you want to make a hard commitment. If you want to be at an advantage under the rim, put your height up around 6’7” and your weight over 250 lbs. However, if you plan to be a quick player who can put a double move on someone and shoot mid-range shots, then a shorter, skinner player would be a better move. It all depends on your play style. I have a tall, skinny point guard who can move relatively quickly, but still shoot over shorter players. However, I often get bullied under the rim due to my smaller frame.

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Resident Evil 6 might have a few problems, but there's no denying that Capcom has served up a ton of content for players to sort through. Four campaigns, Mercenaries mode, the new Agent Hunt, and the usual assortment of progression-based unlocks designed to gradually reward players for repeat runthroughs.

Read on and be educated...

Taking The Pain Out Of Campaign

If you're new to Resident Evil, the first thing you should know: don't be afraid of the "Amateur" difficulty setting. The rewards are dialed down alongside the level of challenge, sure, but RE6 has a tendency to be a little user-unfriendly at times. It isn't great about communicating what needs to be done in certain situations, particularly during boss fights, and facing a lighter challenge during your initial runthrough can be incredibly helpful.

• Resident Evil 6 Beginner's Guide: Tips Straight From The Pros

Along those same lines, experiment with the way you tackle every situation since the game loves to throw every situation at you. One moment you're guiding a snowmobile down a mountain. The next you're sneaking past patrolling insects/zombie/monster-things in a stealth sequence. It can be a little jarring, and threatens to eventually veer off into frustrating territory.

So just relax. Embrace the Game Over screen. RE6 might be bad about telling you what needs to be done, but that old saying "hindsight is 20/20" rings true. You'll often see what you were doing wrong as soon as the You Are Dead screen appears. Take comfort in that and push forward.

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With zombies all around you and the world going to the undead dogs in Resident Evil 6, sometimes you need to turn to the experts. No, I’m not talking about Leon, Ada Wong, or any of the other cast of characters that have survived for decades under the oppressive shadow of the Umbrella Corporation. I’m taking about the real experts, the good men and women who know this world line by line.

Recently, we caught up with Yoshiaki Hirabayashi and Eiichiro Sasaki, the producer and director respectively of Resident Evil 6, about what it takes to survive the coming zombie apocalypse. Even if you happen to be a die-hard fan of the series or just someone picking up the pistol for the first time, these tips will get you through some of the new additions to the series as well as help you get going on your mission to take on the walking dead.

• Learn how to pull off a quick shot. Hit the ready weapon button and fire at the same time to shoot at the closest enemy to knock him off balance. Be careful though since using a quick shot takes up a little bit of your physical gauge.
• If you’re just starting out, you might want to invest in the Best Partner skill. If you happen to go down, the AI controlled partner will instantly feed you tablets. You should also invest in skills to reduce damage.
• Practice using the backwards dodge roll and shooting. Also work on your counters by attacking right before a physical attack hits.
• For newcomers of the game, check your route guide. You can turn it off in the options if you don’t think you’ll need it. Even with the guide off, you can simply hit the route guide button to get you back on track.

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Borderlands 2 brings back the previous game's new game-plus mode as True Vault Hunter Mode, amping up the difficulty with tougher enemies, more powerful loot, and larger stat figures all around.

The main game is hardly a cakewalk, but TVHM is designed to really kick your tail. Many of the basic tips laid out in our Borderlands 2 starter guide still apply, but the amped up difficulty can still come as a shock if you're not prepared for it. That's why I'm back to share a few more tips that ought to help as you take your first stumbling steps into True Vault Hunter Mode.

Borderlands 2 Beginner's Guide -- What You Need To Know Before You Pull The Trigger

Bigger, Better, More Badasses

The wide assortment of Borderlands 2 enemies can be boiled down into two basic categories: standard, run-of-the-mill jerks and Badass jerks. They all want to kill you, but the Badasses do so from a position of greater power, with more health, improved elemental resistance, and higher damage attacks for you to contend with.

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Runic Games' sequel to their highly beloved action-RPG makes no pretenses about what it wants. It wants to be your obsession. It wants you to furiously, feverishly trudge through every square inch of the sprawling landscape in a vain attempt to feed that desire for 'more'. More loot, more skill points, more levels, more quests, more everything.

Ultimately, Torchlight II is a game built around greed and incremental satisfaction. Though ostensibly a quest to save the world from evil, it's all really just a big excuse to build the biggest, baddest character ever.

Characters And Classes – Kill The Way You Want

Let's talk classes. In Torchlight II, you'll be able to choose between the Outlander, the Berserker, the Ember Mage and, my personal favorite, the deliciously steampunk-flavored Engineer, all of whom come with their own specialized set of strengths and abilities.

The Outlander is a long-range weaponry specialist armed with magical Glaives and a few eldritch tricks. His command of wizardry is certainly limited, but who needs grandiose displays when you can slow, cripple, poison, and summon Shadowlings from the broken corpses of the opposition?

The Berserker, as you might have guessed already, is a berserker. His skills are all centered around fists, fangs, interrupts, crits and sudden burst damage - anything that gives him a double-handed edge when up close and personal. Depending on which skills you invest in, you also find yourself wielding ice and lightning or playing pack leader to half-tangible wolves.

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There are lots of guns to be found on Pandora – a "gajillion bajillion" of them, if you're going by the marketing materials. While the reality is probably something more like, oh, an actual number, the sheer variety of attributes that your killing tools can possess in Borderlands 2 far outstrips the already-impressive assortment offered by its predecessor.

Gearbox Software made a big change to its arsenal for the just-released sequel: each manufacturer now has a fully developed personality, resulting in distinctive styles and, more importantly, gameplay-changing attributes for each piece of gear you collect. You'll no doubt realize this as you explore the world of Pandora and collect its generous helpings of lethal loot, but we figured it would be helpful to lay out the basics of the Borderlands 2 arms race in a single place.

Do you appreciate the hair-trigger semi-automatic fire of a Jakobs revolver or do you prefer the clean futuretech look and feel of Hyperion's aim-assisted pistols? We're here to help you decide.

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Welcome Vault Hunters! The time has come for you yet again to dip your toe into the wilds of Pandora to get your hands on the mysterious vault that has only become a big prize than before. Borderlands 2 throws more action, more comedy, and – if you can believe it – more guns at the new recruits looking to take on the wastelands.

But you don’t have to go unprepared into this new world of danger and massive boss battles. We have gathered up all the Intel you will need to take on the world – or at least Handsome Jack who will throw everything at you and your team to stop them from reaching the vault.

Borderlands 2 Beginner's Guide -- What You Need To Know Before You Pull The Trigger– We cover all of the new enemies and rewards you need to know about before you put a finger on this game.

Borderlands 2 "Boss Fight: Captain Flynt" Walkthrough Video – You might be a tough guy, but you might need a little help when if comes to facing off with the Captain. Check out this video to make it easier than ever.

X-Play Goes Hands-On With Borderlands 2 -- Randy Pitchford Reveals Everything That You Need To Know – The manwho made “claptrap” a household word hits the X-Play stage to tell you everything you need to know about Borderlands 2.

Hit the jump to get your full dose of Borderlands 2 information overload.

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Whether you're a veteran of 100+ hours in Borderlands or you're totally new to the world of Pandora, you're going to want to prepare for Gearbox Software's latest adventure. Borderlands 2 presents a much harsher existence for the now-hunted Vault Hunters, and for all the bajillions of new guns that you can play with, there is also a wide assortment of bigger and nastier baddies to shoot them at.

• Video: Offical Launch Trailer for Borderlands 2

I'm a veteran of the first game, with more than 100 hours logged overall with three of the four characters (sorry, Brick!), and I've also put more than 80 in on the latest for my Borderlands 2 review. I'm here today to share the benefit of those experiences and hopefully get you ready for your own first steps in the sequel's new and improved Pandora.

Choices, Choices

Your first act in Borderlands 2 involves selecting a character to play as. Choose carefully, since you'll be spending tens of hours with whomever you pick. Gearbox Software has the best resource available to help you make your choice: a skill calculator for each of the four playable characters, accessible from the official Borderlands 2 website. Take a look at what each character can do and how they develop to help you figure out which you'd want to play.

• Borderlands 2 Commando Guide -- Axton Brings Out The Big Guns

I've found that Axton, the Commando, is a great choice for those who expect to spend some or all of their initial playthough in solo play. His deployable turret amounts to one of gaming's greatest "oh sh*t" buttons, drawing all enemy aggro away long enough for you to slip away, even when you first unlock it at level 5. The same goes for Zer0 and his ability to turn invisible while he draws enemies to a hologram of himself.

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Much like Roland in the original, Axton brings a deployable turret to the fight, but his skill trees let you develop him in a couple different ways. While Maya and Zer0 may be best built striking quickly then moving, Axton and Salvador are both built to be right on the front line, and their abilities help there.

Let’s take a look at Axton's skill trees - Guerilla, Gunpowder and Survival. After that, I'll provide some ideas on how you should build him.

• Borderlands 2 Gunzerker Guide -- Salvador Proves That Good Things Come In Small Packages

Axton's Action Skill - Sabre Turret. Axton's turret has a full 360-degree rotation, and the ability to add rockets, multiple turrets, and other upgrades that will make your turret almost as good as a fifth party member. Not only will enemies also attack the turret, they'll be taking damage from it, which can give you a moment's pause to heal, reload or whatever else needs doing. The one major downside is that the turret has a pretty long cooldown, 48 seconds.

To make the turret even stronger, take a look at the skills from his three trees - Guerilla, Gunpowder and Survival.

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Borderlands 2's Assassin, Zer0 offers a little different playstyle than Mordecai did in the original game. Using his Deception Action Skill, Zer0 tosses out a holgraphic decoy then turns invisible, allowing for some major sneak attacks or to get away from a bad situation. In your four-player party, Zer0 is definitely going to be your stealth and sniper character in Borderlands 2. Plus, he has a badass sword. How can you go wrong with that?

Let's look through Zer0's three Skill Trees - Sniping, Cunning and Bloodshed. Then after that, I'll offer up how I think Zer0 should be built for maximum effectiveness.

• Borderlands 2 Siren Guide: Maya Learns To Play With Fire

Zer0's Action Skill: Decepti0n - With Zer0's Action Skill, he tosses out a holographic decoy of himself, then turns himself invisible. While he's invisible, his next attack will do extra damage. Just be careful around explosions since he's still able to take damage while invisible. Decepti0n has a unique way of handling the damage boost, as well as the cooldown - the longer you're cloaked, the more damage you'll do; but the shorter you cloak, the shorter the cooldown. The base cooldown on Decepti0n is 15 seconds, and the initial damage boosts are +650% Melee Damage or +200% Gun Damage and +250% Gun Critical Hit Damage.

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The newly released Battlefield 3 DLC, Armored Kill, aims to give the fans what they want: heavy metal machines of war and sprawling, open maps to blow them up on. In a lot of ways, the new pack is just as singularly focused as the previous Close Quarters DLC was, it's just set on a much larger scale. What this means is that you'll need to employ some DLC-specific strategies or you're just going to get yourself blown up. A lot. All over the place. It won't be pretty.

Fortunately, you can read on to learn from my own mistakes and better prepare yourself for the challenges that await in all of that delicious Battlefield 3: Armored Kill content...

The Basics

In order to understand how to best approach Armored Kill it's important to first get a handle on exactly what it is. At its core, the DLC pack adds four new multiplayer maps, one new mode, and an assortment of new land and air vehicles to the game, as well as a series of unlocks for each of those vehicles. If there's one keyword that can be used to sum up this content pack, it's "big."

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Borderlands 2's resident Tank Salvador takes the Berzerker role from the original and kicks it up a notch by adding Dual-Wielding weapons. The new game follows a similar skill progression system to the original, with three different skill trees, each focused on building a different aspect of your character.

Most of the individual skills have multiple levels that stack the improvements if you take the skill multiple times. Underneath the Gunzerker Action Skill, Salvador has the Gun Lust, Rampage, and Brawn skill trees.

To make sure you get the most out of Salvador's Gunzerking power, use these pointers to help you build a better berserker in Borderlands 2.

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The Borderlands 2 Siren classes offer one of the most unique player characters out there today.

Maya brings a little bit different skills to the table than her predecessor Lilith did, but provides a somewhat similar role. Our new siren in Borderlands 2 brings the Phaselock skill to battle, which lets her freeze enemies in place and makes them easy targets for your team to focus. Make proper use of her abilities using skills from her three trees - Motion, Harmony and Cataclysm - and she'll be your crowd control expert in no time.

We're here to walk you through Maya's skill tree and help you create the most powerful Siren on Pandora.

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Guild Wars 2 offers all types of experiences and with this structured player versus player (sPvP) beginner's guide, you'll learn about the most competitive side of the game. In sPvP, players compete in different multiplayer battlegrounds. Players are automatically set to level 80 and get access to every trait, skill, and weapon so that everyone is on an even playing field. This allows sPvP to emphasize skill rather than gear and the time invested in a character.

• GUIDE: Guild Wars 2 Guide -- Your Guide To Our Guides

As soon as you finish your tutorial mission you can begin sPvPing. To do so, press "H" to bring up your character screen and press the PvP tab. Select "Enter the Mists" and you'll be brought to the PvP waiting area. The Mists is full of sPvP vendors with different weapons that you can purchase free of charge to bring in to battle with you. Since Guild Wars 2's combat is all about weapon switching, it's important to go in to battle with the right equipment.

Keep in mind that you won't earn any experience for your sPvP efforts, only glory, which can be used to purchase amazing looking cosmetic gear for use only in structured PvP, and rank, which determines the type of items you can purchase from Glory Vendors.

Once you've spoken to the Glory Vendors and equipped yourself and selected the traits and skills you want to bring in to battle with you, there are two ways to join sPvP: Hot Join Play and Tournaments.

To learn more about Guild Wars 2 structured PvP, check after the break.

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