Gearbox say that they'll be using Valve's stat-tracking set of Steamworks tools to support Borderlands 2. As players, that means we get the traditional raft of associated features, like "Steam Achievements, downloadable content, auto-updating, multiplayer matchmaking" and Steam cloud support. The "multiplayer matchmaking" part of all that hopefully means Borderlands 2 won't use Gamespy this time around. This is potentially very good news for anyone who found it an absolute pain to get into online sessions for the first game. The less services we have to sign into to get into multiplayer, the better things tend to work.

Borderlands 2 will be out in the US on September 18 and the UK on September 21, dates that will prove hard to erase once the latest Borderlands 2 trailer has scorched them into your brain in a blaze of screaming electronica and hyper-violence. It will also have "bazziliondier guns," and not many games can make that claim.