"The art style...is the glue to everything," Gearbox's Mikey Neumann explains above the gentle hum of a crowded meeting room during E3. "It allows us to embrace what our game actually is, and man, when we had that epiphany, when it all came together, we were like, 'shit man, that's what this game is, this game is about having fun.'"

Neumann, whose job title today is "a guy who can get you things," is talking about the radical change that the studio's shooter-RPG Borderlands recently underwent, shifting from a gritty realistic aesthetic to something a bit more... stylized. Read more »

As a platformer, 'Splosion Man (XBLA) is a blood relative of Sonic the Hedgehog. But as a relative, 'Splosion Man is the freakish uncle that your mother never let you talk to.

Running about levels, the 'Splosion Man fans out his arms into an airplane. He drops his jaw, and lowers his arms like a neandrathal, and moans like an idiot. And then he explodes.

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