Much as 2011 was a year of sequels, some of the most anticipated games of 2012 look to be continuations on existing franchises. One of these titles came from one of the sleeper hits of 2009 called Borderlands, from Gearbox.

In Borderlands, players got the choice between one of four classes of characters and could play through the world by themselves or with up to three friends cooperatively online in an apocalyptic world with a cell shaded comic book art style. The game came from out of no where and would spawn its own community and garnered loads of DLC as well.

Coming in 2012, Borderlands 2 features new classes including the already famous gunzerker, new locations and new challenges. The four original characters from Borderlands are said to be returning nonplayable characters and favorites like Clap Trap will make appearances as well. This time, a man by the name of Handsome Jack claims responsibility for the deeds of the vault hunters from the first game and has used it to gain control of the Hyperion Corporation and has taken a strong hold on the world of Pandora and now is trying to expand his power.

The game will continue Borderlands’ FPS RPG style featuring quest lines, leveling up and loot drops all using the modified Unreal Engine 3 to power it. Take a peek below at the teaser trailer from the team at Gearbox for Borderlands 2, coming to the XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in July 2012.

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It’s that time of year again when we all gather together to see our loved ones… that’s right. The Con season has begun. Whether it’s SXSW, Toy Fair, C2E2 or Comic Con in San Diego, if you are a reader (or writer) of the Flickcast, it’s likely you are going to end up at least one, if not all, of the Cons this season. Our first one up on the east coast is Toy Fair. Now while Toy Fair isn’t open to the general public, we made sure to get in and get a peek at some of the hottest new toys of the season.

We got to take a peek at the new models for the Walking Dead action figures alongside our friends from MTV Splashpage as the legendary Todd McFarlane himself explained how the zombie bodies will literally explode in the customer’s hands. We can’t wait to see the final versions in action.

There was a plethora of Green Lantern merchandise that we were unfortunately unable to snag pictures of as well as the brand new Thundercats line which is coming out soon. We were able to sneak a few pictures though of some of the Mezco Green Lantern products though.

The video game world was represented strong with Sonic The Hedgehog, Halo, Deus Ex, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy and Little Big Planet. Activision also announced to the world Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure for the Wii where toys and video games come together in a very interesting new way. Check back later this week for a full post including video of the product in action.

Check out all of our pics from Toy Fair below and keep checking back this week for more from the show (including an appearance on this week’s podcast discussing it with Matt and Chris)!

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Late last week, the NPD Group who is in charge of tracking, compiling and interpreting sales numbers for the video game industry released their console and game sales figures for the month of October with some surprising results. These numbers do not include Walmart sales or digital distribution of games. Let’s take a look.

Console Sales

1. Nintendo Wii: 506,900 (up from 462,800)

2. Nintendo DS: 457,600 (down from 524,200, includes all Nintendo DS SKU’s and Nintendo DSi)

3. Playstation 3: 320,600 (down from 491,800)

4. XBox 360: 249,700 (down from 352,600)

5. PSP: 174,600 (up from 146,000, includes all PSP SKU’s and PSP Go)

6. Playstation 2: 117,800 (down from 146,000)

So what does this mean for the video game industry? A few things. Nintendo takes back their top non-portable spot after losing it last month to the price reduced Playstation 3. Back over the half million a month mark, the Nintendo Wii price reduction to $199 had been a long time coming and has shown it was enough of a stimulus to even beat out the Nintendo DS as the top selling console of the month. While Sony made a huge campaign out of their price drop back in September, Nintendo has been more subtle about theirs, only posting in circulars instead of the TV adds Sony has used to attempt to make up ground.

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