Borderlands patched on 360, PS3

After years of anticipation marred by delays, the "role-playing shooter" Borderlands shipped out for consoles on October 20, with the PC version arriving this past Tuesday. But while both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions received high marks from critics, players of both reported numerous bugs. While most were minor, the PS3 version of the game had persistent friends-list issues, which were part of the reason it was rated slightly lower than the 360 edition by GameSpot.

As it was dealing with reported Borderlands inventory shortages at retailers, Gearbox was also readying the first comprehensive patches for the game. Today, major updates for both the PS3 and 360 versions arrived and will be automatically installed the next time anyone with an unpatched version of the game plays it on Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network.

GameSpot editors downloaded the PS3 patch to see if it resolved the friends-list issues. While the 53MB patch now lets players join others' ongoing games without any issues (before, it often locked up), some issues remain with seeing whether friends not playing Borderlands are currently online.

A full list of the issues addressed by the patches can be seen below. Gearbox is also compiling all known Borderlands problems on its forums, along with updates on the status of their respective fixes. They range from the minor (digital audio skips or stutters) to the character-crippling (weapon proficiencies disappear upon leaving a co-op game).

PS3 PATCH NOTES:
*Load times have been improved
*Lilith's Phase Strike ability now works as intended
*The introductory quests with CL4P-TP should now always progress properly
*Fixed a bug that caused the digger elevator to be unusable after completing the Find Tannis mission
*Weapon mapping to the D-pad should no longer reverse left and right
*Fixed a crash when ejecting the disc during the autosave warning splash screen
*Players in a lobby should no longer experience long loading when starting a game after one player leaves
*A bug which caused players and other things in the world to appear incorrectly on clients in networked games has been fixed
*Fixed a bug in which players gibbed in arena combat disappeared
*Changed how space required for saves is calculated
*Fixed a bug which caused the dollars counter to spin continuously
*Various localization and other text and tooltip corrections

XBOX 360 PATCH NOTES:
*Fixed a bug which caused players and other things in the world to appear incorrectly on clients in networked games
*Fixed a bug in which players gibbed in arena combat disappeared
*Fixed a bug which caused the dollars counter to spin continuously
*Fixed a bug that caused the digger elevator to be unusable after completing the Find Tannis mission
*Weapon mapping to the D-pad should no longer reverse left and right
*Various localization and other text and tooltip corrections
*The introductory quests with CL4P-TP should now always progress properly all the time
*Lilith's Phase Strike ability now works as intended
*Load times have been improved