4Gamer has some coverage about the upcoming Virtual On Force, as on release both the standard and memorial box versions will come packaged with a special promotional code for Border Break Air Burst. This will allow Border Break players to gain access to a new a paint scheme for their blast runner, one that is unobtainable within the game normally. Not wishing to miss a trick, players that are only subscribed to the monthly paid Border Break.NET service will be able to use the new paint scheme. There was also a cool press conference for Air Burst about a week ago, where they showed the new game off quite nicely (the video is here in case you’re curious).

Following on from this Game Watch also had some interesting coverage regarding the new training mode in the 360 port of Force. It’s partly based on the one seen in Oratan but will have a great emphasis on structured training levels for novice players (as Oratan’s setup was much more open ended by comparison). What’s also very curious is how the game will handle the various VR types from the arcade, as these were triggered off ranking via the card system. The unfortunate follow-on of this was that often the better performing players received a wider array of VR’s to choose from, leaving the novices to struggle with the default versions. Whether this system has been carried over to the online element in the 360 port still isn’t known but from the description it seems that VR’s are awarded in the new “Mission Mode” now. The latter worries us slightly, as that would make this port of Force a bit too close to Marz for our liking. That said, the Missions also feed into how much you can upgrade your wingman AI – so that could be interesting at least. Finally, the article mentions a graphical option that renders the game with various HDR effects, such as bloom and some specular elements on the surface of the VR. We saw these on the TGS demo we played and they did look nice. The fact they are optional is pretty nifty though (as that very much appeals to our purist tendencies).