Well, I feel like my blog page shouldn't be empty any longer so it is time for my inaugural blog here on Giant Bomb.
 
Well, I'll start this off by saying that I started playing Bioshock and got about 2 hours or so into it and I must say that I don't really like it that much.  I had heard so many good things about it and I really wanted to play it.   A friend of mine let me borrow it and I started playing pretty much right away.  I really tried to enjoy it but I just couldn't.  My reasons for not liking it include the Vita-Chambers and the non-immersive story and atmosphere.  They seem to me to be a cop-out by the developers in that they are saying that they think their game is too hard so why punish the player.  Now, I think the developer should help a player out with some stuff but allowing you to use the wrench to kill a Big Daddy with no real consequences just doesn't do it for me.  I really also didn't sense the atmosphere that everyone raved about when it came out and how it was such an immersive game.  When I talked with my friend about this, he really couldn't understand how I wasn't sucked in by the story.  I told him that it was so slow and I was not impressed with the story to that point that I just stopped playing.  He said that the story got great about halfway through, but I can't play a game halfway through just to get to the good part of the story.  That doesn't work for me.  The only games that I give a pass on for not hooking me within the first few hours are RPGs because they take time to build up to the main story, such as Persona 4, KOTOR, Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts etc...  
 
After I stopped playing Bioshock, I decided to play through GTA 4 again in order to prepare myself for when The Ballad of Gay Tony comes out.  I am just onto Bohan right now and about to do the first Elizabeta mission and I am still blown away by how great the story is in this game and how truly immersive the world is.  It seems like this game is the exact opposite of Bioshock in that it grabs you and doesn't let go for one second.  After I finish the main story, I'm going to play through The Lost and Damned.
 
In terms of games that are actually new, I have played through Batman: Arkham Asylum twice, once on normal and once on hard, and I must say it is the best superhero game of them all.  It was truly a treat to hear Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reprise their roles as The Joker and Batman.  The story that Paul Dini came up with was also brilliant and it was such a treat for me, since I am a huge fan of the cartoon series.  I really also love how the Freeflow combat works because it is one of the most simple to use yet difficult to master concepts in a game in the recent past.  This game will probably get lost in the shuffle for Game of the Year with Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3 ODST and Assassin's Creed 2 to name a few coming out, but it is my Game of the Year to this point.
 
For games that are coming out later this year, I am really getting pumped for Brutal Legend and I will probably be getting it day one.  The next week, Borderlands comes out and I'm definitely going to get it day one because it looks like an awesome game and I really like the look of it because it's so different from what has been put out. The amount of craziness that the four player co-op could turn out to be is really intriguing to me and I love how they have all the RPG stuff, like damage done, just pop up.  Also, Randy Pitchford is one of the coolest developers out there and he really seems like a pretty cool guy and the same goes for Tim Schafer.  Both of those guys seem to be pretty personable and they also really love their game and that is a big reason why I am excited about their games.
 
The other games that I will be getting day one are the no brainers of Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed 2.  I really like the multiplayer stuff they have put out for Modern Warfare 2 and it seems like it will be even better than Modern Warfare's.  I do want to learn more about the single player but I don't think Infinity Ward is going to let much more of that out of the bag which is too bad because the story sounds like it will be just as gripping as the original's, just by going off of the E3 demo.  For AC2, I am really pumped for this game and all that I have seen about it is very promising and I can't wait to actually play it and not just watch videos of dudes playing it.  I really hope that they are doing what they say they are doing by diversifying the game more from the original, which I felt was the only real big problem that the first game had.
 
Giant Bomb itself has been on a roll lately with all of the stuff they have been doing, from the PAX panel, to all the video content from PAX, to the most recent Bombcast, which featured a question sent in by myself, on which franchise is better, Die Hard or Lethal Weapon.