So I borrowed Borderlands from a friend a few days ago, having played the first 20 levels or so with him sporadically when it came out in splitscreen, and got about 10 levels into it in two days. It's fun and the shooting has a sorta open ended thing going for it which I've enjoying, though I'm getting the impression that the guns, despite their procedural nature, aren't quite diverse enough to really bring the game alive like say, Bioshock 2's Plasmids do, which makes it seem hard to think that the game is solid enough to last the time it suggests it does. That said I am enjoying it for the time being, and the Coop was always solid, so presuming that someone on my friend's list doesn't mind playing with a level 10 with no DLC, which happened the first time I popped it in, it should continue to be fun. 
 
That said, I'm really annoyed by the way it controls. Not strictly in terms of sensitivity, that's something that I adjusted to quickly, but in terms of button mapping. Basically after playing probably around 30 hours of Bioshock 2 offline and online, I was used to those controls and as such even today I'm constantly hitting the wrong button. Jumping when I mean to pick something up, switching weapons when I mean to jump, throwing a grenade when I mean to switch weapons. I guess it's more a problem with myself than with the game, being accustomed to another game's unchangeable control scheme, but that doesn't stop it from being annoying, and thus its problem. It doesn't help that I sorta feel like I don't like a lot of the choices in its controls from the start. Sure, it offered some alternatives, but they didn't really seem any better, and given that one of them maps shooting to a bumper, I'd guess they' weren't being serious with those schemes. 
 
I'm interested in what Perfect Dark's Live Arcade release is trying, making control mappings according to matching FPS controls, such as the Spartan control scheme and the Duty Calls control scheme, which seems to go a little farther to address the reason people actually want alternate control schemes, to resist change. I really hope they've throw in more thinly veiled control schemes, namely a Bioshock 2 based one called "Little Fish". I don't expect all the functions of Perfect Dark to have perfect parallels to Bioshock's functions, but then it's simple stuff like Weapon Selection, Reloading, and using I'm looking for, which is the sort of thing they implied the schemes were for, so it should be good. 

Nintendo seem to have just hit their press event where they get a little less vague about their 3 big announced games of this year and show off a bunch of stuff that's either dumb, or too late. For example they made a point that DSiware will be become a games service, as opposed to a venue for clocks with photos. Only it took them a year, and they still got the issue that I don't see myself running out to the store to buy a new version of a system I play 2 games a year on tops. And no, a bigger one doesn't help. Another thing that's stupidly late is Warioware: Do it Yourself. I don't think you're allowed to have any mystery about a game that came out in Japan a solid year ago, so announcing its coming out does little to excite me, rather made me wonder if I was right in thinking it was an April 09 game for Japan. 
  
Other than that, there were a few trailers for games that are actually of note, and I suppose they look okay. Can't say I really learned anything about the games in question, but makes me want them a bit more. Say what you will about the informative, interesting, 6 months in advance developer diary approach, the vague ass trailer has a way of getting into your head. A part of me makes me want to pass up Galaxy 2 on principle then, in favor of a game that had the decency to try to get me involved by awesome gameplay and developer diaries for months and months, but I sorta think I won't be able to. Pokemon though I'm definitely taking a pass on. As much as I'd love to play through Johto again, there are more better games to buy out there. 
 
Metroid though looks a bit crap honestly. When looking at the article and drowsily reading the first passage I said to myself "Wait, is this like Shadow Complex? Some 2.5D Action? I could be into that." And then I read on and found that its a story driven metroid game with weird 3D controls and automatic fighting. I sorta wonder if it'll have a focus of exploration what with the solid story they're shoving into the series, but I'm pretty sure I don't care either way. The things they've done to the gameplay just sound bad to me for some reason, and I sorta don't want anything more to do with them.

So I've played through the Single Player twice (one on Normal, once on easy with no Vita Chambers), and gotten to the 21st Rank in the multiplayer, so I thought I'd summarize how I feel about the game. 

It's hard to say whether or not Bioshock 2 is better than its predecessor as what one does right the other does wrong. I really enjoyed Bioshock 1 back in the day, finding its audiotapes fascinating, its world brilliant, but then it's gameplay was nothing special. Bioshock 2 I also really enjoyed, but because of the faster more punchy action, the big improvements of the Hacking and Research Camera which make them a lot more compelling, the little improvement of the Tonic system, but then a sort of straight forward plot with just enough interesting audiotapes to keep it good.  
 
  Really though, I feel that the Bioshock series has a lot going for it, as its structure of putting you in what is essentially a miniature sandbox with one or two objectives and bunch of little things to do allows it to have a lot of areas which are designed for action and meaningful exploration, while allowing you the freedoms of an open world game, which is something that other shooters don't have. I've mentioned before (in this list for instance) that I consider collectathons such as the Banjos or DK64, to be closer to the Open World game then they are to the 2D Platformer, suggesting the term "Concentrated Open World Game (With Platforming Elements.)"  I think that Bioshock 1 and 2 could be considered Concentrated Open World Games with shooting.  Really though, the strength of a sandbox comes from the amount of variety in the tasks, which are primarily doing the Main Objectives, collecting audiotapes and hitting up Power to the People Stations, dealing with Little Sisters, and shooting a ton of splicers all around. It's the strength of the last two which really put this game above the first, as for a start killing dudes is a lot more fun, so it becomes a joy to run across a Spoicer when roaming Rapture, and guarding the sister allows for a great twist of the usual gameplay, making you hold ground as hoards converge on you and your little sister. In the end, I think the gameplay story blend of the Bioshock 2 is better suited to take advantage of the miniature sandbox approach to level design they got going, meaning that when I want to play a Bioshock game, I'm going to replay the second because it's a better game.  

The problem I had with the story was that it just felt shorter than the first one by far. Whether it really was is hard to say, as I sorta think that Bioshock 1 was just a lot smarter with pacing its story, and a lot more clever about it. The root of the problem is that the third act of Bioshock 1 was a surprise. Leading up to the death of Andrew Ryan, I thought for sure that the game was wrapping up, and the death of Ryan might as well be where Bioshock ends. But it didn't, instead plowing on for 4 or 5 more areas with a new sense of determination. It allowed us to form an expectation as to when it would end so that it could break that expectation. Bioshock 2 didn't do this so much, and it felt like it didn't have that extra push the first one did. Playing it, I also found the fact that half the primary missions centered around opening or clearing train station doors a bit dumb, but then I thought about how many times Bioshock 1 did the same thing with Bathyspheres and decided it was fine.
   
To me though, the weakest part of Bioshock 2 by far is the multiplayer. The main problem is that it feels more like a bad Bioshock Multiplayer mod for some random online FPS than it does an extension of Bioshock 2. I mean, optimally one should finish the single player, and roll into the multiplayer feeling confident with the gameplay. This is not true of Bioshock 2, as even at a basic mechanical level the way aiming handles is completely different from multiplayer to single player, the guns feel a lot less powerful, hacking is done by holding down a button, health regenerates, and we're back to either using weapons or plasmids, which becomes terribly annoying when you go to reload. I suppose there have been rounds where I have a lot of fun, but still. The worst thing I could say about it is that when faced with a choice between playing the single player again and playing some of the multiplayer, I choose to replay the single player all the way through, as I could get more variety and action out of the game doing that.

Finished Splosion man, it's too fucking hard. If I were to rate the first 20, 30 levels alone I'd probably give it a 4 or a 5, but the back half is so unreasonabley hard, and pays no attention to flow, and as a straight foward platformer whos only virtue is that every jump's trajectory is thoughtfully done right such that it can be hit in a perfect run, enemies that hold you up until you bat back 10 projectiles and a difficulty which can have you do the same 20 second stretch for 10 minutes break flow far too often. I really enjoyed level 1-12, but everythings downhill from there, levels become less open ended, free spirited and just plain fun and become exorcises in controller snapping frustration. I'd call it a 2/5, but thats because I'm biased from just having played the last world. The game works well when it's not too hard, and the multis a lot of fun, though timing puzzles based around 4 people and sploding off one another breaks with the presence of lag which seems to fuck up any game, and even moving platforms can be fucked by lag, resulting in platforms in two different places for different people, even after they stop moving, which is not how you build a multiplayer game dependant of coordination on Live. The game feels fun, but at the same time much of it is simply broken. I'd recommend it, but if you value your controllers you should probably stop around world 2. 4/5 
 
(This review was copy and pasted from twitter, hence why it is a wall of text.)

The Half-Blood Prince Quick Look and the demo of Order of the Phoenix I found on Live Marketplace both seem to be all kinds of terrible. In terms of gameplay they look bland, and fail to capitalize on the fun that might be had being a powerfull wizard in Harry Potter's universe. First off, for gameplay, a rail flier and a potions mixer are two of the worst ideas ever. There must be ways to make it fun, perhaps you have to guide the ingrediants from one side of the bowl to the other, Viva Pinata Style, and after they touch the bowl churns a bit and more ingrediants are poured in quick. That might be no fun as well, but it'd be gameplay.