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And here it is, part 2 of the 3 part series Knight Carver is kindly putting together for TGV. He's scoured the web for Bioshock 2 merchandise and taped it all together for your viewing enjoyment. Stay tuned for the final part next week where KC tells us all - has Bioshock 2 lived up to the hype? Wait and see...

So, you like Bioshock huh? Check out the Rapture-themed goodies below and share with us in our forums, the things you have, want, or need.

Read more: Bioshock 2 - All Things Rapture

As most of you know, Bioshock 2 hit our consoles last week and to celebrate TGV's own Bioshock 2 expert Knight Carver has put together a 3 part series on 2K's latest masterpiece. Part 1 goes indepth on the game's extensive Viral Marketing campaign that many of us spent hours clicking over to uncover further tidbits unknown to many others. Enjoy! ~DA

If there’s one thing that really impressed me, it’s the way in which 2K went about keeping fans intrigued and interested in the lead up to Bioshock 2.

Read more: Bioshock 2 - Viral Marketing 101

This past Tuesday, our very own Anchorman Mazda had the chance to attend Robbie Bach's talk in Sydney. Looks like our fears were put to rest, Microsoft do especially understand the need for a controller input for their consoles on top of a "controllerless" format like the upcoming Project NATAL. Anyway I've given enough away - get into it!

http://www.thegamevine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1853

Anchorman Mazda writes: "Technology is an amazing thing. Over the past two decades we’ve seen so many innovations in the way we go about our lives and in the manner which the world works that’s its staggering to contemplate just how far we’ve come. But that aside, we are only scraping the surface of what’s achievable. So, when Microsoft was hosting a conference with lead speaker Robbie Bach (President of Entertainment and Devices) about what ideas and plans the technology giant had in store for us in the near and distant future, it was difficult to turn the opportunity down."

January has passed. Heres my miniguide on whats hot and whats not:

Whats hot:

Whats not so hot:

Dark Void: I probably dont have to explain this one but I did try it on pc. What has happened to you capcom. TPS which is very very bland. As average as a game gets. 4/10.

Games on the horizon:

feb 2: White Knight Chronicles
feb 9 :bioshock 2.
heavy rain, phoenix wright feb 20
Sometime in Feb: Dante's Inferno, AVP.

Some of you have had the chance to play, you've most likely held many a firearm both big and small. Thanks to 2K and Gearbox you've got your gun on big time but there are some who have not. "Borderlands?" they ask you, "What is Borderlands?". Well now this is your chance to find out!

Thanks to 2K you have the chance to win your very own copy of Borderlands for the Xbox 360 as well as a very stylish Borderlands t-shirt! Not only that, but we've also got 3 more t-shirts to giveaway to 3 very lucky runners up in this competition.

"How do I win how HOW?!" you ask? Easy. We want you to design a gun. Not just any gun though, we want to see the very weapon of your dreams. Full-automatic, highly accurate sniper rifle with ammo drum and grenade launcher? Then do it. Gold plated scope with platinum trigger and maple butt? Whatever you want. Just design your weapon using whatever means necessary and get back to us by Friday 13th (ooooh) of November for your chance to win.

We're looking at creativity, lethality and of course - genuine craftsmanship. Once you've completed your masterpiece email it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with "Borderlands Competition" as the subject and your weapon attached. Competition closes at midday Friday 13th November. Get cracking!

Feel free to post up your weapons here, even if it's just to show off...

(T&C - Only open to Australian Residents)

Between enthusiastic CEOs and teaser trailers, Borderlands claims to be all that and more - millions of weapons, a blend of genres, skill based criticals, class customization, and quests a plenty. Does it deliver? Certainly it delivers in being a whole lot of fun.

The co-operative side of Borderlands is definitely an enticing claim - the ability to join, drop out as you like. After acquainting myself with the games basic mechanics, controls and what-not, I was ushered over to the consoles engaging in cooperative play. I took the role of the Soldier Roland seemingly the token black guy.

During the co-op game we were boosted to level 20 giving us a chance to try out the 'ability trees', which were basically a dumbed down version of World of Warcraft talent-trees. At the top, is a compulsory ability unique to the class - for example, the Soldier's ability is to drop a temporary turret. Underneath this, it splits into three specializations - one of the Soldier's was 'Medic' focusing on the Soldier playing a support role, using his deployable turret to provide extra advantages for his buddies like health regeneration in an area around the turret.

Disappointing is the fact that every class has only one ability. The 'tech trees' serve to boost this one ability and also passively boost the character through attributes like health, accuracy, weapon skill and the like. Everything about the game that is 'classic RPG' seems to have been ultra-simplified - the said ability trees, one ability per class, lack of customization - and fans of RPGs may be disappointed by the simple approach.

The particular scenario we were dropped into was perhaps one of the least spectacular available in Borderlands - this was basically glorified mining of nondescript yet inherently powerful crystals. Of course, the cave bearing the crystals is infested with crab worms, skags and bandits. The mission was tedious at best, and perhaps the worst development was that the cave led to very little in terms of both loot and enemy encounters.

I was able to get another play-through of the cooperative mission, this time as Brick. Brick is all about big weapons - rocket launchers and shotguns primarily. His unique ability sends him into a melee frenzy, allowing him to charge into battle and pulverize his enemies with a combination of jabs and uppercuts. Brick's specializations seem to focus on using heavy ordnance, melee brawling and damage mitigation. Brawling with your fists seemed to be the most fun you could have with Brick, perhaps because the weapons we were given for the mission were less than fantastic.

Having played two of the available four classes already, I figured I'd continue and moved on to Mordecai, the Hunter. Mordecai is your classic bad-ass reclusive dude with a sniper. Oh, and a domesticated bat-bird hybrid. The pet was a okay ability, but it seemed to not last long compared to how long the ability took to temporary available again. The class was fun, but the ability doesn't add a lot of dynamic - the bird flys in and swoops things autonomously leaving you to play the game as a sniper as in any other FPS, which may actually appeal to some players, but not this one.

The final class was Lilith the Siren, who I was able to play for but a few moments. Lilith's ability was the drop out of phase, go invisible, stealth, whatever suits you best and move at fast speeds towards enemies, gaining attack bonuses on her next strike. Lilith uses SMGs and pistols mainly, but I never got a chance to see the specializations available to her.

At the end of the missions, the cooperative play generally descended into a bunch of duels. Duels are started between players by meleeing each other - one player will demand satisfaction by hitting another player, and they can accept by hitting them back. While an interesting idea, the duels were less than balanced, the general outcome being whomever had their ability available won. While playing Mordecai, I was able to merely release my freaky bat-bird and it would take down the enemy in one fell swoop.

And on that terrible pun, I conclude my preview of Borderlands. If you can play this game in co-op, it will be well worth a shot, and with DLC just around the corner from release, it will be interesting to see what new mechanics and content is introduced.

 

We were recently lucky enough to get the chance to sit down for a chat with Randy Pitchford the CEO of Gearbox, the creators of the Brothers in Arms series, and the upcoming Borderlands.

 

Read more: TGV Interviews Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software

“There are more guns in borderlands than in every game launched on the 360, and every game launched on the ps3. There are literally over 16 million guns in borderlands,” Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox, boasted.  It’s a hard claim to swallow. If I was to borrow a numerical system, I'd say that's ten shit-loads of guns. I know when I originally heard this outlandish claim I just assumed they meant ten or so, then a stack of slightly different colored guns. After spending a good portion of the day sinking my teeth into the insane world of Pandora, I can say I personally encountered 9 pistols, and that was just the pistols. I saw stacks of shotguns, flocks of sniper rifles, gaggles of SMGS, and fleets of assault rifles.

So we have established there is a large amount of guns, but what the hell is it about? Well I doubt that narrative is going to be one of this game’s strengths, but this is the story of the four playable characters who are treasure hunters, searching for a vault supposedly full of alien technology. A simple premise, but one that seems to mostly just serve as the backdrop for intense fast paced action.

Our preview began with the aforementioned CEO showing us some missions about halfway through the game. One player took the reins of Brick, the large Beserker, and for all intensive purposes the tank of the Borderlands universe. The 2nd player jumped in as Lilith the Siren who I guess is the rogue of the Borderlands universe. Brick can charge into combat and use his fists to smack enemies about, as well as soaking up a considerable amount of damage. Lilith can become invisible and move really fast. So with their characters selected they jumped into a vehicle and set off into the sunset. As they traveled towards their objectives several bandits zoomed towards them in vehicles and created a Mad Max style road battle. This game is heavily influenced by Mad Max, and that’s something you will notice a lot.

The quests we saw were mainly head to way point, kill someone/kill # of someones/collect item, then hand in quest. The section we were shown culminated in the duo entering an arena to fight a guy called Mad Mel (See what I mean?). Upon entering they found themselves battling groups of Bandits in vehicles, and they didn’t fare so well. We did get to see the death system a bit though. When you near death you have to “fight for your life” if you kill an enemy before your screen goes completely black, you get a “second wind” which means you get a chunk of health back and can enter back into the fray. Alternatively an ally can get to you and heal you during this time.

After that we were ushered over to some consoles where we got handsy with the game. (Just making the joke in the title wasn’t enough.) My first experience was with the co-op, but I’ll leave that for N00dle to talk about. After spending some time being dropped into the game with three other people who had no idea what to do with our level 20 characters and completing an instance/quest/dungeon with them, I got to do the tutorial and the start of the game.

We didn’t get to see any introduction video or anything, so things kicked off with me as the soldier Roland, following a robot, who I’m told sounded eerily similar to Gir of Invader Zim fame, I failed to see the similarity, but regardless he teaches players the basics of how to move, jump, and the like. He also showed off the respawn system. Throughout the world of Pandora are New-U machines, which provide New-U’s if you die. Via this machine you can also change three sections of color on your character, and your character’s name.

Once we had this down it was off to cap some bandits. As you shoot numbers appear near the enemies to inform you how much damage you are doing. While it’s a nice touch, you often don’t really have time to take much notice of how much damage you are inflicting. Rather than having criticals being a random dice roll, they are triggered by accuracy. To score a critical you have to hit an enemy in the right place, some creatures need to be shot in the head, others the ass, others the mouth, so on and so forth.

We were then introduced to Doctor Zed who had us perform some collection quests, and some eradicating of basic enemies surrounding the town of Fyrestone. This quest line eventually left me to my first boss battle of the game. World of Warcraft has Elites, Borderlands has Badasses, and my first Badass encounter was against a bandit called Nine toes, who reportedly also has three balls. He stood in the middle of his lair soaking up my bullets and throwing plenty back at me, and then eventually throwing a pair of pet Skags (dog like creatures) at me. It was a tough encounter, and if all badass encounters play out with the same frantic difficulty, you can definitely see the value in having some buddies there to support you.

Before you accept a quest you are told what level is recommended for the quest, and how difficult it will be for your level. It was something that was worth noting, but something I unfortunately ignored. Once I finished up with the Doctor’s tasks, I took a quest to kill some guy called Bone-Head off the bounty board, a board that provides various side-quests.  I was level 6, had a few quests under my belt, and thanks to the skill points you receive after you reach level 5 had the ability to summon a turret, so I was feeling confident. So I approached Bone Heads camp and after seeing him approaching him I threw down my turret. Suddenly I was dead. Puzzled, I set out towards the camp again. Again I only got a few shots off, which weren’t even enough to penetrate his shield before I found myself dead. I’m sad to admit it took me four deaths to realize the 11 next to his name stood for his level, and was there to represent the fact that he could and would kick my ass.

So with that, I ended my time in Pandora. There was plenty more worth mentioning, but I’m not about to do all N00dles work for him. Stay tuned for our preview of the Co-op, and our interview with Randy from Gearbox.  Suffice to say that this odd blend of genres is something that should be on your radar, if it isn’t already.

 

It is somewhat well documented that I can be rather extremely negative. I’m not easy to please, and it takes a bit to get me excited for anything. I’m a firm believer that the glass is not half empty, instead its completely empty and there is a clown trying to stab me with it. So with that outlook on life it is always surprising, when I do become excited about a title, and ODST is the latest entry into that small category. Yes we here at TGV are quite pumped for Halo 3 ODST. After seeing it in action, and promptly changing our pants, we are here to tell you why you should be just as excited as us.

 

Read more: 5 Reasons You Should Be Excited About ODST.

Name: Mother
Price: $3.90
Size: 500ml
Container: XL Can

Taste: The first sip is fairly smooth, with the usual shudder from the sweetness, however not nearly as intense or as uncomfortable as some. Aftertaste is sugary with fruit undertones. On going, the taste only becomes better. Even with 500ml, it isn't overpowering to have the whole can if anything, it's a little too easy to drink.

Actual Contained Energy (ACE): The ACE of Mother is high to very high. Not only does it have the XL size on it's side, the caffiene, guarana, taurine and sucrose combined with the vitamins included means that the energy is long lasting.

Side Effects: Increased speed of speech and movement is common, with shakes and occasionally a high similar to that of a strong coffee or more* depending on consumed volume.

*Note: more can include effects of some drugs beyond that of caffiene or nicotine.

Final Verdict: Mother seems to be a winner on all levels. It's great value with a 500ml can as opposed to that of the price of a bottle of V. It tastes great, has excellent energy content and although the side effects may upset some, Mother is an excellent alternative to coffee. I may be biased but it strongly deserves the rating I have given it.

Rating: A+