I'm going to have to pass on BBC2 and AvP. Times are tight. Wish Metro was TPS. Anyone else prefer the Third to the First Person Shooter? It seems to be taking over rpgs these days. Why have armor upgrades if you never see them?

Just 2 ppl had plats. for ME2 last week. I'll bet that jumped to dbl dig.

Am I rusty or was Insanity exactly that? Vanguard was gimped imo and I just could not get through the 'big' boss with Grunt/Thane. Samara/Miranda in 4 tries FTW. Yeah, yeah girls are godlike beings worthy of my eternal admiration and respect. I get it.

Well, I can only judge a majority of the Marine campgaign for you so far but..

No the critics aren't correct.  They said the game's graphics are ugly.  I don't think they are ugly at all.  Maybe not Gears 2 quality, but somewhere between Fear and Fear 2. They also said the control was off a little, once again I don't agree.  I play a lot of shooters and this feels like most all others. You don't have that aim down the sites mechanic I've kind of gotten used to but within a few minutes of play you forget all about it.  They said the frame rate dips below 30 fps and so far, almost 75 percent through one of the campaigns and it hasn't dipped once.

To be fair and negative, I don't like the save system.  You can save, but you still go back to the checkpoint when you load.  There are a couple of places so far where you go through a 10 minute alien killing romp only to get to a choke point, activate your hacking and then have to defend yourself while the hack completes.  Its easy to die (on hard) and if you do, BAM, back to the check point, do it all over again. Also some of the stages make you back track a little bit, like enter a temple then at mid point of the stage turn around and fight your way out, which doesn't seem so negative because fighting is so much fun.

Most positive things are the sound design, creepy on edge lighting and having specific limb damage like L4D2.  Unlike L4D2 the limb damage seems to help alot as a crippled alien is a lot slower than a crippled zombie.

Still, doesn't deserve its low score based on my thoughts so far.  And honestly I don't imagine it gets unfun when you play the predator or alien, or online.  But as of now I would rank it a solid 8.  If I face all the problems the reviews mention later I might would lower that score.  But I can't see going below a 7 or 7.5.

I really am starting to think reviewers only give good scores to the overly hyped Halo's and Call of Duties.  Any big anticipated game seems to always rank high and any lesser games get 5's and 6's.

The league is up-to-date for this week.

Sounds like a decent game...

As for reviewers, I have a few things I look for now...

1) I ignore reviewers that have XBox in the name of the company even if they are independent.  This is because they rely on the XBox to survive and therefore are biased.

2) I look on Metacritic at the scores.  If there are a lot of wide ranging scores from good to bad then I start to read the bad ones to truely understand why they think the game is bad.

3) I also check the user ratings...  You give it a 8, and the user rating is 7.9 on Metacritic...

I almost never fault a game for graphics or an old working engine because I grew up playing block graphic games and even the most sucky games now have decent graphics.  I am more concerned about framerate, breakup, and art style.  I think I will add to my backlog and get this game when I see it in a store here.

AvP is awesome.

Completed the Alien campaign, and part way through the Marine and Predator campaigns. It's also difficult on Normal. The harder difficulties will be a REAL challenge.

My only gripe so far has to be the online. While it is really fun. it takes way too long to get into a game. If they sort that out, i would give the game an 8.5 overall, maybe more when i finish all 3 campaigns. Oh, and host migration would be welcomed also.

wow, campers in Bioshock 2 are pathetic.

Neo, yeah I never base games on graphics either. If it has jaw dropping polys great. But that doesn't make or break a game.

Also I think user reviews would be more accurate but you have a couple of factors.

People rate games before they even come out, based on pure fanboyism. Haters give a 1, Lovers give a 10. All before anyone really plays it.

There is kind of a reverse bias when you buy a game. Just the act of owning it makes you usually like it, or defend its flaws more, knowing you just dropped 60 bones on it.

But overall, still better than the paid reviewers I guess.

Dammit! My 360 hasn't come back yet!! It's been almost two weeks!!

That stinks...  Phone them.  Sometimes they get things mixed up.

I follow the progress on Xbox.com.  The repairs were complete on Friday but it didn't ship until Yesterday.  It'll be here probably today or tomorrow.  In the meantime, my gamerscore is suffering, though.  I have Mass Effect 2 and Assassins Creed 2.  I should've made a billion Achievement Points (by my calculations) by now.