I'm getting chills already, and these are merely still images from 2K's upcoming sequel. I can only imagine what stumbling across these scenes will be like once I get my hands on the actual game. I'm extremely envious of Totilo at the moment. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Here's the full list. It rates a standard spoiler-alert warning but, going through this, the descriptions don't seem to give up many details of the singleplayer campaign. Be sure to check the link to see the achievement icon art.

• Bought a Slot (5 points)
Buy one Plasmid or Tonic Slot at a Gatherer's Garden.

• Max Plasmid Slots (10 points)
Fully upgrade to the maximum number of Plasmid Slots.

• Upgraded a Weapon (10 points)
Upgrade any weapon at a Power to the People Station.

• Fully Upgraded a Weapon (10 points)
Install the third and final upgrade to any of your weapons.

• All Weapon Upgrades (20 points)
Find all 14 Power to the People weapon upgrades in the game.

• Prolific Hacker (20 points)
Successfully hack at least one of every type of machine.

• Master Hacker (20 points)
Hack 30 machines at a distance with the Hack Tool.

• First Research (5 points)
Research a Splicer with the Research Camera.

• One Research Track (20 points)
Max out one Research Track.

• Research Master (20 points)
Max out research on all 9 research subjects.

• Grand Daddy (25 points)
Defeat 3 Big Daddies without dying during the fight.

• Master Gatherer (30 points)
Gather 600 ADAM with Little Sisters.

• Fully Upgraded a Plasmid (10 points)
Fully upgrade one of your Plasmids to the level 3 version at a Gatherer's Garden.

• All Plasmids (20 points)
Find or purchase all 11 basic Plasmid types.

• Trap Master (15 points)
Kill 30 enemies using only Traps.

• Master Protector (15 points)
Get through a Gather with no damage and no one getting to the Little Sister.

• Big Spender (15 points)
Spend 2000 dollars at Vending Machines.

• Dealt with Every Little Sister (50 points)
Either Harvest or Save every Little Sister in the game.

• Against All Odds (30 points)
Finish the game on the hardest difficulty level.

• Big Brass Balls (25 points)
Finish the game without using Vita-Chambers.

• Rapture Historian (40 points)
Find 100 audio diaries.

• Unnatural Selection (10 points)
Score your first kill in a non-private match.

• Welcome to Rapture (10 points)
Complete your first non-private match.

• Disgusting Frankenstein (10 points)
Become a Big Daddy for the first time in a non-private match.

• "Mr. Bubbles– No!" (20 points)
Take down your first Big Daddy in a non-private match.

• Mother Goose (20 points)
Save your first Little Sister in a non-private match.

• Two-Bit Heroics (10 points)
Complete your first trial in a non-private match.

• Parasite (10 points)
Achieve Rank 10.

• Little Moth (20 points)
Achieve Rank 20.

• Skin Job (20 points)
Achieve Rank 30.

• Choose the Impossible (50 points)
Achieve Rank 40.

• Proving Grounds (20 points)
Win your first non-private match.

• Man About Town (10 points)
Play at least one non-private match on each multiplayer map.

• Two Secret Achievements worth 5 points.

• Two Secret Achievements worth 10 points.

• One Secret Achievement worth 15 points.

• Six Secret Achievements worth 20 points.

• One Secret Achievement worth 50 points.

• Two Secret Achievements worth 25 points.

• One Secret Achievement worth 100 points.

BioShock 2 Achievements List [Xbox 360 Achievements via HBG]

Perhaps most notable are fixes focused on the loss of skill points and character data. Equally as welcome are changes to the display of item attributes, letting players see a weapon or shield's full specs, more skills that actually work as intended and the option to turn off auto-aim. As in really turn off auto-aim.

The update is available now for the Xbox 360, "soon" for the PlayStation 3 and "in progress and in testing" for the PC version.

There's a lot here. Read the full change list below.

• * Characters that have lost skill points will have them returned the next time they are loaded
• * Most instances involving character data loss when playing online should no longer occur
• * Item cards now display the intended five lines of text
• * Achievements should now unlock properly. Players should automatically receive achievements that did not unlock correctly
• * Fixed a progression issue in the Find Steele mission – characters affected by this issue should now be able to continue progressing
• * Some issues involving external data manipulation of the backpack and character level have been addressed
• * The auto-aim option should now fully disable auto-aim properly
• * Fixed a bug that kept challenges and achievements from unlocking for the rest of a session after visiting arenas
• * Fixed some formatting issues with the server list screen.
• * Fixed an issue causing servers to report the incorrect plot mission.
• * Proficiency progress to the next level should no longer be lost when leaving a multiplayer game as a client
• * Lilith's "Silent Resolve" skill now works as intended
• * Fixed a bug that allowed Mordecai to spawn multiple Bloodwings
• * Mordecai's "Loaded" skill now increases mag capacity by 20%
• * Roland's "Scattershot" skill has had its spread adjustment corrected, and damage now increases at +5 per level

The draw in The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned are new locations in which to adventure, loot and shoot, plus new enemy types of the zombie variety at which to shoot. The downloadable expansion brings with it a new suite of missions and a new, self-contained story about Dr. Ned and his beastly creations. And did we mention zombies?

Does the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned expand the Borderlands experience enough to warrant a download? Or is this new content just death warmed over?

Loved
Loot Goons, Wereskags & Tankensteins: While much of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is teeming with slightly more rotting versions of the psychos and midget psychos Borderlands players are no doubt familiar with, the new area is home to many a unique species. Some of these, like the vomit-spewing Defiler and charging Tankenstein, while unapologetic in their unoriginality, will require new tactics to combat and present a noticeable challenge for higher level characters. Others, like the dexterous Wereskag, explosive Suicide Zombie and lootable Loot Goon just add welcome variety to the mix of new things to shoot. The rest of the stuff, the rank and file undead, are merely cannon fodder, but perfect for going after those killstreak chain challenges.

Hated
Location, Location, Location: During my playthrough of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, not once did I come across a vehicle or "Fast Travel" teleportation beacon, ensuring that one of my prime complaints about Borderlands—its excessive foot-based travel and reliance on frequent map-checking—was still an annoyance. While the valleys of death the player must walk through are attractive, a moody change of scenery from the bright and arid Badlands, the expansion's go here, fetch this, cash in tedium is the same as it ever was.

Where'd All Those Brains Go? You'll harvest zombie brains throughout the game. Who knows how many I'd collected over the five to six hours worth of scouring Dr. Ned's island of the undead? Probably hundreds, considering how many headshots I'd accumulated. Too bad that at near the end of the downloadable episode's experience, when I need all those brains for a particular mission, my stock of brains was a whopping zero. And speaking of brains, the enemy AI is just as artificially brain-dead as ever, with path-finding issues making two of the game's more voluminous bosses—including the final final boss—a joke to take down.

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a fine addition from a content perspective, offering a gigabyte sized slice of Pandora to explore and exterminate. If more of Borderlands' addictive brand of gameplay is what you're looking for—now with more of those zombies the kids are so crazy about—this downloadable episode should suit your needs.

What the downloadable content is lacking is anything substantive beyond that. There's no adjustment to the level cap, so anyone looking to grind on zombie flesh will rack up experience points that go nowhere beyond level 50. While the content is fresh and probably worth the ten dollar ticket to get to Dr. Ned's island, don't expect much beyond reanimated, recycled corpse looting.

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 24. Retails for $9.99 USD. A download code was given to us by the developer for reviewing purposes. Completed all story missions and bounties on Xbox 360 with the exception of the extended "Braaaaaaaaaains!" series of missions.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Gearbox Software released a batch of new media for the Borderlands expansion, content that looks like it would've been great to play on or around Halloween and will give my Siren a bluish hue that I'll really enjoy. More reanimated screens in the gallery below.

Thoughts? Theories? Is it Ken Levine's new game? Is it BioShock 3? Is it related to anything that shows up in Google when you type in 2K Games and Dubai? We here at Kotaku can only speculate about the secrets the VGA people are holding onto. They won't tell us anything.

The name of the game and gameplay will premiere during the VGAs on December 12 at 8pmET/PT on Spike. A Halo: Reach trailer is also scheduled for the broadcast.

1up.com reports that this is a teaser for Spec Ops and we can now even watch an August-posted TV commercial for it.

And at $99.99 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, $89.99 for Games for Windows LIVE, it's no small dent in the wallet. But the lovely package you see above comes with all these wonderful things. Even a copy of BioShock 2 itself, if you can believe it!

• BioShock 2
• Vinyl 180g LP featuring the orchestral score from the original BioShock
• CD containing the BioShock 2 orchestral score
• A 164 page 8"x11" hardbound artbook chock full of developer commentary
• Three posters featuring vintage ads from Rapture (rolled)

It will ship the same day—February 9, 2010—as the common version of BioShock 2. And 2K Games' Cult of Rapture site says the package is "limited to a single production run" if that lights a fire under your preordering habit.

THE BIOSHOCK 2 SPECIAL EDITION [The Cult of Rapture]

A healthy dose of glowing eyes and a different Big Daddy suit will help differentiate the sequel to 2007's BioShock, as one can see in the full-sized art for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC versions at The Cult of Rapture. BioShock 2 is scheduled to ship February 9, 2010, smack dab in the middle of what may be the busiest Q1 in history.

BIOSHOCK 2'S BOX ART REVEALED [The Cult of Rapture]

But, hey, rules are rules. At an event in San Francisco in early October, 2K Games gave an extended look at BioShock 2, due out Feb. 9.

Jordan Thomas, the game's creative director, gave about a 20-minute demo that took place in the Siren Alley area of Rapture. Afterward, attendees were invited to play through one of the game's early portions, a level called Ryan Amusements, a theme park designed by Rapture creator Andrew Ryan that served as a "propaganda paradise to scare [children] out of going to the surface and spoiling the secret of Rapture to the world," Thomas said.

Story: The plot takes place 10 years after the fall of Rapture, the undersea paradise-turned-distopia inhabited by genetically mutated "splicers," ghoulish Little Sisters and their protectors, the Big Daddies. Sofia Lamb, a psychologist and political rival to Rapture's creator, the late Andrew Ryan, has taken over the city. Where Ryan believed one should act in one's own self-interest, Lamb espouses the idea that we have a "moral obligation to the world entire," Thomas explained during the demo. "We like to think of Rapture as the sort of the place where good ideas, when taken to the extreme, turn monstrous," he said.

Amid all of this, the player assumes the role of a prototype Big Daddy who has been awakened and given free will. His focus is to find the Little Sister to whom he was once bonded, but "as the player closes in on his former Little Sister, he realizes she's not just important to him, she's important to the entire city."
New enemies: Because much of Rapture is flooded, the goal in Siren Alley was to find a pumping station to rid the area of excess water. Standing in your way, however, was one of Lamb's lieutenants, a half-crazy (and in Rapture, who isn't?) cult leader.

Before getting to him, though, we were introduced to some new enemies. Since we needed Adam, we had to find a Little Sister. That meant defeating her Big Daddy protector. In BioShock 2, there's a new kind of Big Daddy, the defense-minded Rumbler. Again, as long as you don't attack him, he ignores you, which gives you the chance to properly arm yourself and prepare. Once provoked, the Rumbler will lay down a perimeter of mini-turrets and fire at you from behind a powerful bazooka. To combat this, the demo showed the player summoning Security Bots to help defeat the Rumbler.

Later in the demo, we came across a Brute splicer, who, Thomas explained, had been splicing himself stronger and stronger since the events of the first game. Because he's essentially at the "top of the Adam food chain," he's much more difficult to defeat than regular splicers, often throwing objects or charging you as a means of attack. To address criticism that splicers' behavior tended to be too predictable in the first BioShock, the enemies now will come at you with in a variety of ways, both offensively and defensively. (In the demo I played, a note popped up on screen that said, "Beware, a splicer is trying to heal at a health station." I got him good.)

Finally, there are the Big Sisters, as dangerous as Big Daddies but otherwise opposite in nearly every way. Lithe and quick, they come looking for you after you've rescued or harvested a Little Sister. In a way, their presence serves to address the complaint that going up against a Big Daddy just doesn't sound as daunting when your character has become one himself. It was a point the developer obviously wanted hammered home: Yes, the protagonist is much stronger, but, this time, Rapture is much meaner.

"We wanted the Big Sister to not be just like another Big Daddy," said JP Lebreton, the game's lead level designer. "We wanted her to be fast, to be agile, to be scary. She's darting around the environment, she's jumping off walls, she's jumping down off balconies or behind you. A lot of people are saying, 'Well, if you're a Big Daddy, what do you have to be scared of? You're the most powerful thing in the environment.' It's like, well, no, wait a minute. There's this other thing. You're a big, strong dude, but these Big Sisters are a whole different level of challenge for you. And they hunt you."

Weapons: In this respect, the biggest change to the game is being able to wield weapons and plasmids independently and simultaneously. As a Big Daddy, you come equipped with a drill, so if melee combat is your thing, do so Big Daddy-style: First freeze your enemy, then drill him to pieces.

Your other main weapon is a rivet gun. One type of rivet ammunition allows you to shoot rivets so they stick in the ground or on a wall; when an enemy approaches, they act as a sort of proximity mine. Other weapons include a machine gun and a spear gun, with which you can fire rocket spears, projectiles that embed themselves in enemies and cause them to fly around the room before exploding.

There are new uses for plasmids, too. In one instance, the demo showed the player setting some traps for enemies by using Cyclone and combining it with Winter Blast – unsuspecting splicers would wander into the mini tornadoes, freeze, get blown into a wall and shatter. Sure, afterward you can't collect anything off the bodies, but it's a small price to pay for iced splicers.

Combat and strategy: Once you capture a Little Sister, you can choose to harvest her on the spot or adopt her. If you pick the latter option, she hops on your shoulder and becomes a guide to bodies from which you can harvest Adam, the substance that's necessary to gain new plasmids and tonics. Clicking a button allows you to see a "pheromone scent," the path that leads you to Adam-filled corpses. Once there, she will tell you to put her down so she can begin her work. First, however, you must set up a perimeter, because as soon as she begins her harvest, splicers will relentlessly come after her for her Adam. This is where it's handy to have a mini-turret from the Rumbler and to set up Winter Blast-infused Cyclones. When you're done with a Little Sister, you can again choose to harvest her or free her.

A major change to how you progress through the game has to do with hacking. When you hack circuitry, no longer does the action pause for you to complete the associated mini-game (one that, by the 50th, 60th or thousandth time, became annoyingly tedious). There's still a mini-game, albeit a simpler one: A vertical needle moves horizontally across an area divided into colored sections (picture an analog voltmeter). Pressing the A button stops the needle from moving; the goal is to stop it in the green section. The difficulty varies with needle speed, the width of the green sections and how many times you have to repeat the process. Stopping the needle in blue sections gets you a bonus.

Moreover, as mentioned, the game no longer pauses during hacking, so that turret that politely stopped and waited for you to hack it before it started firing on you again? Yeah, now it'll keep firing. To help you out, though, you can now collect hacking darts, which allow you to hack from a distance. Just shoot a dart at a turret from across the room, hack it and you're good to go.

Multiplayer: Although I was unable to stick around to experience it first-hand, here's the overview. The setting of the game's multiplayer is before the events of the first BioShock, during the civil war that led to Rapture's demise. Players assume the roles of Rapture citizens, earning experience points to create unique Rapturians with whichever weapons, plasmids or tonics they want. Environments, such as the Kashmir Restaurant or Mercury Suites, are taken from key areas of the first game, only revised so they accurately depict that time in Rapture's history.

I admit that, although I did finish the first BioShock, it had been some two years since I last visited Rapture. The good thing is that, while playing the single-player demo, I was able to ease back in fairly effortlessly. From the little of the game I played – only about 45 minutes – BioShock 2 at least has the potential to satisfy those who enjoy running and gunning as well as players who prefer to plan their strategy of attack. Then there are those instances that combine those two tactics: When you plunk down a Little Sister so she can begin her harvest. The strategists should take satisfaction from setting up an effective perimeter; the mayhem-minded will appreciate the point when the perimeter fails and chaos ensues.

Other moments were equally satisfying, from accessing a locked door by firing a hacking dart through a broken window to the door controls on the other side, to going head-to-head against a Little Sister and ending up the last one standing. There's the potential for hacking to seem too rote (and that can only be answered after hours of gameplay), but having it occur amid the action, instead of during paused interludes, is a nice touch. In fact, my main complaint isn't really one at all: I wanted to play more.

Pre-loaders of the PC version over Steam found the file "borderlands_low_violence.ncf" in their download; it's not a part of the North American version. When contacted about the file, 2K Australia said:

We have been talking to the US 2K team via email and working out how this happened/ what the next steps are to amend this via Steam. They're working on clearing this up with Valve right now and know to ask how they will handle those people who have already d/l'ed the wrong version.

So, bottom line for Aussies: No content changes were made to receive classification, but this file does make the game "a wrong version." 2K promises to have this cleared up by Oct. 30 - three days after Oct. 27, the game's original unlock date for Europe and Australia.

Whew! Glad they're hot on the case. Because, for real, seeing a level 18 bruiser's face melt off, and his eyeballs pop out and roll down a flight of stairs, after a critical shock sniper attack, is simply not to be missed. Not that I'm rubbing it in or anything.

Borderlands Accidentally Censored for Aussies on Steam [Ausgamers]

The gameplay shows the firepower; the cinematics show a suspense factor to match. And pay attention to the final title card. Of course it'd behoove you to check back here on Thursday, because when an embargo breaks, we fix it!

Siren Alley Trailer [GameTrailers]

Forum threads are popping up on Gearbox and publisher 2K Games' forums from indignant fans who purchased the PC version of Borderlands at stores either accidentally or purposefully breaking the street date of October 27th, upset that the game won't be playable until October 26th, even in single-player mode. One such purchaser, a Twitter user in Germany with the handle Crimvel, posted the following tweet to Gearbox:

I own a legal PC-copy of Borderlands, and we can't even play the Singleplayer cause of the shitty Securom-protection

A few hours later, Gearbox responded:

The PC version won't be playable until the 26th - your retailer broke the street date :(

As you can tell from the sad emoticon, Gearbox isn't happy about the situation. Fans aren't happy about the situation, and 2K Games is more than likely a little ticked at the retailers who caused the situation.

There was bound to be some confusion, really. When you have three versions of a game in your storeroom and one has a different date than the others, there are going to be mix ups. Still, it's one of the responsibilities of running a video game store or department, and I frankly don't see the point in blaming 2K or Gearbox for this debacle, as so many of the forum posters seem to be doing.

We've contacted both 2K Games and Gearbox for comment on the situation, and are awaiting response from both.

Thanks to everyone who sent in this tip!

In addition to problems with the PSN friends list, Borderlands is reported by users to have issues finding public games, with waits of 30 minutes or more for a list of available games. Since we feel that Borderlands' biggest strength is its co-op mode, that's two very serious problems for PS3 owners.

Fortunately, Gearbox software engineer Scott "vatoloco" Velasquez writes on the official Borderlands forums "We've identified the problem and are working on a fix."

"Believe it or not, the friends feature was heavily tested by Gearbox and 2K," Velasquez writes. "However, this particular issue we found could have never manifested itself in our or 2K's test environments."

"We'll find out very soon if the issue exists for the PS3 International versions of the Borderlands. If it does, we'll hopefully have a fix implemented before it affects those customers," he says. "We are doing everything we can to get this problem addressed as quickly as possible."

Velasquez addresses the timing of that fix later in the thread, saying "The only thing I can say is that we're exploring all options of getting the fix out ASAP!"

Thanks to Mike for the heads up.

Update: Well, that certainly was "ASAP." Gearbox reps say they've fixed the issue, no client side patch needed: "We are very pleased to report that using PSN friends lists with the game should now work properly for all PS3 customers. The fix has been released invisibly and should work automatically for all PSN users on the PS3 platform. No special action is required by PS3 customers to apply the fix - just play the game and you'll find that everything works fine now. We thank you all for your patience and for making us aware of the issue!"

PS3 Friends list issues [Gearbox Software Forums]

A ragtag quartet of adventurers wander across the surface of the planet Pandora, searching for the Vault of legend. Along the way they shoot things, gain levels, and gather enough weapons to choke something large that eats weapons, thanks to Gearbox's random content generation. Things to shoot and things to loot. What more could a group of players ask for?

For the answer to that question and more, we turn to the assembled game critics.

Games Radar
Borderlands lacks the charm of Fallout 3, Mass Effect, or Half-Life 2, but it does offer a crap-ton of ‘roided-out bandits, effed-up dog things, giant spider demons, and screeching pterodactyl beasts to shoot with a crap-ton of guns. And that's really what it's about – finding weapons and shooting things with them. You have to assign a skill point now and then, and there's kind of a story, but those things don't matter much. You can skip the text description of every quest in the game, because they will always consist of the following steps:

A. Go somewhere.
B. Kill some shit.
C. Flip a switch or something.
D. Kill some more shit.
E. Success!

1UP
A more traditional description for Borderland would be, "cooperative FPS with Diablo-esque mechanics." You start off by picking a character: Roland the gun-toting soldier, Lilith the stealth/magic femme, Mordecai the sniper, and Brick the boxer/tank. Then you guide that character through a grand journey with multiple quest hubs and dungeons; most of the quests are of the simple "go to a dungeon and kill/collect x amount of y." My first playthrough, where I mostly focused on going down the critical path with a little bit of (but not nearly all) of sidequesting, took about 27 hours. By the way, the overarching story of "finding the secret Vault while guided by a mysterious woman who talks to you in your mind" is just serviceable; it's there to give you a reason to kill things, but don't expect anything more in-depth.

Official Xbox Magazine
Just make no mistake: Borderlands is a hardcore-gamer's game. It won't be fun to those dudes whose two major purchases this year were Transformers and Madden 10. For starters, there's no difficulty setting whatsoever, so when you're getting pummeled - and you will get pummeled - you can't bop down to Easy and race ahead through the story missions. That thrashing you're getting is Borderlands' way of telling you to take your time and properly level your character. Side quests are usually optional in games, but the only optional part of them here is which ones you do. The story missions won't level your character enough to let you survive, so you'll need to linger in each location until you've built yourself up appropriately. (Thankfully, the missions have tags that clearly display this info.)

GamePro
When you can get a full party going, Borderlands begins to shine; it's one of those games that's chock-full of moments that you'll lovingly recount later. Each online experience is made memorable by fun things like smashing into each other with two rocket-mounted buggies, periodically punching your friend to instigate a duel and reviving him later amidst a fight you can't win without him. These moments jive perfectly with the tone of the game, which is surprisingly jovial considering the post-apocalyptic theme. The incredible comic-book art style is a significant factor, with the thick black lines and bright colors breathing a surprising amount of life into an otherwise bleak setting. Watching the nipple-pierced torso of a goalie mask-wearing psycho tumble away from its blood-geyser legs was so silly that I couldn't help but giggle at the absurdity. I got an extra kick out of a lot of the game's goofy characters as well: T. K. Baha is a perfectly loony farmer; the singing, dancing and periodically profane Claptrap robot is adorable; and Dr. Zed's a wildly unprofessional (and unlicensed) medic.

Game Informer
While Borderlands and Fallout 3 share a similar apocalyptic, Road Warrior-esque setting, the former does a much better job of making you feel like a wasteland scavenger. Very few story elements are present, so you don't have a constant "I better get back to the main quest" feeling hanging over your head. There's no disappearing family members or ominous government forces making you feel the need to progress through the story, only the desire to grow stronger and survive the myriad creatures populating Pandora. No matter which character you choose, you're not the offspring of a brilliant scientist or politician and you're not the only hope for humanity...you're just a journeyman with a gun (and ideally a few friends).

Kotaku
Borderlands gets a lot of things right, in particular the balance between being a first-person shooter and being a role-playing game. The shooting mechanics are sound, as are many of the role-playing aspects, save for a few design quirks. Growing and customizing my level 35 Siren was a great deal of fun, when the tedium of all that walking around didn't spoil it. But where Borderlands excels is in offering a functional four-player cooperative loot-hoarding experience, with gorgeous environments to adventure in and smartly crafted items to collect or covet. The game has a few faults, including its traveling inefficiencies-a weak map combined with plenty of long-range fetch quests-and its easily forgettable story line, but it's still relatively easy to recommend, provided you can tap into the best portions of Borderlands, its cooperative multiplayer modes.
Why am I craving Taco Bell?

A 2K release describes the pack's story thusly:

Tasked with keeping the workers of Jakobs Cove alive, Dr. Ned (who is not related to Dr. Zed from Fyrestone) does his job a little too well, creating zombies and other abominations that now run rampant in this region. Players will have to work alongside Dr. Ned as they embark on a quest to cure the inhabitants of Jakobs Cove in this full-fledged expansion filled with new enemies, new quests and rare loot drops.

The same release said only that "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned" is "planned for release later this year." Price will be $9.99 on PSN and for PC, 800 Microsoft points for the Xbox.

"The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is in development at Gearbox Software and is the first in a series of downloadable expansions that will enhance the Borderlands mayhem in fun and exciting ways," says 2K.

Ashley Davis' dramatic reading of BioShock the Bedtime Story is compelling and moving, but ultimately serves only to underscore on terrible fact: no one reads me bedtime stories anymore. Forget live sex webcams. I want to start up a bedtime story live webcam service so no one has to spend another night falling asleep without story time.

The sequel, currently in development for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, is set about ten years after the events of the original BioShock.

"Along the Atlantic coastline, a monster has been snatching little girls and bringing them back to the undersea city of Rapture," according to the press release. "Players step into the boots of the most iconic denizen of Rapture, the Big Daddy, as they travel through the decrepit and beautiful fallen city, chasing an unseen foe in search of answers and their own survival."

What Is It?
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is an Xbox Live Arcade puzzle game originally created as a student project. I last played it when it was part of an independent games showcase two E3s ago. Now it's one of the first downloadable games being published by 2K Games. I was shown the game at E3 2008 and again, last week, at PAX, by Matt Korba, lead designer at The Odd Gentlemen, a tiny studio with a mission statement about making games for the "thinking gamer."

What We Saw
Korba stood at my side with impressive patience as I tried a few of Winterbottom's planned 80 puzzles. All that I played involved Winterbottom needing to obtain pies that floated in his black-and-white world. They float in the fashion of coins in a Super Mario land. Mario can just jump and get coins. Winterbottom can run and jump too. But he can also have the player record his actions and play them back in the form of Winterbottom clones. Those clones can populate the level, serving as platforms, pie-fetchers, batsmen or any other role their recorded movements render them to be. I'll explain more below.

How Far Along Is It?
The game isn't coming out until next year, so I believe there's more puzzle-tuning to do. Plus, Korba told me that people are still finding new ways to solve some of the game's puzzles. So the situation and the design appears to be fluid.

What Needs Improvement?
Lining Up: You run. You jump. You record your own guy's moves and then interact with the replayed moves, the clones or ghosts of your own actions. That's all good, but that is a design based on a player's faith that all of the clones should react to each other in a predictable manner. You want a jump of a certain distance to always land on another clone's head. You want a clone that lands next to another one who is thwacking his umbrella in front of him to get knocked back in an arc, if he lands closely enough. Sometimes, during my hands-on time, things didn't go as planned, a byproduct of either the game not being precise enough — or of being too precise to the point of not fudging things. There's an argument for a game being made to understand the gist of what the player is trying to do. Then again, easier written then programmed. Maybe this is a necessary element.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Puzzles: Each puzzle I tried was fun. A basic one had me recording and placing one Winterbottom beneath a highly-elevated pie, then standing on top of that recorded Winterbottom with another one I was directly controlling and then jumping to grab the tart. Easy. Later, I tried a puzzle (pictured here) that involved an arc of pies that would only appear in numbered sequence, one pie at a time. I had to hit a switch and then collect all of them before the switch flipped back a few seconds later. To make this work, I tried to place Winterbottoms at both sides of the arc of pies, each of the clones recorded to stand there and repeatedly flick their umbrella toward the center. Then, jumping into that with another Winterbottom, my hope was he would sail back and forth, essentially becoming the ball between two Winterbottoms playing catch. It sort of worked.

The Look: Besides MadWorld and that underwater dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, I have not played many games that were primarily rendered in black and white. This is one of them. It's even more attractively old-timey thanks to lighting that illuminates the scene in the fashion of a glowing old black-and-white movie that's being projected in a theater just a little more brightly than recommended. It's a refreshing look.

The Depth: Levels of Winterbottom clone quotas that might, say, keep you from creating more than six. Korba showed me how to beat one such challenge using just two clones. He told me that a producer on the game just figured out how to do it with one. Then he told me about red Winterbottom clones which are dangerous to the touch and are introduced in later levels. He could have gone on. I was impressed with the basic mechanic in the game and was pleased with how it evolved and changed even in just the few puzzles I experienced.

Final Thoughts
I approached The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom thinking that the game would feel more routine now that I've played through Braid, a game with its own time-manipulated puzzle-platforming.

But Winterbottom feels fresh and distinct from Braid both because of its jolly spirit and in the busyness of its puzzles. The game's challenges start as calm conundrums, but once I had four Winterbottoms knocking each other around the screen, I had a fascinating frenzy of my design. I was charmed and ready for more.

What Is It?
At the Penny Arcade Expo, about halfway between where you could buy nachos or watch a comics artist sketch on his DS, there was a kiosk running two forthcoming Xbox Live Arcade games from Take Two Interactive's 2K Play level. Axel & Pixel, an adventure game from Czech studio Silver Wish Games, is the first of those efforts.

What We Saw
I made Axel, an artist, and Pixel, a dog, venture through a few puzzling screens worth of mild clickable challenges, then drove them through an obstacle course of nearly vertical mounds of dirt and grass in a big-wheeled truck.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is set for release next month for download on the Xbox 360.

What Needs Improvement?
A Little Too Mixed: I was smitten by the imaginatively mixed art style but less excited by the mixed gameplay. I enjoyed using the control stick to move a pointer across the screen, clicking at whatever made my cursor sparkle in order to perform some sort of interaction. And I was fine with the simple side-scrolling off-roading that consisted of driving left to right, speeding up, tilting the truck for better landings and maybe scoring a flip. But a little button-pressing mini-game that I had to do in order to battle an angry god in the sky was an undesired interruption of the mostly point-and-click adventure. The puzzles were good enough; I hope there's not too much finger-DDR.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Art: Would we call this fantasy mixed with realism? Photography mixed with drawing? Anything that makes swans look like this is alright by me. It's got a great look.

The Puzzles: I was not able to play long enough to encounter anything other than starter puzzles. I was doing basic stuff, like having the artist paint flowers on a tree so that a bee would fly away and the dog could run ahead. I was having Axel plucking an oar from the ground in order to row a boat across the lake. And I was fishing a long yellow something-or-other out of the lake for reasons I can't even recall. Nothing was too complex; and it was easy to figure out thanks to the ability to just drag the cursor until it's near anything sparkling (then just click and witness the results — or click on something else, repeat.). The delight in the levels I played was in seeing what happens, emphasis on the word "seeing." It all just looks interesting.

Final Thoughts
I didn't have much time with Axel & Pixel, and I expect a final judgment on an adventure game will have to be based on the quality of its puzzles, not just its graphics or silly driving side-mission. What I can say is that this game has one of the most unusual art styles I've seen in a while. I hope it proves to play as creatively as it looks.