Bioshock 2 begins as a serviceable shooter in a world you already know if you played the first game. Be prepared for a little bit of early disappointment. "Oh, this again?" you might ask after an hour or so. "I've already been here. I've played this game before."

You have no idea.

Read the spoiler-free review after the jump.

One of last years biggest and most beautiful time sinks was the city builder Dawn of Discovery. I don't think there's ever been a city builder paced quite so well. I have to use it sparingly, a bit like a controlled substance. I tell myself I'm just going to build a simple settlement. Then I blink and suddenly I've got a vast thriving civilization and I can't quite account for what happened to the last several hours.

On February 25th, Ubisoft releases the Venice expansion that adds a whole new faction with all sorts of unique goodies. But the most exciting addition is the multiplayer support.

Wait, multiplayer in a city builder? How does that work?

After the jump, I'll explain it all.

Gallery: Venice expansion for Dawn of Discovery lets the Doge out (3 images)   view full gallery

When it's not shilling Taco Bell* or Dell, The Blind Side is stuffed full of NFL product placement. This twee heart-warming story of a disadvantaged kid taken in by a loving family who then throws him into the world of professional football has one explicit reference to "the new Madden game". A little precocious kid (pictured, left) is eager to pick it up, and he and the disadvantaged kid (pictured, center) are equally enthused about getting their Madden on. However, Electronic Arts probably should have vetted the script more carefully. Something terrible -- well, as terrible as you can get in such a relentlessly sunny feel-good puffball of a movie -- happens on the way to the Gamestop, or Best Buy, or wherever they're heading. As near as I can tell, they never get their copy of Madden.

Also, The Blind Side turns a blind eye to platform advocacy. The precocious kid doesn't specify what system he's getting it for. Furthermore, on the two occasions when Sandra Bullock (pictured, right) does some Academy Award-nominated hollering for her son to stop playing videogames in another room, she calls it a "Playbox". Sneaky.

* What is it with Sandra Bullock and Taco Bell? I mean, you guys saw Demolition Man, right?

Your wallet is in dire peril this week. There is not a man, woman, or child* to whom I wouldn't recommend Bioshock 2, an epic, touching, smart, unforgettable follow-up to the best game of 2007, and one of the best shooters I've played since Far Cry 2. I'll have more to say in the review, which will be along very shortly. In fact, it's Bioshock 2 week on Fidgit! We'll have a new article on the game every day, including a separate review of the multiplayer and a discussion with the developer.

You'll probably also want to shell out fifteen bucks for Darwinia+ on Xbox Live Arcade, a strategy game set in a haunting cyberworld. I haven't spent any meaningful time with it yet, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that fans of dungeon crawls will be a little poorer because of Shiren the Wanderer for the Wii. Finally, Sins of a Solar Empire gets the Diplomacy expansion, but based on my time with it, it seems like a lot of extra feature creep. I'm not convinced it fits very well, but I'll have more to say later in the week.

Also, there's some sort of Dante's Inferno thing out in case you've already exhausted all the awesomeness of Bayonetta and Darksiders.

* over 17, of course, since it's a very M-rated game

Brad Wardell, the owner of Stardock, says he loves the new Diplomacy expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire. Well, duh, his company is publishing it. But Mr. Wardell isn't a good enough actor to feign the sort of enthusiasm evident in this broad outline of how the game plays.

A couple of things caught my eye, both examples of how adding diplomacy isn't just a way to do an end run around the usual fighting you'd do in a real time strategy game (as much as people try to tag Sins a grand strategic game, it really isn't; it's an RTS through and through). At one point, Wardell noted that there was diplomatic tension with an AI player. So he called up an information box to check why the other player didn't like him.

Their fleet strength is just so much higher than mine that it's bringing down everything else big time. Their fleet is almost 4 times larger than mine.

Mr. Wardell indicated that he was going for a diplomatic victory. In other strategy games, such as the Civilization series, a diplomatic victory generally means avoiding wars. But Wardell noted that's not quite how it works when you're playing the Diplomacy expansion for Sins.

...based on who I set up as my opponents, I can greatly increase or decrease the ease of getting a diplomatic victory. Now, to be...ahem, honest, because I'm playing as TEC and half my opponents are TEC, I've effectively made it quite a bit easier to get a diplomatic victory since the different TEC factions are more likely to "get back together" than say my ability to get the Advent and Vasari to be friends with me.

The Diplomacy expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire comes out next Tuesday.

Over on our sister site DVICE, Kevin Hall has written an intriguing pre-obituary for the Wii. He acknowledges its remarkable success, but lists a few reasons that he thinks it's going to be surpassed in the three-way race among Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.

While he's got some good points, particularly about the viability of Nintendo as a platform for third-party games, he puts way too much stock in the usual canards put forth by us hard-core gamers: the Wii doesn't have fancy graphics and online support. Now I love my eye candy and multiplayer games as much as the next guy. But all of the Wii's success has been had while it was clearly bested on both those fronts by two other consoles. Yet Hall sees this as something that will doom the Wii going forward. Furthermore, he suggests the Wii's unique advantages aren't sustainable.

...what the Wii was in the beginning -- a cheaper console banking on motion-controlled innovation -- becomes moot point when the other systems drop prices and add the very same. The pressure's on, Nintendo. The Wii doesn't have the stamina to finish this race.

Plus, just look at that kid up there. No one in the history of reactions has ever had that reaction to a Playstation or Xbox. By the time you're old enough to get one of those systems, you're too cool for that level of unbridled insane enthusiasm. That kid is going to buy Nintendo systems and Mario games until he's outgrown them, at which point he's going to buy Nintendo systems and Mario games for his own kids.

Hey, look, it's a letter from Marc Whitten, the general manager of Xbox Live. Let's see what he has to say.

Dear Xbox LIVE Members,

On April 15 we will discontinue the Xbox LIVE service for original Xbox consoles and games, including Xbox v1 games playable on Xbox 360 and Xbox Originals. I want to start by saying this isn't a decision we made lightly, but after careful consideration, it is clear this will provide the greatest benefit to the Xbox LIVE community.

Sega has just released an Aliens vs. Predator demo for the PC. You can get it on Steam here. Sweet!

But then I tried to actually play it on a LAN with some friends. Oops, no such luck. It's public servers only. And it's only deathmatch, which results in some utterly silly alien-on-alien, predator-on-predator, and marine-on-marine violence. So unrealistic. And for a fairly complex shooter, it's completely undocumented. If I hadn't spent many an hour playing the last game, I would have been lost. Well, even more lost. For instance, I eventually figured out how to toggle the predator's vision mode, which led to being jumped by aliens or gutted by predators several times because I was scanning for marines. This is a game heavy on making sure you get killed in elaborately animated ways. I look forward to being able to inflict them on other players in appropriate gameplay modes.

But straight-up deathmatch is the absolute worst way to show off Aliens vs. Predator. What a terrible introduction for prospective players. On the plus side, it sure does look nice.

EDIT: Ah, I see it's available to flummox Xbox Live users as well.

The USS Furious Turtle flies like a pig, but at least it looks cool. Seriously. Look at that picture. Try and tell me that if you warped into a system with a dozen Federation ships plinking away at Klingons or Borgs - a common occurrence in Star Trek Online - that ship wouldn't draw your eye.

After the jump, I'll tell you how I got it.

Syfy has posted a short video interview with Zachary Quinto who appears in Star Trek Online as the voice of the Emergency Medical Hologram who is not Spock at all, seriously, he's not, he's really not, even though Quinto played Spock in the movie, this isn't him in the game, seriously, it's not.

Quinto voices the character in an oddly brief bit when you first start playing. You'd almost think it was added at the last minute just to get some sort of real-world connection to the latest Star Trek movie. Quinto manages to undercut his gaming credibility with this bit:

I had Atari when I was a kid. I was the last generation of Pitfall, I think. And then I sort of moved into Nintendo and Super Mario. I was always a big Super Mario fan. I definitely gamed a little bit when I was a kid. But, you know, I mean, I outgrew it. I have plenty of things to engage me in my real experience in the real world that the notion of removing myself from it in order to immerse myself in a world that doesn't exist seems a little bit extraneous at this point.

Since Dante's Inferno is published by Electronic Arts, you can bet they aren't finished selling you the game once you've bought it. Hence the following paragraph in the press release about the game's retail availability next week:

In March, [developer] Visceral will release Dark Forest, a prequel level that tells the story of Dante's journey home and features new enemies, puzzles and relics. In April, players can download Trials of St. Lucia, a full expansion to the game that offers a co-operative multiplayer mode, a new playable character, and an in-game combat editor. The easy-to-use combat editor allows players to create custom combat trails, and then upload and share their creations online. In addition to Dark Forest and Trails of Saint Lucia, Dante's Inferno will offer downloadable packs containing souls, skins, relics and magics to further boost players on their journeys through Hell.

So I'm playing Bioshock 2 last night, and I'm in the middle of a pitched battle to protect [spoiler redacted] in [spoiler redacted] while [spoiler redacted]. I've situated myself between a hacked turret and a hacked security camera that sends out a pair of bots when it detects a splicer. I'm low on health and I'm trying to stay out of the firefight while the turret and bots do their thing. My decoy plasmid helps immensely, but some of these spider splicers are somehow getting wise to me. It's touch and go as I try to keep [spoiler redacted] alive.

Then a message pops up onscreen. "Look at you, hacker". It's the name of an achievement I've just unlocked for killing 50 enemies with hacked security devices. Of course, it's also the catalyst for a flood of nostalgia. This is a quote from the original System Shock, which is the creative well from Bioshock 2 draws. Here's the lineage: from Bioshock 2 developer 2K Marin to Bioshock 1 developer 2K Boston nee Irrational, who also made System Shock 2 to System Shock 1 developer Looking Glass. Of course, you can kind of tell because all these games have the word "shock" in them.

The problem with playing older games isn't necessarily the graphics (pictured). Yeah, that looks terrible now. But once you start to sink yourself into a world as vividly realized as Citadel Station (if you think this is a Mass Effect reference, please hand in your Old School Gamer card), your imagination takes over to smooth out the pixels. Instead, the bigger problem is often the interface. Which is why it's great to hear that someone named Malba Tahan has managed to hack mouselooking into the original System Shock. Go here to get it.

Okay, now someone port System Shock to the iPhone and videogames will be complete.

The above teaser for Fallout: New Vegas, the upcoming sequel from Obsidian, shows that New Vegas has plenty of electricity to spare. It also shows what looks like a Hellghast from Killzone 2 coming to visit in the name of California. Sinatra croons throughout. In other words, it's about as informative as any teaser.

The problem with jumping into an MMO before you know whether you're going to like it is that you might not put as much thought into certain decisions as you should. For instance, what your ship looks like. When I started playing Star Trek Online, it was out of a sense of obligation. So when it came time to customize my ship, I just hit the randomize button.

I got the traditional saucer, with two nacelles slung low underneath it and close together. Sure, I thought, whatever. Looks fine. It's a space ship. What are you going to do? Click accept.

After the jump, the ship envy begins.

One of the reasons I don't play sports videogames is because I satisfy all my violent impulses by playing shooters. It allows me to behave reasonably when people suggest tactics like not sniping on Carentan. Otherwise, who knows how I'd respond when someone suggests tactics. Consider the case of a man in Italy stabbed in the neck.

The man, identified as Fabrizio R., suffered a deep cut to the throat after his 16-year-old son, Mario, attacked him during an argument on Sunday over the soccer video game FIFA 2009. Police said the argument broke out when the 46-year-old storekeeper offered his son advice on tactics to improve his play, and then turned the television off in response to his son's behavior.

(Thanks Peter!)

Do you have plans to watch that football thing they're doing this weekend between commercials? Well, you can cancel them, because Electronic Arts just gave away the ending.

The New Orleans Saints pull the upset and march to a victory over the Indianapolis Colts with a score of 35-31 at Super Bowl XLIV, according to the official Electronic Arts simulation run by the award-winning Madden NFL 10 on Xbox 360. The first three quarters display the offensive fireworks that both teams have become known for, with the Colts leading 24-21. A nail biting fourth quarter begins with a big play, courtesy of the Saints' special teams, when Reggie Bush returns a punt for a 42-yard touchdown. However, with minutes left in the game the duo of Joseph Addai and Peyton Manning put the Colts back on top with a go-ahead touchdown pass. With the game hanging in the balance, Drew Brees hits David Thomas for an 11-yard touchdown and the game winning score. Drew Brees takes home MVP honors as the Saints earn their first Super Bowl Championship title in the franchise's 46 year history.

Sega announced the next Wii project from High Voltage, the folks who did The Conduit, a competent if not generic shooter. Tournament of Legends is a fighting game that will feature...

epic battles in fantastic fighting arenas where they will wield mythical blade weapons, launch 40 magic attacks, and dodge giant mythological creatures that protect the battle lairs. In intense one and two-player fights, players master a range of character and weapon based magic attacks; including unleashing, amongst others, a man-eating lion, Jupiter's Storm, Thor's Fury and a nest of venomous snakes.

High Voltage is building Tournament of Legends from the same engine that was used for The Conduit.

Large, 3D mythological fighters move fluidly. Fighting arenas, characters, and magical attacks are polished by advanced real-time lighting, blended animation, cinematic color curves, and more. And the fighters' mythic journeys are told through beautifully hand drawn in-game cinematics.

Tournament of Legends is slated for a May 18 release.

Gallery: Man-eating lions coming to the Wii in Tournament of Legends (3 images)   view full gallery

Star Trek Online launches today. In fact, you could be playing right now. So the question you have to ask yourself is, "Is there room in my life for a massively multiplayer online game that isn't World of Warcraft? And, wait, isn't this just World of Warcraft in space? I mean, look at that screenshot up there. It's like the Auction House in Ogrimmar but without so many gnomes!"

The answers to these questions are "sure you do", "no", and "that's not a question".

After the jump, I'll tell you what Star Trek Online does that other MMOs don't.

In the recent screenshots from Lego Harry Potter: Year 1-4, due out this May, you can get a glimpse of the Lego version of Hogworts and environs, as well as the Lego version of some of your favorite characters. I think Yoda even appears in the role of Dobby. You can also see that Lego chess would suck. Look at the screenshot up there. All the pieces are the same! That chess set isn't good for anything other than a game of checkers! If that's the attention to detail we can look forward to in this game, I expect everyone will drive mops in Quidditch.

At least one thing that will make sense in Lego Harry Potter is all the magically levitating and assembling Lego sequences. That stuff was so unrealistic in Lego Batman and Lego Indiana Jones, and it only made sense when a Force-sensitive character was doing it in Lego Star Wars. So unrealistic.

But mostly, I'm excited for Lego Harry Potter because I want EA to quit messing around with kiddie books and give the world what it needs now, more than ever: Lego Lord of the Rings.

Gallery: Lego Harry Potter to delight Potter fans, enrage chess enthusiasts (11 images)   view full gallery

Discover a mysterious theater. Hundreds of prisoners forced into deadly plays.

The only details available beyond the video is this short blog entry from the developer.