Zombies are a profitable market as of late and it seems developers outside of Capcom are finally catching on. Gearbox has released their first bit of downloadable content for Borderlands, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. It's giving us some lovely new scenery, zombies and a lot more humor.

Not all is sunshine and rainbows in the murky swamps of Jakob's Cove. It seems the overworked citizens are a little mad….. Oh and they seems to be dead. Or would that be undead since they're all crawling around and trying to eat your brains? When you arrive in Jakob's Cove via the fast travel system, you'll be greeted with a quick and adorable introduction. Once that's over, your zombie massacre will begin! After saving the town of Jakob's Cove, it's up to you to get to the bottom of this strange infection and save the day. The story is told however, through the speakers of various echo communicators. You'll come across plenty of them throughout the four to six hour ordeal to fill you in on all the strange shenanigans plaguing the island. Of course you won't always need the echo communicators to get all the wonderful humor that's been packed into the new content as well.

You're going to encounter a lot of zombies in the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. The zombies range from the normal, slow zombies that hit rather hard to barrel tossing suicide zombies and Tankensteins that heft around loot chests. You'll also encounter Crimson zombies and Psycho zombies. Crimson zombies can use turrets just like Crimson engineers yet they still like to get up close and personal. Psychos… Well they just run at you like psycho bandits. That doesn't make them less terrifying though! There are also Defilers. These guys tend to spit up some nasty phlegm that can not only blind you but slow you down as well. These enemies change up the pace a bit and keep players from getting bored with the slow pace of the normal zombies. Provided you kill with a headshot you can blow off their heads to collect brains for a chain of quests and limbs so you watch them crawl mindlessly to you if you're interested in that kind of thing.

While Zombie Island adds some new enemies and a new setting with a better narrative it really can't escape the large problem in Borderlands. That problem is repetition. You'll spend the majority of the game talking to the bounty board and killing certain enemies while you hunt down and collect items. You can only kill so many zombies and collect so many brains before the new car smell wears off and that familiar feeling of monotony finally takes over.

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a great bit of downloadable content even if it's still a little repetitive. It's got a solid narrative this time around and the scenery is a breath of fresh air considering Pandora's barren terrain we've grown so accustomed to. Oh, let's not forget about the zombies. Who doesn't love zombies? If you're itching to go back to Pandora and delve into the mystery of the island, then it's certainly something you want to look into purchasing.

Yes, I'm aware Capcom isn't the only company who has made a game with zombies but that's not the point!

If you live in a cave and haven't bothered to leave it's sanctity in a while, then you don't know Halo 3: ODST comes with it's own Horde-esque game type known as Firefight. Where players will fight wave after wave of randomly generated enemies with 3 other people. It's just too bad that it lacks a certain matchmaking feature.

Yes, that means you can't pop the game into your console and find others to play Firefight with when you're friends aren't online. Bungie has clearly stated that Firefight is an experience that is to be shared with friends so you can only invite your friends or join their games. Ok, that's not a great thing really, but one thing I noticed among the community though, is that it seems to have been split into two sides over this. The people who support Bungie's decision to nerf Firefight, who are also known as the diehard fan boys, and those who feel it makes it less worthy of a purchase.

While I can see why some people think this is a good thing, I can only see it in a gray light. Sure, friends are a tad more trustworthy when it comes to these sort of things, what do we do when they're not on to play though? We are allowed to play Firefight by ourselves, but where's the fun in that? If I want to play the game by my lonesome, I'll load up the campaign. Firefight is an experience to be shared with friends. Ok, that's cool and all but why can't we share it with other people? It might stop me from getting into games with children who curse like it's going out of **** but not every Xbox live member is a pre-pubescent sailor.

Which brings me to my next point. Matchmaking is a necessity for these kind of games. Even if it's the only form of multiplayer a game has to offer and might have made Bungie put a few more months of work into the game(supposedly 6 months), but doesn't that just help justify the games $60 price tag? I'm fully aware that there is more than one reason for my one example to have matchmaking, but just try to imagine what Left 4 Dead would be like if there wasn't any matchmaking and it only had it's campaign mode. Sure, your allies may be smart when your friends aren't around to control them, but how many people would choose to just play it's campaign without their friends around? Probably not a whole lot.

If you have the option to play with other people online, don't limit it to our friends. They're not guaranteed to be on when we are on and in the mood to play Firefight. Firefight can be a wonderful way to meet more people and make more friends, which will in turn, make the chances of having more trusted people to play with greater. Not everyone wants to play with their friends all the time or by themselves and would rather get out there and meet other people. Different strokes, for different folks.

There's always the chance of landing in a game where one guy wants to team kill everyone, or talk **** about everyone's performance when he himself does just as bad, but that won't stop our friends from doing the same. Not only that, but as I said before, it'll help justify the games $60 price tag Microsoft slapped onto it and gives a greater feeling of completion instead of some half assed job on the developers side. One good way to meet other people may be to load up the second disc included with ODST that contains Halo 3's multiplayer in it's entirety, but we shouldn't need to do that. We also shouldn't have to whore ourselves out and friend request every Tom, Rick and Harry we meet on the internet who's looking for some Firefight fun.

The exclusion of matchmaking from Firefight certainly has it's up' and down's, and that won't stop me from buying the game. Buying the game won't stop me from wanting more included in it though. So I ask again, why can't we have both?

The Wii was the first console to give its users the ability to create a digital representation of themselves. It also let us use our custom avatars in a plethora of games. Microsoft and Sony quickly hopped on that bandwagon and rode that wave all the way into shore with the 360's Avatar support and the PS3's Home.

Now, my whole reason for writing this lies in the Xbox 360's recent update. Now players can buy clothing, accessories and props for their avatars. Now, you'd figure that one dollar for a t-shirt is a reasonable price, which it is. I mean, it's a dollar. I don't mind letting go of a dollar. However, is there any reason why they're charging 400 MicroSoft points for a lightsaber? 320 for an RC warthog?

Straying from the topic at hand allow me to say, yes, I bought the lightsaber. I'm a fan girl who's been playing both KotOR games and Republic Commando recently, leave me alone. I also happen to be a Splinter Cell fan girl who squealed at the fact that I could dress my avatar up like Sam Fisher and I ended up buying both the Elite uniform and Sam Fisher outfit. I even got the Big Daddy doll to top it all off.

But outside of being aesthetically appealing to fan boys and girls around the world, what use do these have? Why did I just spend $15.00 on a few pieces of digital fangirlism? Where the hell are my steam punk goggles!? Aside from giving us more reasons to throw our money away, I can't really see any reason why anybody would feel the need to purchase these things. Our fanboyism if going to drive us to be suckered into this scheme and let's be honest, there's nothing we can really do about it. At least we'll eventually be able to unlock items as rewards when we play games. Is there an award for spending too much money in the Avatar Marketplace?

I'm also disappointed in the lack of unique items. I know I'm kind of complaining about them, but bare with me. If they're going to add them, they should add something for each game. There's no Spartan armor in the Halo 3 section, but there's marine armor in the ODST section which doesn't make sense. It's Halo 3: ODST, so wouldn't it be better provide us with the various suits of armor that the characters they've introduced us to wear? If that's too much of an issue, then I'd be fine with armor that looks like Rookies. Bioshock gives us helmets that look out of place and a doll, but can I please have a Big Sister outfit? I want a giant cage for carrying Adam digesting children in on my avatars back. At least Star Wars, Gears of War, and Splinter Cell categories deliver unique items for players to sample and purchase if they so choose.

At least my avatar looks cute compared to my lifeless Home avatar. This actually gives me more of an incentive to give MS my money instead of Sony. I actually feel like I've been raped out of the small amount of money I put into my Home Avatar and I haven't really put any money into Home at all. Oh and Microsoft..... Mass Effect 2 is coming out early next year(hopefully), avatar items. Make it happen.