Bioshock was a videogame – I think we can all agree on that much. It was also a vast idea. Do ideas have sequels? I guess they sort of do. A corollary is a kind of idea-sequel, right? Or is a corollary more like downloadable content? I shouldn't have lead with something like this, maybe.

-Tycho, Penny Arcade

I was overtly biased against a sequel that took one of 2007's finest games and handed the franchise over to another developer. My take now (without having played it, mind) is that the review scores are impressive, hailing it as an accomplished action game that polishes all the bits of the first game that I didn't really care about. The awe of exploring Rapture, in all its art deco Ayn Rand-inspired glory, was a unique experience that you can't really replicate by placing the player in the same environment but a bigger suit. Even if the combat works better.

On the other hand, if I'd read more about Mass Effect 2 before playing it, I'd have believed Bioware ruined an excellent RPG by removing the customisation depth and turning it into a straightforward action shooter. They haven't. What they have done is carefully distilled their experimental hybrid into its purest essence. It's exquisite. If you require more words, it's one of the few games I think about solely in terms of its characters rather than its mechanics, which become almost invisible as you explore more of this vastly detailed universe which tears through the boundaries of previous "choice and consequence" simulations. If someone survived when I played the first game, I can converse and work with them. If they didn't, I can't. Because they're still dead. Working out the permutations for the third instalment must be a terrifying prospect, but one whose benefits I cannot wait to reap.

Earlier this week Microsoft unveiled another sequel of sorts: the cumbersomely titled but rebuilt from the ground up Windows Phone 7 Series, replacing Windows Mobile. It's not about to win over the iPhone crowd because, let's face it, their attention is unflinchingly fixed in one direction. To be honest I'd be surprised if it wins over me because I've been stung too many times by beautiful bits of hardware that were crippled by the sluggish Windows Mobile OS. But for now I just want to talk interfaces.

At first it just seemed bland. The "chromeless" interface means no menu backgrounds, no reflective icons or dropped shadows (and apparently no carrier customisations either). It's surprisingly different to current designs, taking its cues from the Zune rather than any existing smartphone OS. After a minute the focus on simplicity and clear typography is not only refreshing but rather beautiful, elegantly sliding between screens. Who would have thought Microsoft would be the minimalist ones? I remain wary until I play with one, but I think it will be all too easy to write this off as bland rather than bold: if that was your first impression, I'd urge you still to give them a whirl when devices arrive at the end of the year. I will be, even if I'm not holding my breath.

All this is a long way of saying that I should probably set my prejudice aside and try out Bioshock 2, remaining silent on it until I do so.

It was, he explained, the biggest night of his life. Looking around the heaving arena, it wasn't hard to believe. For any stand-up comedian that was a serious crowd. I've previously made my feelings about The O2, at least as a music venue, very clear. However as Rav and I had booked these tickets back in January (fortunately he reminded me yesterday since I had entirely forgotten) I found myself there tonight for the biggest gig of Michael McIntyre's life.

I'm a big fan and rather in awe of his sudden rise to such stratospheric fame. As you might expect, he was hilarious, though somewhat unusually the second half of his set felt significantly stronger than the first. The material felt fresh (by which I mean I hadn't seen it all on TV before) but some of the observational humour seemed to miss its mark – I'm not certain of the intelligence required to point out the unnaturalness of plants inside houses when I've been railing against it for the past decade.

The chief problem was still the venue itself. Its size is a massive disadvantage particular with a comedian like McIntyre because (as his fans will know) half of his humour is derived from his facial expressions and/or hair. This means for the full effect one cannot look directly at him, but rather must focus on one of the screens, with the result that one often feels they may as well be watching at home. To his credit he played up to it, actively engaging the distant rear seats, and it's certainly an impressive sight to see a single man keeping an crowd that size in constant laughter. He wasn't aided by a triple echo that reverberated around the arena, though it was amusing to experience the laughter/applause that seemed to roll around the audience in waves rather than the usual ripples. Perhaps most worrying of all, however, was a long segment in which he discussed the removal of pants in a gym. It's a sign of just how long I've been spending in the States of late that it took nearly five minutes to realise he was talking about underwear and not trousers.

Penny Arcade's review of Windows 7 is decidedly succint, if not entirely inaccurate. Having had an experience with the Release Candidate so good that I installed it on my primary computer, I am pleased to say my experience with the final product has been (aside from a brief issue with Belkin's wireless drivers) even smoother. Wandering home through Waterloo station I was impressed by Microsoft's launch advertising which appears to be their most accurate campaign yet, highlighting how the changes in Windows 7 are simply what users have been asking for. It's nothing massively innovative or original, it's just what people want. In some ways that is what separates it from Apple (though I am not about to suggest this is what has characterised Microsoft over the years; if anything the opposite is true), which feels the need to tell people what they need from and how to use their technology. For the last generation perhaps it is true that users could not be trusted with such decisions and needed to be told. Now, as we all become increasingly familiar with technology, that approach seems just a little bit backward.

In the past few years collector’s edition releases of major videogames have become a popular way for publishers to convince hardcore fans to part with a little extra cash. An extra £5-10 for a fancy tin box, an artbook and an extra disc with behind-the-scenes development footage is a pretty easy sell. The cheap approach, often used to entice pre-orders, is free-to-produce in-game content like an extra outfit or gold guns (yes, that happened). This year, all that has changed as videogame publishers have decided to up the ante.

The price of a collector’s edition game has rocketed to around £60-70, which in a recessionary year may seem either ill-advised or a blatant attempt to bolter lacklustre mid-year sales by cashing in doubly over the always-busy Christmas period. But the contents are a world away from the old fancy box and book. Batman: Arkham Asylum includes a fullsize batarang (that’s 14” of vigilante justice, one supposes, in marketing speak) for the proud owner to display/fight crime. The "black edition" of Assassin’s Creed II contains an 8.5” statue of protagonist Ezio as well as the game’s soundtrack on CD (and I’ll be honest, I’m tempted by this one). But the crowning jewel of this year’s line-up is the £120 “prestige edition” of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which comes with fully working night vision goggles. Seriously. If next year’s Dragon Age: Origins doesn’t come with a real dragon egg, I suspect fans will feel cheated.

I’m a collector, I understand the mentality and, if we can find the right price-point for this stuff, it’s no bad thing. At least it’s real stuff we’re being offered. Unlike the new clothing and accessories for sale in Microsoft’s new Xbox Avatar Store. Paying a little to express oneself digitally is okay, but this stuff is all really advertising so I find the future plans to unlock related clothes through in-game achievements far more appealing. The problem again is pricing. 80 points (about 70p) for a t-shirt or a hat might be okay. But it shows that they know us far too well when they charge 400 points (about £3.50) for a virtual lightsabre, and it almost seems worth it.

First off various bits that I've been meaning to share:

• Thomas Allen's book art photography is a stunning series using the cut-out covers from old pulp novels.
• I've been reading Lily's I Invent The Future blog for a while now, but only just added it the links page. It's broadly about women in technology, written with a considered and non-sensationalist voice.
• The Guardian has an interesting article on the importance of scary films for children, an opinion I strongly agree with and have mentioned here before. It cites Coraline as a perfect example.
• Cheat codes for everyday life is an interesting collection of things you may not have known you could do. But you can. Incidentally the opening of the article is a reference to the now legendary Konami Code, which was recently discovered as an easter egg on Facebook.

I have not said a great deal about my experience with Windows 7 since installing the beta a while ago. The reason is pretty simple: it’s just been incredibly smooth with very little to report. The general interface has undergone minimal change since Vista, with most of the changes under the hood. Subtle changes like the new Super Bar and AeroPeek are well-implemented evolutions of the Aero interface, but hardly revolutionary. Unlike the experience of early adopters of Vista, most software will already be fully compatible, particularly since most vendors now support 64-bit releases (yes, with 4 gigs of RAM in the laptop I'm using a 64-bit version of Windows 7). The result has been a very stable operating system that acts just as it should: generally stays out of your way and lets you get on with what you want to do.

So when the Release Candidate arrived earlier this month I didn’t jump at it. In fact, my experience with the beta has been so hassle-free that I probably won’t upgrade before my trip to the States either, since reinstalling all that software will be time-consuming. In fact my chief reason for switching to the RC will be to take advantage of its generous trial period, lasting until March 2010 (full expiration is technically June 2010 but forced shutdowns every 2 hours essentially render it useless in that period).

I’ll discuss the weekend’s wonderful trip up to Cambridge once I get hold of some photos from the panto (I didn’t take my camera up with me). In the meantime I have a few thoughts on Microsoft’s new interface for the Xbox 360, which went live last Wednesday. I am not buying into their NXE moniker. “Experience” is somewhat overstating the product — it’s an interface not a skydiving holiday. It is the first time a console has undergone such a radical overhaul, though it is a logical step for a software giant like Microsoft. With so much strong content being released it would be wrong to say this update breathed new life into the three-year-old console but it was certainly welcome – the old blade interface was already arguably better than its competitors but as the games library grew, finding items online became a chore, scrolling through a list of hundreds of titles.

The other big change it brought was the introduction of avatars, undoubtedly inspired by the Wii’s Miis but a natural evolution with far more detail, taking advantage of the console’s superior processing power. Interestingly the facial customisation is arguably shallower in that one can select parts in various shapes and colours but there is no ability to alter positioning on the face. This is presumably to facilitate more detailed facial animation on the dashboard and in games.

However a large part of customisation is in clothing, which proves far more than just novelty outfits (although in future games may unlock new themed outfits) or exaggerated stereotypes. A behind-the-scenes video showed artists at Rare sketching concepts with fashion magazines as reference, which frankly seemed a bit excessive. The result, however, is that one recognises friends as much from their avatar’s fashion as their appearance – indeed my sister’s is most instantly recognisable from her choice of jumper. That I had not expected.

The month long absence was largely to do with focusing on starting work as a trainee solicitor at Bird & Bird although, with the first two weeks spent on what broadly amounted to an LPC-lite Professional Skills course, very little has actually been going on. The trainees are a fantastic bunch, and I'd managed to meet about two thirds of them already through various social events over the past two years since the summer scheme (yes, it has been that long). From that bunch Rachel, Chelsea and Matt have joined, with Kelvin also starting in the firm's Hong Kong office. Rob will be joining us next year.

Obviously client confidentiality means I'm unlikely to discuss work at length here, but the firm culture is possibly even better than we had hoped. Rather than waxing lyrical about the ubiquitous "work-life balance" claim of every law firm, instead they just give us great hours with virtually no late nights so that people can, well, go away and have lives. I'll be in the IP department for the next six months and, having been a student for too long, I'm actually looking forward to getting properly stuck into some real work.

With classic poor timing in my last week of freedom before work, my Xbox 360 finally gave up the ghost, refusing to start and displaying the dreaded three red lights — meaning a critical hardware fault. While an electronic device of that value ought not to break after just 2 years, Microsoft's support has been stellar. With unusually high failure rates they extended their warranty to three years, meaning that after logging the problem online they emailed me a UPS label and paid for all transportation costs. Once received the turnaround was only around a day, and it arrived back working fine. The included note stated they had found problems in both the motherboard and DVD drive, so not exactly a minor repair. The inclusion of an unboxed scratched-up disc of outdated tennis game Top Spin 2 was a somewhat insulting gift, but the 1 month Xbox Live subscription card was vastly more welcome. Overall it was a problem that should not have happened, but being able to resolve it for free without even calling up a helpline mean Microsoft get top marks for their response.

Following the furore surrounding the release of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, I gave it a very wide berth for about half a year before eventually installing it. Those issues largely surrounded the introduction of Windows Firewall (turned on by default in SP2) and in hindsight I came to respect the developers' view which can be summed up as "enabling the firewall is inevitably going to break some things, so let's make sure we break everything at once and then it's done." By the time I installed SP2 the process was pretty seamless and updates to my firewall software (still Norton back then) provided a quick solution to immediately switch off Windows Firewall and continue as before.

A cursory glance over the contents of the first Service Pack for Windows Vista shows nothing major at all for those who have kept their systems up-to-date. Since it largely deals with under-the-hood speed and stability issues I figured it would be safe enough to install at Windows Update's suggestion, particularly since a public beta test had already occurred. Apparently I was wrong. After two attempts to install it, I've given up and will instead leave it well alone until either I hear the widespread issues have been resolved or it is actually forced upon us by Windows Update. What was my experience? One attempted installation caused a blue screen, failing halfway through. The second installation ran fine, taking about 40 minutes and reaching 100% in each of the 3 stages. After which, inexplicably, a message appeared stating "Service pack not installed" and rolled back again, which took it about half an hour. No error messages, nothing to explain why or even what on earth it was doing in those 3 stages if that didn't constitute a full installation. The internet is now flooded with similar experiences, with one suggestion being that it may be caused the by the (very common) Realtek integrated audio chipset. I need to by a sound card to install an OS service pack!? The short version is really the common sense approach I should have followed: avoid Vista SP1 for as long as possible until all the kinks get sorted out.

UPDATE: Microsoft's official advice is now to leave SP1 until mid-April, though Windows Update is still suggesting it.