A guy at work is getting one, so I'm waiting to see what he thinks of it.

I’ve played a whole lot of Skyrim in the last few weeks and got my character up to 79th level with everything but Two-Handed and Pickpocket maxed out. I did use a couple of cheats on some skills like speech where there’s a guy you can keep having the same dialogue with over and over, and I beat the crap out of, pin cushioned, and flamed the horse. Otherwise just used various power leveling tricks.

I’ve made some weapons and improved some armour but haven’t done anything close to the optimizing routines out there but still pretty powerful. I Three-shot a dragon with dwarven arrows and beat the big bad dragon the first time with about 5 daedric (sp) arrows.

I’ve managed to put together a nice little “party” with Lydia, the conjured shadow assassin, and whatever conjured creature I want and when outdoors the horse joins in the fray. Even with relatively unenhanced light armour I can now take three hits from a giant before going sub-orbital.

I’m collecting up ingredients for making some smithing and enchanting potions to max out some weapons.

About the most interesting thing I’ve found recently was a huge set of underground ruins that took about a day (real time) to completely explore. There were lots of soul gems to be mined there.

I still have 25 unassigned perks to play with. The big decision I haven’t made is to go up the heavy or light armour side of the smithing tree. I think weapons smithing is going to push me toward the heavy side despite the sneak hit and weight for heavy armour. I should be able to make up for some of the weight by smithing my own weapons with double enchantments so I’m not carrying around 3 bows. Also I found (by reading forums) that Lydia can supposedly carry an unlimited amount if you direct her to pick it up rather than handing it directly to her, though some people have reported glitches when done with large numbers of the same item. However, the reality is that except for the ruin, which was so huge, I haven’t been near my own carrying cap for some time since I don’t really need to pick up much heavy stuff anymore, though lugging around a 20 lb. Elder Scroll is getting annoying.

I’ve only had one major glitch in the last several weeks where the game just froze. Of course it was just after I’d collected a bunch of butterfly wings without saving. Otherwise it’s only been minor glitches like having to fast travel or leave a room to get an NPCs dialogue options to reset or to get the next progression in a quest.

I must resist peeking at Mass Effect 3.

It's a slick looking device but I'm not sure if it will take especially with the popularity of tablets and the abundance amount of game development surrounding iOS and Android. It definitely has some big advantages over a portable gaming device like a tablet with the controls.

Playstation Vita developers will have to step up because of the reviews of the launch games I have seen so far on TV, the games are not that great.

Yeah, the dual analog sticks are the main reason I'd consider it. Of course, if I'm going to be playing games, I'd much rather do it on my main system. I'm never away from home long enough to really feel the need for mobile gaming. I've started taking my Kindle Fire to work, but only to catch up on online stuff during breaks. If I have any time after that, I read on my other Kindle.

I am more into the casual aspect of mobile gaming so a tablet really fills that void nicely. It also has unbelievable dev support. The simplistic and intuitive nature of playing games on a tablet I find provides a nice contrast to what I usually play on console and PC.

I spent all weekend beating Mass Effect 2 (played the demo for 3 also). So I'm all ready for March 6th.

Oh, I also have a Vita pre-ordered, so I'll have that to play with for a couple weeks before ME3.

Back when ME2 came out I played though both ME1 and ME2 enough times to get a both a “good” and a “bad” maxed out character to port over to ME3. Now I just hope I can figure out which saves they are.

Have you played the "Arrival" DLC for ME2? It came out after ME3 was most of the way through development, and ties 2 to 3. I played the demo for 3 before finishing the last two DLCs of 2, so knowing how 3 starts I can see how what happens at the end of Arrival links to Shepard's initial position.

No I haven’t played the DLC. I’ll check it out. My main interest if the character progression continues through the DLC to ME3 since I really don’t want to start over again right now from ME1 though at some point I probably will since I just love the whole ME universe.

Oh yeah, the DLC integrates right into the main story. There are two that are even intended to be completed after the return from the Omega relay, The Shadow Broker, and Arrival, and definitely choices made in all the DLC will have an affect on ME3.

Have you reached level 30? It took the final mission of Arrival to hit the cap for me.