Hey guys, dunno if anyone really noticed but I ain't been on gamespot all that much recently. Basically, I was having problems getting on to my own and other people's profiles. Stupidly, I waited for the issue to fix itself and it never did so I checked out the technical support forum and it turned out it was my Firefox web blocker that was restricting me, but the problems all sorted now.

Anyway, moving on. I'm still chipping away at Skate 2 and I still love the game, I'm getting closer to reaching Legend rank online mainly by playing best trick competitions cuz I win them a lot, and you don't have to sit and watch other people take turns. Also I recently started playing Godfather 2, which brings me to my next point.

Gamespot suck at reviewing games. Seriously, they gave it a 4.5, that's an incredibly dumb score to apply to this game. It's clear that they never really bothered to give the game a chance. If they did they would see that: Firstly it's a varied and fun game. Admittedly it can be a little buggy but then so can Fallout 3 and Oblivion and they're seen as perfect. If anything, on the surface it's a highly competent shooter game, okay so switching targets feels a little loose compared to say GTA but the combat is actually more fun.

You get a choice of weapons, admittedly there's only a few but with each weapon you get two execution techniques. For example if an enemies injured when he's kneeling you can execute him one way by clicking the R3 button. This usually involves putting a gun in the enemies mouth and blowing their face off. The hand to hand combat is suitably violent too, you can choke enemies by approaching them and pressing L1 and R1 and then holding L3 and R3 in to squeeze their throat. This all sounds really sadistic but when it's in context it really isn't that bad at all.

Okay, from what I've played so far the story is weak and doesn't really follow the events of the film so drop it down a mark for weak story. But then again, I played the original Godfather game so I knew to expect this. They gave the original game a 7.6!!! Yet the sequel which has better graphics, better gameplay and is generally better in everyway scores 4.5...ridiculous.

Anyway, one of the things I really like about this game is the new look map its actually a brilliant feature of the game. It's fully 3D and the fronts and properties you own are all shown in red and your rivals are shown in their respective colour. From the map you can micro-manage every aspect of your business empire. You can control how many guards are defending each of your venues, if things start getting heated you have to increase your defences. You can also manage take overs and bombings of other businesses all from the map. This really gives you a feeling of power and truly fulfils your role as the don.

Also, in the Godfather 2, you get your own family, you got this in the original game but it just felt a bit tagged on, I mean you had your squad but it never really felt like a 'family'. In the sequel the family mechanics are much more emphasised as each guy has specific skill sets whether it be medic, demolitions expert, safecracker etc. These skills make the game more varied as you can use strategy to eliminate your rivals. If there's too many guys guarding the front of a property, you can blast your way through the back door, or if you just wanna put a hurt on their crew to eliminate one of their perks, you can blow the joint.

Speaking of the perks this is another addition to an increasingly intricate strategy game. When you own all venues within a certain racquet, you gain a perk. For example, yesterday I took over all of the diamond venues and was awarded with bullet proof vests. These perks are brilliant and really give you a reason to fight over the turf. Rival gangs can however break these rings by taking over or bombing your property you then lose the associated perk which can be annoying but it also offers yet more strategy to the game. You see, you can do the same to your rivals, if there's a particular perk that they have e.g bullet proof vests and you can't take over their whole ring yet, you can eliminate one front and it breaks their ring and they lose the perk.

Basically forget what gamespot said about this game, if their review put you off buyin the game, seek a second opinion. I'm a huge Godfather fan, it's my favourite film series in fact. So I was getting this game regardless, I'm glad I did or I would have missed out on a slightly flawed but incredibly fun game. F*ck what you heard, try this game you might like it.

Review Breakdown:

Pro's:

• Solid shooting mechanics

• Detailed city environment

• Varied side missions

• Brilliant strategic gameplay

• Deep character development and family mechanics

• Good voice acting and character models

Con's:

• Driving is a little loose

• AI is sometimes questionable (but not enough to give a 4.5!!!)

• Graphics are a little dated (early PS3 looking)

• Story is a little weak and doesn't follow the film too well

Overall Score: 7.3

OK, so as you can see I don't think the game is perfect, I just think gamespot did it an injustice, every game has it's faults but GS seemed to focus on them which made them overlook alot of the games charm. I think if the graphics were a little sharper and the AI was tweaked this could have been a must have game I'm talking like a 9/10. As it stands, Godfather 2 is a fun and varied game with deep and involving strategic elements.

It's flawed but fun and is more deserving of your time than gamespot would have led you to believe. If you stuck around and read the whole thing then thanks for your time, this took me quite a while to write and I'm glad you bothered listening lol. :)

Since my last blog I've made some good gaming progress. I finished up my COD run and got the platinum, I had to replay the game again though on hard mode which was a pain in the a$$ because I'd already beat it twice, but it was also really easy and not much of a challenge at all.

I also managed to get the POP platinum trophy, I had them all except speed demon and be gentle with her from a previous run trough. I restarted a file and beat the game in 6 hours 12 minutes with only 41 saves from Elika, the ames much more fun when you play it quickly as the light seed hunting really slows the pace of te ame.

Next, my girlfriend randomly bought me the Wolverine game (cuz she loves me I guess lol) and I was pleasantly surprised, firstly because its a beat em up/hack and slash and secondly its a movie tie-in and they neaarly always suck. Well Wolverines actually alot of fun, the combat is quite complex which takes it a cut above the usual movie tripe. The enemies et progressively tougher and you have to adapt your moves to suit the enemies. I got all but one of the trophies for this game, I just need to beat it on hard mode, I plan on doing tis in the next few days. Overall I'd give the game a 7.8, the graphics are great, the combats fun and the games actually longer than you'd think. The only problem is the repetetiveness of the levels. You dart between jungle setting levels and laboratories constantly so eventually the environments start to get a bit boring.

The final part of my blog is in relation to WWE Legends of Wrestlemania. i've always been a bit of a die hard wrestling fan until recently. I no loner have access to wrestling on TV so I kinda gave up on the sport. However the golden years of wrestling i.e the 90's shaped my childhood quite significantly. Therefore for me LoW was a huge nostalgia trip for me. The game is like a really simplified version of smackdown except with all the old school classic wreslters. The likes of the Rock, Stone Cold, Andre the giant and Hogan make an appearance aswell as many others. Ok, alot of people wont like this game straight off the bat, alot of people didnt used to follow wrestling so will have no interest in the legends roster. Also, the Smackdown diehards will hate the new controls, all moves are mapped to the face buttons, the L's and R buttons play no part in the game.

The gameplay itself is alot of fun, if a bit basic, this is the perfect pick up and play game or a good game to play with a few friends round. The highlight of the games single player mode is without a doubt the Wreslemania World Tour Mode. I loved this! basically the game gives you a load of historic matches that true WWF fans will fondly remember. It then allows you to replay them more or less move for move or you can rewrite history and completely change the outcome. This mode is an interesting feature and for me the best thing about the game. My only criticisms of LoW are thae controls are firstly the controls can be hit and miss. There are so many moves and they're all mapped to the face buttons meaning half the time you'll struggle to actually do what you intended. Also, the campaign mode is on the short side and alot of genuine LEGENDS have been excluded from the roster, I'm talking Mankind, Kane, DX and many others. Despite all this I really enjoyed the game and managed to platinum it in more or less a day. Overall I'd give it a 7.6/10.

It's been a long time coming but at long last my strugle against W@W on veteran is finally coming to an end. Today i managed to conquer Heart of the Reich which is arguably the games hardest level. Now I just gotta do Downfall and the platinum is mine.

Although, this may not be the case, see I completed like the first 8 levels on veteran and got the respective trophies, then my game save corrupted so I lost all my progress. So, what i did was redo the first 8 levels on EASY because I already had the trophies, then I went on to do the later levels which i hadnt completed, on veteran. So in my trophy list it shows every level has been beaten on veteran. My only concern is that the trophy 'hardened war hero' might not activate because I didn't do it in one run. I'm hoping that this tropy is tied to the other trophies, i.e it activates after you've earnt all trophies for beating levels on veteran. I've got a horrible feeling that it's tied to the game data though :( So I just gotta wait and see, fingers crossed though.

Hey, so I got Skate 2 for my birthday and I gotta say, I love it. It's weird, I have no interest in real skateboarding whatsoever yet I've loved skateboarding sims for as long as I can remember, dating back to the original TH Pro Skater.

Anyways I wasn't sure if Skate 2 could topple Skate 1 as my favourite boarding ame but it far exceeded my expectations, the moves list is even larger and the controls even more refined. For anyone who is a Skate virgin, you will struggle to grasp the controls, but once you have them down, you'll never look back.

The grapics and art style are also a huge step forward, Skate 2 uses a water colour style which looks just beautiful in HD, really crisp and colourful.

I'm only a small way into Skate 2 but I'm already enjoying my stay in San Van, the missions are more varied and enjoyable than it's predecessor, although I must confess that I've been getting stuck on the odd mission due to my terrible reaction times lol. There are several new additions to the gameplay, you can now get off your board which opens up a whole new feeling of freedom, you can climb obstacles to reach a good skate spot or even move and manipulate their position to create a skate spot.

The game has trophies although I'm kinda cutting back on whoring for a while as I was rushing through games and often missing out on their charm, not so with Skate 2 I'm gonna do everything on offer before I move on.

I haven't played a great deal of online but from what I've sampled is great fun, there's a wide array of events on offer including the hilarious hall of meat contests.You can also create and upload spots which can be 'owned' if another user beats your original score. In addition to this you can upload videos and photos of your skating onto EA's servers as well as view and rate other users content.

All in all Skate 2 is a brilliant game and for me the best skating sim ever made, the graphics, gameplay and mechanics of the game are second to none, this is a must buy for fans of the previous game as it's improved on a seemingly perfect formula. To conclude, I'd give Skate 2 an 8.9/10, I knocked it down a little bit due to the occasional difficulty spikes and the sometimes unhelpful camera, apart from that...Skate is great :D

Hey, well you guys might remember a couple weeks ago that my grandad wasn't too good. Well yesterday afternoon he passed away. My aunt said that he went peacefully, but we'll know more after the post mortem. The funeral is next monday at 9.30am, but its a way from our house, so we have to leave next Sunday (which is my birthday). Hopefully we get to go to the chapel of rest and say our final goodbyes. Oh, some good news is that my dad got a new job.

Well I'm not entirely sure of the rules of conduct for this whole tagging sensation, but I'll give it a whirl (thanks for the tag bigd lol)

1.) My real name is Daniel O'Shea and I'm 18 years old.

2.) I come from Irish descent, but I live In Leicester, England.

3.)I'm currently at university studying Information and Business management.

4.)I have a great girlfriend who I have been with since I was like 15.

5.) I listen to a wide array of music including Hip Hop, Drum & Bass, Dance, Rock, Indie, Ska and Reggae.

6.) My favourite musical group are either Jurassic 5 or A Tribe called quest.

7.) My favourite ever song is Annie's Song by John Denver (for personal reasons)

8.) My favourite sport is basketball, but it suckscuz everyone else in the UK obsesses over Football (or soccer for the yanks lol)

9.) My favourite game is Final Fantasy 7, mainly because it's the first RPG I ever played, since then I have owned and played every PS FF game and loved them all.

10.) I have a shaved head, as I'm too lazy to style my hair in the mornings.

11.) My favourite alcoholic drink has to be lager, I drink it in quite amazing quantities last time I was out I sank like11 pints :O

12.) I try my best to be a good person and if I ever see anyone in trouble I go out of my way to help them. It usually results in some form of fisticuffs, but I'm not confrontational lol.

13.) The firstsong I ever owned was some song called ooh eee ooohh ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang, by the Cartoons when I as like 6 lol, terrible song.

14.) I am the proud owner of a PS3 and I'm glad I waited it out instead of blowing my money on a 360, I think I would have regretted it.

15.) And finally, I hate coca-cola, or pepsi, or dr.pepper, or any sort of coke derivative. No idea why, I've just never been able to drink it. Unless it's vodka and coke for some reason o_0

Anyway thats the end of my tag thingy, I now sentence the following to tagdom:

Conman999PS. Altiar25, Spyder0146 and Antiusername

I look forward to hearing your tag blogs guys.

This is gonna basically just gonna be me venting my problems, sorry if I get all depressing on you guys.

The last couple of weeks my grandads been real ill, like, he's basically on deaths door, don't get me wrong he's 89, so he's had a good life. But I just hate seeing him how he is, he's not the same strong man I used to remember. He's had two suspected strokes in the last 3 weeks and he spends all day asleep. He's started getting irrational fears, like he's scared to go in his bedroom as its where his last stroke happened. In case you were wondering my grandad is on my dads side of the family, he's my last remaining grandparent and I don't wanna lose him.

To make matters worse, my dad got made redundant today, yep, he lost his job :( i know its happening to alot of people due to the recession, but I dunno I guess i always thought my dad would be Ok, he's pretty upset. I feel so bad for him, he's lost his job and his dad is really ill, I just dont know how to make him feel better. In addition to all this my mum has been really upset and so have I, you see in 4 days time, its the anniversary of my grandmas death, I miss her like hell, I used to see her every day and she was like a mother to me. I wish there was a way I could see her again :(.

I've also been really busy with assignments so I havent seen my girlfriend as much as I'd like, she didn't really get why I couldnt see her, we had a bit of a talk but now she realises that I've gotta prioritise my uni work. Also, she knows why i've been down and is being really understanding, seriously, I'm so glad I have her. 'the last couple days I've been finding it really hard to muster the energy to make my way to uni, so I've missed a bunch of lectures...I dunno I guess I'm just depressed atm.

Anyone on here that knows me, understands that I'm not normally all doom and gloom like this. I'm just having a tough time atm and need to keep with it for my families sake and hopefully come out the other hand in a happier mood.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some emo punk who slits their wrist or any of that $hit. You gotta turn the negatives into positives and take each day as it comes.

Anyways I hope I've not depressed you guys, I actually feel better for talking about this stuff. Hopefully my next blog will be a bit brighter.

When hostility and darkness are your only opponents,

Cherish your honesty, your grace and embrace the moment,

Thwart the negative feelings that are clouding your thoughts,

And remember that a battle lost, is still a battle fought,

So don't you ever give up with your trying,

You're wasting your time withall of this crying,

Tears are an after thought of an unwanted emotion,

Stirring deep inside you causing such a commotion,

Embrace the positives of life and look out for each other,

Keep on fighting for life because we don't get another,

So please don't you ever give up on existing,

I'm urging you to persist with persisting,

It might seem that life is stacked up against you,

But smile and keep trying thats all you can do,

It might seem hard now, but just empty your mind,

Of horrors and pains and I'm sure that you'll find,

A heaven that's encaged in a mind that's so plagued,

Stand strong against the demons, now, you must be brave,

Life is so precious, try to remain positive,

Life is so fragile, we only have one to live...

It's just a little something I wrote incase anyone else has got problems, it aint a poem or w/e its just some words that happened to rhyme a bit....I dunno.... look...Just read it lol.

Okay this isn't some self pity trip or a plea for attention. No, this is my self critique of my gaming accumen, I've come to the conclusion that I'm pathetically hopeless at games. Seriously, like in most games, the average person would pick it up and automatically try it on hard mode, but me, I punk out and take the very easiest difficulty. It's not because I can't do the harder setting I just feel "safer" (for want of a better word) playing on the easier setting. Seriously, every game I've played including COD, MGS4, KZ2, Uncharted, ME, Bioshock and Fallout. All of these games were first attempted on the easiest setting, the only reason I deviate from this process is for the sake of trophies.

It's not that I don't like challenging myself because I do, infact I'm more suited to harder difficulties as easy are not challenging enough. It then comes to the stage that I get so used to theeasy modeswhere I think, well easy is less stressful so I'll play that, then when I come to do a game on the hardest setting e.g COD on veteran it just seems like a ridiculous leap in difficulty.

Ok, so the thing that made me blog this is Killzone 2, I played it first on the easiest setting and seriously, in some places I found it relatively difficult. However when I devised a strategy it was ok. Next I went on to play the game on Elite (big jump right?), unlike other games Killzone 2 doesnt just make more enemies, with more grenades, whilst reducing your health. It changes the difficulty but it makes playing the game more realistic. i.e in a real gun fight, you get shot once, it really effin hurts, therefore if you get shot 4 times your likely to die, this is how Killzone 2 on elite is. I don't have a problem with this, where my lack in ability fails me, i rely on instinct and common sense to keep me alive, such as the use of cover, flanking and using grenades to push through the enemy ranks.

This method has taken me very far, infact its gotten me to the final checkpoint, on the final mission of the game. I'm literally minutes away from completion. This is where my problem begins (slight spoilers ahead).

Without giving too much away, suffice to say that its near impossible to deploy the previously mentioned tactics, wave after wave of enemies spawn in a relatively confined area and at certain points they're spawning from all angles, this makes finding cover very, very hard. If you take cover at the front, the frontal wave kills you, and if you take cover near the back, the back wave torches you with flamethrowers. Anyone whose attempted the last level knows what I'm talking about. Anyway, basically I tried for like two hours to get past the very first checkpoint in the final section of the mission, so far I've not once managed to get on to the balcony.

This is why I suck.

Please can someone, anyone help me before I frag myself!

Hey, well atm I have a huge amount of work to be done in a seemingly impossible amount amount of time. I haveone assignments in for next Thursday, a 2500 word report on the use of social tagging in taxonomies (boring stuff) . That may not sound like much but then for the DAY AFTER, i.e NEXT FRIDAY, I also have to do do a collaborative report (3000 words) on the One laptop per child project ($100 laptop) this would be ok if it was me on my own, but it's a group assesment and it's almost impossible to get everyone to meet at the same time so it's progressing really slowly.

As well as that (ON THE SAME DAY) I have to hand in a website...A WHOLE WEBSITE! I have no HTML experience prior to going to university and I'm only 5 weeks in to this semester, the professor is basically expecting us to have grasped HTML programming to a professional level in like 6 hours worth of sessions. The only method I know to make a websiteto look semi decent is the inclusion of divs, this gives the webpage some structure but it's still gonna look amateurish.It's ridiculous, I have a day off uni today but I'm going in for like 5 hours to try and get the design of my website done and complete the CSS for the pages. Then I have to go and research all the content.

Basically I'm having a crap time of it atm and I've had no time whatsoever to play any games. :(

Hey well I really wanna make my profile look good but I need a decent banner.

Was just wondering if any of you guys are banner whizkids and fancied making me one?I like the one i have currently but the image is real blurred and I want one thats personalised to me.

Can anyone help out?