I've been away from my 360 since the 1st of July. I don't consider myself a gaming addict, but after a couple days without it I began to miss it a bit too much... Luckily that awful time is over, and I am rejoined with my trusty companion.

I had of course added the trials of the arcade games to my Xbox.com download queue, so eventually I tried out all the different games. A lot of crap, like Madballs, but Battlefield 1943 is excellent.

At first the sniping was a bit weird to me, but now I am really feeling it and I'm getting the same vibes as in Far Cry 2. I'd say 1943 is actually better than Far Cry 2 (multiplayer sniping-wise), so it's definitely bang for your buck. You don't have the overpowered .50 caliber AS50 sniper in 1943 that you do in Far Cry 2, but after getting used to the bolt-action snipers in 1943 I find it just as exhilarating to do some kill assists from across the map and getting extremely lucky and hitting moving targets (which you have to lead if you have enough distance) in the head. And all the other stuff, like getting flags and using vehicles is also fun. I also love the demolition charges the sniper gets. Not only can I take out tanks, but I can also be clever and place charges by flags and wait for people to try and capture them.

One of my favorite "Battlefield moments" was when I had placed charges on the flag outside the watchtower on Iwo-Jima (in the middle of the map) and was camping out at the top of the watchtower. On the map I saw a tank rolling in and he placed himself by the flag and began lowering it. BOOM! I detonated the charges, then went down the ladder to re-raise the flag, and was treated with the sight of a dude standing in the doorway where I was heading with his back against me for an easy melee kill. The pistol is also very effective. In other words, I love the Scout.

There really are a lot of moments in this game, and especially sniper moments. I have decided to do what I did with Far Cry 2 and make a compilation of all of these by filming the TV, but this time it will be much faster and I won't move the camera in between matches like I did with Far Cry 2...

I'm also playing more Halo 3. I'm doing the Annual achievement soon, which is very easy once you know what to do. I'm also getting into ranked FFA, which I had completely ignored in the past, but I actually quite like it since you only need 3rd place for EXP and my K/D is a bit low in Ranked so there is less pressure.

So yeah, business is back and booming and hopefully we'll see each other online!