My God its been a long time since I last wrote something, it generally relates to how busy I am at work and as you can probably tell not alot going on.

Right well Happy New Year, hope y'all had a good one. I spent it with my good gaming friends as opposed to my social friends who thought it better to spend time with girlfriends for meals rather than getting drunk and falling down some stairs. Anyhow, we drank an awful lot while playing some soul calibur, it was all great joyful fun =)

My gaming recently has been consisting of 'Bad Company 2 + Vietnam', 'L4D2', 'Minecraft', and 'Supreme Commander 2' thanks to very persuasive friends and my christmas bonus. I feel as though I have re-discovered gaming in my life, especially after my recent break up on Christmas eve. Games have meant so much to me, generally no matter how bad or bleak a situation is, they seem to cheer me up. The people that come with them help too, not with comforting words or life lessons but with....well words like "Sorry about that dude......Right Joe you take point with your tank battalion while...OH JESUS UNIVERSAL COLOSSUS! Need more bombers!!!!" =)

This evening and over the weekend I shall be playing these games with the wonderful people at my local LAN which starts in about an hour and has me clock watching profusely. It shall be a weekend of brilliance and joy =D

This is really just a little thing I have noticed over the last week or so. My game has really started to take a down turn, such as im finding myself with 7 kills to 18 deaths and loosing alot on supreme commander: FA.

Im not sure what has caused this sudden down turn in my playing abillaty, but I think I've narrowed it down to lack of sleep, grenade launchers and mainly friends.

The lack of sleep is not from playing games too much but from 2 other things. 1. Labradors, my dogs have taken to sleeping on my bed and moving around during the night and 2. Downloading GTA4 which has taken me 6 days to download on steam so I've had to leave my PC running with its overly loud fans and bright blue lights.

The grenade launcher for obvious reasons. If I could go back in time I would remove the grenade launcher from history just to stop the suffering of millions of gamers and extra's in 80's action films. Its just a quick and easy way to kill someone. So much so that it defeats the object of having bullets at all, infact I feel sorry for the grenade launcher, in games like Battlefield 2 you hardly use it because for the biggest and most sinister thing brought into gaming. Regenerative health! If people lost health from bullets and didn't magically gain health back then their would be alot less 'noobtubing' and more shooting.

However I can't change that in modern games. So my last point and biggest is friends.

I'm not the most popular of lads, I know that, but I have 8-9 close friends who I see reguarly. 2 of them are hardcore gamers, 4 of them are casual gamers who play an afternoon of xbox a week and maybe have a small LAN at mine, 1 is a royal marine (he did the full training but got medically discharged before he went into combat) the most gaming he did was complete boarderlands, 1's a girl who had one game of CoD6 and beat me with one kill and has never let me forget it, but apart from that she hates games, and the last one is my marine friends older brother (thats why its a 8-9) he hangs around from time to time and talks alot of older games like the original AoE and things. Anyhow, the reason that they may be an issue with my gaming is because with the British summer on our door steps everyones been realing out the BBQ's, so instead of gaming ive been socialising and going to the local to enjoy a cider on a sunny afternoon. So this week (or whats left of it) I have got nothing planned at all, until Sunday, besides games. If I want to get back into my grove of positive KD/R then I've got to get focused and less social :lol:

After playing a few varieing games over the new year Ive come to the conclusion that thanks to CoD:MW many games are now lacking the 'lower standard' of gamers. By this I mean no disrespect to the people of MW2 who actually are rather good. Its also killing off many games by doing this.

I went back to playing some CSS, where many servers are now locked for clan wars, and found it 10 times harder to shoot someone. Maybe due to the hitboxes on CoD6 being the size of East Sussex also that everyone I was against was running around shooting my nakers off before I could get my crosshair on them.

So I then decided to go forwards to the Bad Company 2 beta to see if thier was anything to extinguish the raging fire of MW2. I believe this game has the potential to do such a miricle. I found itto be a joyous experience, as I was now able to blow snipers up from thier camping spots. Happy Days :D. There was also no stupid perks or buggering care packages, the only thing that I found rather annoying but loved at the same time was that hitting someone with bullets is alot harder than MW2.

Compairing CoD:MW2 to Bad Company 2 would be like compairing a prostitute to a girl that actually likes you. CoD:MW2 being the prostitute for the fact that it acts as if it loves you and you'll love it too for the hour you have her, but you know that she's done exactly the same for everyone else. She's fun for that hour but your left with nothing afterwards except goneria. Bad Company 2 on the other hand is fresh with plenty of potential. She's listened to what people have said and taken it in by having dedicated servers and not followed the trend of player hosted servers. She has a few slight imperfections but this is her in beta, when she's all dressed up and ready to hit the town she'll be making everything else look like a fool for falling for the cheap thrills instead of waiting for something thats a good laugh and won't ask for anything except you to play with her.

So in all i'm glad that MW2 has come along as it brings things into perspective that many games out there are a hell of alot better and more fun than MW2. Sure i've had my hours worth of fun getting my MP5k mastery and pretending to be a spartan with the riot shield but its time to move on. In a classic break up speech way "Its not you, its me. Ive changed, but don't worry thiers plenty more noob tubing, camping, QQ'ers in the sea" :P

Well were here once again,

Ive realised what ivebeen missing out on by not giving into buyingModern Warfare 2 whichjust came out yesterday and I predictmany people are going to be playing that well.....forever.

It doesntappeal to me really, I played CoD4, loved it to bits, then the game reset my stats at level 55 and lost me my golden deagle so I could have the 'joy' of re-aquiring them.I predict MW2will be similar, so good, no doubt about thatbut im not going to get it. Insteadive been playing some slightly older games that will likley become quiet due to this giants arrival.

So I thought id take sometime to re-visit TF2, seeing as I got a free hat from buying L4D2 I thought I may as well play it for the lols. Now I cant get enough of it. Then I went on to play some Left4Dead survival with a few mates on Helms Deep, we had that much fun on it, slowing down time and burning witches,that we ended up playing from 10 until 3.

Its more than likley that servers will now get less poppulated on other games seeing as MW2 is predicted to be the biggest game EVER! So im going to contribute to the few rather than follow the masses.

To the source engine!

hello,

This is basically what i did during my teens (so far) and anyone that is struggling to be aceptted as a gamer or person thats slightly diffrent should read this as it took me bloody ages lol =) I must warn you though it does get pritty long as I get older lol

Enjoy!

lets start at 13: During 13 I only had my playstation 2 and played ALOT of GTA Vice City, i loved it. The only problem for me was i didnt have a memorey card so i played it from the start over and over again. This was considered nomal for anyone of 13 to be playing video games but i took it to the next level and just kept playing, i didnt really do much else apart from skateboard with my my mates and brother. I was doing well at school ahving just moved up to high school getting B's in my reports ect. The world was my oyster.

14: I still had my playstation but was now playing San Andrea's and Battlefield modern combat, online this was one game that i will never forget playing and really got me into playing online. I had got a job that summer working for my parents shop and was enjoying school even though my grade had began to slip but nothing drastic. I still hadnt got a girlfriend but had many many friends most of whom I played with online or split screen on Timesplitters 3. This was when i must say i was most poppular and was loving it as i was surrounded by people who knew me well and respected me and invited me to BBQ's and camping trips ect.

15: This was my last year at high school and my grades had fallen quiet alot as I had started playing more and more games (and the fact i pratted around in most lessons didnt help) I was getting steady C's in most lessons. I started to find it hard to be with all my friends around school as i was popular with everyone (except maybe the geeks, not gamers, geeks as in beat your mark in a test by 300000 points and gloat about it geeks =) ) anywyas so i spent my mornings with the people who where into games like me and the poppular sporty types in the afternoons, i wasnt particuarlly sporty but i did play football (soccer) when the chance arose and swimming every wednesday after school doing life saving coarses. This was also the time when i realised at the end of the year that i was out of date with my PS2 and BF:MC so i decided i would get a PC a brand new one with the money i would get for my grades but they where heading for D's at the end of the year so i buckled down and scrapped C's meaning i passed 'just'.

I managed to get £600 for passing my tests and with it bought the PC of my dreams but had to wait to the end of the summer to order it as we went on holiday. When we got back i payed for the screen keyboard and mouse with the money i had eared working (which was around £400, im very low maintanance lol) and have it too this day still shiney and working perfectly. But the sad thing about this summer was that everyone was going in diffrent directions, some to work, some to colledge, and some to sixth form which i am still in for another year.

16: This was the year that changed my life as most of my mates had left and some more left during the year along with my 2 best mates and one girl that i had been talking and flirting with all summer. I didnt tell my remaining friends that i had been non stop playing CSS or BF2 most of the summer and kept my gaming life on the low until i decided to go to a LAN at a local centre and told someone during one of my lessons and he shouted 'LAN PARTY.... you geek' basically that killed me dead in the water as all i got for the next 2 month's was people calling me LAN and shouting 'computor geek' at me and thanks to my brother helping it spread through out the school even 13 year olds knew me as LAN. Slowly the people i had once called my good friends suddenly turned into people who constantly asked me stupid questions and remard that i sweat 24/7 luckely there was one group of friends that i basically would of died without and that was a mate who i had knew since first school and the art students that shared a spare room we used for extra art work and that was the only place i felt comftable being.

We had so much fun in that room but after getting kicked out of there a second time though (for breaking a cuboard door and getting paint on the floor and the rest on me =) ) we had come to the conclusion that we had cut ourselves off from the rest of the year and ri-introduced ourself to the wild of the school when we got kicked out of that room which was about 4 times out of 10. I had gone with the flow and excepted being called LAN as everyone called it me and decided to express it by wearing t-shirts saying fraises that only certain people only understand e.g. '1 Pwn n00bs' and stuff like that and some people laughed but it was short lived as i just took it and it wore off very quickley. But LAN has stuck with me to this day aswell lol.

17: This is the age im at now having just turned it infact in August and have gone back to sixth form for my last year and so far its going good, im managing with the work and getting on with the people as for the room, well we havnt been allowed it yet as it got slightly trashed from the year before leaving, but i dont think i want to go back into there as I have found that now the whole gamer aspect of me has become a everyday thing people have accepted it and moved on (except the geeks they still havnt forgiven me for using the word noob and forbid me from talking to them unless in letter form lol) but they dont matter what matters is that my grades are stready and im happy than i have ever been as i can play games and go out and have fun with my mates or atleast the ones that have stuck by me. Plus i couldnt of gotton through the age of 16 without the people at the local LAN event as I would of just given up gaming to start a new but they help by making it a jolly good laugh every month.

So remember no matter how horrible, dark, unrelenting it gets theres always hope =D yes its cheesy but what else can i say lol oh and hope to play you soon ;P

CHCJoe (Josh Wilson)