I've been playing Day of Defeat alot recently (as anyone who knows will have noticed) and there are a few common patterns emerging in the community.

Almost everyone who plays DoD seems to like Band of Brothers; I've seen a hell of a lot of people playing with names of the men from the book/TV drama like "Lt. Winters" as one example. I've also noticed a clan called the "101st Airborne" (the company in Band of Brothers) and many people with the same title added to the end of their names.

Another noticable link is that there are many DoD players who also like Red Orchestra. I have to admit that I did a test on this myself, not just finding it out by myself. I'm, interested in buying RO so I asked if anyone played it and what they thought of it...and pretty much the whole server answered the former "yes" and the latter "it's good".

These strange connections within the gaming world...an obvious one yes; all of these things are WWII.

Has anyone noticed any other connections out there? I'm sure there are many more to be found.

These opening words of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty are said by the famous (or is that infamous) Solid Snake. He speaks in the year 2009.

Last Sunday (30th April, 2007) marked the date that Snake took his magestic leap over the side of the Verrazano Bridge, New York City. Strangely, many eccentric nersds from all over gathered on the bridge to see what would happen (whether they truely belived or were just there for the experience is down to the individual nerds in question). Even stranger, however, is that something really did happen.

In the New York harbour, just past the bridge itself, a sinking tanker drifted half submerged. Sadly, however, the frieghter was designed to be a semi-submersible tanker using many ballast tanks; just like a submarine. So, it's just a strange coincidence right? Right?

But that's not all, is all this news just a cover up by the Patriots? After all, they do have GW to control the flow of information with. Even the mission of the so called, Dockwise Swan, has yet to be revealed. It all seems rather...fishy...to me. You make your decision, World.

The news plus videos and pictures of the tanker

I've had Counter Strike: Source since I got it free with Half Life 2 (and I'm glad I didn't buy it with my own money - read on to find out why) but I don't understand why everyone loves it so much. I thought the gameplay was irritating and unbalanced, the guns to be poorly designed, the maps to be lacking in inspiration and the players to be stupid and angry, very angry.

Take a look at my review

The graphics card has come, and it's finnaly nice to know that I'm seeing exactly what developers intended me to see in their games.

My games now look like a mixture of late Xbox textures and models with Xbox 360 water and effects, which is nice, to say the least. 'Tis a bout time I got better hardware for my PC and although the graphics card is probably a step down for most PC Gamers, it'll do for me.

Another good factor in my new card is the fact that it is faster than my old card, so even though I havn't been able to upgrade my RAM, games still run faster now on high graphics than they did a few weeks ago on low/medium graphics.

One draw back, however, is the increased loading times, but I'm a patient man and on the Source games (CS, HL2 & DoD) the loading times are pretty good anyway...for the Battlefield games though the loading times have always been bad and now they are even worse!

Perhaps my next step will be to get 1GB of RAM...

My Day of Defeat review

I have recently seen 300 and now want to speak my mind about it.

First off, I dislike the logo...not that that really matters but I know 2 people who think it says "Zoo" and 2 who think it says "309".

The film itself was fairly good, good action, realistic gore and reasonable acting. But it is still a film that will be quickly forgotten. I usually enjoy a film with a good plot that makes you think...this was devoid of any storyline what-so-ever, but perhaps it's not such a bad thing, 90% of the film was action and very good swordy action too, but 90% of the action was slow-motion; I'm quite sure the film could be cut down to an hour or less if the action was just normal-motion, sometimes I liked it, sometimes I just wanted to scream "get on with it!". That said, the film was quite enjoyable and the concepts of the real-world battle were there (I read up on it after seeing the film) but it is stretched and overly done for the film, but hey? What's wrong with that? Nothing. It's just a film/comic book.

So, a good film, but a little to slow (despite the fact it the story was so incredibly fast).

Hurraah! I ney graphics card is on the way and I should be getting it sometimes next week. It ain't much, only 128MB VRAM but it'll do. Now all of those "unsupported chipset" problems should go, like the bad draw distance and pathetic online FPS to name a few.

Normal-person gaming here I come...well, actually, I play PC games...so really I'm not that normal, those boring console gamers are the "norm".

I am finnaly level 10 and am now finnaly able to add my own videos to my profile! Yay! Although this is no big achievement at least now I don't have to sit through the long and painful method of "YouTube" video posting. Bah! Gamespot loads them much quicker.

Huraah!

I've been obsessed with planes for years now but have never invested in a proper flight sim. Sure I've had the whole Ace Combat series but there is only so much of the action those games can offer. So, after watching TopGun again I decided enough was enough and finnaly looked into buying a real flight sim. I looked at Lock On and Wings over Europe, WOE was cheaper so I bought it, it came but I over looked one major issue - a joystick. Well, I tried to play it with the mouse and even with the sensitivity as high as it could go the plane would hardly budge.

Out comes the crappy PS2 controller-shaped USB controller that has been out of action for some time and hey presto it worked perfectly. So I, being one who does not like change, I assigned all of the most used buttons into the exact same positions as the Ace Combat games' default stlye. I put the game onto hard mode and started it up.

Ah! What the hell was going on!? I though I knew about planes but not to THIS degree...why won't it turn? Why has my engine just turned off, which one of these 15 radar types should I use? Bah, too hard - and I'm one who's good at most games...well, not this one evidently. So now I play the game on a mixture of hard, medium and easy settings and therefore now I have, essentially, a more in-depth Ace Combat but on PC.

Now that I consider it...I should have probably just carried on playing Ace Combat.

My WOE review: http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/sim/wingsovereuropecoldwargonehot/player_review.html?id=423595

My Ace Combat Review: http://uk.gamespot.com/ps2/sim/acecombat5/player_review.html?id=423651