Playing now: BattleField: Bad Company [video=6192918] I've been racking up the gameplay hours with my brother playing Bad Company online. We're both Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 veterans so this game feels very familiar. I like the chaos of the larger scale battles presented by the Battlefield series. 8 vs 8 firefights across a street are not uncommon. And with grenades and rockets blowing holes in walls, it can get pretty intense. Castle Crashers [video=6165246] I've been playing a lot of this with my girlfriend. It's easy to pick up and humor appeals to her. The online multiplayer suffers from disconnects which is annoying. Twice my friends and I got to a boss only to get disconnected. But local multiplayer is fast paced and satisfying. Excited to play: LittleBigPlanet [video=6195864] Who isn't excited about this game? Just release it already. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II [video=6193807] I'm a big fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and I've sunk many an hour into the first Dawn of War game and expansions. Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising [video=6193574] Again, I'm a big fan of the original. Owned and played through all of the expansions. More impressive is that I bought them when I was in college which was a period of game pirating for me. But we'll save that for another post. Spore [video=6196872] I don't know if I'm excited to play this, or to see what happens with it. There's a lot of hype surrounding the game. I'll probably wait a little while after it comes out to see what the word on the street is. What are you guys playing and looking forward to?

I bought a video capture card and made a couple Halo 3 highlight videos. We're doing a little 3 v 3 pride tournament, best of 7. Match 1 and 2 Match 3 and 4 It went to seven matches. Last video is on the way.

I downloaded the Dawn of War: Soulstorm demo yesterday, twice. Apparently the first time I didn't finish downloading or something as the file was corrupt. It wasn't until 10:30pm or so that I actually got a chance to play. But after I started I didn't stop until the wee hours of the morning. I did find it annoying that the battle I played didn't have any victory conditions for some reason. So after I annihilated the space marines I was fighting with the new Dark Eldar faction, nothing happened. I searched the whole map. I had every capture point. Every relic. Even the victory point in the middle. No idea what's going on. Maybe it was a glitch? Anyone else play? So it's a fun game. I have purchased every iteration of it so far. But, its appeal is wearing thin. I don't want to play as the Dark Eldar or the Sisters of whatever. I want to play as the Space Marine Dark Angels. I want to use the Deathwing and Ravenwing companies. I want larger scale battles with titans and super heavy battle tanks. *sigh* I guess I'll keep dreaming. Also, the title of this post is the Dark Angels battlecry. Update: I played the second battle in the demo. It was much better. It had a story line and there were bigger gunfights. I think the first one must have been just a skirmish or something. *shrug*

A while ago I posted top five reasons to get a PS3. Well, this is my revision.

I've been playing a lot of Forza 2 again recently. I go faster in the motorcycle helmet. Trust me. I'm close to getting gold in all the race events. Even so I don't feel confident enough to race online. :( I wasn't really a fan of racing games before I played Forza 2. My brothers were into the Gran Tourismo series way back when they were actually releasing games. After playing so much Forza I'm actually looking forward to playing GT5 (whenever that may be). Of course I don't have a PS3, but maybe that will be the final straw?

I got my 360 back from the repairs a while ago. They sent me a "new" one instead of repairing the old one. Initially I was excited to hear I was getting a new one... and then I got it. If by "new" you mean unused, then sure it's "new." But if you mean manufactured within the last year and a half, then no, it's not "new." It doesn't have an HDMI port and I feel like it's just going to overheat again. But it works... for now. In the past month or so I've been playing Guitar Hero III, Rock Band, Forza 2 and a lot of Call of Duty 4. Before I got CoD I was more excited about the single player campaign as I've never been a fan of the CoD multiplayer. However, according to the stats I've sunk a good 20 hrs in the multiplayer so far. Yeah, it's good. Right now I'd say CoD multiplayer trumps Halo multiplayer. My girlfriend, Jules, bought Rock Band the day it came out for me. (Thanks Jules!) And now it has spent more time away from home than it has in front of my TV. My brother borrowed it for a while and it currently resides at my parents place where my dad likes to play the drums with my brother while he's home on break from college. My Wii is also hanging out at home with my unfinished copy of Mario Galaxy. My older brother got me Mass Effect as a present and I played a little of that tonight. The voice acting is excellent, the story is engaging, the graphics are sharp and the gameplay is... eh. I'll have to play more before I have a final verdict. I must say that the voice acting and movie-like qualities of the game are excellent on my new surround sound setup. I opted for the Onkyo HT-SR800 which my friend helped me pick out as a gift to myself. I must say that games are amazing now. Amaaaaaaazing. What kind of gifts did you get this year?

Well, looks like my 360 finally died. The three red light deal. I got it about a year ago. *sigh* So, anyone know the process to get it fixed?

I would like to think of myself as a PC gamer. World in Conflict, Crysis, Medevil 2; all games that I play on the PC. Half-Life is a game that I've had a long PC relationship with so when it came to the Orange Box, it was a no-brainer. I preordered it through Steam and had a grand old time the first couple of weeks. Then I noticed a friend with it on the 360. Then another, then another. Until I have half a dozen friends playing Team Fortress 2 on the 360 regularly and only a couple on the PC. This is the kind of thing the 360 is good at. You see everyone else playing something and you want to do it too. I already have the Orange Box for the PC but seeing all these people playing it on the 360 makes me want to get it too. If only there was PC 360 gameplay. Argh!

Since my last update I've pretty much moved on from BioShock, World in Conflict and Supreme Commander. I still play a little WiC occasionally but I never even beat BioShock. :( Like everyone else I've been playing a lot of Halo 3 and the Orange Box. Unlike everyone else I tried out the PGR 4 demo which wasn't as bad as I was led to believe. I actually like riding the motorcycle better in that game than I do in MotoGP '07. Overnight I downloaded three demos and I'm eager to play them. Call of Duty 4 I've played the mutliplayer demo on the 360 and I'm not very impressed with it. But I usually enjoy the single player campaign of the Call of Duty games so I'm hoping this single player PC demo will get me excited about the game. Unreal Tournament 3 Honestly I've never been a big Unreal fan, but I'm curious to see what the new Unreal Engine has to offer. TimeShift I was excited for this game when I first started hearing about it. It has changed a lot since then and hasn't received much hype recently. Let's see what they've done! Wow, other than PGR 4, I'm apparently only interested in gun games. In my defence I did play Ticket to Ride at the recommendation of StanleyL last night which is an excellent game, even though my girlfriend beat me. :(

With the new computer setup I've been playing a lot of video games. After the late night I previously wrote about, I continued the trend and stayed up again until 2:30am the following night. The night after that I stayed up until 4:30am and last night I think I stayed up until 1 or 2 again. I've been focusing on three games mainly, BioShock, World in Conflict and Supreme Commander. BioShock I got a bit of a late start with this one. I had to wait for the new PC before I could dive in, but I'm glad I waited. The environments are the best part of this game. A lot of people have been raving about the graphics.

...the environments you find throughout the game look amazing and practically beg to be explored... In addition to a terrific artistic design that ties the visuals together, the game has a very strong technical side, provided you have a machine that's built enough to handle it. Unreal Engine 3 is under the hood, and all the requisite bells and whistles are along for the ride. - GameSpot Review

The art **** animations, and special effects create an unparalleled sense of mood and believability. - IGN Review

However, it's the sound that's really impressed me. After playing the demo on the 360 I started inquiring about surround sound, but I ended up going for the PC version and I don't have the desire for surround sound in the bedroom. I still haven't made it very far through the story yet but geez those big daddy's are brutal. I went through all of my first aid kits fighting the last one I ran into. It was pretty brutal. I know it doesn't really matter if you die as there is no penalty, but I still try to avoid it. I've also been 'rescuing' the little sisters. I would imagine it makes the game slightly harder maybe since you don't get as much ADAM, but I don't really know the difference at the this point. I just know it feels good to 'rescue' little girls. Their eyes get so big and watery and they say "thank you mister." Now how can you 'harvest' them after seeing that? World in Conflict What haven't I already said about this game? I've played it at every stage so far: alpha, beta and now the demo. It looks gorgeous and runs smooth on my system now. Jules asked me if there was anything interesting about the gameplay today over some pizza. I rambled off a bunch of things but I thought I'd highlight the cooperative nature of the multiplayer component. When you begin a game, you pick a role: infantry, armor, support or air. You get the rock paper scissors thing going with all the units. A tank is weak against helicopters which are weak against anti-air vehicles which are weak against infantry and so on and so forth. With built it VOIP it is easy to communicate with other players when you need assistance from another **** In addition to the VOIP there is a way to indicate on the screen where you need help and what action you need taken. For instance, if I'm playing support, I can see artillary indicators on my screen when my teammates want a building or area barraged. If you have a decent computer and enjoy RTS games, I strongly urge you to download the demo and try it out yourself. Supreme Commander Last but not least is a game that I have been playing off and on since its release back in February. I wanted to try it out again with the boost to my CPU power. It played well before up until I got hundreds of units on the screen all doing their own thing. It seems to be handling the load much better now. Also exciting is the expansion Forged Alliance (which is where the above image is from) due to come out in Novemeber.