Having recently completed a rather pointless two year college course as part of my work apprenticeship I have decided to take a week off to relax, potter around the house decorating, drinking tea, drive around aimlessly in the sunshine and to (most importantly) catch up on some video gaming.

To celebrate this occasion I've bought Red Dead Redemption, Splinter Cell and 2100 Microsoft points. The microsoft points purchase surely needs no explanation, the new Modern Warfare 2 map pack is released tomorrow and I am very much looking forward to the prospect of killing people in an abandoned fairground setting. I am also pleased to see that they have brought back Vacant although I feel a little bit annoyed that Infinity Ward feel that it is justifiable to charge 1200 ms points for a pack that contains re-hashed maps from their previous game, surely a free map pack with the old favourites could have been thrown in as an incentive for those users who purchased the previous 2 packs? But that would mean Activision would be doing something nice AND for free.

On to the meaning of my topic... I actually feel guilty spending my hard earned holidays playing video games. Whilst other people use their free time to sit in the sun (as rare as that is in England) or drink (which is not too rare admittedly) I prefer to take Mr John Marston hunting in the mountains for bears or to occasionally hogtie a prostitute and leave her lying on a railway line whilst i stand by cackling with joy... Ok, maybe I should feel guilt for that. But the crux of what I am trying to get to is that I genuinely feel as if I am missing out on something despite the fact that I am usually delighted to sit around in my pants playing video games.

My girlfriend is working this week and most of my friends are also working so I don't really have anything to do during the day except play on the xbox or catch up on a bit of Football Manager, the sun, however, is shining and I can't help but feel a little bit pathetic hiding away in my room, with the curtains closed (blasted sunshine affecting my view of the screen!) and endlessly riding around New Austin on the hunt for rare flowers.

On the positive side though, I am really, really, really enjoying Red Dead Redemption, more so than previous Grand Theft Autos. I hope that the sales of RDR are high to encourage Rockstar to branch away from the city settings of GTA and to try new vistas, personally I would really like to see a pirate style GTA clone as well as a futuristic GTA, a futuristic sandbox game would be incredible, Rockstar would not be limited by technology (i'm thinking back to the future 2 style flying cars) and the art direction would be breathtaking (I'm thinking Mirror's edge or even the dark, bleak futuristic world of Blade Runner).

Like the proverbial dog with its tail between its legs, I return. I tried giant bomb, couldn't get into it, I looked at some other gaming sites, didn't have the energy to 'interact' and then decided to give up on blogging. I then tried my hand at just general blogging with the google blog doohickey (because I am man, a fickle beast).

Then I thought, sod it.

So i'm back and I intend to embrace gamespot again, I shall go on the hunt for unions and forums to shoehorn myself into and later on this evening I intend to scour through a few blogs of friends on here and say poignant things like 'hello' and 'i like this game'. You lucky devils.

I just wrote a huge blog that would have been the 4th part of my favourite artists/bands list. Unfortunately I pressed back at an inopportune moment and the blog has been lost. This has annoyed me greatly and spurred me into thinking about starting my own blogspot blog. I'm getting annoyed (again) with gamespot's technical inabilities (thank god i don't live in Scun---thorpe!) and the awfully draconian censorship issues that cause me to insert three dashes inbetween the name of one of England's most famous industrial towns.

If i do start a blog that is less game orientated and more egocentric (if that is possible) then I will post the link on here at some point.

In actual gaming news... I am quite excited about theBatman game that is going to be released over here on Friday, I have decided against trying the demo simply because I don't want to ruin that 'first play' moment of placing the disk in the tray and throwing myself into a game world.

Batman aside, Bejewelled 2 has taken over my life. I'm not sure if it is a bad thing. I am however, determined to obtain at least a clutch of the insanely hard achievement points offered by the game, no matter how long it takes me.

so i got moderated. bugger. and they've deleted my last post!

All because I partially (not fully) covered a swear word in my title. I wonder if someone reported me or people just go around looking for things to mod. ah well, I feel like a fully fledged member of gamespot now.

To paraphrase my last (and non-existant) post... I've got a big tv and i'm enjoying Turtles in Time on Xbox live, I also bought Marvel vs Capcom but it turns out that i'm ******* **** at it.

Power to the people and all that!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel in this series so i thought i'd press on. If you have read the previous two entries and have never heard of the bands/artists that i've mentioned then i'd seriously urge you to look into them; i'm not mentioning them to try to alienate you, i really think that they are acts that deserve recognition and that they are artists that can be seen as being at the top of their game in terms of what they do.

The Arcade Fire

The Arcade Fire are a 7 piece band from Montreal and rose to prominence with their album 'funeral'. They became known for their incendiary live shows and for their distinctive brand of indie rock and have won numerous award including a grammy in 2005 for best alternative album (for funeral). Back in 2005 i worked in an indie record shop in England and I found myself immediately drawn to the seemingly handmade album artwork and found myself intrigued by the band. We originally stocked the album in low numbers so i'd find myself playing the album in the shop and having to turn it off mid-way in order to sell the record to a customer that had been attracted to Win Butler's distinctive vocals and the intricate orchestral workings of the bands. Arcade Fire's album 'Funeral' was influenced by the deaths of many a band member's family and friends and through such events the band were able to compose a masterful album based around death, the cold and an apocalyptic view of the world that appeals to pessimists like myself. They followed up 'Funeral' with the album 'Neon Bible' in 2007 and I was still working for the record shop. So once again, I played the album to death and it sold well, it lacked the immediate urgency of their previous album but the band had introduced an odd element of impending doom and bleak imagery cemented the 'Neon Bible' as an album that would prove to be as unsettling as it was exciting. When I think of the Arcade Fire I generally think of 'Funeral' and the incredible songs that feature on the album, at the time it was completely unlike anything else out at the time. 'Funeral' is an album that needs to be listened to in full, there are countless singles on the album but when separated from the other songs they lack the cohesive sense of impending dread tinged with optimism that the Arcade Fire have made their trade mark.

Songs to listen to: Neighbourhood #3 (power out), No cars go, wake up

Sam Cooke

Anyone that knows of Sam Cooke will claim to love him, that is a scientific fact. In my view he has possibly the greatest voice that has ever been recorded and the majority of songs were recorded (and released) in a musical period in which pop music genuinely offered profound and beautiful opinions about life. Sam Cooke was a soul singer that possessed a voice that could resort even the hardest, crazed maniac to tears after listening to just a few bars of his songs. His most well known song is 'wonderful world' and I think that it has featured on both singstar and lips karaoke games, my girlfriend seems to love this song a lot and I (modestly) think that it has something to do with the fact that this is always the song that i choose to sing whenever the family pull out my dusty microphones. Sam Cooke sang songs about love, pure, distilled love and he managed to show an awareness of the awkwardness of teenage relationships in his songs that are very rarely successful (especially in modern pop songs). Out of all of the artists that I plan to (and have) write about Sam Cooke is definitely the most difficult to explain; he is simply the greatest thing about pop and soul music to have ever existed. Please listen to my recommended songs and then accept that Sam Cooke will forever be a part of your life.

Songs to Listen To: Wonderful World, Bring it on home to me, a change is gonna come, good times

Wilco

Back in the early 90's there was a band called Uncle Tupelo, when this band imploded Wilco formed from the ashes. Wilco are an American indie band that can not be typecast easily. Their first album A.M. is a pretty rudimentary and deceiving introduction towards what the group would eventually produce and offered a generic, run of the mill set of alt country songs. With each album that Wilco produced the band began to grow and display their particular strengths; culminating in one of the greatest albums ever 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' in2002.The songs on this album are, in my view, incredible, and show Jeff Tweedy(and the rest of the bands) ability to invert a topic and to create songs based around the fundamentals ofthe greatestever pop-songs (heartbreak, alienation and accessibility) whilst adding a pioneering variation comparable to Radiohead on the other side of the Atlantic.

Songs to listen to: I am trying to break your heart, radio cure, ashes of american flags, I'm the man who loves you

My list of favourite artists continues... Thank you for your comments about the bands that I've mentioned (even if they are not to your taste), I'm going to further this post by linking each artist to something; unfortunately Youtube in the UK no longer hosts music videos and other such musical goodness so I think that I'm generally gonna resort to linking to myspace pages.

Sufjan Stevens

Labelling Sufjan Stevens as a 'singer/songwriter' is a bit of an injustice, he is so much more than that. Sufjan is most well known for his 'illinois' album (part of a projected series in which he plans to release an album based on each US state) and his signature tune 'chicago'. I first heard Sufjan Stevens on when I watched 'Little Miss Sunshine' and I immediately swore to look into his back catalogue. Sufjan is often considered to be an indie-pop-folk artist yet his albums vary from the electronica of 'enjoy your rabbit' through to Brian Wilson-esque orchestral pop found in 'illinois'. His music is often considered to be based on his own life experiences and the songs that are semi-autobiographical are heartbreaking and intriguing. His 'States' series of albums focus on distinctive themes based on each area and 'Illinois' features songs about aliens, serial killers and cancer. There are very few artists around that can produce albums at such a prodigal rate and still maintain such a high level of quality.

Songs to listen to: "Chicago", "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti", "Casimir Pulaski Day", "John Wayne Gacy Jr."

Mogwai

Mogwai are a Scottish post-rock instrumental group that formed in the mid 90s and have since established themselves as one of, if not the greatest post-rock band to date. Their work has been mimicked endlessly since they broke through to the relative indie mainstream with their album 'come on die young'. The group have released the majority of their albums on the acclaimed Scottish indie label 'Chemikal Underground' that boast artists such as 'arab strap', 'aereogramme' and 'The Delgados' in their stable. Mogwai have released 6 studio albums, a John Peel Sessions compilation and a soundtrack to a movie entitled 'Zidane- a 21st Century Portrait' in which the band scored the soundtrack to a football match in which dozens of cameras followed around the mercurial french midfielder Zinedine Zidane for an entire game. The actual album is brilliant (as is the film) and is testament to the powers of the band in which they can channel their terse orchestral works to any ****of content and still produce staggering results. If you are a fan of 'Godspeed You! Black Emperor', 'M83' or any other band that dabbles in apocalyptic instrumental anthems then you need to hear Mogwai.

Songs to listen to: Hunted By A Freak, Like Herod, Mogwai Fears Satan, XMas Steps

Tom Waits

Tom Waits is many things; an artist, a poet, an actor and a composer. He is most well known for being a pioneering and challenging singer songwriter and boasts a back catalogue of music spanning from jazz to blues to industrial metal. It is often said that their is a fine line between madness and genius and Tom Waits definitely stands firmly on this line whilst sipping scotch from a broken glass. His album 'Rain Dogs' is one of my all time favourite albums and has written some of the greatest songs of the last century. He has also covered a number of songs and completely over-shadowed the original artists that penned the songs (search for Tom's cover of 'Roxanne' by the Police, I dare you). If you have ever experienced a day in which nothing seems to go right and your only salvation has been odd music and strong spirits then you should consider Tom Waits to be a kindred spirit. Never has a nervous breakdown sounded so brilliant.

Songs To Listen To: Goin' out West, Jockey Full of Bourbon, bad liver and a broken heart

Arab Strap

Arab Strap don't exist anymore. They disbanded in 2006 and their hasn't been a band since to produce an album that can challenge the sad, poetical nihilism that Malcolm Middleton and Aiden Moffet turned into an art form. Arab Strap (label mates of Mogwai) created beautiful and tragic songs that offered vignettes,dirty, glancesof a sleazy and down beatenvision of lifethat others are too scared to reference. Aiden Moffet's vocals are delivered in the form of a drunken, epiphany hit murderer and their songs revolve around sexual failures, drunken adventures and sober realisations all to a post-rock tinged backing that manages to musically relay the emotions in which the lyrics often allude to. As previously stated, Arab Strap no longer exist; they achieved a modicum of the fame of which they deserved and no more. Their live performances spanned from the shambolic (in which the band members where so drunk that they were unable to perform) to the sublime (in which each member of the audience stood rooted to the spot, unable to express their gratitude for bearing witness to such perfectly crafted brilliance) and having witnessed both ends of the spectrum I can say that I'm wholeheartedly grateful to have been in the presence of true genius.

Songs to Listen to:Soaps, New Birds, Packs of Three, There is no ending, The Shy Retirer

The idea of a concrete top 5 favourite bands/artists is a difficult concept for me to grasp, it will change from day to day, after having read slipknoob's top 10 favourite bands I have decided to write my list of the favourite artists (and generally a specific album if possible) that have changed my outlook on life, music and how art can affect everyday life.It was impossible to narrow the list down to five and I struggled to make a list of ten, so I've decided on a list of 20. That my seem excessive, but I love music and there was no way that I could exclude certain acts from my list. If you have heard and enjoy the majority of the acts on the list then I raise my hat to you and applaud your good taste, If any of the artists that are listed are unknown to you then I urge you to track them down and listen to the tracks that I've recommended, I promise you that you will find it to be rewarding.

So without further ado her is my list (in no particular order)...

Elbow: Elbow's latest album, The Seldom Seen Kid, recently won the Mercury Music Prize which is a relatively prestigious award in the UK given to the artist(s) that create the greatest album of the year. The MMP is very often rewarded to over hyped bands or artists that the critics believe to 'deserve' the award instead of actually deserving it. This time around the judges managed to get the award completely spot on. Elbow beat Radiohead, Robert Plant (of Led Zep fame) and The Last Shadow Puppets (Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkey's side project) to the award and very few journalists and fans would disagree with the result. Elbow have spent many years plying their trade as indie also rans being unfairly described as Radiohead rip offs and as general underachievers. Guy Garvey, the lead singer, is one of the most charismatic front men of the current generation of Indie bands from the UK since Jarvis Cocker started to swing his androgynous hips on top of the pops and is the primary writer of a collection of songs that perfectly encapsulate the angst of growing up in northern England. Garvey writes his songs packed with literary verve and places his songs in the most mundane of situations and manages to place a spotlight on general everyday events and gives them a significance that James Joyce was able to pertain a hundred years prior.

Songs to listen to: Grounds for Divorce, Great Expectations, Scattered Black And Whites

Radiohead: Every generation offers a band that acts as a watermark for other bands, 15 years ago it was Nirvana and 15 years before that it was down to bands like Joy Division, The Clash and the Sex Pistols; acts that managed to change the way that 'rock' music was perceived, performed and accepted by fans. It is not hyperbolic to state that Radiohead are the next band to fall into this illustrious category. Thom Yorke crafts songs of delicate heartbreak and paranoia that often prove difficult to translate on a basic level but are carried through by the layers of sound that his band create. Like any great band, Radiohead aspire to challenge their listeners with every step that they take as a band and each album is different in it's style and overall message. Radiohead started off as a very ordinary grunge band (post nirvana) and managed to achieve notoriety and fame through their single 'creep', the song followed the basic grungy blueprint of embedding angsty lyrics with a quiet, loud, quiet format that rarely even hints at the depths that they would eventually plumb with their later albums. Yorke credits his trademark vocals to Jeff Buckley and the similarity between the two artists' voices are notable, Radiohead however have continued evolving and have produced a back catalogue of albums that would each individually warrant a place in many fans and critics top ten favourite albums; from the progressive post rock of 'OK Computer' to the sparse ambient electronic jazz of 'Kid A' to the bleak pop of 'In Rainbows' Radiohead have always challenged their fans to run with the band, never allowing them to rest and stagnate in a set genre.

Songs to listen to: Just, Paranoid Android, Reckoner, Creep, there there.

Modest Mouse: I first listened to Modest Mouse many years ago (the album Moon & Antarctica) after finding a promo for £4 and being intrigued by the song titles on the album. Modest Mouse wrote odd songs that shouldn't be accessible to fans, they wrote about the universe and God, the lead singer (isaac brock) was an ex heroin addict with an odd voice, what tied Modest Mouse together though was their ear for a good chorus and a catchy hook. Modest Mouse are able to make anything sound like philosophy and to make even the most ardent indie fan break into a dance. They have recently joined forces with Johnny Marr, the ex guitarist from the Smiths and whilst they're music recently has lacked the odd funky individuality offered by their earlier bombastic albums Modest Mouse will always be able to offer a punchy alternative to the three minute pop song that will always pull me back in.

Songs to listen to: Float On, Dirty Fingernails, Bankrupt on selling, 3rd planet

The Decemberists: The decemberists are a strange band, they either attract unadulterated love from fans or bemusement. Colin Meloy, the lead singer, has an extremely distinctive vocal style and his lyrics evoke the old folk tradition that fuse together old english tweeness with the post capitalist views of the United States of America. The decemberists songs' can be seen as little vignettes, small stories and snap shots of characters and events that are distinctive in their idiosyncrasies. Meloy sings of angry mariners that await their revenge on sworn enemies (whilst providing entire tales behind their lust for vengeance) and of Romeo and Juliet-esque romances between lovers that are destined to end in tragedy. Despite the often clumsy subject matters the decemberists (named after an uprising in 19th century russia) craft songs tinged with a tongue in cheek humour that are always reinforced by a supreme literary knowledge of the periods described.

Songs to listen to: O Valencia!, The Perfect Crime No. 2, My Mother Was A Chinese Trapez Artist, The Mariner's Revenge Song.

Neil Young: A few years ago I found myself driving from one end of England to the other with my dad to pick up a hell of a lot of junk that my sister wanted to move with her following her return from her younger ventures in the south of the country. We hired an old van that had a faulty radio and a tape deck, the only tapes that we had for the journey were both Neil Young albums 'After the Goldrush' and 'Tonight's the night'. The journey was about 9 hours there and back and we listened to these albums non stop for the duration. My dad had never heard of Neil Young and for the first listen (or two) of the albums he was quite critical, Neil Young has a very distinct and shaky (his nickname by the way) voice, as the journey went on he began to understand what Neil Young was all about and has since developed a love for the crazy canadian. Neil Young sings songs about America and from his outsiders point of view he picks apart the country that he adopted with his critiques of the deep south (Lynard Skynard's 'sweet home alabama' was a response to Young's song 'Southern Man') and the American Dream. Young was famed for his advocation of marijuana as a creative inspiration yet wrote many songs about the dangers of other harder drugs ('the needle and the damage done' is a song about heroin addiction whilst 'tonight's the night' is about a former band member that died of an overdose). He famously spent his early years in the US driving to gigs in his car, a hearse, called mort and seemed to love the abuse directed towards him and channelled this into his music. Young's ramshackle take on folk-country is completely unlike anything else that I've ever listened to and whilst his music takes a while to sink in and his voice is an acquired taste it can not be denied that his musical back catalogue will stand the test of time alongside Dylan, Cash and Springsteen. To illustrate the impact that Neil Young has had on the musical heritage of our generation, the last line of Kurt Cobain's suicide note was a direct reference to a Neil Young lyric 'It's better to burn out than to fade away'...

Songs to listen to: Don't let it bring you down, heart of gold, after the gold rush, cinnamon girl, Tonight's the night

And it is Sunday again... damn you Sunday, damn you to hell! As a working man (grr, spitting, the daily star and pints of stout and all that!) Sunday evenings pain me, Sundays act as the harbinger of a new week and the fact that I will be forced to go to bed (reasonably) early and that I must spend my days doing things that give me no pleasure at all. But if I had no job I would be unable to enjoy gaming, but because I have a job my enjoyment of gaming is reduced... this paradox shall continue on loop forever until I am able to retire and by that point I am sure that I will no longer be able to understand video games and if the Wii and Project Natal are anything to go by I will not be able to even take part due to the fact that I'll be old and (probably) frail. That's an upsetting thought.

Anyway, It's been a while since I last posted on here, since my rant about online gamers I've bought a few things that will feature in blog entries in the future... I've been playing the fallout 3 DLC that i'd been avoiding (Broken Steel and erm... the river one), I've downloaded the demo of battefield on live (which will be part of my demo reviewing blog type thing), I've played and completed Ghostbusters, I've received my Street Fighter Fight Pad (which looks very nice) and I've started reading the entire series of Sin City (which is going to inspire me to continue my top 5 graphic novels blog series). Slipknoob has also inspired me to write about my favourite films and bands and I think I will also write an entry about my 5 favourite novels too.

So yeah, lots of stuff for me to write about when I can get the energy/inspiration.

With the arrival of the new 'Call of Duty: World At War' map pack (map pack 2) I've rediscovered my love of all things Nazi Zombie related. The only downside to re-entering the world of undead fascist killing is that I am often forced to endure the quirks/misgivings of people that are slowly putting me off the world of online shooters. Hopefully by this point you have already got an idea of the type of person that I am eluding to, if you have no idea then I salute you for being either a, more tolerant of fools than I or B, not in possession of an Xbox Live Gold account. Here is a brief (well, brief for me) run down of the things that really annoy me about the Nazi Zombie co-op levels in COD:WAW...

Glitches:Everyone in the world must now be aware of the stupid glitches in the game, furthermore, everyone in the world must surely have found themselves staring at some crouching fool who will scream 'don't touch me, it's a glitch!!!' at the top of their pre-pubescent voice whenever you dare to venture more than 10 metres into their 'area'. It is not big and it is not clever to glitch, it pretty much takes all of the fun and challenge out of playing the game when you know that you will never die and the knowledge that your statistics will always be there, leering at you, in full view of your friends who will whisper to each other about how he 'used to be an honest man'.

Loud and incredibly offensive/embarrasing youths: Like the business man in a zombie film that you immediately recognise as the person that will be the undoing of the group's attempts to fight off the undead, the loud, sweary and idiotic school boy will always guarantee to ruin a game of COD Nazi Zombies. At first he will just seem annoying and you will revel in the idiotic naivety of his insults, but then it will dawn on you, 'this is a zombie situation and I need this kid to watch my back' but by then it is too late, the group as a whole will decide that 'NOO3PWN3R-69' is quite clearly an unlovable idiot and whilst it is frustrating to endure their taunts that range from 'you suck, man!' (which was never original even when Bart Simpson was innovative) to barbed,Oscar Wilde-esque, social critiques based around your sexual preferences/ethnicity/mother's sexual libido, you are going to have to rely on him at some point. An astute gamer may try to inform the young upstart that his misplaced opinions about 'the other' make him seem like a poster boy for the Hitler youth... your subtle hints at the paradoxical nature of the racistNazi Zombie killer will go unnoticed but you hope that you're fair and balanced observations will one day be the spark of a Joycean epiphany.

The young COD gamer, or as they are known in biological classification terms, the Fry, will never back down from an argument (that they will always start), they will bamboozle you with poor grammar and startle you by pulling out insults that you never would have thought of as a youngster. You will sit there, considering whether or not you should shoot the young fry down with your stock pile of witty shootdowns... and then you will hear in the background 'Sebastian, your dinner is getting cold!' and the inevitable whine of an idiot found out 'awww mmmmoooooommm!'. The group rejoices.

That bloody Teddy Bear!: As a fully grown man I should not be scared by spooky laughter, I can grow a beard and I've smoked a cigar, surely there is nothing else in the world that can tarnish my masculinity... and then that bloody bear pops out of the box. A side effect of being the guy who opens the box to find a bear is that you will inevitably face the ire of the young fry; remain dignified no matter what they say, save it all for when it happens to them and then laugh the laughter of a man with a beard!

Server problems/Lag: Whilst initially it is a novelty to see a zombie's head explode 4 seconds after you have fired that glorious head shot it is the harbinger of tougher times to come when you shall die without knowing for certain where you went wrong...

The difficulty of getting into a game with party members/not being able to start a private game, get your mates in and then open it to the public to make up the numbers: This evening I enjoyed about an hour and a half of gore filled fun and 2 hours of waiting for everyone in my party to enter the pre-game lobby without being mysteriously kicked out. It becomes a rewarding mini-game in itself to actually herd everyone into the game lobby. Surely after two map packs and a number of patches there must be a way to get four people into a game without having to ask 'where's Matt?'

people who shout 'don't kill that zombie, it's mine!': This variety of gamer can often be found in shoals of Fry that take terrible offense to you stealing their kill. You try to remind them that you was merely trying to save them and that there will be plenty of zombies to go around in 3 rounds time but to no avail, you will immediately become the focus of their adolescent fury. Retribution for performing such a heinous act will follow in the form of grenades and endless T-bagging motions over your pistol-bearing andsoon to be dead soldier.

people who hog the mystery box: like the gamer that wishes to claim ownership of zombies, the mystery box hogger will sprint to the box at the first hint of a lull in the action, what will follow will be a bloodbath as the three wise gamers waiting for the white out to make their purchases (whilst offering cover to others), are forced to revive the Bazooka wielding simpleton from the clutches of the undead.

Other traits of the box hogger include the need to maniacally jump in front of you as you satisfying pluck the ray gun out of the box with the shrill cries of 'that was mine!' still ringing in your ears.

'experts' that ridicule 'noobs': There are three Nazi Zombie maps in COD:WAW so that means that each player will have to get used to a level at some point, the cynical old veteran (who has beaten every COD ever made and revels in telling others this very fact) will ridicule the green soldier entering the arena. The ol' general will bark out orders, often using abbreviations and slang names for rooms whilst patronising the hell out of you for forcing them to revive you. The cynical bully that can often be found in the halls of zombie filled buildings will always prey on the weakest member of the team and blame them for ruining their game. As a gamer who feels fairly confident (but never brilliant) when playing COD I always face the dilemma of whether it is my duty to tell the bullish fool to lay off the 'kid' (when you play war games, you eventually adopt a Full Metal Jacket-esque mentality that sounds credible in your mind and foolish on screen).

people who steal window spaces in the early stages because 'they need the points': A relative of the zombie possessors, this breed of gamer will find themselves placed in front of the most boring window in the game and will thus decide that they need to steal some one else's view point, often leading to an early scare when the 'quiet window' is broken down and a number of lumbering creatures with questionable political viewpoints stagger towards you as you manically reload yourKAR98K.

people who play without the microphone on: I can understand the reasoning of the gamer that stoically ploughs through the game without a headset; there are a lot of annoying people online and chicks dig the strong and silent type. But the only way in which a group of people can successfully rack up high points and reach the higher levels of the game is through communicating with each other. Admittedly there is always a little bit of tension and silence at first when playing with a bunch of strangers but as soon as the body count starts piling up and you have fought back to back with your team mates the warnings and strategies begin to flow naturally. If you are the kind of person who refuses to use their headsets online because of the trash talking going on then you are the sensible and respectful kind of gamer that I love to play alongside, so when you see the mics flashing in the pre-game lobby; dust off your head set and get ready to make some new friends.

people that decide to open every area without discussing it: You have a concrete plan in your head, you have formulated a foolproof plan in work that will guarantee success by bottlenecking the zombies into that doorway, nothing can go wrong... the other members of the team applaud you for you're strategical genius and you can sense that today will be the day that the undead will be sent back to hell. And then you see someone with a hell of a lot of spare points sprinting away from the group... 'don't open that door!' - It is a familiar scenario to any zombie movie fan, the turning of the handle signifies an act that can not be reversed... the corpses swarm in, they initially take down the foolish team mate that couldn't wait to reach the mystery box, next the jovial and reliable young gamer (hardened by endless nights of fighting unquestionable evils) is engulfed as he attempts to resurrect the instigator of the chaotic scene that is unfolding in front of your eyes. The brave second in commandattempts to launch a counter attack but by then it is too late, he runs out of shells and switches to that M1 that he never got around to changing and all hope is lost; you witness the losses of your comrades and attempt to formulate a plan to turn this all around... by this point the team mates have all died and are watching your third person viewpoint as you blindly run around the room in a circle trying to make every bullet count... you relive these scenes the next day on your lunch break as you once again try to formulate that perfect method that will get you to level 30.

I've just bought Ghostbusters for the Xbox 360, yes, the Xbox 360!!! Apparently you can get it on ebay, so I have just bought it and I'm expecting it to be delivered by the middle/end of next week.

This is very good news and has slightly restored my love for the gaming world.

Until the time arrives when I can use my proton pack to lasso ghosts with Bill Murray I shall be spending my free time doing a number of things... playing Co-op Resident Evil 4 with my old uni flatmate, plodding on with football manager, dipping into Prototype, reading DMZ and getting on with my XBLA demo feature.

In other purchasing news I have bought the new Fallout 3 DLC and I now have Broken Steel and Point Lookout to get into, I'm quite happy about xbox 360 gaming at present; there don't seem to be many huge blockbusters on the horizon (well, there is Modern Warfare 2) but i'm quite happy that the apparent summer games drought season has offered a couple of good, new IP to keep me occupied.