So, straight into the blog this week, no time to talk about what I've been playing 'cause I got a video game expo to talk about. Please don't be afraid to skip through whatever of this gargantuan wall of text doesn't interest you or read part of it now and come back later.

Microsoft

The Microsoft press conference was definitely my favourite press conference of the show this year and the one that really sticks in my mind. For a while I was just sitting back and watching it thinking what I was seeing looked really good but not much blew me away in a really big way. I did think that the whole concept for Tony Hawk Ride was good and the game itself looks like a good play, although I don't really want to pay that much for the board peripheral. Although I'm not a big fan of stealth games I did think that Splinter Cell: Conviction presented itself really well and the look of the game world and the various elements being projected onto the environment were really stylish. I thought Modern Warfare 2 looked like a lot of fun for those who enjoy the Call of Duty series even if I'm not overly partial to Call of Duty myself. I also thought that Final Fantasy 13 also looked like a game well worth picking up with its combat and the brilliant world the game was set in.

As a huge Halo fanatic I do have to say that I was absolutely glued to the screen in a moment of pure captivation as Halo 3: ODST was shown. I thought the opening of the game came across really well and I liked the look of all the gameplay as well as the darker feel of the games setting and the new firefight mode they showed post-conference. They also announced Halo: Reach and while we have no clue what this is (although I may talk more about this in a later blog) I'm sure Bungie will very gradually reveal details on this mysterious game and at any rate we'll get to experience it this September in the beta.

So everything was going great for Microsoft and proceedings then reached the point where I pondered whether they were about to wrap things up, when Microsoft unleashed something I was completely unprepared for. All of a sudden I was watching this strange but rather brilliant turn of events where Steven Spielberg was on stage talking about this wondrous new peripheral, the natal. Even trying to keep calm and critical I couldn't help but get excited over what Microsoft was showing. It wasn't just the motion capture aspect of it; it was also the voice and facial recognition features which really gave it some of its potential. Although I did think the somewhat controversial "Milo" scene was undoubtedly scripted in one way or another, I think that the basic concept of an interactive computer AI which works with the natal would be possible and very fun at that, even if not quite in the magical sci-fi way Microsoft presented it in.

The 1 thing I wish I could have seen on a Microsoft console that wasn't there was a Portal 2 or a Half-Life 2: Episode 3, instead Valve opted to showcase a Left 4 Dead 2. This'd be all well and fine but considering the latest series of Half-Life games are supposed to be episodic I think we're owed at least a glimpse at Episode 3 when Episode 2 was more than a year and a half ago.

EA & Ubisoft

So I knew the EA and Ubisoft conferences weren't going to be as big as the big three's but when EA's hit off it wasn't too bad. I'm far from being fanatic about anything in the EA Sports franchises but what they showed of Brutal Legend was very entertaining, The Saboteur was interesting in both art style and gameplay, there were some nice trailers here and there and all other content at least managed to hold my attention. Particularly the confusion of Gamespot users tuning into the live stream just as EA began showing everyone The Littlest Pet Shop game. It also seems like Mass Effect 2 is really a step up from its predecessor with much less of the technical issues and a darker story.

I wish I had something positive to say about the Ubisoft conference but sadly I feel like I gained little more than a 2 hour nap from watching the show. Granted it was pretty late when I watched but I was awake enough to properly take in what I was seeing and for E3 I was willing to sacrifice any amount of sleep if I got to see something good. But the only one thing in this conference which really interested me was James Cameron's lengthy talk on the universe of Avatar he and his team had created; apart from this the only other items of the conference which I really had any interest in were the showing of a very small amount of information about Red Steel 2, the announcement of No More Heroes 2 and to a certain extent the demo of Rabbids Go Home which seemed very Katamari-like to me and could be relatively fun. Most of the rest of the conference was filled with the same Splinter Cell content we saw in the Microsoft press conference, Academy of Champions which still seems like a bad football/Harry Potter crossover to me and a big presentation on games for casual gamers. I understand that Ubisoft are a company and like any company what they aim to do is make money, they are not simply here to entertain me, but while statistics of high profits and exploitable markets are all well and good for those in the business, they risk putting off potential supporters of their games by having a large chuck of their press conference dedicated to flaunting fitness titles and "tween games". Indeed at the time watching the Assassin's Creed trailer was good but it wasn't worth waiting through some of the rubbish that led up to it, when both the trailer and a full demo of the game were featured at the Sony press conference.

Nintendo

For Nintendo I was expecting something amazing. I was expecting to see some awesomely innovative new peripheral or some really inventive applications of the Wii Motion Plus. Sadly it transpired that there was no presentation of either of these things. The Wii Motion Plus however is still looking like it will modify the Wii motion controls in the way everybody wants and it looks like there are some genuinely fun mini-games in Wii Sports Resort, so I think I'll enjoy that when I get it. Nintendo's new peripheral, the Wii Vitality Sensor however seems decidedly set around a single idea and seems like the kind of thing that may be used for one fitness game and then simply die. We might get maybe a few games out of it if we're lucky but I can't see it being used for anything ground-breaking.

As for the games themselves I'm surprised that I wasn't more excited over New Super Mario Bros. Wii, although I think this was just due to the way it was presented, with the 4 players in a sort of competitive co-op platformer situation, but with what was broadcast from the show floor later I was able to remind myself "Yeah, this is still Mario and Mario is awesome". The Wii Fit Plus will undoubtedly be another big money-maker for Nintendo but I don't think it's really the game for me, out of the RPGs they showed there wasn't much that appealed to me apart from the new Mario & Luigi RPG, the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong looked kinda good with the same old gameplay and the level creator, I thought the microgame creator in Warioware seemed like a great feature and hopefully it will be as good a creative tool as they said it would be (seeing the music editor for it was a very promising start), however I was surprised to see no demo or even trailer of Zelda: Spirit Tracks during the conference, but what was on the show floor reassured me that it will be another solid Zelda title.

However the two major announcements for me were the announcements of Metroid: Other M and Super Mario Galaxy 2. As far as Nintendo games go Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the highlight of E3 for me and a second 3D Mario game for the Wii really took me by surprise, of course we only got a glimpse of it but the brief look seemed to give the impression of a game that has more of what we saw in Super Mario Galaxy (which was a phenomenal game in my opinion), mixed in with some fun new content... Called Yoshi. Metroid: Other M looked very different than any Metroid game before it, being less isolated and seeming like it was a game with a story much more driven by character interaction, but I think this will provide a refreshing take on the Metroid series and I'm very interested to see what Team Ninja can do alongside Nintendo on this game.

Sony

Now I don't have a PS3 or a PSP but I have to say that even I was reasonably impressed by what Sony had to offer. Of course with the numerous leaks this year the announcement of the PSP Go was hardly the most surprising event of the show but none the less there it was even if I wouldn't want to pay all that cash for the console.

The way the new Uncharted presented itself certainly seemed enticing, MAG looked quite exciting and unconventional even if you will need the world's best internet connection to play, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker looked okay but it could have done with a few more Snakes, Assassin's Creed 2 looked very good and fingers crossed this game will have more longevity than the original, Final Fantasy 14 Online was as much a surprise for me as it was to anyone but it none the less looked like another very good game, the trailer for The Last Guardian piqued my interest and had me slightly confused, I'm sure more Little Big Planet won't be a bad thing and the track editor in Mod Nation Racers did look absolutely awesome.

The big deal at the Sony press conference for me though was their motion control peripheral. No doubt an attempt to improve on Nintendo's Wiimote, but this kind of thing will be an essential if they wish to survive in the market and if applied to games properly it could (much like the natal) snap up some of those casual gamers that Nintendo have been hoarding all this time, although I do wonder about how well they'll be able to break into an area of the market Nintendo has themselves so deep-rooted in. However it didn't really hit me properly until some time after the Sony press conference that none of the motion control devices we saw at E3 are necessarily better than any other; there are advantages to having buttons on your controller and advantages to not having buttons on your controller, there are advantages to having a camera and advantages to having something in your hand. At the moment although I think I probably favour what Microsoft is doing if I have to choose, I see each company's motion control peripheral as an alternative to the others, not something that is necessarily inferior or superior.

Until Next Year...

It was sad to see E3 end this year but honestly I don't think I could have properly taken in any more information about all the insane games there. There were tons of great games, some interesting peripherals and overall a whole plethora of exciting, interesting, promising and just plain awesome things that we'll all have our grubby mits on some time in the future. I'd like to thank you very much for reading and I'll be writing again next year when hopefully we'll see more of what made E3 2009 so special.

-Gamer_152

Hey y'all, decided to drop a quick blog into your midst as I didn't get this done over the weekend and I decided I gotta do something between now and the E3 Microsoft press conference (at the time I'm writing this there is less than 90 minutes to go).

So I am stoked about E3 2009. I'm looking forward to seeing the Wii motion plus and any other intriguing peripherals Nintendo might have lined up, I'm not a big fan of the wholedownloadable/streamable movies thingbut I'm interested to see what Microsoft will be doing with the 360 next and I'm interested in a whole bunch of games there: particularly Mass Effect 2 and of course Halo 3: ODST which is just one of the many thingscontinuing to fuel my insane obsession with the Halo franchise. With my exams and E3 falling on the same week things are getting a little hectic, tonight there are3 press conferences on but if I wanna see them all I have to fit it around revision for my computing examand writing a whole essay for my psychology class. The life of a nerd is not an easy one.

Back to mycrazy love of Halo and I'm still on my quest to replace the Halo 3 that my Xbox 360 broke with a collectors edition copy of Halo 3. Last Thursday I tried 3 separate stores and while 2 simply didn't have it, 1 of them had literally just sold their last copy after I got there. A quick check by my brother on Saturday also sadly yielded no results. I have picked up Elite Beat Agents for £20 though which I thought wasn't bad considering the usual price for DS games in the UK is at least £30. This was actually a game I meant to pick up ages ago but didn't get around to it but I have it now and I like it even more than I thought I would. The mix of simple yet very satisfying and unique rhythm gameplay, combined with random and ridiculous comic-strip style stories about the team of agents helping people in their everyday lives through using music fits together surprisingly well. The first couple of missions I played on that game were amazing and even with a limited soundtrack by the standards of todays modern rhythm game it's still very addictive. It is as hard as I had been told it would be though; I am currently stuck on the final mission of cruisin' difficulty.

My bro also went out and bought a couple of games this week which I'll no doubt get to play at some point, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and Saints Row. I'm not overly looking forward to playing Saints Row but I think it might be worth a few sessions, however this is a bit of a problem at the moment as it seemsmy bro picked up a preowned discwith a few grooves worked into it and the ancient disc drive of my poor worn-down 360 just can't quite work up the momentum to read the disc. However Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise looks very good and when I'm done with my current games I'll be very eager to play it.

So apart from Elite Beat Agents I am still playing Fable 2 at the moment. It's hard to believe it was only a little beforelast week that I completed the See the Future DLC. Since then I've just been picking up odd achievements on my main character and I've started a new character to run through the game again with. The achievements are fun but starting the game over from scratch has been a great experience, like visiting a place where you hung around as a kid again. In fact there are large parts of the plot of this game that I had completely forgotten and it's like experiencing them all over again but the parts I do remember are great to revisit. I've actually been a little surprised by my progress in that game because I'm making my way to the end of the story mode much faster than I thought I would with my secondary character and my main character has helped me gain an amount of achievements the likes of which I haven't seen since I last played Halo 3 and Rock Band.

Thanks for reading everyone and I hope you all enjoy E3. A special thanks to PJ24 who has offered to trade mesome Pokemon to helpme fill out my pokedex on Pokemon Diamond Version. This week I'm going to leave you with this video game-related piece of image manipulation from Swedish artist Erik Johansson.

-Gamer_152

Hi all, I'm back for another weirdly timed blog. At the moment I'm right at the beginning of my half-term and I have my final college exams coming up soon but that doesn't mean I still can't play the occasional game and pass my exam. I just have to limit my play time to about 5 minutes a day and work out how I can read and play at the same time. At any rate I've still played quite a few games between my last blog and yet I've still not replaced my Halo 3 disc yet, really just out of laziness more than anything but I still wanna get back to the game.

One thing I have been trying to get back into thought is single-player RPGs. The problem I've had is that an RPG is really a game that requires some commitment to play properly and I've been jumping from RPG to RPG. I started a new save file on Final Fantasy 3 and got through the first few dungeons and haven't come back to it. I started a new save file on Super Paper Mario and got past the first world and haven't gone back to that one since. I have however spent many more hours than I did on either of those 2 on Pokemon Diamond which I have gone back to and made quite some progress on, now having obtained over 250 Pokemon, a few of them with the very generous help of friends.

Today I also played through the new Fable 2 downloadable adventure, entitled 'See the Future'. My brother was actually the one who downloaded it and to be honest I'm not sure if I would or wouldn't have bought it myself. It's not that the content in it isn't fun but See the Future provides about as much additional content to the game as Knothole Islanddid and it has to be said that that's not a lot of content. Still it had a pretty good story, more of the great Fable environments, some pretty well made dungeons and although I don't want to give away the surprise the special prize you receive at the end of the storyline was also quite cool. See the Futures story also ties back into the original Fable 2 story to an extent and again I'll keep this blog a spoiler-free zone but the ending contains a big, brilliantly played out Fable 2 sequence and pretty much confirms that there will be more Fable in the future but is very enigmatic in its approach. This is not necessarily a bad thing but if you are going to buy this content don't go into it expecting to find anything greatly conclusive to add to your Fable 2 experience. Overall I enjoyed it but if you didn't like Knothole Island it's very unlikely you'll like See the Future.

Finally I'm gonna leave you with this leaked demo reel of the recently cancelled Duke Nukem Forever. You know looking at that video it kinda makes me a bitdisapointed that the development team was fired but just one of those things I guess. Finally shout out to Jeff Gerstmann and Vinny Caravella who continue to do an excellent job on the Persona 4: Endurance Run and I hope you've enjoyed reading.

-Gamer_152

It's now almost a whole month since my last blog and with the 30 day mark looming I decided to stop buy and drop off another blog about my latest exploits. Some notable games I've played since I last blogged include Halo 3, Halo 2, Rock Band 2, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Gears of War 2, Age of Booty, Spore, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Halo Wars and Soul Calibur IV, so I've been keeping myself busy.

Unfortunately my undying love for Halo has been struck down in its tracks. Halo 3 is the my most played Xbox LIVE game and possibly my most played game on the 360 overall but recently my Xbox has been making strange noises when running the game, this seemed a bit weird it but it was no big deal, it was an old disc and there wasn't much point copying the game to the hard-drive (I don't have the space and there are loading issues when you run the game off the hard-drive as well) so I carried on playing. All was well until I was entering the matchmaking lobby after a successful game of Grifball on Sandbox. My screen had turned completely black and the console seemed to have frozen, again nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary and I just figured this was the Xbox being the Xbox. I turned my console off and on again and made a few attempts to start the game again, no luck. After a few fruitless endeavours at trying to make this thing worked I took out and disc and looked at it and to my horror I found that my Xbox had put two large scratches right down the disc. So I guess that means I'll need a new Halo 3, I was thinking of getting the Collector's Edition this time round.

But it's not been all bad, I mean have lost a game but I've also got 2 new ones... Kinda.

First off there's Peggle which for a bit I hesitated getting because the one worry in my head was "sure it seems fun now but how much longevity is this game really gonna have when I'm just shooting balls at pegs". But I got it, I completed it and I got a few of the achievements of it and I must say it was pretty fun, it feels great to get that awesome shot you were trying to pull off, bouncing the ball off of one peg to another or when you manage to build up a huge score with just one shot. I haven't been played it in a while but I'm glad I bought it; I've had a good time with the game.

I've also downloaded the trial version of EVE Online which again I've hesitated about due to the costs. You have to pay quite a bit to make an account and then on top of that there's a subscription fee which is greater than that of World of Warcraft. But I have 14 free days of play (well, actually I only have about 8 left) and it's been not just enjoyable but also very unique. It's hard to describe in any brief fashion quite why EVE is so unlike other MMOs but somewhere between its environment and it's gameplay it just likes to do things very differently. Skills aren't about repeating the same tasks ova and over, you simply add the skill you want to improve to the skill queue and your character will learn the next level over a period of time (whether you're online or not). The game also takes a different spin on character equipment, using an unconventional system for equipping ship parts and involving buying new ships. I wouldn't say it's the MMO for everyone and the price is still putting me off buying the full game a little but it's still been a great experience.

There's probably a lot more to talk about but when I start approaching a full page on Microsoft Word I think that means I've yakked on just about enough for this blog. Thanks for reading, who knows when the next one will be. But this week I'll leave you with Giant Bomb's quick look at Dragonball: Evolution.

-Gamer_152

Hi everyone, ready for your weekly wall of text? Ok, let's get to it! This week I'vebeen playing Halo Wars, Halo 3 and a little of Half-Life 2,Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2. I was also happy to find last week that upon posting my blog on Giant Bomb, the website didn't just generate a rather embarrassing blank blog post but instead posted the blog exactly as I wanted it, so it's all good. I've also been watching Giant Bomb's endurance run of Persona 4 on the PSP and you may think that watching all those hours of somebody hitting the A button over and over would be boring but they actually manage to make it a very entertaining experience.

Halo Wars is still providing me with a fair bit of enjoyment, I must say there are some really nicely designed multiplayer maps, as well as campaign ones. I was quite impressed when my troops had pushed their way through the Covenant defences to the middle of the map to find a factory from which I could build Sentinels to attack my enemies. All in all it's been a pretty good time with that, even if the ranking system isn't completely tailored to my liking and I do have a tendency to get owned online. On Halo 3 this week I've been focusing my attention once again almost exclusively on the Mythic maps and it's surprising the difference 3 new maps makes, even though I'm playing the samemaps over and over it's not been boring. I've also seen a few people on the internet with some awesome Sandbox maps, I knew there were people out there that would make something good but one interesting thing I've seen lately is people making Rube Goldberg machines on the map. I'd love to make something as good as that but I've never been much of a forger, I remember first finding myself in Sandbox's skybox, staring out at the huge, objectless sky and just having no idea what to do with all that empty space.

I've also been keeping an eye on Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams recently. Like most I thought that a prequel would have been a great idea and like most I've become a little sceptical of the quality of the storyline now that they've announced a sequel set 7 years after the original. Of course this doesn't immediately mean that it'll be a bad game, the plot could turn out okay and the gameplay, graphics and sound of Bioshock are all great too. However, the events of the last game seriously closed up a lot of possible plotlines and I can't really see where they can take things now apart from people discover monsters from Rapture, people go to investigate, people work their way through the same kind of setting from the first game but with less characters from Rapture. For those curious about the game there is a teaser site that was put up a bit over a week ago at somethinginthesea.com.

The wraps up things for my mid-March blog. I'll leave you this week with these photoshopped pictures of a Team Fortress 2 RPG (sorry I had to go via the Giant Bomb forums, it's the old s*yle problem). Thanks for reading.

-Gamer_152

O hai, it can be blog time nao? Okay. So you'll probably wanna know what I've been playing, well not really but I'm gonna tell you anyway. This week has mainly been all about Halo Wars, but I've also played Halo 3, Half-Life 2 and Rock Band 2. In fact Rock Band 2 has got a bit more appealing now that I have a working set of drums to fumble through my favourite songs with. Interestingly although I didn't buy it (my brother did) I've still found myself somewhat reluctant this week to return to Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and The Damned. I don't think it's because the DLC is bad, in fact despite some unfortunateannoyances when I first played I was impressed with what I had seen of the overall package, I mean it wasn't quite the original GTA IV but it seemed none the less worth my attention, but for whatever reason I just haven't felt like going back to it.

But back to things I have done I completed Halo Wars much earlier this week, you know 15 campaign missions doesn't sound like a lot but I was actually pretty contented with the length of the campaign and with all the gold medals, achievements, skulls and black boxes to get it certainly has plenty of replayability value. From the whole thing I think my favourite levels have been 11 and 12, which both had awesome environments and the hardest level for me was the 10th which for some reason I found much harder than any other level in the game. With any luck I'll be able to complete the whole thing again on Heroic, however Legendary is way outta my league. The only one thing that has disapointed me about the campaign is that it is not possible to play a local co-op game so you must either go system link (not an option for many people) or via Xbox LIVE to team up with your mates against the enemies of the UNSC. But don't let my obsessive focus on campaign mode fool you into thinking that it's the only thing in the game of any worth, there is heaps of fun to be had online or in skirmishes, although I personally have had trouble connecting to games of four or more people online, maybe it'sa NAT-related issue. Oh and before I move away from the subject I do have to emphasise one more time that the cutscenes are freakin' epic.

Onto games that are looking awesome for the future I've still kinda got that voice in the back of my head telling me to pick up The World Ends With You and Pokemon: Leaf Green/Fire Red. The last couple of times I've checked in my local GAMEs they've had shelves lined with all sorts of rubbish (to put it as best I can without attracting the attention of the mods) but not a single copy of TWEWY and to get Pokemon I'll either look at the only other store near me that sells video games properly or I'll have to search the internet, seeing as GAME doesn't do GBA games anymore. Actually speaking of GBA games I've been thinking about the DSi and its lack of GBA slot and you know what? This is actually something that strongly deters me from buying the console, the size for compatibility trade-off just doesn't seem worth it. Oh well, nobody is forcing me to buy itand according to recent reports the console was forged in the darkest pits of hell by evil child predators anyway. Bringing things back down to March 2009 again I like what I've heard recently about Dawn of War 2, it sounds like not only a solid RTS but also an original one and I think in this genre of games something new would be a really great thing to experience, of course I have an RTS to keep me occupied for now but it's definitely on my wishlist for future purchases. Further light has also been shed on Sims 3 this week, I've seen previews of it before but I like the sound of new public events for Sims (I am totally taking my Sim to a rock concert), moodlets and the number of traits that are actually available for your Sim (65).

I think that'll about do it for this week, I'd just like to highlight Bungie's amazing news of the 1 billion games of Halo 3 that have now been played (although Halo 2 is no lightweight, coming in at 798 million). This week I'll leave you with a shoutout to my Gamespot friends Kingrich06, PJ24 and Zxv33 and this little gem of animation which while not directly video game related is undoubtedly inspired by video games (warning: do not watch if you have epilepsy or awesomephobia).

-Gamer_152

Hi gamers, I know I didn't post last week but it looks like consistency isn't my strong point, but I suppose there's not much point blogging when I just don't feel like it. However profile-forbidding I'm here this week with another entry and I won't get a repeat of the hyperlink-less Gamespot blog or the completely blank Giant Bomb blog from last week. Oh and although I've got content about Halo Wars in this blog, don't worry, there are no spoilers.

I have predictably enough picked up Halo Wars this weekend and it's actually worked out pretty well, a 3 day weekend means that I've had 3 full days with the game. However upon my first attempt of obtaining the game the cashier wouldn't serve me, despite being 17 (and 6 months) and looking it, I was still told I needed ID to purchase a 16+ game and apparently my college ID wasn't valid. I suppose GAME have got to keep to their rules, but interestingly the other GAME in the same shopping centre seemed to have no problem with serving me and so I walked out of the store with a fresh copy of Halo Wars: Limited Edition.

The campaign mode has been awesome and I'm currently struggling my way through the 10th mission on normal, I'm not too great at RTS games and I imagine I'm really gonna have trouble making it through all 15 missions on this difficulty but the gameplay is good and constantly has you developing new strategies and fulfilling new objectives to take on the enemy. I'm sure even the most hardened RTS veterans will find a fair challenge on legendary difficulty. The story and cutscenes are also as high quality as I expected and there are moments where the graphics of the cutscenes really do impress. All in all Stephen Rippy's soundtrack to the game isn't as good as the work of O'Donnell's on the Halo trilogy but I think it would be unreasonable to expect it to be and Rippy does do a good job on all the tracks, especially the main theme, Spirit of Fire. Skirmishes are also fun and overall while the game doesn't have the most complex tech-tree system and may not satisfy gamers looking for a really in-depth and complex build-up of their army; the rock-paper-scissors system of combat and the various units and upgrades do still make for a very enjoyable game. I was worried that there would be a limited number of units in the game but this hasn't actually been a problem. I've still yet to conquer my way through the online world though, I remember when I'd get my backside constantly kicked around the map on Dawn of War, I'm not sure I can do much better on Halo Wars but I'll darn well try.

All extra items that come with the limited edition are nice as well. I must say even the packaging of everything is really nice but the Spirit of Fire patch, leader cards, graphic novel and Honour Guard Wraith are all very nice and Halo fans should be pleased with what they get. Of course for many part of the allure of the limited edition is a chance to get an early download of the Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack, in fact looking at some of the threads on Bungie.net not only are some people buying the full game just to get the maps early but they are also complaining that Bungie are giving out the maps early, bunch of whiners. But the Mythic maps are all good, Assembly I must admit I'm just plain bad at, there are too many sides to get attacked from, I've had great fun on Orbital, especially with Team SWAT and CTF and Sandbox really does live up to its name, once I got up to the skybox it felt like there was almost too much building space, it really is the new Foundry. All the maps look brilliant as well and even and this point there seems to be a good amount of people online (there were well over a couple of thousand playing the Mythic playlist yesterday).

To finish up I'd like to say that I'm looking forward to the week with Halo Wars and the Mythic maps, I've purchased The Art of Halo 3 and it's a great looking book, amazing to see how much great-looking content was dropped from the game and finally I've been listening intently to the Giant Bombcast over the last couple of weeks and it's been awesome. This week I'll leave you all with a brilliantly confusing look at Noby Noby Boy.

-Gamer_152

I'm afraid I have some bad news. This week I haven't got a blog, well at least not one in a format I'd like. You see usually I write my blogs in Gamespot's blog writing utility, because despite not having the greatest spellchecker ever and being a generally slow and clunky system, if I write it here I have less likelihood of falling into the trap of being struck down by an error message when I go to post my blog on Gamespot. This week I decided I'd write my blog in Microsoft Word 2007, it was about here that things went wrong. Satisfied with my freshly typed three and a half paragraphs of blog I attempted to copy it onto Gamespot. As I feared might happened when I copied it over all my hyperlinks disappeared, so I took a deep breath and one by one re-entered all the hyperlinks in the Gamespot editor and hit submit. I was met with a rather vague error message, telling me that my "query string is not valid" and although I figure this must be something to do with the hyperlinks in my post, I have no clue how I'm supposed to fix this. After another deep breath I decided I'd just have to post it on Giant Bomb and link over from here. But when I tried to post on Giant Bomb an even wierder glitch stuck when upon hitting 'post blog' a completely blank post appeared on my screen, all text completely wiped. Right now you may be wondering why I'm so obssessed with having these hyperlinks in my blog, the answer lies in the fact that there are so many items from gaming news this week that I've linked over to the source and so without these links the blog is pretty much nothing. But if you're still up for it here is a linkless version of what would have been my blog this week. I apologize and assure you I will not let this happen again.

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15th February 2009, time for another blog. I know my past two blogs have been on Sundays instead of the usual Saturdays but better late than never. I've spent the last week checking out what's in Giant Bomb's bathroom and watching game industry insiders chugging cola, awesome stuff. Oh and I also played some games this week as well, it's been a strange mix of Maplestory, Puzzle Pirates and Halo 3, I know that wouldn't be the ultimate line-up for everyone but I enjoy my Halo and my old MMOs and it's been a good week. Although it does feel like any time I manage to raise my skill in Halo it just drops back down again, curse you Team Slayer!

Hey does anybody remember those little plastic army men from when you were kids? Well did you know there's actually an RTS devoted to them? This was news to me. Speaking of news there's been more from that wacky economy this week and much like in the previous month and a half I could copy story after story from various news pages... So let's do that. Bids have been put in for company buyouts that could see some big company mergers, Midway games have declared bankruptcy (but that won't stop them) and Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games has been announced, needless to say my expectations are not very high for this game but I understand that this game is not really aimed at people like me, it's aimed at those who find mashing the A button for 90 seconds the height of gaming brilliance.

Now onto the really good stuff. I'm sure quite a number of you are familiar with Konami's upcoming rhythm game, Rock Revolution and I'm sure none of you have had any trouble seeing the similarity between Konami's project and Harmonix's famous Rock Band franchise. Well the similarity definitely hasn't passed Harmonix by either and they are suing, claiming that they have violated seemingly vague patents for "simulated musical instruments" and "musical rhythm-matching games". The irony of all this is that Konami is actually more the forerunner for Rock Band and the world of guitar and drum simulating games, being the father of titles like DrumMania and Guitar Freaks. In fact Konami already tried to sue Harmonix in the summer of last year and Harmonix responded, describing Konami's actions as "surprising".

Thanks for reading, peace out all. I've got a week of half term holiday and a lot of games to play.

-Gamer_152

Hi everyone, I'm back with a slightly longer blog than usual this week. I hope you've all had a good week, I know I'm feeling pretty good right now. I've dedicated a good portion of this week to just playing Halo 3 and I'm really getting back into that again, although I'm still not exactly the best player ever, none the less I was very pleased yesterday to see that by some amazing twist of fate I'd managed to pick up a Killimanjaro medal (7 kills with each kill within 4 seconds of the last). Apart from Halo 3 I've played Rock Band 2 and the very odd game of other things.

Let's see, what else relevant to my interests has come out of this week? Well Bungie's given us a good look at Sandbox, the new forging playground in the Mythic map pack, Bob has descended further into craziness and added a disco ball to his work space and made his site start playing a MIDI-st*yled version of Stayin' Alive, Nintendo President Iwata has said that he feels that sales of Animal Crossing: City Folk and Wii Music are not what he wished, there has been a hilarious uncovering of fake PS2s, the Burnout Paradise Party Pack is out (with what looks like a slightly odd visual st*yled and although I'm sure I'm the only one interested there has also been a Puzzle Pirates update. (Wow, that's a lot of linkage).

3 days ago the Halo Wars demo hit the Xbox LIVE marketplace and I've downloaded and played and am very satisfied. At over 1GB it took a while to get (especially as my connection wasn't at its best at the time) but it was worth it. Although the graphics looked top notch, I was confident there was going to be a solid plotline and I pretty much love anything Halo, I was wondering if the gameplay was all that solid but I kept my hopes up knowing that Ensemble had control of this project and there's not really anyone I'd rely on for a good RTS more than them. From what can be told of the demo they have produced a very enjoyable Halo-RTS experience, the 360-oriented control scheme gives a fluid feel to controlling the game, the missions were well designed and the general progression of unit-building, upgrades and base expansion was good. I'm more stoked than ever for the final product.

Thank you all for reading, especially if your name is Kingrich06 or PJ24, both you guys have stayed supporting my blog and I'm really thankful for it, know that I'm watching everything you write too. This week I'll leave you guys with Giant Bomb's collection of images of what games would look like if they were the covers of 60s novels (don't ask). Peace out.

-Gamer_152

It's January 24th and it now really feels like we're well into 2009. In fact there are some release dates coming up that I'd forgotten about that now seem much sooner than I thought they were. There's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2, coming out on February 20th, The Sims 3 on the same day and Halo Wars on the 27th. I suppose it's all a month away but I'm hyped for some of this stuff. Still as much as I enjoyed Dawn of War and as many hours as I put into The Sims 1 and 2 I don't think I'll be getting either on launch day and with all the half-finished games I have at the moment I don't know how I'd fit them all in anyway. This week I've played Halo 3, The Sims 2, Soul Calibur IV and a little Rock Band 2 and Fable 2.

I was also considering getting the new DLC for Fable 2 but from what I've heard from various people it's really not worth it. It seems to be 800 points for one hour of gameplay and I think I have to agree with all the people saying it would be better if was marked down to 400 points but I don't think that's very likely to happen.

I also took more of a look at The Sims 3 this week and my opinion before was kind of that it looked like a good game but it didn't look like the great game that the first and second installations of the series were but after taking a bit more of an in-depth look into it and comparing it to its predecessors I'm now thinking that I might have underestimated it. Although there's still that little problem I had when switching from Sims 1-2 which will most likely strike again which is that without about 3 expansion packs jammed on the back of the game it feels like a comparatively content-devoid wasteland and so I have to make the choice between going and and spending my money on disc after disc of expansions or play a smaller game. This won't stop me from getting Sims 3 and it's not something EA or Maxis can really be blamed for but it's still an annoying fact.

Thank you all for readig my blog this week and I'll leave you with what can only be described as a picture of awesome proportions.

Gamer_152