Wow, almost didn't do my blog this week but the weird and wonderful world of gaming once again drags me back. This week I've been playing Halo 3, Soul Calibur IV, SSBB and Rock Band 2, although I have an exam coming up this week so I'm expecting my gaming time to be considerably reduced. I am however thinking of getting back into Pokemon Diamond or Sapphire again because it's a great RPG series, in fact I think if I can get my hands on a copy even starting Leaf Green or Fire Red from the start might be fun.

As far as Fable 2 goes there's a few easy achievements to pick up and I was thinking of replaying it but I've got a lot of stuff I want to play and I think it might be a good idea if I return to Fable another time, refreshed and much more eager to play. Something I didn't say last week about the game which I feel I must now though is I found the ending of that game awesome. I'll resist the compelling urge to blurt spoilers right left and centre but I found the last few moments of Fable 2 suspense-filled, exciting, breathtaking and in some ways quite eerie (I think anyone who has completed the last couple of missions knows what I'm talking about). But there it is, one of the most enjoyable video game endings I've seen in a long time.

Now has anyone heard of a man called Robert Pelloni? I know there are a lot of people out there with this seemingly insane architect of Bob's Game. For those who don't know Robert set up his site from which he made a variety of crazy announcements. Claiming that he had made a game of monumentous proportions and that in his anger over the lack of publishers willing to take it on he had barricaded himself in his room and would stay there for 100 days or until Nintendo provided him with the SDK he needed to complete his game. From that point onwards things just got stranger and stranger with Robert most recently being abducted by aliens... Apparently. But as it seems to have turned out out good friend/terrifying nutcase Bob is in fact simply a character within Bob's game. Driven mad by the series of events that have distressed him so greatly he has become the evil final boss of Bob's Game. Ladies and gentlemen my mind is somewhat blown. I find myself very much curious at this point about a game that I might have otherwise had no interest in and it's also quite aurreal looking back at people's reactions to what we now know is just a made up character.

Thank you for all reading, whether you're a regular reader of just a random fellow browsing the forums. This week I'll leave you with this trailer for Bob's Game.

-Gamer_152

Thanks once again for reading. It's really been a week of Rock Band 2 and Fable 2 for me this week, both of which I completed Sunday, one day before I went back to college. Both have been really great games, of course Rock Band 2 will have more longevity, especially now that I've exported all my songs from Rock Band 1 but anybody who hasn't played Fable 2 really needs to play what I found to be a refreshing and enthralling RPG.

I also took my laser-damaged Soul Calibur IV disc back to game and while the cashier refused to believe it was sold to me damaged (it was preowned) they did repair it and it seems to be working fine now, so that's all good. The new set of Rock Band drums I'm still working on acquiring however, it's really just a matter of hauling the box home so I should have them before not too long.

Just a short blog this week, seeing as I've been out all day and I have other things to get on with now but just to round off I'm looking forward to Halo Wars next month and I'll be picking up the limited edition. This week, I'll leave you with this Halo 3 montage. Thank you to everyone reading my blog, now I'm back.

Hey guys, guess what? I'm doing a blog this week! I know, I'm as surprised as you are. Since Christmas I've been playing all my new games although I've played more of Rock Band 2 and Fable 2 than anything else and less of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption than my other games. I really have been playing a ridiculous amount, I've hit a record of 55 achievements in 9 days. 55!

My only dissapointment is that I seem to have a damaged Soul Calbibur IV disc. It took more than 45 minutes of wiping the disc first time round for the 360 to even read it but I'm still having problems; sometimes levels won't load on hard mode or the game crashes during the opening cutscene. I'm gonna have to return it asap. I've also got a lot (emphasis on a lot) of things to unlock on Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I knew I had a lot to unlock but I'd kind of forgotten all the trouble I went to getting 1000 KOs, completing the Subspace Emisiary, etc. Still, I suppose unlocking it all is half the fun.

Rock Band 2 has been awesome to play. It doesn't stray far from the original and you really feel that when you see all the old characters and venues start popping up again but new features like the ability to so world tour solo, the challenges and the battles of the bands separate it from the first game. The little visual changes to the interface are also nice to look at and the soundtrack is as great to play through as you's expect. Unfortunately the blue pad on my old Rock Band drums stopped working earlier this week, I opened it up to have a look and I found one damaged wire and one completely snapped wire. How that can happen drumming I don't know but it looks like I'm gonna have to cough up for a new drum kit. I also need to pay for the liscence to export all my Rock Band 1 songs but that doesn't cost much.

Fable 2 is also seriously addictive. It's great to have a bit of a different RPG experience and I haven't found a game like this which I felt so comfortable getting into, my problem's been whenever I looked at an RPG I've thought "will I really have the time to get into this" but Fable 2 is a really satisfying and enthralling game. One thing that really stood out in that game for me was the sequence in The Spire, but the whole of Albion is a wonderful world to quest in and explore.

Thanks everyone for reading and should there be anything to blog about I'll return next week. I'll leave you with this, the first episode of Halo 3: Make Love Not War, in which a team of people attempt to enter random Halo 3 matchmaking games and make peace with the other players, with amusing results. Happy new year everybody.

-Gamer_152

Hi all and happy holidays to everyone. I'm aware of my lack of blogging in the previous two months (as in there was none) but I'm sure I'll be back and blogging sooner or later. In the last two months I've only purchased two games but I've had a great time with them both. Firstly Mirror's Edge which I am currently on the 6th chapter and I've found it a really immersive and enjoyable game, I wish the combat didn't seem to be entirely tackle-able by pressing X and Y and then using the enemies gun to take down any other opponents but this is my only main gripe with the game, the freerunning feels great and the environments are beautiful to look at. I also purchased Portal: Still Alive and it's great to have more Portal, all the maps are genius and even the main game was superb to play through again but playing through the Still Alive maps wasn't the same without the familiar, amusing and slightly creepy voice of GLaDOS guiding me. I also borrowed Dead Space from a friend and I must admit I only go so far before my attention was drawn away by other distractions but it was none the less a good horror game with well-made environments and audio.

But for Christmas today I've got 5 brand new games which should keep me occupied well through the new year. For my 360 I've got Fable 2, Rock Band 2 and Soul Calibur IV and for my Wii I've received Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I'm over the moon with all my presents.

As is my tradition I'll leave you with my favourite video-game related video I've seen recently, this short Halo 3 Christmas machinima from Helveck. I hope you've all got what you wanted this year and have managed to spend your Christmas with the ones you love.

-Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah from Gamer_152

Well looks like I am back this week with another blog, I've basically been gaming as normal this but my time spent on video game websites has been near none. This week I've played Puzzle Pirates, Halo 3 and more Rock Band. All great games but I have a strange urge to go back and replay Bioshock for some reason and that was before I even saw the Bioshock 2 trailer. Which is a very nice looking trailer but I'm still very extremely eager to see the gameplay and backstory for the new game, I'm expecting a completely new protagonist (although given the fact that the player essentially filled in the part of any real protagonist in the first game that doesn't really have any great effect) and I wouldn't be surprised if this game takes place a few years on from the previous one, the seemingly older Little Sister in the trailer seems like a slight hint at this.

After a quick demo I bought Age of Booty, the pirate strategy game from Certain Affinity, the studio recently founded by ex-developers of Bungie. I feel like doing a review of it but I've only had it a couple of days and it feels too early, but it's a good game and the gameplay feels very strategic despite being somewhat simple, I like how the hexagon-based playing field affects movement and the fact that firing is automated so I'm not constantly hitting the A button to attack. I don't quite feel the Bungie in it but offcasts from a lot of different studios worked at developing it and its good to see another genuinely decent title added to the XBLA library.

The most surprising piece of news I did see this week was that despite all the recent international economic hardship Microsoft are reporting record sales, that really confuses me. That's about it for this week, I'll leave you with one of the best uses of forge I've seen.

-Gamer_152

Just a short update to all to inform you of the situation this week. To be honest I've played surprisingly few games compared to my usual spree of Halo and such, I've been concentrating on other things such as reading and piano playing. I have been playing my fair share of Rock Band though but still, given my deficit of game time and the fact that apart from some of the TGS things and that one really weird Little Big Planet story I haven't been keeping up with news from the gaming industry, I decided I didn't have enough content to justify writing a blog this weekend. I've also noticed that for the first time in a while I didn't get any comments on my last Gamespot blog post, I don't blame anyone as to be honest I haven't been able to completely keep up with anyone else recent posts either.

All in all I feel that for a guy as obsessed as me with games it might be a good idea to take a bit of a hiatus from my usually more hardcore approach to gaming, we all need a break once in a while. I think I can say if there's one thing I won't stop playing it'll be Rock Band but as for other games I could be playing everything or nothing over the next week. Likewise I may return next week with a blog post twice as long as usual but don't be surprised if there's no blog at all. See you when I see you.

-Gamer_152

Greetings one and all. Straight to business, this week I've been playing Halo 3 and Spore but I eased off on them so I could spend the last few days getting some serious practice time in on Rock Band. Of course TGS, the Tokyo Game Show is currently on and it looks like there's some seriously cool stuff going on, RE5 is looking impressive while there are other aspects of the show which just come with it being set in Japan which are awesome in a bizarre way (e.g. the giant Norton Antivirus anime robot) and they're great to see. The show seems to be carrying a very different feel to E3 and I kinda like that.

Those of you who know me well may have guessed that my favourite feature so far of the show was Bungie's announcement of their new project, Halo 3: Recon. The trailer looked awesome, from the movement of all the characters there, to the awesome graphics and the continuation of the computer-themed SI perspective on things. Having an ODST as the protagonist really puts a new spin on things because whereas in the previous campaigns the world of Halo has been seen through the eyes of the UNSC's greatest hero and in Halo Wars allows control of the world from the perspective of a commander, Recon will give a look at the world from the view of a regular (well okay, almost regular) soldier. It'll be a very long time before we're all down at our local stores queueing expectantly, boxes in hand but with the Mythic Map Pack and Halo Wars coming out next year it seems Bungie are working harder than ever.

I didn't mention it last week but Bungie also have their new file share system alive and kicking and the ability for Bungie Pro members to render videos to a PC-playable format straight from Halo is the best thing that has come out of it in my opinion. If I had more awesome stuff on my file share I'd really be looking into getting Bungie Pro. Oh and anyone remember the Xbox LIVE update preparation from a while ago? Well it seems to have messed up Team Fortress 2 something fierce, it just seems glitchier than before; one of my friends even found a single leg on a character floating across a map, I'm still scratching my head wondering how a server update has done what it has done.

Thank you for reading again, I'm gonna get back to the bizarre goings on of TGS and maybe some more Rock Band, I'm having big trouble on the last set of the guitar tour on expert. This week I'll leave you with this altogether confusing trailer for Namco Bandai's Noby Noby Boy.

-Gamer_152

So what's up with me this week? I've been playing World of Warcraft, Rock Band, Spore and a little bit of Puzzle Pirates and Burnout Paradise. After a little rooting around I've also discovered pretty solid evidence to suggest that Rock Band 2 will hit Europe this November which in my mind is a fair release date considering how much the UK and Europe have been conned in the past.

Some big console news this week, firstly the Xbox 360 has seen a double in sales over here in Europe, but the Wii still sees even higher sales; I'm surprised that with all the financial problems recently people are buying so many consoles. A lot of you will also have seen the DSi, Nintendo's new handheld console for 2009 and I'm pretty excited, no where near as much as I was when I first saw the Nintendo DS but considering Nintendo's work with the Wii and DS I'm sure the camera and other features on the DSi will be put to very good use.

Things haven't been at their best for Microsoft this week though. After sending out a message saying that Xbox LIVE would be down on Monday to prepare for the new dashboard update, however many took this to mean that the dashboard update would be implemented on Monday and so when that didn't happen a few angry and confused users came out of the woodwork to voice their frustration. However it didn't stop there because after servers went back up EXP and Trueskill were not being awarded on most online games across LIVE, this went on for a few days and when the engineers believed they had finally fixed the problem users were met with even bigger EXP and trueskill issues and networking problems. All is now supposed to be fixed but I'm not completely convinced that everything is running 100%. All this has information I've found only through Bungie.net, I accept that networking problems like these can happen but Microsoft themselves didn't seem to bothered about alerting users of any problems.

Finally the inevitable add-on saga begins a bit sooner than I expected as Gamestop have a parts pack for Spore heading their way mid November. I kinda feel like getting it but for £10? I hope it'll be available cheaper via digital download or something like that. Finally thanks everyone, I'll leave you with IGN's 20 Wii games you should already own... Perhaps it's time for me to get buying for my Wii again.

-Gamer_152

As I did a few weeks ago I come to you today in the form of a Sunday blog post; Friday and Saturday I stayed round a mates house and well, I got very little sleep in a very large amount of time and although I felt fine yesterday I didn't want to come to you with a half-witted, brain-dead blog post, so please enjoy todays half-witted regular blog post. Before I start I'd like to make a small but notable comment, the way Gamespot squishes everyones blog posts together makes them look longer than they really are, it sucks... Just thought I'd throw that out there. This week I've played more Spore, Burnout Paradise, Halo 3 and a little bit of Rock Band.

This week was in fact the birthday week of Halo 3, the actual day falling on 25th September and I noticed that some found it a little lacking but I thought it was great. They're new teaser trailer looked awesome and although very cryptic gave us quite an insight into what's coming next (a new Halo 3 campaign experience), it's interesting seeing all the different theories coming out for what precisely the new project entails, there's been everything from seriously detailed analysis of the trailer to suggestion that despite the very blatant statements that it is for additional content to Halo 3 it is in fact for a new game and then there's my favourite, the Bungie.net user believing it was a trailer for a new Halo TV show. With the ODSTs strongly hinted at I believe this could be the rumoured darker, grittier Halo experience, although I don't think we're gonna see Bungie cloning GRAW or anything like that. Whatever it is it's good to see Bungie still making proper use of Halo 3 and giving us more content without an entirely new game.

Halo 3 version 1.2 was also released earlier this week and the update is pretty sweet. Personally I can't say I'm blown away but the new ranking system but it's a change and pretty nice to have, partly because it allows me to experience the whole working my way up through the ranks thing all over again but I still get to keep my original Lieutenant [Grade 3]. I really like the new achievements though, despite them giving out a fair number of points compared to other games the achievements look fun and encourage a wide range of playing styl*s, achievements can also been seen for the upcoming Mythic Map Pack. Hiding skulls on multiplayer maps? Now that's ingenuity, they'll be fun to find and I'm also looking forward to a 6 map DLC map pack.

But there's more brilliant news, Jack Thompson has been banned from practicing in Floridian courts. No longer shall time be wasted with half-assed, crack pot court cases which the U.S. media exploit to disrepute video games unfairly. I hate to bring down the mood at this point but although I didn't mention it last week I am more than a little annoyed with EA again as last year pandemonium ensued among Europeans who were to receive Rock Band long after America and once again we've been put second best with no release date at all set for Rock Band 2. I'm almost certainly gonna get RB2 and that new guitar but there's also a battle raging in my mind over whether to also get Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Thanks one and all for reading, especially Kingrich06 and PJ24, don't worry guys, it may not look like it but I am keeping up with your blogs. This week I'll leave you all with the ultimate gaming quiz (note: quiz may be less ultimate than name suggests). Keep it clean.

-Gamer_152

Gamer_152 checking in again. Just quickly, on the non-gaming front the highlight of my week was probably yesterdays international talk like a pirate day, you should've seen my college, it was full of pirates and piratical speak alike. Moving back into the world of (relative) sanity this week I've mainly been playing Spore (bet ya didn't see that one comin'). Now the following blog is a long one so I've divided it into sections so just read what's relevant.

Spore

Spore has been once again interesting, I've taken some time out of the main game for the creators as well as working my way up to the second last title of the game and reading thread after thread of other peoples opinions on the game. Overall I'm still enjoying it quite a bit and pretty much everything I said last week stands but having had more time with the game there are a few new points to discuss.

Firstly I've been playing the Space phase for quite a bit and it's getting a little tiresome, but I do now have pretty much full access to everywhere in the universe and perhaps part of my problem is that I can't see my full exploits. It's really satisfying to sit in the region around my home planet and look at the giant green blob which represents my allied territory but I've travelled all over the galaxy and not only can I not remember who half the races are but I can't remember where they are or who I'm allied with and I understand the whole premise behind the limited field of vision but I feel very isolated and I'm left feeling like my attempts to make peace with all those species was a little pointless. Secondly I'm not going to spoil the story for anyone but let's just say I've reached a point later in the Space phase in which I've been deliberately pulled into a fierce conflict with a very strong empire and I'm not enjoying it. It's not just that I've had almost my entire empire wiped out and that I'm almost powerless to fight back but considering the supposed open-endedness of the game I'm surprised such a clearly preset plot point was put into the game and that it was geared towards more militarised races, maybe it's possible to make peace with them but when I'm being fired on heavily by a race who promises to make me extinct it's not so easy. Winding down from the rant it's annoying that there's no feature that allows you to stop you downloading everything your buddies have made, in some areas of the creators I wish there were more parts to work with and I'm also feeling a little sad for those affected by the DRM, ironically Spore has become one of the fastest illegally downloaded games ever, I guess there's just no winning against piracy.

On the plus side with the ability to travel virtually anywhere in the space phase has once again brought to the foreground the overwhelming size of the game and one day being the little creature on the tiny planet and the next being the leader of a great empire who is looking down on a planet of primitive planet really puts things in perspective, the game makes you think a lot about the real universe we live in. I was also very impressed this week to see the new patch for the game. Maxis have obviously listened very intently to the critics and the fans and have rolled this patch out of the door amazingly fast, it doesn't fix all the games technical weaknesses but it's still an excellent piece of patching.

Burnout Paradise

I also have the new Burnout Paradise Bike Update and it's great. The bikes look as good as anything else, the awards are a sweet idea, all the new challenges seem well thought-out, I'm very happy that online games are actually divided by bikes and cars, the transition from day to night is very smooth and most importantly the update is free. I found the night time lightning was particularly good, if I hadn't of known I wouldn't of noticed that it wasn't something from the original game and it very much gives that night-time driving feel. It adds a whole second look to Paradise City, making it eerie in some places (places meaning tunnels in the mountains) and a joy to look at in others (other places being the areas with cool lights). Perhaps a larger number of awards would have been nice and maybe something to keep newbies away from, the challenging burning/midnight rides but I'm not complaining, Criterion are doing a top notch job.

Gamer_152's Section of Linkage

Lastly I'm interested in yet another gaming-movie venture, the Mass Effect movie. It looks like they have a good director but half of the point of Mass Effects storyline was choice and this movie is likely to suck away a lot of Mass Effects soul in that way. I'll be watching expectantly to see if the new Bungie-Rare European event rumour is true and congrats to Giant Bomb on their awesome new update. Now I'd like to leave you with (as Jeff Gerstmann put it) the worlds greatest game review. Fine sailin' to ye.

-Gamer_152