You know going back to college hasn't been so bad, most of my classes are pretty good and I have plenty of free time. I've also been playing a bit of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 and a bit of Rock Band, then there's the game that I was inevtably going to bring up this week...

I picked up Spore on Monday and my first day with the game was mind-blowing. I worked my way all the way up from the Cell Stage to the Civilisation Stage and had a great time doing so. As I expected after the couple of dizzy days of enjoyment that came after my purchase I still had a great time on the game but I began to see what people meant about it. I think the things that got to me most were the repetitivity of the Space Stage missions and the game making a very had attempt to push you onto the next stage after you complete the stage you are on. But the game does need patching, not just as improvement gameplay wise but to tweak loading times for planet textures and to sort out a texturing glitch that occurs with vehicles and so on. I'm also having one problem where no matter if I place a small, medium or large plant on a certain planet it says it's the wrong size for the ecosystem, that's either a bug or me seriously missing something.

Everybody seems to be saying they have a favourite stage in the game, but I'm not sure if I do. Each stage seems to have aspects about it I do and don't like, it's often a mater of the simplicity originally making the stage a delight but slightly losing its charm by the end. If I had to pick one stage at the moment it would be the civilisation stage, it's got RTS style gameplay but unlike the similar Tribal stage it is more complex. Recently I've found myself going directly into same of the editors just so I make something special aside from the main game and I have to say much like with Spore Creature Creator the possibilities with the creators in the full game seem limitless and it is easy to build with them but you get a real sense of satisfaction from creating something really cool looking. I also liked the sheer scale of the space stage, the music of Spore and how well the game transitions from one stage to the next. I'll probably write a review for it but for now I'm going to say that it's not the perfect game but Will Wright has still injected that brilliant creativity and originality into the game that everyone was expecting and with a little patching (or possible expansion packs) I'm sure a lot of the current problems in the game can be fixed.

That kind of brings things full circle, a few years ago when I posted my first two blogs I was talking about Spore and here we are now. Despite being swept up in the craze I'd also like to say that I'm interested in picking up Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise, I'm still eagerly awaiting the next Burnout Paradise update (September 18th) and the next Halo 3 update (between September 16th and 25th). This week I'll leave you with a beautiful Halo 3 montage with slightly annoying music, here's Oh So Beautiful. Oh and don't forget September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

-Gamer_152

Good morning, afternoon, evening or whenever you're reading this. I am now officially enrolled as an A2 student at my college and although there are some aspects of college it'll be cool to get back to, I don't think anybody really wants to go back. But it's been a long week and a good week, I now have my late birthday present, an awesome laptop that my parents paid for. It's wi-fi ready, has a dual core processor (1.8 GHz), 2046 MB RAM, a 160 GB hard-drive and a NVIDIA GeForce 8400 graphics card, I can't tell you how much I love it.

With the graphics card on this thing I've got Spore Creature Creator running and even though I have a limited selection of parts and it's only one component of the full game, the possibility in this thing seems near endless and I feel that it's so accessible that almost no one can build a bad creature, but that there are so many options available that more proficient visionaries should be satisfied with it. Considering it was effectively free, the game has been a great taste of Spore and I love everything I've been able to make.

However, I've been rooting around the internet and the actual reality of Spore seems to have come out a little different from what the vision was. I've heard that the game has various problems from the dumbing-down of the main gameplay to annoying but idiotic AI. It still looks so weigh up as a great game, but I find this news disheartening given the time that has been put into making the game and the brilliant vision that Will Wright originally had. Maxis haven't been known for patching their creations in the past and I don't expect Spore to be any different, however I wouldn't be surprised to see expansions in the future but who knows if EA will ever publish anything that will not only add new content but address existing issues. None the less I am still going to pick up the game (today hopefully) and I'm still very excited.

Finally I wish I could have been at PAX last week, the event looked really great and the music, Giant Bomb panel and podcast and the Bungie-related fun looked really sweet. So this week I'm going to leave you with this video of Jonathan Coulton (writer of comedy songs, including Still Alive) and Felicia Day (creator and main character in The Guild) performing Still Alive live. Hope you had a great summer everyone.

-Gamer_152

Hi there everyone, sorry this blog is deceivingly late but I spent pretty much all of yesterday at the Tutankhamun exhibition in London. Still here I am and it's hard to believe that it was only last Saturday that I was here, ranting about Fable II Pub Games. But in my time this week I have played plenty of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Rock Band and Puzzle Pirates. In fact Puzzle Pirates have a new puzzle, foraging which has managed to reignite an old feature of the game and put a bit of a new spin on the economy, so if you have an account on there it's worth going back to for a look. I've also got a few more Rock Band songs and just like with Guitar Hero it seems that they're really aiming to provide challenging DLC.

I downloaded another demo this week, the eagerly-awaited Castle Crashers. The art style and the kind of side-on combat made me a bit unsure about this game at first but having played a little of this I can see how it could get to be a really fun and addictive experience an yet I'm not sure if I want to pay for over 1000 points just to pick up Castle Crashers. One thing that worries me a little about the game is the glitches (feels just like last week again, doesn't it). Firstly, although I'm not too likely to play Live Arcade games around other peoples houses, my heart goes out to anybody who lost stat-changes on the game through a glitch that wipes them should you play it on a different console than you downloaded it for. The online play also seems to have some major glitches which make playing with others across the world a bit of a struggle. I know sometimes glitches can be unpredictable but this does seem a little like negligent testing on the part of the developers, hopefully all will be patched.

I'm sure many of you will know that PAX 2008 (The Penny Arcade Expo) is going on this week and is providing a Seattle-situated haven for nerds and gamers alike. Of course Bungie was there and it looks like they've got a very active line-up and are really aiming to please, in fact they were even showing off their new map Assembly and it's looking sweet. Rooster Teeth also showed something that absolutely perplexed me for one, a Red vs. Blue anime (here is Rooster Teeth's blog on it). It doesn't look too bad, in fact it retained much of the Red vs. Blue humour and it had all the old voice actors but half the charm of RvB was that it was a machinima and for me they're really gonna have to put some detail into the look of the anime, still I'm strangely interested.

Thank you all for reading and this time I'll leave you with something the excellent-looking opening cinematic for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. An excellent job on Blizzards part. I'll try and keep up with all of your blogs and see you next week.

-Gamer_152

Hello one and all and thanks for being here for one of my blogs. Since last week I have managed to curb my Geometry Wars intake but I've also been playing a little Rock Band this week and have also become rather obsessed with Burnout Paradise. The Cagney update was great but the Bikes and Paradise Island updates look even better, I'm really hyped for those. Speaking of updates, the 360 version of Team Fortress 2 is set to get everything the PC version has and I that's reassuring to hear, I really thought I'd been left behind by getting the console version.

I have downloaded the Fable 2 Pub Games demo though and there's some good aspects and then there's some bad aspects. I think the best bit about the game is the creativity that has gone into the puzzles, although they all bear a resemblance to some kind of real life game the design has been very original and if the whole game was as good as the basic design it wouldn't be half bad. The ambiance and music in the game is very fitting and atmospheric as well. However it must be said that at the end of the day the third minigame, Spinner's Box is just a mystical slot machine and while some fun can be had there's only so much joy the A Button can bring you and coupled with my next point it's really not fun at all. At first I thought it was just me sucking but the odds are strongly in favour of the house and its rather easy to get into debt even when using your best strategy and judgement on the games, considering half the point of the game was so that you can earn gold to carry over to your Fable 2 character, the whole experience seems a bit pointless once your sitting at the Keystone table 500 Pays down. There's also the one unfortunate thing that seems to have managed to destroy the economy before the game has even started, a simple exploit in Fortunes Tower which has let people already earn millions. Judging by the simplicity of the programming oversight it looks like they just haven't tested the game properly, so while some people will walk into the realm of Fable 2 after hours of Pub Games with nothing, cheaters will be applauded with instant millions. Lionhead are still 'working on a patch' but there's not going to be any gold reset and many have already got an unfair headstart in the world of Fable 2.

I also downloaded the demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and it's feeling pretty good. The force mechanics come across without a hitch and the game looks just like it should, I only wish I could have got a chance to face tougher enemies as just facing the Stormtroopers and Imperial Saboteurs it did seem like a bit of a cakewalk.

In the news this week it seems Kratos has finally fulfilled his life long dream by becoming a golfer, unfortunately not everybody sees the funny side of Kratos appearing in Hot Shots, there has been anger on the various forums. And some games I really liking the look of at Leipzig this week are Guitar Hero: World Tour, Mirror's Edge and Warhammer: 40,000 Dawn of War 2 (finally, after all these years, Tyranids!), if you have any interest at all I advise you to check out some of the previews. A little closer to the present time I've been thinking of Picking up Soul Calibur IV but every time I consider it I keep thinking about re-buying SSBB, what's a gamer to do.

Anyway thanks for reading and a special thanks to everyone who commented on my birthday blog, I'll see what I can do about getting some of those pictures of the Tank Museum. Oh and my little brother might be getting me some Microsoft Points as a late birthday present so I'm hoping to download a few more Rock Band songs. I also should be getting that laptop soon which I'm really excited about. But now I must go and this week I'll leave you with TV Tropes Wiki's Lists of RPG Game Cliches.

-Gamer_152

I got back from my Holiday in Dorset yesterday at exactly 7:01 pm and although I don't mind being back I had a good holiday, if any of you are ever in the area visit the Tank Museum, it's awesome. But anyway when I got back yesterday I decided to hold off on blogging so I could put one up today as I'm happy to announce that August 18th marks the anniversary of my birth and I have now reached the grand old age on seventeen. What with fitting everything in around the holiday I'll have to leave festivities and presents for a later date but today is a good day none the less. When presents do roll around however it looks like I could be in for a laptop and driving lessons so fingers crossed on that one.

When I arrived home yesterday though I noticed that the new beta Gamespot changes had been implemented. Overall I have to say I'm pretty impressed, what with there being a bit of competitivity between Gamespot and Giant Bomb the Gamespot team have quickly answered the call and implemented a lot of the kind of features and layouts that have made Giant Bomb the favourite for many video game fanatics. But I'm afraid now I'm going to start nitpicking because I do have a few gripes with the new site. Firstly although I know it'll take some time to get used to the new look of the site for me Gamespot looks just a tiny bit too much like Giant Bomb for me and although the forums have been saved from the overhaul the old look of Gamespot made me feel like Gamespot was a more individual site. Secondly changing the thumbs up/thumbs down options to agree/disagree is a bad idea in my opinion, although it gives more clarity on the meaning it is effectively encouraging fanboyism and applaud of a post no matter how well or badly written it is. Thirdly despite much visual revolution Gamespot seems to have retained a few of the technical shortcomings that acted as a nuisance before the new version was implemented, in general these are nothing major but should the video uploader still be as unreliable as it was I imagine they could have a lot of angry users on their hands. Apart from that my other arguments are mainly based around things being too small, why even this blog entry box feels a little claustrophobic. Don't get me wrong, I understand a lot of effort and good design has gone into making the new updates, I just think they could be that tiny bit better.

Those of you who have listened to the latest Giant Bombcast will be familiar with the subject of my next little rant: Blizzard's new World of Warcraft recruitment campaigns. Because if you can get one of your friends to join the game and sign up for two or more months subscription not only do you get triple EXP when partied with them but you also get a free mount. Now my main problem isn't with the triple EXP but its still a big issue for me, partying with hardcore players was an old slightly faster way to piggy back your way through the levels and I didn't mind one player helping another out like that and double EXP being gained from spending time offline or in towns, I didn't mind that either because I thought it was done in a very fair way. But the idea that if you wanna play World of Warcraft you just get your higher level friend to recruit you and express-level your way through the game with them is no more than Blizzard simply cheapening the game, before now there were people who would've done anything for that kind of EXP boost and now Blizzard is just boiling down the levelling structure for their own gain. The free Zhevra mount? Now that is really annoying, I know I'm not the only one who spent the run up to level 40 desperately scrapping together enough gold and silver for my brilliant steed, now we have reached the point where level 70s with epic mounts are going to be running through towns to see everyone riding half-zebra, half-unicorn creatures from A-B just because they roped a single new player into the game. I know this stuff won't absolutely annihilate the WoW experience or anything but in my eyes it is nothing short of selling out.

Finally it was interesting to hear one Bizarre Creations representative say that Geometry Wars is a franchise and that they have lots more ideas in the works, although I think his statement about a Geometry Wars 10 was just one of those stupid things industry people say I'm seriously interested to see if they can really pull off a Geometry Wars 3 that does for 2, what 2 did for 1. Speaking of which my new review of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 is up and that game is still a blast to play.

That about does it for this years birthday blog. Shoutout to AJMarra who celebrated his birthday yesterday, I'm off to make some new high scores on Geometry Wars and wait for those sweet looking new Burnout Paradise updates to roll in. Once again thank you for reading and I'll leave you with this brilliantly made Halo 3 trick jumping vid, Fracture. Speaking of which I was happy to see Halo 3 take home G4s Game of the Year award recently. See you all next week with the usual Saturday blog.

-Gamer_152

So we're well into the summer holidays and I hope everybody has been enjoying their games as much as I have. Firstly I am going away on holiday in a few hours so I won't be around to read your blogs for the next week and my next blog will be 1-2 days later than usual, just so you know. Among other things I have spent more of this week on Giant Bomb instead of Gamespot, they just have a lot of stuff Gamespot doesn't. It's not that this isn't a good site but Giant Bomb has all the best editors, better features and at this point I'm not too impressed with the new version of Gamespot in beta testing. I'll tell you what, I've listened to the Giant Bombcast and it's easily five times better than the Gamespot UK Podcast.

But you probably want to know more about actual games. I've had more time with Dawn of War: Soulstorm and it's a good game but not a great game in my opinion. It adds some fun and inventive new armies and units to the game and once again stays loyal to the Warhammer 40K storyline but the campaign is very similar to the one from Dark Crusade and outside of new armies after 3 expansions we still haven't seen any great jump forward for the game as far as new features go. There's also a little gripe I've always had because despite adding most armies to the game, the Daemonhunters (Grey Knights) only got one unit in the game where as the Witch Hunters (Sisters of Battle, I refer to them as the Witch Hunters because.. Well they are the Witch Hunters, I think the name 'Sisters of Battle' was badly tied in) get an entire army and even worse than this the games have added pretty much every army that could be asked for including the 2 types of Space Marines and Eldar and yet still no Tyranids but I guess my nerdiness is costing me some enjoyment of the games. Overall with Soulstorm though although I don't regret buying it, it felt like they tried a little harder with Dark Crusade.

I've got Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 now and man is it superb. I'm not guaranteeing you'll like it if you liked the original Geometry Wars but the game is well worth a look. Despite being a simple Xbox LIVE arcade title they took the game and completely revised and reinvented it, it's a joy to play and it's like discovering Geometry Wars all over again. Hopefully when I get back from my holiday I can get a review out.

Now it's time to bash British Magazine MCV. As many read the magazine shocked readers by bringing out the news that the Wii 2 was in production and speculating over the idea that Miyamoto was out of ideas. I know the media will do their cheap eye-grabbing headline thing but this paticularly annoyed me, for starters the idea of a Wii 2 being in production was nothing more than a downright lie and they knew it! They also concocted the second piece of news from the fact that all the initial ideas for the Wii had been released, the key word there being 'initial' but again they didn't seem afraid to deceive readers. I hate when media publications do this, it's cheap and underhanded.

I'd shoutout to everyone but after I finish writing this I'll literally be packing up my things and leaving, but I don't want to end this on a low note so I will leave you with a fine use of TF2 machinima. See you all some time next week.

-Gamer_152

Ah, the holidays are good aren't they? It's hard to believe it's only been a week but I'm sure my time off will fly past soon enough. The relationship between me and games over this previous week has been an interesting one, I've had mates round and we've played Dawn of War, Rock Band or whatever else takes our fancy and likewise I've been playing a lot of them alone as well. In fact since Monday I have been writing a strategy guide for Rock Band, I've put a lot of work into it and it's looking more comprehensive than anything GameFAQS have up at the moment, I've had a great time writing it. I also picked up Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War: Soulstorm yesterday but I haven't played it enough to really give any proper thoughts on it. I'm also looking to purchase Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 which looks spectacularly crazy, much like its predecessor.

My use of Giant Bomb has also continued to an extent and already I'm finding much less lag on the site, less glitches, everything's very simple to use and I'm still impressed by their ever-growing database and blog. While I'm at hyping things there is something I feel I have to say and that is that I like many of you was disapointed with certain aspects of Nintendos press conference at E3 this year, but just because the only classic Nintendo game they really showed was Animal Crossing does not mean that Reggie Fils-Aime is sitting in his office right now burning future plans for any Mario or Zelda games. Often internet-forumgoers get a little melodramatic and this is no exception.

Now for the weekly Bungie awareness section! Would you believe it people are finally modding Halo 3. I believe it and of course Bungie are coming down hard on them with the Banhammer. The general concensus seems to be "what all I did was violate the terms of service I agreed to and post extremely offensive content on the internet", but none the less files share privileges have been revoked and modders are being banned from matchmaking. If only every company could deal with modders that well.

I'd like to give a shoutout to one of my mates who has actually now joined up here under the name of Ninja_Duckie and I'd like to leave you all with Loading Ready Run's epic vision of the future.

-Gamer_152

Well it's time for me to blog on another week of game-related miscellanea and with the absence of E3 or any editorial I may be writing I can fortunately greet you this week without a wall of text three times the size of a normal blog. In fact E3 seems so long ago to me but perhaps this is because I am now in the third day of my Summer holidays and already it's been relaxing. I've played a varied handful of games that I won't go into except for Rock Band which I am still enjoying and somehow I managed to strum my way through the 58 song 'Endless Setlist' so I'm feeling pretty smug. Also just for the record, despite looking a little dated I've found Sid Meier's Pirates to have provided an immersive experience.

The Giant Bomb also launched this week for beta testing. The site comprising of a few of the best critics in the buisness, many of whom were fired from Gamespot has news, reviews, videos, blogs and a wiki on everything gaming. The site has grown astronomically fast and already it's a flood of users and content which is looking great and really benefiting from the input of all its wonderful staff. I've already secured my profile there but they're not kidding when they say if you want a specific name the time to get it was three days ago. Of course I sometimes find the site a little tricky to use due to various glitches and copious amounts of lag when you Americans hit the site, but hopefully all the bugs will be ironed out soon enough.

Now for a humourous and once again Bungie-related story. A few weeks ago the Bungie fans thought they'd caught the clever developer out when a picture of a Wal-Mart database was taken from their intranet which listed a product called 'Halo Blue'. Of course the 'avid Halo fans' on Bungie.net (that means people who spend all day complaining about Trueskill and the power of the Battle Rifle, but never actually stop playing Halo) were immediately speculating away with talk of a Halo 4 or even more ridiculously a Halo 3 expansion pack. It was revealed more recently that although Bungie do have a Halo project in the works, in this case the legendary item was in fact just a blue Halo-themed USB flash drive.

Well that's this week done and dusted and now I must bid you adieu, places to go, headcrabs to kill. Thank you to some of my favourite people, PJ24, Edpeterson, Kingrich06 and Neojedi. Now I will leave you with the amusing but ultimately crushing to any game journalists out there, 100 game-industry cliches. Keep on rockin'.

-Gamer_152

It's been a big week for video games, I've been playing more Rock Band and I have Sid Meier's Pirates which is also great but the real experience this week was E3. Of course I can't run through every game but here is just some of the stuff I enjoyed from this years show.

Nintendo

I thought that Nintendo did a fair job, granted they weren't obviously the be-all-and-end-all company for the core gamer this year but they've got some interesting stuff. I thought Wii Music looked like great title, not quite as in-depth as a game like Guitar Hero and I think that's something some rhythm gamers may miss but it is still an imaginative concept and to give Nintendo some credit the game has 60 freakin' instruments! Nintendo also unveiled Wii Sports Resort and that alone looks like a pretty good game but the Wii Motion Plus add-on is what really does it for me, it's a tool that adds so many new possibilities for developers and opens up the controller for areas of play that were difficult and clunky before. I am a little surprised that Nintendo were hyping Guitar Hero on Tour so much though when they were already hosting titles on the Wii like Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. New Animal Crossing looks like good stuff. Skate It! also seems to be answering the prayers of the people who were wishing for a skateboarding game that included the balance board and my long-time personal want from Nintendo is finally being fulfilled in the form of a new sequel on the Wii of the Japanese strategy game Pikmin. It's a shame that there was such a bring-down and distancing from the old-school Nintendo fans through a complete lack of anything Mario, Zelda, Metroid or any "proper" Pokemon and this is one thing that left a feeling of emptiness in Nintendo's otherwise quite successful conference.

Sony

I was reasonably impressed with what I saw from Sony. I still don't really have any more inclination to buy a PS3 than before but Resistance looks like a cool game and they have some other interesting things... like Flower. I must say even though I don't usually go for that kind of thing Playstation Home looks like it's coming together quite well. Little Big Planet still looks like it'll be a great title as well, I really wish it was available on other consoles. Sony also seem to be joining the competition in the movie download and rental market and I don't know about anyone else but despite Microsoft's and Sony's efforts at this I still have no more inclination to use my games console as a replacement for my DVD collection. Hard to say that Sony will fair any better than they have before, their main sale spikes only being around Christmas and MGS4 but I hope fans get everything they deserve.

Microsoft

Microsoft also put in a strong performance at E3. Gears of War 2, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and Resident Evil 5 look like they're shaping up to be the kind of superb games we are expecting them to be and I was also surprised by how enthralled I was when presented with new glimpses of Fable 2. The full setlist and news that original Rock Band songs will be able to be ported over for Rock Band 2 was good news to say the least and although both developers are doing a great job I till feel more inclined to get Rock Band 2 than Guitar Hero World Tour. Microsoft also made some decisions that I felt were perhaps more akin to Nintendo's kind of decisions. They really seem to want to bring in games that are more simple and accessible to more casual gamers, they've got their very Mii-like cartoony avatars and then they had their whole weird thing with the Xbox Live Vision Camera games. I love the idea of 101 person multiplayer quiz games where you can win actual prizes and the idea that we can now have our own avatars with unlockable clothes, but the avatars are too close to the Nintendo Miis for me, I'd prefer something a little less cartoony and I don't want to see any novelty camera games or Xbox Live Arcade titles that don't live up to standards. Overall I'm not quite sure what to think of the new look for the dashboard either, but I'm sure everyones opinions will be well-founded come the Autumn update. Although it's only a short game I was happy to hear GLaDOS announce Portal: Still Alive to add more content on the brilliant experience the original puzzle game created, I'm really excited. Another title which will no doubt bring a grin to many gamers faces is Final Fantasy XIII and I'm happy the series is chipping in one of its ground-breaking games for Xbox 360. I also saw a fair bit more of Halo Wars and I'm finding it hard to judge what I think of the gameplay but I'm a big Halo fan and I think Ensemble Studios and Bungie can be trusted to produce an RTS that is at very least decent.

Concerning PC titles I still thought Spore looked mind-blowing, the number of creatures people have already created is phenomenal and even after all this time waiting the concept continues to blow me away every time. I was also happy to get a look at Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 which will be the sequel to an RTS whose skirmishes and campaign missions have given me much enjoyment over the time I've had it. Now I just need to get my hands on a new graphics card and I'll be all set.

Bungie's New Announcement

Bungie (I love Bungie!!) had their own little saga of events this week. In the lead up to the announcement of their new project they had been leaving cryptic clues around their site through the mysterious character of the Superintendent in that genius way that Bungie do. When the Superintendant hi-jacked Bungie's site and started a countdown on the front page even the usually ever-complaining community of Bungie.net were excited beyond belief and speculation ensued. However before that countdown had the chance to hit 0 the publisher contacted Bungie telling them that the project was not to be announced and so with an announcement from Bungie's President and many sad faces on the side of both Bungie's employees and fans the news on the new project was shelved. The publisher was soon revealed to be Microsoft and it turned out that it was indeed a Halo project that was being announced, in fact even before the E3 press conference a representative from Microsoft had mentioned to Kotaku that it was a Halo project. But when it all came crashing down Microsoft said that they had done what they had done because a) They wanted to make their press conference suitable for modern attention spans and b) They thought that this particular project deserved its own event. Based on the latter statement I suppose Microsoft did the right thing, but if only things had been organised between Bungie and Microsoft much earlier there wouldn't of been so many disappointed gamers.

I could go on and on about this and even go into serious depth on each little game that has been showcased at E3 2008 but this is where I shall end this madness. It's once again been another very awe-inspiring event in the gaming calender and it'll be brilliant to see all the games shown on our consoles in the future. I hope we'll also get a chance some time to see titles that didn't pop up at E3 such as Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2 and various other things ending with 2. This week I'll leave you with what I felt was a very special moment in animation, used the live coverage of E3s Microsoft press conference.

-Gamer_152

Usually I'm a bit happier when I write these blogs, but as I write one of my two cats is being put down which sucks a lot so I hope the quality of this weeks blog doesn't suffer for it (yes, believe it or not it can get worse). I've been playing various things this week from Puzzle Pirates to Halo 3 but my main focus has once again been on Rock Band, there's not much to say except once again I'd like to emphasise it is a great game in dire need of a price drop.

Last Monday was Bungie Day as many of you are aware and I had a good time playing on the Bungie Day playlist Icy Treats and I'm very much enjoying the new map. I really like the 3D artistry on Cold Storage, it's a sleak-looking map but with great flood-elements and it's ultimately fun to play. It's a shame Bungie have got so much c**p from their community because they're one of the best companies out there. This week I've been checking the Bungie.net forums for a few minutes once or twice every day and man they never stop complaining. You have the company here who has made one of the best shooter series in gaming history and all these people care about is how the Battle Rifle may be slightly imbalanced or why their lag is Bungie's fault. I don't mind hardcore fans and I don't mind constructive criticism but this is just complete over-reaction to minor flaws and I doubt half the people complaining actually know how what they're complaining about works. On the brighter side though they seem to have a special announcement for Monday (that's 7 days after 07/07). Yay!

Speaking of events this week we have a little convention going on called E3 2008, running from Tuesday to Thursday. Everyone who knows about it seems pretty hyped and I gotta say I am too, besides the great games there this is the place where all the big announcements happen. Why only two years ago we were watching as gaming critics and other lucky souls who'd managed to sneak themselves in were enjoying the first play-throughs of the then upcoming Nintendo Wii, now look where it is! For those of you who can stretch back your mind to ten years ago, that was when E3 was showcasing Half-Life in it's final stages and first glimpses of Duke Nukem Forever were given. For this years 13th E3 convention I'm expecting to hopefully see news on many big sequels in development and maybe if we wish very hard news from the big companies on their next consoles, but the announced lineup so far still looks pretty solid.

Thank you once again for reading. On one final topic, they have announced the one song I really thought would of been perfect for Rock Band for Rock Band 2 (Everlong by Foo Fighters). Shoutout to Baldpigcool, PenBandit and "Chris" (they know who they are) and this week I'll leave you with this page of Bungie tributes.

-Gamer_152