It is currently Saturday 26th September and I have now been living in my university halls of residence for a whole week. It's still very strange here and while my computer games programming course doesn't start until Monday it's been good to know that I'll actually be around large groups of people I can have a really intelligent discussion about video games with. So I'm eagerly awaiting 11:00 Monday morning when I will get my first official practical lesson in computer environments. Of course I could go on about the university and the course itself endlessly... So let's do that.

I've been very impressed by what I've been told about the course. My university has direct links both with Microsoft and Sony and my lecturers have even seen secret Microsoft and Sony tech which they are not legally allowed to talk about. In fact these guys knew about the Natal even before its announcement at E3 09. More than one of the people in the computing department here has worked with Codemasters and others have worked on games such as Motorstorm, Need for Speed: Underground and one the people teaching computer games programming was even an AI programmer for Fable. They have been emphasising that the course itself is extremely hard though. There are about 94 people on the course and these have been selected from over 450 applicants and the course is so intimidating for some there is also a 10% drop-out rate before it even starts. We will be working more than 40 hours a week in the first year and overall the course is considered to be about the hardest course out of the hundreds taught here. The overall dropout rate is over 50% and the last group of 74 programmers has dropped down to about 30 programmers. I'm raring to go and willing to put in every bit of effort it takes to get this qualification though.

I haven't been playing many video games themselves this week. I've played a bit of Zoo Keeper, Tetris DS and Microsoft Pinball but that's really it. But today I picked up Halo 3: ODST and tomorrow I will be back in possession of my gaming mouse, my Xbox 360 and my Wii. It's gonna be one hell of a Sunday! However, as a student buying games is pretty much entirely off my agenda until I get a part time job and earn a fair amount of cash. In other news I was disappointed this week to find out about the various problems people have found with Scribblenauts. From the sounds of things the game has serious problems with controls, the way in which the objects interact with each other, physics and just how easy the levels are to complete (e.g. Entering "Cthulhu" and "Wings" seems to be able to get you past just about anything). I'm still going to buy the game but with such glaring faults I still feel like the game isn't going to be the full experience it could have been.

I think that's everything for this week and stay tuned for thoughts on my first days getting a degree in computer games programming and my opinions on Halo 3: ODST in the near future. This week I'll leave you with this ****c trailer for Chu Chu Rocket on the Dreamcast. Peace out.

-Gamer_152