Well here we are at the start of another monday.  This is my last week at my current contract and start another IT contract next week.  Heading to Budapest on thursday with my girlfiend which I'm pretty excited about. 

Had the hangover from hell yesterday.  Had gone shopping for some new clothes before meeting up with a few friends for....a couple of pints.  Famous last words and an early morning taxi later, my girlfiend found me fast asleep on our not so large sofa! Now I know why my neck is hurting :-)

On the gaming front, I'm holding off buying anything new for the moment as I've become a graphics snob, well not really, but I'm waiting on a new graphics card and would rather start any games I buy with the upgraded settings.  First purchase will be Dark Messiah, which although ran well on my current card (6800GT), I imagine it will be pretty sweet on the new card (X1900XT).  I had to think long and hard regarding this card as technology is about leap beyond the average gamers current set up.

Windows Vista is about to rewrite what we can expect from games.  The next couple of years are going to see a major leap forward in terms of what will be on offer in gaming technology.  DirectX 10 from the amazing sample screenshots I've viewed is going to produce drool from the corners of my mouth.  So you may wonder, why I've got a card which is DX9 compatible when this new technology is just around the corner?

Well there are several reasons.  For a start, it's a new operating system from Microsoft.  There's going to be problems to begin with until we see a few patches.  Secondly, these will be the first edition of the DX10 cards and may have heating issues / noise issues / overuse of power supply due to card demands.  Third, the games programmers are going to have to learn how to use these technologies.  Forth will be the initial cost.

I'm gonna wait at least a year and enjoy the less shiny DX9 version of the games being released.  Lets be honest, I've been using a 6800GT and have played games at 1024 x 768 for quite a while.  I'm used to the not so shiny versions!

I'd been meaning to start up a blog and Monday morning at work is a good a place as any to start it.  Just been posting about the fan divide between Gothic III / Oblivion and Dark Messiah.  Whether you pick a corner or embrace them all, one thing is for sure beta testing begins with Gothic III and Oblivion,  after the game is released.  You can argue that this is because of the huge gaming world, the enormous task in producing such a game, well I for one I'm tired of the excuses thrown back.  Why as gamers do we accept such poor testing?  It's not as if it was my choice to employ 2 testers instead of the 1000 required to test the game properly.  It wasn't my fault that the testing began too close to the release deadline.  The reason that we accept such liberties from these games is because there are so few of them in this range.  Take for instance FPS of a more action orientated nature.  There are hundreds to choose from ranging from FEAR and Half Life 2 to Counterstrike and Halo.  Although these games are not as involved, the games playing community are not as forgiving if one is poorly written.

Bethesda should be ashamed in the support that they have provided for Oblivion.  It's been left to the fans to repair all the numerous bugs.  Why should I have to figure out how to use tools like Wyre Bash to sort out my savegame to run a patch?

As for Gothic III, I'll wait until they realise version 1.99999, or until all the paying beta testers report enough bugs, which thinking about will still be version 1.99999