Today, I got a rather nice surprise. Just before I left to go to my friend's house for the day, I decided to check my emails and in my Junk folder I found an email from Battle.net informing me that I'd been accepted into the Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty beta. And with that, I followed the link and left the installer downloading as I left the house.

Now, I have to say that I've NEVER played Starcraft in my life so I'll probably have to do the tutorials if there are any once I get it up and running. Also, if any of you have played Starcraft in any capacity, even if it was just a couple of skirmishes, feel free to impart any wisdom on how to play any of the three races effectively. Saying that, I'm fully aware of the Zerg rush "tactic" so no need to bring that to my attention.

That's all for now, peace out.

Rai~

Now that it's Christmas, I finally have my PC to use as freely as I like without having to rely on my sister's laptop. I'm friggin' happy about that, what I'm not happy about is that I'm likely to be spending my Christmas day trying to fix the sodding thing because it keeps blue screening and crashing when I try to play games on it.

Regardless, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and a great new year.

Sooooo, I managed to obtain one of the early acces codes for the Left 4 Dead 2 demo which became available on Wednesday. So far, I really do like the game. I don't, however, like the new survivors as much as I do the old ones. Maybe it's just because I played so much L4D1 over the last year, but I don't know for sure. It just feels odd playing a round of L4D knowing that none of the original guys are even there :(

Aside from that, everything so far has been pretty positive. The new guns are pretty damn cool and the melee weapons are fun to use. Now, I'm not too sure about how many of you have been following the L4D2 features and whatnot, but I'll give you a run-down of what I've seen in the demo so far.

• The original special infected have had their models and sounds changed, so it's slightly trickier to distinguish what's out there. I'd suggest putting on the subtitles so you can familiarise yourself with the noises that they make now.
• Boomers have an alternate, female model too. From what I can tell, the game will randomly alternate between the two.
• One of the Uncommon Common Infected which are throughout the capaigns can be a little annoying. The demo only has the armoured Security Infected which have to be shot in the back for them to be killed. This in itself can be rather annoying when you're in the middle of a horde attack. I have found, however, that hitting them with a melee weapon seems to kill them.
• The shove cooldown now applies in campaign. So no more standing in a corner holding down left trigger and shoving them away. Instead, just hold down the right trigger with your melee weapon out, (if you have one.) this doesn't have a cooldown on it, oddly.
• Advance and Expert seem a bit easier than in the original. This may be because my copy of L4D1 hates me, but I have noticed that Tanks go down far easier than before, especially when on fire.
• Speaking of Tanks, they don't spawn terribly often. I've played through the demo perhaps 20 times, and only about 6 playthroughs have had tanks.

• Boomers also seem to be able to vomit further or Valve has added some slight splash to it. Which means you oughta get a few yards further back than normal.

• The new items are: Bile Bombs which are similar to Molotovs except they trigger a Horde to attack whatever gts covered by it, Adrenaline shots which allow you to run through a horde, heal and revive teammates faster, and Defibrilators which, similarly to their real-life counterpart, will bring a dead player back to life.

I think there are a couple bits I've missed, but I'll leave it at that for now.

To those who know me somewhat, I'm a typically happy person and very few things can make me sad or upset. However, I've recently started feeling somewhat... unfulfilled. I honestly have no clue as to why, I have nothing that most people my age don't, aside from a job and ID. It's not that I feel like I ought to be trying to better myself academically, 'cause I'm already at college doing exactly that. In fact, pretty much everything is how I like it, I have a good family, friends and both my older sisters are pregnant with their second children and ought to be giving birth somewhere between March and May next year.

Despite this, I still feel somewhat underwhelmed with my life at the moment. This may just be an unpleasant side-effect of the change to my Tuesday-Thursday sleep pattern. I hope that's the case and I don't start feeling worse because I'll just keep feeling angst-y and end up isolating myself from everyone/thing. Anywho, I'll bid you all adieu because I'm sure you have better stuff to do than read about me feeling sorry for myself.

Sooo, this week saw my friend Danielle's 18th birthday. She had a party, and guess what! I **** missed it. Firstly, I thought I missed it about 20 hours before the party had even started (because I looked at the date on Joe's computer and didn't think to even look at the time) and then, forgot all about it until it was later mentioned by Tom (which was about 2 hours after the party had started).

For everyone who thought "tl;dr", I missed a friends party and I hate myself.

I'm gonna go and be pissed off with myself somewhere out of the way. See you later, y'all!

Over the past few days I've been spending a large amount of time on Live playing Left 4 Dead online. In itself, that's unusual for me because my internet connection doesn't seem capable of handling my xbox's Live connection on its own, let alone with any other computers being usedin the house. But oddly, my connection has been nice to me and allowed me to play online comfortably for at least about 12 hours at a time. (I know that's an unhealthy amount of time, but what the hell do I care? I live too far away from most of my friends to be able to do anything). Now that my connection has decided to be kind to me, I'm trying to arrange a few games of Left 4 Dead with real-life friends of mine who have the game (or are borrowing it) but so far it has proved futile as things keep popping up that prevent our games from going ahead :(.

Anyways, I just hope my good connection lasts at least until my Gold runs out next month.

Until the next time I can be bothered to write something here, I bid you farewell.

OK, so recently i came across a website that focuses on remixes of in-game music. This got me thinking about the music i've liked in the games i've played throughout my time as a gamer, and this is what i came up with.

Pokemon Silver/Gold/Crystal - Rival Battle, Pokemon League and Team Rocket Battle

CastleVania: Circle of the Moon - Awakening

World of Warcraft - Brill Tavern, Burning Crusade and WotLK login musics

Final Fantasy X - To Zanarkand

Halo 2 - Halo 2 Theme (Mjolnir Mix)

Super Mario Land - Main Theme

Sins of a Solar Empire - Everything

Sid Meier's Pirates! - Battle Music

Devil May Cry 4 - Shall Never Surrender

Universe at War - Most of the Heirarchy music

Timesplitters 2 - Anaconda and Wild West

Dynasty Warriors 5&6 - Openings and Lu Bu's Theme

That's all i can think of at the moment, I'll post more when/if i remember any

So, it's four days until Christmas (WOOHOO! /sarcasm) and I STILL have no idea what to do for my 18th birthday. At the moment I'm considering renting a function hall and having a fancy dress party! What could be more epic than getting pissed while dressed as a Tusken Raider? Obviously, I'd have to prepare this a little while in advance and make it virtually imperative that people dress up, but what's bothering me most at the moment is the costume.

Originally, I'd intended to think of a recognisable costume that wouldn't require a mask/hood/helmet but everything I thought of involved one of the three. So I conceded and decided on Boba Fett. THEN I had to finda blaster to go with it, after about 45mins of searching, I gave up. I ended up going for a pair of replica Jango Fett pistols :P

At the moment, the costume is going to cost me roughly £60-something, so I'm gonna wait until after Christmas to decide for definite whether the party will be fancy dress.

Anyway, it's time for me to resume Universe at War. Farewell.

Side-note: I don't know why, but I have this weird feeling that a party hosted by me is doomed to fail :(