It's late. It's hot. Hayfever is a foot. And there's crazy thoughts of taking a cold shower running through my mind. So I'll keep this short. I wanted to give Nintendo's front man Reggie some lovin', but like I said, I don't know how much longer I can sit here in this pool of sweat.

GameSpot covers E3 each year, and I'm not to sure how long they've been doing their live coverage, but I just want to give them some kudos for doing a steller job. I haven't been giving the live footage my full attention throughout the night, but it's nice having it streaming while I sit here and do some work and bask in the pool of my own sweat.

As I write this, it seems to be Sony hour. GameSpot have been sharing the stage with a variety of third party PlayStation 3 developers showing off their goods. And I have to say, I'm impressed. It's safe to say the PlayStation 3 has had such a high rate of negetive press, both throughout the media and community, so much so it gives off the impression that it's cool to "Sony bash". Is the large majority of the negetivity valid? Sure. But hardware will always have it's teething problems on release (us PC Gamers get the brunt of that) and when you're a company like Sony that is so often in the lime light any problems they may have are ballooned up in the media.

Anyway, as I was saying, I'm impressed. The catalogue of games coming this holiday season look seriously kickass. They just got done with Naughty Dog and Uncharted, and it reminds me of a few games I've had a good time with in the past. Most noticably Freedom Fighters and El Matador. Same goes with Warhawk and Heavenly Sword. Although I have to disagree with the "realistic hair" the Heavenly Sword developer kept waffling on about. That stuff just looked fugly. Granted, although the a variety of games looked promising, they're nothing to make me "make the switch", as they say. But it's nice to see PlayStation 3 owners will have a good holiday season.

Right, time to go hose myself down.

I was planning on, like the majority of GameSpot members, talking about the Big Three's conferences in todays blog post. But I haven't managed to watch them all, only really getting to catch the highlights that the fella's over at Joystiq have an offer. So I'll slowly make my way through them over the next few days, and leave my impressions as I go. From what I've read so far, however, neither of them had any jaws hitting the floor. It was to be expected though. The conferences were always going to be software focused this year, with the majority of that software already been shown off to ridiculous lengths throughout the year.

But before I go any further into all the E3 craziness, let me get back on track for todays topic. Although what I'm going to talk about today is slightly redundant after the events that just occured a few hours ago, it has been something that's boggled my mind over the last couple of months with the lead up to E3. Plain and simple, it's Killzone 2.

Now I never experienced the original Killzone, which may make me as fortunate, but from what I hear it came out the gate to very lackluster reviews, with GameSpot themselves giving it somewhere in the high sixies. Now, how does a game that gets this sort of poor reception deserve such a high profile sequel is beyond me. Does the tag "Potential Halo Killer" really carry that much force in the video game industry?

So how does a game, that originates from a poorly recepted IP, manage to gather so much hype and attention? That's the question thats had me scratching my head. There are threads popping up all over the place on pre-E3 forums asking questions such as "Which game will be better? Halo3, Crysis or Killzone 2?". What has Killzone 2 done that it's managed to get it's self compared to such titles as Halo and Crysis? Both these games have proven themselves to have some sort of impressive feat, be it technical or gameplay, that puts them over and above other popular games. What has Killzone 2 done? It provided a prerendered CGI video clip that ended up just causing a daft amount of ridiculous. It offered nothing but that prerendered clip for 12 months, but still managed to draw a crazy amount of attention and hype that had it being compared to the previously mentioned deserving games. It simply baffles me.

Now like I said, this arguement was made completely redundant today with the release of actual in-game footage of Killzone 2 today. But with that aside, I still think it's a valid arguement considering the mass of attraction this game got with the runup to E3.

Oh, and Assassin Creed looks kickass. Ubisoft can have my babies any day of the week.

I was planning on pleasing the geek in me and staying up till the early hours to grace the Microsoft conference with my presence. But as I sit here a few minutes after midnight, with my Macbook slowly toasting my inner thighs and punishing myself by watching the end of Doom for the N'th time, my eyes lids are dropping. Call me an old man, but I'm one of those people that just can't function properly throughout the day with a good 7hrs sleep.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm even investing the time to watch the "Big Three's" conferences. I'm solely a PC Gamer, and although Microsoft may have small tid bits of information about PC Gaming (I'm lookig at you Windows Live), it's barely enough to justify a PC Gamers viewing. But saying that, I'll still no doubt catch the Sony and Nintendo conference's live tomorrow, and get the Microsoft conference once the fine folks at GameSpot Live HD'ify it and upload it.

It's been a year since I posted a blog entry, and although I may have said this before, I'm going to attempt and keep this thing updated each day. It'll atleast give me reason to pull myself away from Notepad and ColdFusion. Damn you custom modules, damn you all!

Uch, I'm such a geek. But I love it!

With the release of Titan Quest just around the corner, there is quite a bit of talk being generated about it over at the PC forums. And nearly every thread has something in common - besides the topic of Titan Quest of course - the mention, or more to the point, the comparison to Diablo "sodding" 2.

Now i like to think of myself as an RPG fan, and the isometric view RPG being my most favoured type. But does every isometric RPG have to be compared to Diablo 2? Sure, back in 99/2000 when Diablo reared its ugly head, it was a pretty decent game. But gaming has moved on, and the isometric view RPG is implementing new gameplay mechanics that give each game a sense of individuality. Yet, they're still compared to Diablo 2.

Just because the games share the same gameplay foundations, doesn't mean they're each instantly compariable to each other. Doom and Quake broke the FPS genre, but just because they're set in the first person you don't see any Half Life 2 review saying "The Best Quake Clone Yet!". But for some obscure reason, the large majority of isometric view RPG's is a Diablo 2 clone.

One of lifes lost causes, i suppose.

For those who have read my previous blog posts, you'll know i'm attempting to work through the games in my collection, for one reason or another, that i've have bought but never played or finished.

Since i last updated, i had just made my way through FEAR. It was, like everyone was saying, a very enjoyable FPS. Looked and played amazing, although it did tend to get slightly tedious near the end. Well, since then i've managed to score a few more titles off. Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War and its expansion, Winter Assault, got the treatment.

Reluctantly, since i'd forked over the cash for it, i played through Matrix: Path of Neo. For anyone that had to edure the same pain, what the heck was that ending about? I thought they said they changed the ending to make it a more exciting and enjoyable gaming experience? Nothing was enjoyable about that ending. In fact, it may well have been the most dullest part of that poorly developed game that looked like it was created for the Commodore 64.

Finally, i seem to be only two races off completeing Need For Speed Most Wanted. I'm not usually one for racing games, unless the racing involves commandeering a vehicle from a fellow citizen and then proceeding reek havoc across the city (i.e GTA, or as our fellow media writers call it; "everything that is wrong with society").

Currently working my way through the original No One Lives Forever. Really enjoyed the second one, and would probably place it somewhere in my favourite games of all time. But sadly, the original just doesn't seem as engaging as the sequel.

After that, it's only a handful of RTS's left. I always find myself having to be in that "i want to conquer the world" mood in order to play an RTS. Which, funnily enough, isn't a common mood for me. So it may take me a while to get through them.

It looks like it wasn't to be. As quick as my hopes were risen over the GRAW demo, they were whisked away from me. I know the game was goin to require a hefty peice of kit to run on high, but i never imagened it would need a hefty machine to run on low. Just at the site of the game loading up, my graphics card managed to unscrew it self, wriggle itself free from the AGP slot and burst through the side of my case running out of the room wheeping and in a ball of flames. That's right, even on all low settings, my machine couldn't run the game at a stable enough frame rate.

Obviously this was a heart crushing time, unable to play the one game i'd chose to have in 2006. But what was more upsetting was the fact that my machine couldn't handle it. Don't get me wrong, i know my machine isn't what it used to be, but i honestly thought i'd be able to scrape through this year with games running on low/medium settings. But looks like it's not to be. I'll have to look into doing a full system overhaul in the next few months, as E3 open my eyes to a wide selection of system demanding games that made me lick my lips.

Thank you Ubisoft. You've made my day. Was more giddy that a school girl when i saw a Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter demo had been released. Although, my machine doesn't share the same feeling. I think i can hear it weeping at the thought of having to run it.

Look forward to getting my teeth into it and leaving my throughts about it here.

Was a pleasent suprise to wake up to GameSpot UK. I seem to remember reading somewhere a while back about GameSpot dithering over the idea of introducing a UK office. Glad to see its been implemented. Makes life that little bit easier to know that i don't have to travel the Interweb for UK specific gaming news and release dates.

Always made me soured face when a GameSpot competitions would be open to all paid subscribes. But by "all", they meant only US and Canada based subscribers, of course. So a smile was put on my face when i read us UK readers are getting a few competitions and discounts at popular UK based retail websites.

It's amazing how you can play a game for months, and think you've experienced everything it has to offer. But one day, the game just throws something new and exciting at you that opens up an entire new level of experience.

Been playing Battlefield 2 on and off since around November. Never taken the game to seriously, and can't seem to stick at a session for more than an hour. The whole squad feature of BF2 always interested me. It seemed to be able to offer a great deal, but never really delivered. When playing the other day, i joined a squad of a few players as normal. Usually, these players are scattered over the map playing only for themselves. But, suprisingly, this time was different. The squad seemed to stick together throughout the map, coordinate their attacks and make good use of the available classes. Playing like this really made the game far more enjoyable and was a welcome change. Like i said, i never take these games to serious. But playing like that really got me engrossed.

At ease, soldier.

Anyone see that? Did you? Anyone see that tumbleweed roll by? Yes, it has been slightly quite around these areas lately, but things got a little busy over the last few months and i didn't manage my time very well. Where's that Persian Prince when you need him, eh? But, it seems everything has settled down now, so it's time to get back into the GameSpot swing of things.

So, expect see to more of the usual, regular blog updates and comments on all your blogs. Aswell as more PC Gamer Union updates from myself, things went a little quite for me over there too.

It's good to be back.