First off, Happy Holidays to all. Hope the man in red dropped by with a plethora of gaming goodies.

This time of year is always a good time to be a gamer. The bargain bins are growing fatter by the minute, the preowned section is filling up with unwanted christmas gifts, and prices are slashed.

Enjoy.

After Enter the Matrix, Shiny Entertainment couldn't really sink any lower. The game was riddeled with endless issues. Buggy gameplay, half par graphics, lack of Matrix themed action. Any game that has a patch released the day after it hit store shelves, like Enter the Matrix, is bound to see the bottom of the bargain bin quicker than Gods & Generals. It was to no suprise that Shiny would try and redem themselves with another Matrix title, this time giving the fans what they wanted .. all out Matrix action with Neo.

It's easy to criticise a game, but i'm finding it hard with Path of Neo. Not because it's a game that deserves GOTY title, the very opposite infact. I'm overwhelmed with the problems with this game. The list seems to never end.

The first problem you'll come across appears on the menu once screen. You're presented with a langauge choice, from which you'll select your chosen language. However, it doesn't save that langauge. Everytime you load the game, you have to set it to the langauge of your choice. Irritating, but you can learn to live with it as you'll rarely laod up the actual game.

If you have an impressive system under your hood, you'll a custom to cranking up the graphical settings. This proves to be pointless in Path of Neo. The game can't successfully change resolution, and will always run at 640*480. I can't even start to descrive how unprofessional that is. From here on in, the game just goes further down hill.

From the get go, the game just plays horrid. Overwhelmingly horrid. The graphics are just plain shocking. It looks like you're playing a game from the Playstation 1 launch lineup, and thats a compliment. The low resolution doesn't help, but that contributes very little to the poor display.

The lack of a regualr save feature really takes any enjoyment the game have hidden away. Checkpoints are few and far between, and you can find yourself playing for upto 45mins without a save, only to die and have to begin the level from the start.

The AI is about as sharp as a golf ball. Enemies will either stand on the spot waiting for you to kill them, or they'll show off the one move they know repetitevly, making it easy for yourself to dodge the attack and pull of a counter attack .. if you can figure out how to.

The controls seem to be none effective. I would like to say button mashing will get you somewhere, but it really doesn't. You'll try and pull of the moves the training scheme taught you, but either something completely different will happen or Neo will stand there gazing straight ahead as if Cameron Diaz is running towards him in a bikini. In actual fact, it's some middle aged security card with a stick looking to club you over the head. The controls are completely unresponsive and uneffective, you really don't feel as though you're playing the game.

I didn't think Shiny could sink any lower after Enter the Matrix, but Path of Neo has proven me wrong. It is clear that Path of Neo was a rushed title, but rushed for what? Who knows what they're going to hash out after this monstrosity, but whatever it is i can happily say it won't be gracing my hard drive with its presence.

 Picked up this months issue of PC ZONE the other day, but with my hectic work load i never got round to reading the damn thing. So when i felt nature was calling, i took my seat upon the throne and pulled out PC ZONE and beging reading.

I opened up at the "First Look" for a game called Titan Quest. To be honest, i'd love to say i've been following this game for months, but this was the first time the words "Titan Quest" had christaned my ears. Well, all i can say is ... thank god nature calls. They don't go into to much depth about the game, but what they do cover sounds.

The game is very much like your Diablo's, Divine Divinity's and Sacred's. Hack n' Slash RPGs. There has been a drout of these sort of games over the years, so it's great to see one in development. From the screenshots on offer, the game looks outstanding for the style of game it is. However, ever since Age of Empires 3 i tend not to trust the power of a screenshot. The talk of a 40hr gameplay length, real world locations and a very detailed editor open up to the community has got me all hot and bothered.

 Was in my local Gamestation just the other day, and noticed preorder copies of Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Never played any NFS before Underground, so was more acustome to the way Underground was set and played out. And for the record, i really enjoyed Underground. Not so much with it's sequel, but then again i never really gave it much of a chance.

Anyway, with Most Wanted being brought to my attention, i remembered the demo being released a week prior. I scrurried home to download it and give it a shot. I was slightly disappointed not seeing the same setting as Underground, but you can only have so much of that before it becomes repetitive and tedious i suppose. So i did a few races, mucked about with the new features etc. and i have to say, i'm not to impressed. It's a great looking game, although it suffers from the pixelated road Underground 2 had, but it just didn't feel all that "smooth". Hard to describe it, but the words that spring to mind are "bitty", "bumpy" and, funny enough .... "off-centre". To be honest, i don't even know what they mean myself, but i do know i didn't get the thrill out of as i did from Underground.

Bring back the shiny nightlife of Underground, i say!

 I remember hearing about GUN in passing, not really paying much attention to anything said about it. I usually look ahead and see what games are going to interest me in the coming months/years and make a note of them. GUN never got the pleasure of having that treatment.

So as i went in to purchase my copy of Path of Neo, not knowing at that point by doing so i'll scar my gaming career for life, GUN caught my eye. A quick read of the blurb and a handful of faith, i added that to the purchase aswell. Gun took a back seat for most of the day, with Path of Neo getting the majority of my attention. As the day was ending, and i had felt i had punished myself enough with Neo and his entourage of dated graphics and glitchy gameplay, i loaded up Gun. The splash screen was enough to get me excited. The old western music, seude jackets, leather fraid trousers, saloons, all get you itching to get your fingers on a six gun. From the get go, your indulged into well crafted characters, an exciting storyline and a superb enviroment. As the game progresses, things just go from good to great. The free-roaming, horse riding, gun weilding action just feels so different, yet so similiar.

However, with everything that is grand ... there is faults. The major problem with Gun is its length. If you just power through the storyline, putting the side missions ... er ... aside ... you'll breeze through the game in roughly 6 hours. Even with the side missions, you'll only get 8-10 hours out of it. The game does allow you to explore the land after you complete the storyline, but if you've done the majoirty of side missions then there really isn't much point to exploring. A few minor issues arose, the game becomes sluggish when entering a town and a few graphics glitches here and there, but nothing huge.

With the problems aside, Gun can't really be faulted. The western theme is barely touched in the PC Gaming sector, and for something new to be so entertaining and provide a great gaming experience, albeit a short experience, is well worth the cash in your back pocket.

The latest title to grace my vast collection is the highly anticipated Quake 4.

The reviews that have been shelled out for this game have been high, mostly around the 8.3 region. Which, for a title in this day and age is a damn good score. My problem is, however, is why it didn't score slightly higher. I'm not expecting it to hit the 9's, but something along the lines of an 8.8 would be more suited. I raise this point because i don't agree with why all the reviews scoring it down. What did they all say? Basically, the single player is to "run-and-gun" and the multiplayer is to much like Quake 3. First of all, let me tackle the point about the single player. If people expect every title to have the complexity, the tactical view, the depth that games along the lines of Brothers in Arms have, were you sit in a ditch for 15mins planning a 30 second attack on small group of enemies, then i'm sure we'd all be sick of the slow paced action. Games like Quake 4 give us a break of the so called "groud-breaking FPS's" and take us back to the roots of gaming ... take a big gun and shoot everything that moves. It maybe simple, but is so easy to pick up and play and is very enjoyable.

Now onto the multiplayer. I'm not going to spend to much time on this. I'm only going to say two things ... why fix what isn't broken and ... look at CS:S and DoD:S. Firstly, Quake 3 was and still is hugely followed on the online gaming community. So why change it? There is no need. Just give it a bit of a make over, bringing it into this era of gaming, and all is good. The reason i mention CS:S and DoD:S is because Raven has done what Valve did with CS:S and DoD:S but with Quake 4. Not try and make a sequel to their predosensors, but simply give them a graphical face lift to make them more appealing. And for Valve it works, and in my opinion it has worked for Raven.

Now, in my last post i said i would mention why i didn't jump on the ban wagon and purchase FEAR. To put it simply, because i'm a wuss. I had to build up so much courage just to play the demo, and even then i found myself pausing the game and preparing myself each time i entered a room. Seriously, i must of lost about 30lbs with all the sweat and **** i let out playing that demo. So, to save myself from having any health problems, i decided to give FEAR a wide birth untill i can grow some balls.

No, i'm not talking about the hit TV drama ... although maybe i should, it's beginning to really heat up over here in the UK and is most likely far more interesting than what i'm about to write. But, i shall conceal my urges and get on with the matter.

Summer has ended, actually it ended well over a month ago, but to use lazy students it has only just closed its doors to us. What does this mean exactly? It means it's time to move back to Uni. Thats right, the lifestyle of living off ¿10 a week, eating 3 week old yoghurt and drinking your own sweat has arrived.

The situation above explains my absents from 1up, along with all online communities i participate in. The interweb has not yet been hooked up in my room. Tell a lie, it has been hooked up and from my knowledge is actually active ... but just not accessible. I am needing a helpful engineer to come along and fit a socket so my trusty modem has somewhere to connect to. And that engineer is supposedly coming on 11th November. Quite a bit away, and how i have been able to manage with my daily fix of BF2 and message boards is beyond me. I would of thought i'd have broken out in a cold sweat and sitting curled up in the corner of my room. It's all still to come.

In the meantime, i'm nipping on here and there at Uni between lectures and such. Reading up on all the latest gaming goings on. Luckily, there has been some awesome single player campaigns that have been released that have successfully kept me occupied. Fable, Winter Assault, Brothers in Arms 2 and the most recent Quake 4, and many to come such as Black & White 2 and Pro Evo 5. Next time i can grab a minute or two i'll post my opinions on the long awaited Quake 4 and why FEAR is missing from my list above.

Time to bring this novel to a close. Look forward to getting back into the swing of things in the next few weeks.