Hey, i got a new PC today not phenomenal but far, far better then what i had previously. It's in my room along with my 360 and wii, so having it nearby means i'm far more likely to be active online,

New PC:

Intel Core 2 Duo Procesor E6600 2.4Ghz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB Cache

Windows Vista Home Premium

2048MB RAM Memory

500 GB 7,200 Hard Drive

Dual Layer DVD Re-writer drive

256Mb ATI Radeon X1550 Graphics (Weak i know, but i'm not too focused on pc gaming and can always upgrade if i want to)

Misc: TV Tuner, Wireless mouse + Keyboard, wireless network ready, HD Quality speakers.

It's great, i've got a Dvi to HDMI plugging it into my 26"HDTV, i was pretty surprised that it actually output in HD as soon as i turned it on, (HDMI cable are expensive as %$&£ £45 for a metre long cable, obviously it's there for a reason, but 24k gold?)

As i said it's a giant leap up from what i had previously, which was more of a family pc from 5-6 years ago then mine.

Before / Now

15" LCD Monitor / 26" HDTV

80 GB Hard Drive / 500 GB Hard Drive

32/64Mb Video Card / 256Mb Video Card

Windows Xp home OS / Windows Vista Home Premium

Pentium 4 Processor / Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz, 1066 FSB, 4Mb Cache

As well as having a Tv tuner, being wireless ready and the wireless keyboard and mouse, it looks better too.

Well that's enough of my bragging (just so pleased to have a better PC after years of a broken, green and grey computer.

On Non-PC related news, i've been playing yet more Forza and while i'm still rather poor at designing (making realistic pictures is too daunting a task for me) i've gotten quite interested in the tuning / upgrading side of things, i'm yet closer to finishing Career mode, with about 3,000,000 credits going unused, While i was getting the computer i saw both the Xbox 360 steering wheel and a surround sound system, i'm thinking about getting both of them either this week or next, but Dirt's come out and after being thoroughly impressed with it's physics/grpahics and gameplay (in the demo) i'm thinking of getting that. Your views? Is the steering wheel + Forza (and whatever other games it works with. PGR3 being the only other known one to me) a more worthwhile purchase then Dirt, and then there's the surround sound speakers, i've not experienced surroudn sound for a few years, so i can't remember what it's like quite. Though i find myself watching a lot of movies, listening to music and at the moment playing Forza Motorsport 2 to near death.

Any views/oppinions /comments / constructive critisism / the normal kind of critisism are all welcome.

Thanks for reading this blog post (or just this line) hope my ranting didn't get too ominous.

Zaxex (Mark)

I haven't blogged in quite a while as there's not much to blog about playing random games all day then watching TV.

But now i've moved on to my latest obsession, FORZA MOTORSPORT 2! I'm crazily hooked on it and find it's the only game i've played since it's release. I'm going to take use the blog to post car designs and other random things i come up with. For now i only have a few cars designed and frankly they're all rather poor but i'm gonna attempt to improve.

An Audi i made, i use it in most D races, and online. I gifted this one to JusticeCovert.

The bolts were rather lazily placed now i look back on it. THinking about re-making it on another car.

Well i've had my Xbox 360 for about a fortnight now and i'm impressed with the system and it's games. I'm signed up with SwapGame which is the UK equivilent to Gamefly, basically an online rental place. I've rented Kameo and Perfect Dark, both of which i've completed and will likely buy, they also gave me a pretty clear example of how the 360 plays games, though of course they're launch titles that came out last year.

I got two games when i bought my 360: BFME2 and Oblivion. Both i've played quite a bit but in Oblivion's case "quite a bit" is 200 Hours, unfortunately £40 doesn't last very long and it's pretty much broke. Last week i noticed the disc wherred slightly when loading speech as wel as loading times changing and in some cases taking ten times longer then the same situation the day before. I figured it may be on it's way out but as it still played the game i keep at it.

My 360 is always horizontal, the disc is either in the 360 or in it's case all the time and the game's brand new so i'm still wondering what's caused the damage. For a game that boasts 200 hours of game time and delivers such with excellent quality the fact mine's screwing up 200 hours of my time is somewhat disheartening.

The main issue is that i'm chugging through the story for the first time with a 65 hours character and *SPOILER ALERT* i'm in "paradise" there's no way out without waiting for two people to finish talking, my game eiher freezes or says disc read error after a few seconds of them starting to converse which practically deletes the characters as there's nothing to do, completely stuck.

Okay i'm completely impressed with oblivion and the 360 but NO WAY IN HELL am i going to buy a £40-50 twice a month, being the same game. I suppose i'm expecting more quality then is readily available but having something break that happens to be one of if not my totally favourite game of all time with practical use. I've not done anything with the game that was not expected and intended by it's creators.

So yeah, i'm pissed i'll see how it turns out, i'm a big fan of TES4 Oblivion and would hate it to become unplayable without having to re-buy the game. What happended to the good old days when a nintendo 64 cartridge would work for a lifetime or so and doesn't get "scratched".

ZAXEX/MARK

PS3 delayed for the uk, instead of the announced November launch worldwide, they've decided to delay it until March 2007, i'm doubly glad i caved in and bought an xbox360 about 2 weeks ago.

It doesn't effect me much, in fact i see it as a positive change, as suprising as this was for me. I do intend on getting one and when i do i'll have a better choice of games and reviews will be out, maybe even a lower price as Sony will start making their money back after software sales.

I have a pre-order set up at Game which cost £20, i really can't be assed to waste £20 as i wasn't going to get it at launch and i'm not going to come March.

Seems Sony have been disappointing everyone and i kept thinking to myself oh nevermind, Sony is Sony think PS2, but everything up to now seems to be burying the PS3 all bad news. Who knows it could be by far the best of the three and "win" next generation, or a rather expensive paperweight.

Regarding non-sony discussion, i've beenplaying quite a lot of xbox360 and completely ruined all sense of day and night, for a forthnight my usual bed time was 7am and i woke up between 3 and 7 pm, darned Oblivion so addicting. :D

Add me on Xbox Live if you want always glad for competition in points, leaderboards and rad-ness (I'm not good at points or leaderboards but i'm hella rad). My gametag is...

ZAXEX

Enough of this crazy blog, bye :)

I've had the 360 for about 2 days now and i'm impressed xbox live is thousands of times better then i thought, achievments are fun, arcade games and demos are cool, not to mention the graphical quality in games I've also been listening to music and podcasts from my pc on my 360 without having to spend any extra money.

One thing though, this console isn't built to withstand marathons. I've played mine around 8-10 hours each day for two days and it just froze on me, so... well..that sucks big time. It was oblivion mind you, though it's not quite acceptable.

Fortunately i got warranty when i got my 360 so if it does break microsoft will give me another so yeah, i KNOW it's going to happen and it won't be my fualt when it does, i keep it horizontal, put discs in carefully, let it use sleep mode, turn it off if i won't be playing it for 10 minutes or so etc etc.

Well overall i'm really impressed by the 360 and i think the freeze was mainly about how much oblivion needs to run i may be wrong but i beileve that when Greg was doing the 12 Hour marathon that 360 froze/crashed.

Still it's not annoyed me much at all, what with the waranty and all, it's an easy process to recieve a new one when/if this breaks.

I suppose i've been pushing it quite hard but it's new i always play new consoles for a long time especially when i first get it.

Well that's enough of my rant, if anyone want's to add me my gamertag is Zaxex, see ya there.

Cost a bundle but i've bought a xbox 360 (Full) with Oblivion and BFME II. What can i say... it's awesome!!!!

I decided to pick it up today instead of tomorrow (couldn't wait) and now have the 360 sitting in my living room. I'm still going through it's features; downloading a demo, listening to music in game, getting a few points, etc etc. I can't wait to play the 360 more.

No achievement for guessing what my xbox name is, Zaxex, so add me if you like :).

Going to give the lord of the rings the battle for middle earth 2 a go now and maybe get another few points on oblivion.

-Mark/Zaxex-

Well i've officially gone insane, i've never considered getting a 360 and i thought (for the past 30 minutes) that it was pretty cool, so i've reserved it at argos and i'm picking it up tomorrow.

I'm getting Oblivion and BFME2 with it and yes it's the Full 360 of course.

I've only every played about 10 seconds of madden at a store on the 360 (which i DONT understand) so learning how to play any games with it's control will be fun :D.

More on this tomorrow when i'm playing the "xbox 360" man that sounds weird to me, considering the sony logo that has been practically stampted to my head ever since i got the ps1, at first i didn't consider getting anything but the ps3.

Well i'm stocked and can't wait for tomorrow. :)

Well i ordered Tekken: Dark ressurection and Mario Hoops 3 on 3 around a week to two weeks ago. They had to get the games sent to them from their suppliers, then shipfrom Hong Kong the shipping was free so the wait was certainly reasonable.

Well i've got them both right next to me now and have played a little of each.

Mario Hoops is a LOT better then it looks in gameplay videos, the stylus control works exceptionally well which is sort of suprising. The Japanese is sort of heavy in the menu's but i managed to find quick play and veyr easil chose the teams and started up a match, i managed to win my first match at around 300 to 200. There's multi-pliers and stuff, i didn't get 100 hoops. It's quite easy to get into and i expect i can do a lot better if i do a few matches.

Tekken's graphics are excetional, i suck at tekken so i'm having a wee bit of difficulty on Medium i can't beat Devil Jin at the moment. The controls may be consideed an issue, playing tekken with a PS2 control is undoubtebly better but the PSP's dpad gives it a run for it's money. During the tutorial (All Japanese but they tell you the buttons which is easy enough) i couldn't press down and left at the same time, or at least it wouldn't have it. I managed it in a fight somehow but whatever :).

Tekken is super import friendly, plenty of English spoken bits (for story mode and such), as well as fully English menus.

I also bought Tony hawk's pro skater 4 for £1.61 and Pro skater 3 for £0.99 on eBay, yay eBay.

When it comes to gaming i'm a giant fan, but I've never been particularly "good" at games, i'd always play games on easy and never get all that far. Well i decided to try and complete a few of my games over the summer holiday, it's taken me three days of on and off playing to complete Psychonauts, which is an excellent game that i recommend. It got hard, at least for me, towards the end but after a bunch of tries i finally finished it. Not sure what game i'll do next, i'm still waiting on the imports so I'll have to find something to keep me occupied till then. I recently rented Destroy all humans and i've got it for another two days, i'll probably complete that (i'm nearly finished as it is) either today or tomorrow.

Edit: I've written a Review for Psychonauts as i just completed it, read if you're interested and please recommend if you like it.

I'm playing Tales of Eternia (psp) quite a bit but haven't the patience to play for too long at a time, and RPG's take upwards of 30 hours to complete if not a lot more.

I'll play a bit of both Metal Gear Solid: 2 sons of liberty & Devil May Cry 3 and see if i'd want to finish them.

In other news i recently decided not to get any next-gen console (for a long while at least) and instead get a new Pc. I already have some games that i really like but can't play to their full potential on my current pc as well as games i'd like to buy if only they'd work. I may be getting it in a months time if i'm lucky.

~Mark

Well i live in the UK and i love games. I finally got fed up with having to wait a year for a finished game to be sold in the UK so i've ordered Super Mario Hoops 3 v 3 and Tekken: Dark ressurection for the Ds and PSP respectively.

Being region-free they'll work fine on my british consoles. THe language is just a fun obstacle as i've always considered learning japanese and will do so now if in the simiplist of ways as to navigate through menu's in portable games.

I'll be writing reviews of both of them after a week or so of getting them. (I have to wait for a few days for them to get mario, then wait for deliery, could be a few days i went with free shipping).

If you're interested in importing yourself chekc out gamespot's feature story on it, helped me a lot.

Importing aside i've mainly been playing Guitar Hero, the constant praise of the game won me over. I'm seeing the highest scores i can get on easy, which is mainly 100% per song and the odd 98% notes hit. I've done quite a few medium songs and given Hard a go which is eays when you know the songs. Might try moving up to expert but i'll give it a few weeks.

Currently Playing Psychonauts and destory all humans, i'm going to try and complete both over the next few days.

That's about it from me have a good day :P.