since breaking the sort of hatred i had of guitar hero series (thanks jake) and dowloading the demo, ive been scouring ebay for a copy of the game and a wireless guitar for it but id like to raise an issue with the whole bundle thing for GH3 and all bundle packs actually.

right, so the game is £40 give or take, thats fair enough. but when you take this from the bundle pack is still leaves the £30+ for the guitar and this is leading me to issues. the guitar is essentially a wireless controller with a different button config and a different shaped plastic outer shell. but controlles go for about £25 which is okay i suppose paying an extra £5 for a cool gadget but this brings me to the Wii Fit which is being released some time later this year. £99!!!!!!!!! almost one hundred smackaroos for basically two pressure pads. thats just 47 quid off a new Wii. what the hell? now im prepared to pay £60-£70 for a decent game that needs a guitar or magic stick with it but £100 for just an accessory? next we'll be getting the interactive rape simulator...no wait thats already out...umm....oh, i know...an interactive lightsaber game where the lightsaber cost £200 plus £50 for the game! yeah what a great idea!.....

are we seriously getting to the point where add ons are going to cost more than the game? it may just be me being tight but for me, forking out for something that will basically be used for three months then taken out now and again is a pretty bone headed thing to do. still considering that GH3 les paul though...

hahahaha!

wow, my lucks really being pushed today!

not only did i get £55 for pretty much nothing, but my dad's bought a 37" 1080p HDTV AND a PS3 for the bluray! woohoo!

right, firstly id like to thank you for sticking with my seemingly endless rants that i can spurt out faster than i can write them. but we have more pressing issues to deal with.PC gaming.

now the PC is the ultimate gaming platform. everyone is agreed on this. no matter the game, you can play it on the PC. notice how crysis is PC only.

but this privilege also has a phenominal kick in the back side. upgrades.

now usually if you want to play stuff like vegas 2 or mass effect on a PC, you go out and splash out the better part of £2000 on hyper liquid-nitrogen cooled PC that can only be described as "pornography". then you play mass effect and vegas 2 and you think "WOW this is great!". then you see a game called "crysis" and think ill have a bit of that please. so you go out and buy it, stick it in the drive and the PC says "NO. just no" and you are now forever the slave to forever upgrading you PC until you can run it. now not being someone who can magic five million million pounds out of mid air, i only did the roundabout of death once. i got a super PC for my birthday last year and got all the latest games to fiddle with. then 5 months down the line you cant play any new games on it because all the hardware is now classed as "pre-historic". so, being poor i said bugger to this, lets just buy a console. but most people dont possess the magnificantly sized frontal lobe that i do and think, i need another upgrade and go out and spend the money they got from selling their kidney and grandmother on the latest top of the range hardware and repeat until they have no functioning organs left or have no family left to sell.

this is what i mean. the industry keeps pumping out insane amounts of products that are twice, if not more powerful than the last product that they spawned 30 seconds ago. when i got my really fast single core processor, quad core was something not even feasible, now its like the bog standard. and developers think that because everyone has billions to spend on JUST games (obviously) they'll build all their games to run on this hardware which then leaves 89% of the gamers not being able to play them.

and my main point that im trying to make is when does it stop? once we get to dodecahedral cores and quantum GFX cards with some sort of liquid state hyper velocity RAM, there will be nowhere to go but how long before we get there? how many more people will be suckered into the neverending circle of upgrading death before the circle collapses? thats why im sticking to consoles from now on. at least you only have to buy a new one every 6 years.

as you may/may not know. i have now been banned from all forms of video games partially down to my exam results which were bad but salvagable, and my parent's illogical hatred of the so-called "demon-spawn". so id firstly like to rant about how video gaming is being misinterpreted or not interpreted at all.

right, we all know we play video games with our hands (even the Wii) and react to images that pop up on a screen. obviously there's the debate about whats on the screen messing with the minds of underage impressionable thickies. but im talking about the argument that it "messes with your mind". now firstly i found a few surveys from high up boffins saying that firstly people who sit at home playing video games all day (take note) are less healthy mentally than a person who goes out and exercises. well of course they bloody would, they're not sitting on their arses ALL DAY. now im a casual gamer so i would only play a few hours a day, maybe all day some days like weekends. and my parents argue that this affects my mind and therefore is a bad thing. i argue that watching TV (as that is all your doing when you play games) while pressing buttons is more engaging than sitting down and actually watching stuff thats squirted through the ariel as it is a media that i can enjoy. then they obviously just shout mindless blabber as they cant think of a decent counter as there is none and cannot comprehend that watching TV and playing video games are one in the same. dont worry, they're not some jack thompson devotees that join him in cloak and dagger style meetings and plot world domination...yet but ive met parents that think in just the same way. a little less in some ways but roughly the same. if you are one of these people, next time one of your parents pops in and says "that'll rot your brain" explain to them that it is no different from them watching eastenders or corrie and watch thier mind's cogs sieze up in trying to comprehend what you just said.

the second thing i would like to point out it how well i seem to be coping without games. im not even allowed on the DS for a bit of brain training. but i am now 4 days into my 16 week sentence and can honestly say that if someone offered to play co-op, i could say no. not that i couldnt before hand but i like to try and think that what my parents are trying to put me on is a form of re-hab for life without videogames which will inevitably come by the end of september whether i go to uni or not. and i can say that right now, hand on heart, life has only become less full. because i do other things anyway (like go airsoft and get tanked) all that is happening is that at the end of school days, there is nothing to do except wait for top gear at 5, check my mail and do a few things on the web at 6, revise till 8 and do something upto 9. so far im reading "the world according to clarkson" which i got at christmas but only read briefly before being shoved up on the shelf to play COD4. i will also get round to reading the other three or four books that i got at christmas as well. i have also found a new found interest which i have called "movies.net diving". what it is, is going onto watchmovies.net, selecting a random letter of the alphabet or a random genre and trawling through until something appleasing catches my eye, then i watch it. up till yesterday i had never watched "dr.strangelove" but it is now up there in my top 50 list. along with star wars, predator and aliens(of which i had never watched up till friday). trawling hte internet is actually becoming kinda fun. so remember kids, if your parents ever say "that'll rot your brain", say to them "its the only thing stopping me from stabbing you out of pure boredom"

hello!

how is everyone on the best time of year for suicides! so if you've made it this far....well, there's always next year.

so, onto more pressing matters.

so far my outlook for 2008 in terms of games looks bleak for now. Army of Two is just round the corner but other than that i have nothing special to look foreward to. Endwar is looking ever more bland as the days wear on and Vegas 2 will not be bought because of the money i now have to pour into university. and that leads me onto another bane. university. now obviously im taking my X360 with me to Uni but the main point is whether or not i can play online. the internet is block based so the internet i use will be spread throughout my block which will limit the amount of bandwidth i get. so i might be better off getting some screenshots and making a flipbook out of them and i might just get the same experience.

oh well, at least most of the games i have are single player so i wont be totally game-less.

i finally got round to playing the frontlines MP demo and can say that its not that bad. the classes and sub classes are a good idea along with upgrades for each which i hope to god you keep through out the online play. but it seems to have already de-based down to an armour fest. as soon as the game starts people rush to the tanks, helis and APC's....only to be put down by an army of seemingly invincible AT class enemies with EMP weapons. and the lag. O.M.G. i almost thought that my connection had went down but it was actually the game that was. every game i joined was red,red and red. some games had orange connection which was'nt too bad but still enough to piss you off immensly when you try and snipe someone and get headshotted point blank by the guy you were supposedly aiming at half a mile away.

the special abilities are more than good, they're humourous! nothing lightened up my day more than dropping an FAE on an objective and getting about 4-5 kills from all the clueless enemies standing around trying to be tactical. and presicion striking a sniper sitting at the top of the map. the drones are not as bad a i thought either. the assault drones are a bit annoying when the guy spawns one every time he goes arounda corner but AT classes have no problem with them.

i might rent the game when it comes out because i still have my doubts about the singleplayer which is usually why i buy a game but the muliplayer has sold me.

ahh, finally got to lvl 55 after prestige mode and it feels good. got my golden desert eagle back, which is nice and i can now start to get camos for my guns. but it seems a bit meaningless really. there's no motivation for going to the next prestige mode. i mean i would have gone for it if at least on of the rumours were true like "you get golden pistols after every prestige mode" or "it allows you to add more stuff onto your gun after the third prestige mode" etc. but you dont, you get a new frilly picture and the painstaking effort of getting back all your weapons, extras and camos. that might please the simpleton audience to have pretty colours but not me. id rather have all the guns and work on the camoes and get all the challenges done before i even consider going to the next prestige mode. but i wont have to worry, by the time i get golden camo for any one of my wepaonss (G36 will be the first) army of two will be out. and with my XBL fee paid for another year, army of two will offer endless amount of fun until i can get enough money to buy EndWar by which time COD4 will have gone the way of airbourne and have almost noone playing it (due to the fact that the servers are as unreliable as a shifty immagrant. i was also thinking of buying vegas 2 if i somehow got a lump sum of cash as all it seems to be is the original vegas with a drastic overhaul of graphics and ranking system along with new weapons. this means that i could sell my old vegas as it is pointless on online in terms of ranking so i could then have slightly less money to spend...hmm...i think i just got an idea. hehe vegas 2 might be mine after all.....hehehe...hahaha!....MWAHHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!.......okay ill be quiet.

at the moment of 2008, my eyes lit up at the selection of games that i wanted to buy. EndWar, Army of Two, Vegas 2, Mercenaries 2... the list goes on. but the problem is in the thing we call little pieces of metal and sheets of special paper...money. so far ive managed to get £60 in 2 weeks which is like parting the red sea with nothing but a hiar dryer for me. but yet that leaves me £20 quid short of a second game. i really want endwar, but i want army of two more. and vegas 2/mercs 2 would be a buyable game, but not if i had to choose. so until i can magic up another £20 from somewhere (which wont be the bank of mum and dad as they paid off my contoller/headset crisis over the space of about 2 hours) im stuck with playing COD4 until AoT comes out in march, which by developer dating is about the end of april. its not so bad though, COD4 is getting to be alright from absolutely horrific. this is because the server downtime seems to had rid the servers of the vermin we call the 8-year old american. this had made the game more playable as there arnt people going round with the M4 with grenade launcher, juggernaut and martyrdom anymore which allows us more experienced players who use the wide range of other weapons using more fair perks like UAV jammer and dead silence and get some kills. so far ive done every weapon except the sniper rifles (bar the R700 which is done) so im currently working on them and because i no longer have to bother with prestige mode i can finally keep my gold desert eagle and get the tiger camoes for my other weapons as im sick and tired of people who are lvl 39 non-prestige and have red tiger camo on their M16 and it looks so cool that i just have to pick it up and keep it. i want my own and prestige mode will defy the point of it all.

anyways, 31 kills with my dragonov to go then i can finally use my Barrett 50.cal...hehehe.

unfortunatly i have found a game with has gamerpictures with achievements and its that new underwater game on XBLM. now, i usually dont bother with the arcade games because i dont see the point in paying god-knows how many points for a game which i can just get off the web for free. but this one is better than that. its like attack and defend with control points but you upgrade your underwater man to different levels of armour and weapons. and you get gamerpictures with some of the achievements, woohoo! if only other games were as giving as this small time arcade game.

anyway, thats the rant correction.

a random thought occured to me last night as i plodded on with my new BF2 streak, "why dont 360 games give you things other than achievements for doing things?" and i pondered this well through the night. the only games i can remember that gave you something other than achievements for things were Gears of war for completing the Campaign on insane and seriously.. and you got some fancy gamerpics. shadowrun also gave you a secret pic for getting the "catch it " achievement. but game of late dont seem to be giving you anything other than achievements. it would have been nice to get a gamerpic for completing the campaign or getting to prestige mode. but no. all the gamerpics and themes are stuck on XBLM for 120 points each. this just re-inforces my distaste for the people who run XBl. instead of giving us something in game, they make you pay for it. yeah we get achievements, but what are they for? nothing. ive past the 10,000 gamerpoints mark but nothing happens. not even a little email saying "welcome to an exclusive club of 10,000 GP people. keep working" which makes me think why the hell am i still using XBL? online gaming of course but what for? i could easily just get the game on PC or PS3. every game now a days seems to come out on any console thats available (except the Wii of course)...whoops im going off topic. anyway, why dont devs just give us something for getting a certain achievement like the good old days. i want to say, yeah ive got the gamerpic for completeing the WHOLE of COD4 on veteran and got the last prestige mode haha, but i cant, because they're tight. i even thought that you might get a halo 3 theme for comlpeting the game on legendary, but no. its starting to irritate me that no develpoer is adding in these sort of treats anymore. even unlockable weapons are being filtered out slowly. everyone getting the same weapons right at the start of the game sounds to me like a bit of a bugger. they need to sort it out i think, because before long you might not get achievements from games before too long.

first off id like to go to COD 4. now ive completed one of the many prestige levels and had to start over, i can now no longer see the point of going any further, ive got the shiny badge and thats all i want. whats the point of going further? to unlock golden versions of guns requires only headshots of which so far i could not go past digital because i was forever leveling up other guns at the same time so i got all the weapons to maximum marksman level but only had digital camo for a few of them as they were stuck at around 25 headshots as i saw no point in trying as i was going to get prestige mode anyway. once i got prestige mode and lost everything other than my stats, i thought "whats the point now, ive maxed out my level and got the funny badge, whats the point of going through it all agian to get another badge?" it would have been nice if you unlocked a character creation after prestige mode so you could modify your character's appearance or unlocked special camo's or attachments or even just allowing you to attach more than one attachment to your gun. but there's no point. so from now on its getting everything up to max marksman level and trying to get every challenge and expert challenges so i have every weapon i want, have my beloved golden desert eagle and the best weapons in the game.

another thing i want to go onto is the sniper rifles on COD4. why is it that the only good sniper rifle is the barrett? the R700 has the same damage but it doesnt look like it. with overkill on i found that the barrett can kill with one shot (without juggernaut), whereas the R700 needs two shots. the R700 also holds less rounds and is only one shot whereas the barrett holds 10 rounds and is semi automatic. it probably makes sense as you unlock all the sniper rifles (bar the barrett) before lvl 30 which makes no sense to me. the same goes for all the other guns and pistols. why is it that you unlock really rubbish stuff at the beginning and dont get any good stuff before your sudden transition from lvl 55 to 0. the d.eagle is unlocked so close to prestige mode that you might as well not bother with prestige mode for a while. anyway enough ranting with COD4, lets switch to vegas.

Vegas is probably one of the hardest games ive played on the 360 along with conan and kane and lynch. the single player story is fine as your CPU mates kill everyone and perform MOE actions flawlessly (MOE stands for method of entry for the non-army lingo people) so this makes killing hostage takers easy and you can use them as human shields as well as indicators of enemy activity. the problems start arising in Co-op. because youhave people instead of CPUs, you cant do MOE actions properly, you just have to strom in and hope you kill the hostage taker. the same goes for when people join your games. i mostly use private chat in games because i usually dont like listening to 7 year old americans screaming foam-mouthed down the mic at me so when a decent person (or not so decent) joins a game of co-op i cant hear them and they cant hear me so they dont play as efficently as they would do. plus the fact the the terroists seem to have noticed your CPU partners have gone and have been replaced with humans, and think that now they actually have a chance at surviving so they have put on two layers of blastproof body armour and are twice, if not three times harder to kill than in the single player story mode.

the real pain in the ass starts with multiplayer. obviously you still get weapon selection but some weapons arnt unlockedat the early stage and people who have done nothing but play vegas since it came out have a massive advantage against the people who are not-so high ranked. this would be fine with me if i could rank up, but you cant. once specialist rank is achieved it is ni-impossible to rank up agian because your constantly losing. i actually joined a quick match game which ended as i got into it and put me on the larger, losing side. it did this three times in a row before i threw the towel in. my overall experience with vegas online had not been a good one so ill keep to T-hunts and co-op story.