...so we got screwed over with the team rosters again. Over 600 clubs, a grand total of 15,000 real-life players are featured in the game? Well, that's perfectly fine with me (and, to be honest, the single major reason why I've been looking forward so much to FIFA on the 360/PS3 this year). However, I clearly think it's about time EA get their act together and live up to their god-darn promises. You know, accuracy doesn't stop at the English Premiership. You see, EA, there actually are people outside the UK that expect up-to-date rosters for their favourite teams. I'm talking about Scandinavian folks, guys from the Benelux countries, and, of course, us Austrians (and probably even Germans, for that matter). Point in case is, I've been playing FIFA 08 today and went with my favourite club SK Rapid Vienna (Champions League participants in the 05-06 season and currently competing in the UEFA Cup) for my first match. Lo and behold, four out of eleven players in the starting lineup aren't even with the club any more! Even worse, they all left the side at the end of last year's season, i.e. in May! Almost half a year ago! How can you possibly claim that the rosters are up-to-date and unprecedently accurate when all you can come up with are but the squads for Europe's five biggest leagues? Makes me seriously doubt they'll live up to their promise of "updating the rosters 24/7".

It's December 2nd, which means Microsoft's next-gen console has hit store shelves here in Europe. And it didn't stop at retail store shelves, no siree. Today, the 360 also has officially hit my very own living room. Hooray for Microsoft!

Being a hardcore gamer for over a decade now, I had already preordered my premium bundle in mid-August at a well-known internet-only retailer (which shall remain undisclosed at this point) - just to receive an e-mail a mere 3 weeks ago claiming, "that there were more preorders than consoles available" (duh, what a surprise!), and that they couldn't give me any guarantee I'd receive my console before Christmas, let alone in 2005! I guess you can understand my irritation when I first read that e-mail. I mean, c'mon! Everyone and their grandparents knew that there'd be shortages of the 360, that's why I placed my order in August! And now you tell me straight to my face that some guy who had been living in some godforsaken cave somewhere in the Alps places his order in late November, and has the same chance of receiving a console on launch day as I? Hello?! Ever heard of "first come, first serve"?!
Ah, to hell with it. It was amazon.at (the Austrian branch of the -as I've said before- well known internet retailer) who screwed me over. So thanks to this service announcement courtesy of... well, me -- y'all know where not to preorder the PS3 (and the Revolution, for that matter) next year.

The fact that I cancelled my preorder the same day I received that e-mail turned out to be a wise choice in the end, though. Working for a major radio station here in Austria, me and a couple of colleagues were invited to Microsoft's grand kick-off party in one of Vienna's more prominent event locations last night. Cool thing was, they also had 150 systems (premium bundle, of course) for sale there. And since there were only around 200 people invited, it wasn't too hard to get my grubby hands on one of the systems. Plus, food and drinks were for free! Hooray for marketing budget-induced catering goodness!

So, what's up in the coming days? Playing my 360 to death, of course. Having added Madden 06, Perfect Dark Zero, PGR 3 and Call of Duty 2 to my already large collection, there's some sweet time to be had in front of my brand-new Sony LCD HDTV...

P.S.: The new banner on my profile page shows me in the probably most famous second-hand gaming shop in the world, "Super Potato" in Tokyo, Japan -- where I was lucky to spend the first ten days of November, as a holiday. Now, before you get me wrong: I didn't spend ten days at "Super Potato" (although I certainly wouldn't had minded!), I spent ten days in Tokyo. And it was awesome. I'll tell you more about that next time, so make sure to check back soon!

...officially announcing the completion of my very own MONSTER RIG.

I just bought the Razer Diamondback optical mouse (hey, it won GameSpot Hardware's "Best of 2004" controller award!) and finally replaced my old SoundBlaster Live 5.1 with the almighty Audigy 2 ZS.

Take a quick look at my current system specs: AMD 64 3800+, ATI Radeon X800 Pro, 1 GB DDR RAM by Samsung, SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS, the whole thing running (surprisingly smooth) on WinXP Professional.

Now kneel before my awe-inspiring rig and praise me ;)

The bad news: Having this powerful PC, why ever go back to consoles again...? :)

Wishing you all the best for 2005,

Commander Leon

...and I still haven't bought a single present for my beloved ones. gee, I don't even have a christmas tree yet. with prices sky-rocketing (and dropping on the 25th) during the last couple of days, I guess it's about time.

I did, in fact, pick up and started playing advance wars 2 again. after I gave it a break when I was stuck on a certain campaign mission, I trried it with the aid of gamespot's game guide... and did make it on my second try. thank you, game guide, for making me look like a complete imbecile on my first couple of pathetic tries.

Plus, I could persuade a colleague of mine to purchase the Xbox, and renting ninja gaiden. yes, you read that correctly: RENTING ninja gaiden before buying it first. now before you guys start flaming me on my own journal, let me point out that, all undisputed gameplay qualities aside, ninja gaiden is one living hell of a difficult, unforgiving game. I was stuck on the second boss (that guy on a horse, carrying a spear) for literally weeks. certainly not a game for beginners or unpatient people.

I hope you have a good time shopping all your christmas-related items, I see you around!

...added to my game collection, a software-packed 2004 seems to have finally come to an end. I don't plan anymore game purchases this year, as of now.

Since MGS: Snake Eater, Mario Power Tennis and Ace Combat 5 won't be released until 2005 here in Europe, there aren't any games that I feel the need to buy at the moment.

Which isn't a particulary bad thing, for I still haven't finished halo 2, san andreas or paper mario 2. in the matter of fact, I'm actually looking forward to completing those games during my christmas holidays.

I envy you guys who still go to school and have much more spare time on your hands. a working man like me doesn't have nearly as much time to spend with my beloved consoles as I would like to. okay, okay, end of rant already.

hope you guys are enjoying yourself, see you around!

...and a slow monday, as well.

I had much work to do, so I couldn't spend as much time with my consoles as I had previously planned. No progress in San Andreas, no progress with the master chief, no progress in rogue port (which is where paper mario takes place).

Thank God there's always time for some pick-up-and-play mortal kombat. this is one of the very few fighting games that's even fun in single player mode, when you're (literally) tearing your AI opponents apart.

hope you enjoyed your weekend, see you around!

Here's yet another Mortal Kombat-related journal entry.

After spending yesterday afternoon exploring Konquest mode, I finally got to spend my hard-earned "koins" in "The Krypt", unlocking hidden bonuses.

There's tons of kool stuff to be found in "The Krypt" - koncept art, karacter bios, trading kards, photos of the series' kreators, and loads of things that start with "K".

Seriously: It's been a really long time I've seen so much love go into making a product. You'd normally expect such amount of "making of" stuff in some kind of special collector's edition, but not in the "normal" retail version. thumbs up, midway, for such beautiful effort.

BTW I'm contemplating writing a review of MK: Deception, in German. Let me know what you think of this idea.

see you around!

I finally got to play Mortal Kombat: Deception and WWE: Smackdown vs Raw. And, well, what can I say.

Let's start with WWE: SvR - an awesome game, without a shadow of a doubt. Unless you have spent countless hours with its predecessor Here Comes The Pain, like me. The truth is, nothing much has changed compared to that game. A new timing-based mini game here, a couple of new animations there, that's about it. (You know the saying, never change a winning team!) Don't get me wrong - it's an awesome game, like I said before. It just doesn't deliver the sense of originality as much as HCTP did. And for a wreslting fan like me, that's a bit of a disappointment.

Mortal Kombat: Deception. My first impression: Wow! The last MK that I played was MK:4 on the N64, which was neat altogether (although it missed the flair MK:2 had). Anyway, I skipped MK: Deadly Alliance and spent some fun hours with my friends playing MK: Trilogy for the good old PlayStation 1. So, in other words, Deception is my first Mortal Kombat on a so-called "nex-generation" console. And boy, it delivers... when you're playing Arcade (or, as MK likes to put it, Arkade) or against a friend. Puzzle and Chess Kombat are fun for a couple of rounds, but tend to get boring after a while. They're neat additions nontheless. But the ultimate bummer is Konquest mode, which feels like a rushed action-adventure from back in the days when the Dreamcast was the most powerful console out there. It's fun for... oh,no, I'll take that back. It's not even "fun", it's interesting for the first 20-30 minutes, but it ultimately feels like a chore. The annoying thing is, you'll have to play it unless you want to miss out on some of the hidden characters/stages.

To put it in a nutshell: I'm glad and proud I could add these two titles to my game collection. Unfortunately, they're flawed by a small number of issues - some of which might could've been avoided by just a little more development time.

Hope you share my thoughts!

Halo 2 and GTA: San Andreas are still some of my currently most beloved games; but it's Paper Mario: The 1000-Year Door that's been in pole position for the last couple of days. The reason being that it's just THAT addictive. Its mix of RPG, adventure and platformer elements make it unique, not to speak of its nice graphics.

I even missed yesterday's champions league matchup real madrid - bayer leverkusen because of paper mario. if you're european and a football (=soccer) aficionade like me, you'll understand that it takes a lot to make me miss such a game. BTW I heard figp missed a penatly and the game ended tied, 1:1...

I'm gonna make this one short, because I need every single minute of spare time that I have. These are the games that I've added to my collection in the last 14 days:

GTA: San Andreas, Halo 2, Paper Mario: The 1000-Year Door, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw.

And with MK: Deception due this week, I'm absolutely lost; I don't know when to play all those games! Thank God I took a week off from work in December. Hope I can catch up then!

I's gotta get back to them consoles, so excuse me for now...