I played the RUSE demo on PS3 the other day and I'm pleased to say that it did not disappoint. It's not an EndWar. It's well thought-out, deep and so addictive. The only gripe I had was that I found any other difficulty than 'beginner strategist' fairly unforgiving. I suppose it's realistic in that way. I especially like how the map is set out as a strategy map table like a real general would use back then. I like how you can stay zoomed in and see the 'real' view, but also zoom out to see the old-fashioned block-type view where your units are just little bricks on the board. The ruses really stand out too, and seemed to have been pretty well thought-out and pretty realistic. I especially like how you can use dummy units to fool your enemy, just like the Allies did on the run up to D-Day (although I couldn't use the ruse myself in the demo, the enemy did use it). I'm looking forward to seeing how well the Move controller will be integrated into the game.

After a lot of consideration, I actually decided to order myself a new, 320GB, HDD for my PS3. With my history of needing to replace my PS3, my main worry is what would happen to my HDD if my console broke down. But I decided that it should be okay, so decided to go ahead with it anyway. It also helped that I had £20 worth of Nectar points to spend, meaning that the HDD was basically half price when buying it with a £20 Amazon Gift Certificate. So I should get it in 5 days or so. My only worry now is installing it, since it's been said that the PS3s screws for the HDD are really easy to strip. I might get my dad to do it for me. Lets hope we have to right screwdriver.

Having recently had my 60GB PS3 replaced, and not having re-downloaded any of the DLC, I was once-again thinking if I should get a bigger hard drive for it. You see, I have so many games now that if I wanted to have most of them installed and ready to play on my PS3, I need a bigger hard drive. So I was thinking, should I get a 500GB HDD to replace it, and also buy an external hard drive storage thing so I can put my then-un-needed old hard drive to good use afterwards? What do you guys think? It is worth it for £50? Is it easy to do?

Raptr has finally unveiled support for the PS3 on it's website! That means that all the Trophies I've earned are now all on display on my GS profile here - just check them out in the achievements box to the left-hand side of the page! Finally my profile is now complete! Before I got my trophies in my profile made me look like a n00b, but now I am the master! (to paraphrase Darth Vader)

I've been playing my new games today, mostly Assassins Creed II, and my PS3 has been fine. Yet when I went to load it up about half an hour ago, I was greeted by a green-turning-to-yellow-turning-to-red light. I couldn't believe it. Barely 1 1/2 months since my last console failed (not YLOD but a slightly different problem; my first console before that did YLOD though) so this will be the third time I've had to get a replacement one from Sony. I'm just lucky that this one died while still within the 3-month warranty you get with replacements. At least I didn't have to pay £100 or so like last time. The only trouble is that Assassins Creed II is stuck in the console, which happened with my first console (with COD4) which took ages to get back to me. So I'll have to phone Sony tomorrow and arrange pickup of the console tomorrow. If the next one fails then I won't ask for a replacement or pay for one if that's required. I'll get a new 'Slim' model (no BC :(). I need a bigger hard drive on my PS3 anyway, what with the 40 games I have for the console now. And hopefully that won't fail as much. Or hopefully at all.

I got a lot of money for my 19th birthday the other day and thought I'd go spend it on some cheap used games to fill in the 3 months I have off until my second year of university starts. I'd only just discovered how cheap this used media shop CEX was the other week and so bought them from there cheap. I managed to get Assassins Creed II, Red Alert 3 and Red Faction: Guerilla for £41, which I thought was a pretty good deal. I have Red Alert 3 for PC but I only played it once, because playing a game on PS3 I find so much easier for some reason than loading up a PC game. Assassins Creed II looks really good, I didn't play the first one but it looked really cool so I decided to get it and try it out. I did get the Red Faction: Guerilla demo and quite liked it, but was put off by some negative reviews, but thought I'd get it as it's cheap.

I'm 19 today, yay! I've already got £100 and a Star Wars t-shirt from my parents, which is kinda crazy. I might spend some of it buying cheap used PS3 games from this shop called CEX (they are dirt cheap). I'm going out to the pub with around 14 friends tomorrow, it's going to be good :D I'm just hoping England doesn't let me down today.

I almost died of boredom watching the Microsoft conference, it's mostly either stuff I've seen before or awful Kinect games. No offence to Natal but the games that were shown were just really pointless, pretty much the same things that have already been done on the Wii. Not to mention how stupid some of the people looked when playing the games or minigames that were shown. EA's was a lot more interesting, being actually about games mostly, although the large sports games section in the middle really bored me, especially since they were mostly American sports games. Yeah, I know America is the biggest market, but it's still annoying. Ubisoft's wasn't that exciting either, apart from perhaps the new AC game, which looked pretty sweet. I gave up watching at that point, because watching all these boring conferences had really made me sleepy. Not to mention it was 1:30am or something by then. I'm just really hoping that Sony or Nintendo's conferences are actually interesting.

My replacement PS3 arrived yesterday, yay! After setting it up I went straight onto the Store to buy the Stimulus Package and gave it a spin. I must say I'm liking the new maps and the old MW ones as well, particularly Overgrown. I'm hoping that the next map pack will include some old favourites too. I'm particularly hoping for Crossfire and Ambush - assuming the next DLC will contain 2 MW maps like this one.

I finally got around to phoning Sony today about my non-functioning PS3. They told me that they would take it away and send me a remanufactured one for £121. I decided to go for it as it would be cheaper than buying a new console that wouldn't have backward compatibility with PS2 games like mine does (mine's a 60GB 'fat' model). They should collect my old one and drop off the replacement on Wednesday