... it's aggravating.

To counter your first response, no, i'm not crap, i'm mediocre at worst.

I just can't enjoy it, no matter how hard i try, i just can't seem to enjoy Halo 3 multiplayer via Xbox live, with actual friends locally, it's a great laugh. But online, it's just aggravating me, not only is it nearly impossible to get some of the achievements unless A) Your a god, B) You cheat, or C) You are incredibly lucky. But simply just trying to come out of a match on top is far more effort than it's worth.

Not often does a decent firefight erupt, most excursions are over in milliseconds, a short burst of some kind of weaponry followed by a melee attack. Now, i'm all for repetition of decent tactics, and playing a game to the best of someones ability, and i'm not gonna take the noob path and cry 'cheap' or 'unfair' or whatever bullplop people shout because they are no good at a game.

I just can't seem to enjoy the style of multiplayer presented in Halo. Sorry, i tried, i really did. I'm gonna get the spartan officer achievement, then probably never touch multiplayer again, and go back to Team Fortress 2, which im crap at, but am enjoying immensely.

Team Fortress 2 sure crashes a lot.

It is fun though.

Almost racked up all of it's achievements, and Episode 2 was an absolute joy to play as well.

Anyone who wants to join me on TF2 feel free, my Gamertag is The A Drain.

Well, having finished nearly all that single player has to offer on Halo 3, with just legendary mode, and one boring flood level to get metagame points on, and Orange Boxes failure to arrive this morning, i buckled.

Buckled in more ways than one, not only did i buy Puzzle Quest, but i hastily purchased 1 months XBL Gold Membership, in hopes that i can squeeze a few more points out of Halo 3 before Orange Box does finally arrive, and i can get some points from Team fortress 2.

I am weak willed i know :(

EDIT:

For anyone who wants it, my Gamertag is: The A Drain

Does anybody actually buy Picture Packs of or Themes from XBL?

I mean, this shouldn't really merit a blog post, but i am geniunely curious.

Themes i can understand, but paying 150 points (about £0.95, or just under two bucks) for 10 pictures, at about 80x80 pixels a piece, that's an 800x800 tapestry. In my personal opinion, is a complete, and utter, 100% waste of money.

Gamerpics are something akin, no, in fact, ARE the same as forum avatars, and yet Microsoft doesn't have the decency to allow you to upload your own. An 80x80 image is something i could photoshop to these gamerpic standards in under 30 seconds. I kid you not, and i guarantee you that Microsoft is doing the same thing. Do you really want to pay someone two bucks for something you could make in 30 seconds?

And unless i'm missing something, you can't even look at them beforehand... And it's not like you can utilise all 10 pictures, they arent like collectable trading cards, i don't know about anyone else, but i changed my picture for the very first time since i got a 360 today. From the generic gears one, to some guy who looks like Juggernaught. And i only did that because i clicked change pic by accident, and ended up discovering that like themes, i inherited a large number of picture packs with my Elite.

Themes again are something that should be customisable, Microsoft should release a simple image template that can be filled in either photoshop, or on the web or something, and uploaded to your account if they are worried about security issues this is the perfect way of doing it. Then it can be verified before being selectable as a download personalized to your account.

It would make sense that Gold members only get that benefit however, as i mean it's not like they get ant benefits currently, only a bregrudging surcharge for a large component of many games. Multiplayer.

Personally, i beleive that player matches should be available to silver members, and ranked only to gold.

Now, i'm not ragging to get free multiplayer here, i don't even like multiplayer, and would probably never use it even if it were given to me for free. But the more i look at XBL, the more certain parts of it annoy the crap outta me.

Gamerpics, seriously guys, tell me i'm not crazy? This is something that common convention says should be customisable right?

And if MS are worried about adult content getting into the pics, then they should add a parental control option to not display them. As for themes this wouldn't make any difference as they only display on the home console, not online.

If they don't want to do this they could at least tie some extra pics to achievements to give people something extra to unlock (Or so they can wear them like medals to show off a particularly hard achievement they have earned)

Unless there is a way to get these customised (without hacking your 360 of course) then i would love to know, tell me.

EDIT: Ok 150 points is actually £1.35, which is actually $2.70

If i were a massive fan of the series.

However i'm not, so i was pleasently surprised with Halo 3 and quite enjoyed playing it.

It's nothing more than a stop gap however, as i finish up with the achievements today the real star of the show has been dispatched, and should be arriving tommorow morning.

The Orange Box.

I really cannot wait to play Episode 2, and with an achievement list the size of Mt.Everest i will be playing it for quite a while longer than any other Xbox 360 FPS.

Portal should keep me entertained for a long time as well.

In other news, i have so far resisted Puzzle Quest, despite having played the demo for almost 3 hours and not even realised, man that game is addictive.

No, i don't mean the run up to christmas.

It is once again time for me to moan and generally make like a spoiled child and complain about the unfair deal europeans get compared to the US.

I want Puzzle Quest from XBL DANMIT!!

However, it's 1200 points. Which is fine, but would leave me with 300 points left over as you can only buy them in increments of 500.

Arse. So i thought, alright then, i'll get 2000, and buy both Puzzle Quest, and Puzzle Fighter, yeah. that sounds good i thought, untill i went to purchase them.

£17!!? Are you freaking kidding me?! And it's £2 more than that if i buy from a retailer.

Thats 34 dollars... That's absolutely insane. I am not paying that.

But i want Puzzle Quest ;_;

Looks like i'll have to add it to my list of PSP/DS wants then :(

Maybe i'll reconsider when Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix hits the marketplace, as i am buying that regardless of cost, even if it is going to be an extortionate 1200 points, hopefully it will be 800, then i can get Puzzle Quest and not feel so bad about it.

I mean, i just paid £16 for 3 DVD's worth of Spongebob Squarepants, and £17 for both series of The IT Croud! No way am i paying £17 for 2 XBL games, one of which i will probably get bored of very quickly (Puzzle Fighter)

*sigh*

EDIT: In somewhat harder to admit news, i buckled and bought Halo 3, and have 6 days worth of free 48 hour trials to use up getting the achievements. So add me if you want, my gamertag is The A Drain i might just bring myself to try out the multiplayer :)

RE-EDIT:

I have officialy found a legitimate reason to like Halo over any other generic FPS!!

Ron Perlman voices the Fleet Commander!!! YEAH!!!! :D

I hear a lot of complaints about video games (and movie, music, etc) piracy all the time.

Cries of "Companies lose billions" abound and illogical arguments about the immoral basis of pirates and their motives fly non stop. A lot of these arguments are not entirely accurate.

For example, claiming that the gaming industry loses billions due to pirace is a flat out fallacy, it is simply incorrect. The large majority of pirates simply would not have purchased the game anyway, so in essence, to those people, piracy is free publicity. The number of people who pirate a game instead of buying it are in the small minority, and most of those, either rightly or wrongly, think they have the morale high ground. Whats leftover are either kids, or the unemployed, who wouldnt have the disposable income to buy the game anyway.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not defending these people, i'm simply putting forward a logical argument, a large number of pirates would not purchase the game at retail, even if there was no pirated version.

What puzzles me, is that the entire industry seems to have taken completely the wrong approach to combating this 'problem' of piracy. Many companies introduce convoluted or intrusive protection/DRM measures which either alienate the consumer, or make things difficult for developers. Whereas other simply don't put up a fight, and release their games without protection.

While at the samw time, these same companies are trying desperately to cut costs, or gather more revenue by inserting advertisments into videogames.

How clearer does it need to be?

Make the pirates redundant, give those rogue coders something better to do (Like fixing Vista issues, or going back to focusing on retro emulation perfection)

It came to my attention the other day that it is possible to create self booting Dreamcast disc images, from what i gather, these allow you to simply burn and play a game without using expensive GDroms, or chipping/modding your dreamcast. Then it hit me, this is the solution, this is how you make pete the pirate redundant.

You release a free version of the game that can be burned to a disc and played on home consoles. One which is packed full of advertisments. Thus allowing you to keep retail games ad-free and enjoyable to those with heaps of expendable income, while still providing enjoyment to a number of those that cannot afford it. With the amount of advertising you could put into a full game, it would surprise me very much if companies could not afford to use this method. I'm sure coca cola, or nike, or whatever, would pay a substantial sum to have adverts plastered throughout popular commercial games, more than enough to pay for the additional development, and distribution of these free versions. While revenue is still generated by a retail copy which would be released say, 6 months earlier, or some period of time.

Oh sure, you would still get people pirating the retail version of the game, but there will always be a small number of those people who want things for free, i mean just look at shoplifters and theives that plague retail centres and shopping malls. But a large number of people who pirate videogames would MUCH rather have an ad supported version, this way they are not breaking any laws, and can obtain official support and patches easily.

This also helps to reduce the amount of intrusive anti piracy measures, and increase community trust.

Ok, so the idea i put forward may not be the simple miracle solution to piracy i made it out to be, but i feel it is a geniunely viable way of reducing piracy. If not viable for console games, it most definately would be viable for PC games, as nobody likes Starforce/etc copy protection.

Some developers are already starting to put out ad supported games, but the large majority of those games either don't have a retail version, or havn't had a retail version for many years.

This would also sate the complaints towards advertisments in retail games. If a game contains large amounts of advertisment, why is the cost not reduced? This sort of image, regardless of the developers/publishers actual agenda, gives a bad image of that company, it makes people feel that they are just trying to screw the consumer while rolling in the cash. Whether or not this is true is irrelevent, that's the image it gives, and people remember that image. (EA For example, give this image, as does Ubisoft) Despite the fact that the more likely situation is that developers are trying to keep overheads down so that they can pay developer wages and keep things in the board room nice and cosy, not make piles of extra money.

As i said before, sure, it's not the miracle solution we all want, but companies need to do more than introduce intrusive copy protection, or remain apathetic. They need to come up with new and inventive ways to combat piracy, or eventually, they really will lose out, not because people don't want to buy their product, but because people would rather have a cracked version of a game, than one that leaves a rootkit on their computers. (If Bioshock did not have a 360 version, i would not have bought it due to the copy protection it has, the same is true of several other games, think about that developers)

What are your opinions?

Late last night my laptop threw a complete spaz.

Lately it had become extremely sluggish, crashed a lot, and there were constant hangs, waits and loading times where there shouldn't have been.

Last night it seemed to just implode, i couldnt even shut it down, and it would constantly freeze everytime i turned it back on.

So aftera complete clean wip, and a fresh installation of Vista i will be testing it this afternoon and for the next few days, if i still notice any sluggishness or instability then i will be calling Dell customer support in an effort to get a repair/replacement, as some of the components could have been damaged by the massive amount of heat the laptop was generating last night.

This means i may be without a computer and access to the net for a while, so if i inexpicably disapear, that would be why.

:)

Sitting, playing Persona: Revelations and sipping from a bottle of water, these words pearced my ears from the television set behind me

"Conclusive tests are being undertaken to prove how children are affected by violent computer games"

I turned to see ITV news reporting, in a very biased and uninformed way about the effects of violent videogames, and how difficult it is for parents to keep these games out of childrens hands.

I must say i am outraged at the latent disregard for unbiased reporting in the report, with the general tone of voice and language leading anybody uneducated in the matter to beleive that any child can walk into a store and purchase any videogame (This is the UK remember, so that is NOT possible, in fact a clerk can face up to 3 years in prison or a 10 thousand pound fine for selling an age rated product to a child)

"This is one videogame your children won't be able to get hold of" the reporter said, while clips of Manhunt 2 scrolled over the screen "The BBFC this week have refused to give a rating to Rockstars latest game because of it's sickening level of violence and drug use"

"The industry says it is not to blame and that products are not aimed at children, and are clearly marked, however parents are finding it very difficult to stop their children getting a hold of violent videogames" she said as images of Hitman flashed up.

Hold on one second. 'wont be able to get hold of'?? They wouldn't be able to anyway seeing as the game would be an 18, and the state considers anyone over 18 not to be a child. As for parents finding it difficult to stop their children getting these games, i've never heard so much bull in all my life. What a total joke, the parents are the people giving these games to their children, the industry is not to blame for their failings and ignorance.

Also, i would like to add that nowhere in the entire report did ITN give either the name of the institution, nor any outlet that could give further information on this 'conclusive study into the effects of violent computer games on children'

I would also like to point out that they showed clips of children CLEARLY under the age of 15 playing Halo 3, the irresponsibility of news outlets like this is what should be under scrutiny, not the games industry.

I make a grim prediction this evening, now that ITN has run the story, the BBC is sure to follow, this will only give the anti-games activists another reason to hit the streets as Rockstar appeals the rating refusal.

People keep telling me not to worry, "You're overreacting" they say "Manhunt 2 will be out by christmas" they tell me.

Am I? Will it?

We will see how this plays out, i for one am not so optimistic.