I'm really looking forward to getting xbox live. Multiplayer games will be far more enjoyable due to the fact that you can play what you want when you want. There's no having to limit yourself to what other people want to play because there will always be other people you can play with on any game type. Hopefully I can develop a clan with people of similar ability and who are open-minded as far as games are concerned. Best Halo fest ever.

I've always struggled with the campaign mode on Halo more than the rest of my friends. When it comes to multiplayer I'm very good but I can never seem to make the campaign work as well. I'm only playing the later levels of Halo 2 on normal, and already I'm struggling to get through it without dying a lot. I don't know how I can get better at the campaign.

I had another ultimately annoying game of Fifa this morning. I was playing against Macclesfield in my career and the damn defenders just predicted everything. Every shot, pass, lob, through ball and chip was perfectly predicted by the other team. I couldn't get a shot off without it hitting someone else (who had magically thrown themselves into the path of the ball at exactly the right time). I had to resort the tactic of making runs through the opposition defence and slicing them open: a tactic which I don't like as much as making well-positioned shots. I won 3-0 in the end after several runs made by Jermaine Easter as he broke away from his markers. I've also been forced to drop Lockett from the first team as he's completely off form. He can't seem to shoot on target, and misses all the chances he gets. I might play him for the next small match I have to try and get his confidence back up, but for all the big matches I have I am going to have to play Chillingsworth and Easter up front, at least for now. Add to that that my other striker, Webb, had a fight in training and now his morale has dropped: a blow considering that he was on top form. This means that I'll also have to play him for the next small match to try and work him back up again, which means for my next small match I'll be playing both my second strikers. Damnation.

It always gets on my nerves when, after playing Halo 2 with my friends for about 2 hours, some of them announce that they no longer want to play because they are bored. I realised a few days ago just how many completely different game types there are on Halo 2. There are dozens of variants, and yet my friends will only ever play slayer, rockets, shotguns and team slayer. It's so frustrating when they say they are then bored. No wonder they find it boring if they are only willing to play 10% of the intended content.

I swear, of all the games I have ever played nothing manages to piss me off like Fifa does. I was in my campaign mode today playing as Cambridge, and my next fixture was an LDV Vans Trophy tie against Bristol Rovers. My first team pretty much had to be replaced due to fatigue, and so I had to play with mostly rubbish players. It was the most annoying experince of my life. Their team was physically superior in every way. They beat me to every header, every pass, every barging competition. It was impossible to long ball it to my strikers as I like to do as they were continuously muscled out by the defenders. Even weaving through their defensive ranks with tricks wasn't working due to the super-human reactions of the bastard defenders. I had the last laugh in the end though. In the 89th minute, Jermaine Easter finally managed to break through the defensive lines, shrug off his marker and neatly chip the ball over the keeper and into the net. A few seconds of careful posession later, the match was over, and I was through to the Quarter Finals. Have that.