Been a while huh! I've had a good year, I hope you have too! I've had a busy year at school, and gaming :D so much has changed in my personal life, which I must say is a good thing!

I just realised that I haven't 'blogged' on Gamespot in so damn long. So here I am, without any freaking idea of what to write about. Man I hate the word 'blog', not sure why, it just sound gross. Anyhoo, I remember meeting some really cool dudes here, and it'd be nice to chat with those old forum-buddies I used to have :P

I'm just here writing nothing that I doubt anyone would read, and enjoying writing it. I've started playing Splinter Cell: Conviction recently, which is a great game, but not a great Splinter Cell game. I'd call it a tactics game rather then a stealth game. Oh yeah; I got a new computer a couple of weeks ago :D it's an i7, with a 5850 and 6gb ram. It's so much fun to use, and a damn good bargain for merely $400!

Christmas is coming up soon, so I'm going to pick up Skyrim around that time, since I've invested thousands of hours into the other games, I'm really looking forward to it! Time well spent, aye. In other news about my not-so-interesting life, I went and saw some V8 Fords and Holdens race around in circles the other weekend at Sydney Olympic Park, that was great fun. I was much more interested in the alternative races; like Porches and 60's muscles, 'twas awesome fun. There was a, dare I say, 'pixel perfect' remake of the batmobile from the 60's TV show ~ the one with the red trim. I had a nerdgasm when I saw it :P

I've been listening to The Distillers, NOFX, Megadeth, The Ramones, Spinnerette and Anthrax... and I must say they're incredible! If you've never heard The Distillers before, and you're even slightly interested in punk, or even rock, you must! They're amazing! They're my favourite band! :D Here are some songs by them.

Finally, I'd like to post a video I made out of boredom the other night. Not sure why, it's a tribute to Driv3r so I thought it necessary to put it on a website about games, full of game-loving users :D Here you go!

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I'm going to try be on Gamespot a lot more from now :D

As you may or may not know, I'm younger than most. My early gaming childhood consisted of Half-Life, The Sims (which was fun goddammit), Age of Empires, Majesty, Goldeneye and a heap of other random games. One of those random games was named Deadly Dozen, which was darned incredible. It was a challenging stealth-ish FPS set in WW2. It was extremely realistic and you commanded and controlled a squadron of four mission in and mission out. It was possibly the most exciting game I have ever played.

Recently, I played through a few levels of it, and afterwards I was thrilled, and shaking at how intense it was. Maybe it's just the nostalgia hit that got me, but my god, I don't know how the world ignored this game. It isn't flawless, in fact there's a lot of things that would put people off in this game, mainly being the difficulty, as it's an extremely difficult game, but it's so much fun!

Something that really hit me is how well the game makes you feel like you're there, and you are commanding a squadron. You decide how you do the levels, you decide what to do, and where to do it. The ultra-realism is great too, if one of your men dies in the first level, he's gone for the rest of the game, and it only takes a few hits to die.

This is why the game is so thrilling, I'm nervous just thinking about the game. I didn't think it was frustrating, but my god it was exciting! Whilst I'm not impressed by the visual presentation of the game anymore, the sound design and music is amazing.

So guys, would you like to see me review this game, I'd love to review it, and regardless of your opinions, I'm going to try to. More importantly, do you remember this game? I'd love to hear someone elses opinion on it. If you haven't heard of this game, look into it and try and play it, it's awesome.

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My unexplained absense will remain unexplained.

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Speech tomorrow, I'm pretty nervous. Any tips?

Got straight to the point on this blog didn't I.

These days you don't hear many people say they're favourite genre of game is 'racing', as racing games have a generally quite repeditive nature. Just thinking the words time and trial bring back bad memories. I'm going to admit I've never really enjoyed a driving sim on single player, though I haven't played all that many.

Step in, arcade racers. The first thing that comes to mind is Crazy Taxi, followed closely by Burnout. Arcade racers are awesome, there's something about them that reminds me why I game. They're simple, over the top, and all they want to do is make you have fun. They don't care about storylines, they just want you to enjoy yourself, and that's the best thing about them.

I can't think of an arcade driver that I haven't enjoyed, I loved Midtown Madness, Burnout, Tokyo Extreme Racer, Crazy Taxi, Midnight Club, Need for Speed, Ridge Racer and Motorstorm. They're all incredibly fun, and can be really intense, but for some reason they never get particularly frustrating. Why don't they get frustrating? Because they're fun. They exist to be fun, nothing more, nothing less.

Arcade racers are a refreshing way to game, as the genre hasn't really been milked, and they have a very 'friday afternoon with your mates' feeling. They're superb both in multiplayer and in single player. To get to the point, arcade racers are worth playing. Burnout 3, Motorstorm 1, NFS: Underground/2/MW and any Midnight Club are the best places to start in my opinion.

I'm going to say it. Arcade racers are my favourite genre. I'm probably the first person you've heard say that, am I not?

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It feels like I haven't written a blog about gaming for decades, and I only joined Gamespot a few years ago. Hope you enjoyed it.

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...for you aerobie. I didn't have much time or space to take these pictures, so they're kinda suckish, but here they are :p

'ello Gamespot. It's been a while, per usual.

The Playstation Network is down. This doesn't really effect me at all, whilst I do have Sony's Playstation 3, I didn't play online at all. What I find amusing about this, is how angry everyone is about it. People claim they've been cheated, they feel betrayed, etc.

Sony doesn't care about you. Sony are a business. Sure they might've been working hard on fixing it, but ultimately it's for their benefit. Sony want money, and their losing money while the PSN is down, so their trying to fix the PSN. This paragraph is directed towards the generic Playstation fanboy.

I was utterly surprised by how many people were raging over the PSN being down, although I know I shouldn't be. I do know why you would be angry if you put your credit card details in and whatnot, but if your angry about the lack of the Playstations ability to play online, I say that there are many, many more things to do. This might be a harsh reality check to you, but this isn't the end of the world, hell, the PSN is probably going to be back soon anyway. Don't worry about it, go do something constructive I say!

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So what's going on in my life you ask?... oh, you weren't wondering that were you. I'll tell you anyway. Might as well start of with random s*** I've bought recently, and go from there. I might even throw in some pictures if you're lucky :P

Recently, I have bought some games, not as many as I usually buy, because I'm saving money to build something, I'll explain later. I've bought X-Men Origin's Wolverine (which is actually a fun movie game), ARMA 2 (which I haven't played yet) and probably a few more that have left my mind. Both of these are fun games.

I've bought an awesome Atari T-Shirt, with the Atari logo in the centre and rainbow circles circling around it, it's very... Atari. I've also bought some Logitech X530 5.1 SS Speakers for... the thing I'm building.

So what have I been building? Why haven't I been on Gamespot much? I'll tell you what, and why. I'm building a MAME arcade cabinet! That's right, a stand up, two player arcade cabinet. Like the 80's ones. I got it standing the other day and I'm excited to get it finished. I really can't wait :D... these speakers are pretty neat too, been using them with my PC and I'm gonna mount 'em in my cabinet soon.

I've been listening to Deadmau5, The Distillers and Camp Kill Yourself recently, all of which are very different, and very awesome :). Though Deadmau5 and CKY have a lot of cr*p songs IMO, but the good ones are really, really awesome!

I'm playing through Mafia: The City of Lost heaven for the second time at the moment. It is the greatest game of all time... that I've played. Play it before you die. I tried out the second one a couple of months back and hated it, it's just too shallow. I might give it a playthrough sometime when I can get it cheap. I might do a review on Mafia after I finish it this second time. I've also been playing Wolverine, Minecraft, Audiosurf, On The Rain Slick: Precipice of Darkness series (which were really awesome btw, 'specially if you love Penny Arcade), Counter-Strike Source and a few other games. ' been enjoying them.

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Hey Gamespot, if you stalk me, you've noticed I haven't been blogging much, and when I do blog it's always about nothing. Anyhoo, I'm about to write a pi$$ed off blog about school, as my latest experience with it has been cr@p.

Academically, my school seems to be most useless place of all time. Today I basically sat in multiple rooms being yelled at by mulitple teachers. Normally I wouldn't mind this, but it seems most of my teachers expect me to work when they don't teach, and if they don't teach, then how am I suppost to know how to work.

The one thing I can think of that high school has taught me is the Pythagorean theorem, and I'm in year ten now. I'm picking at my memory to think of anything else I've learnt, as everything they've tried to teach me I think I've forced out of my mind because I thought it was useless, as most of it is.

In Australia, year eleven and year twelve are known as the most important grades as they give you your ATAR, which is one single percentage that can get you into a university. To get the highest possible ATAR you can, you need to pick the boringest subjects, as they count the most towards that one mark. If you want a good mark, don't choose the subjects you want to choose. How logical.

At the end of year eight, I was given the freedom to choose two subjects for year nine and ten. I thought this would be great, as school was finally giving me atleast one freedom. I chose multimedia and IST - Information Software Technology. So computing and media, great! I love computers and I love making videos and whatnot, should be fun, right? Wrong.

For media, our lucky class was given a woodwork teacher, who doesn't know the first thing about media, he doesn't teach, all he seems to do is get angry at people when they play games, so everyone just sits around in this class doing nothing, as our teacher is raging at us. IST is a pretty similar story, in year nine we were given a textiles teacher for computers, at the start of this year she actually tried to teach, and I applaud her for that. She was nice, she just didn't know a single thing about computers. For year ten IST, we've changed teachers, to a 'real' IST teacher. You'd think this'd be better, we've now got a middle aged man with anger problems. Awesome.

The one thing I love about school is seeing your mates everyday, and the question here is; is it worth wasting time to see your mates? In my opinion, it is, but why should we be wasting our time in the first place? God I hate school.

On a lighter note I've been listening to some old THPS soundtracks, I love 'em, soooo nostalgic and they remain to keep their awesomeness over time.

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If you read all this I'm impressed. :D

I'm not going to say why I've been away, as I'm too lazy and will explain it later. This is a short blog :p One thing I'll say though is... I got a Wii :D

Anyhoo, my mate hosts a Minecraft server, it's based in Sydney Australia and he wants a few more people to play. I'd be happy to give anyone the IP, if you message me. Also, there's a good public one at www.gameployment.com I'm an mod for them, and I kinda know the guy who runs it. It's on a whitelist, but it's worth playing on. It's in Brisbane. Just go check out the website.

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First of all, Happy Australia Day!

...it seems fusionhunter has tagged me, thanks. Now, I am to write down five mistakes that I've made playing video games, I'll write them in no order. Here goes...

-Thinking Hitman was a generic 3PS.

When I discovered Hitman with the second game; Silent Assassin, I ran through Anathema shooting everybody, it didn't work. I realised that it was a stealth game after that.

-Lending out games, and never getting them back.

I've lent out Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, BLACK and a few Pokemon games. I haven't gotten them back, I lent them out years ago :/

-Playing the PC version of Bully and Deus Ex for hours, and forgetting to save.

They crashed.

-Playing Runescape for hours.

No description needed for this one :p

-Saw the Alone in the Dark movie.

No comment.

So, who do I tag I wonder... uhh. DethSkematik can be tagged, because it's his birthday :p. theslimdavylp can be tagged, because he actually bothers to read all my blogs and rhysthepriest can be tagged, because he just added me, and doesn't blog.

's your turn to write down five mistakes you've made in video games!

I saw Jack Blacks new Kids movie today, with my cousin. It wasn't bad, it was better than I expected really. Jack Black plays Gulliver, who is just like all his other characters, and he makes it to some land of small people... and it goes on. Decent movie, nothing special. It is enjoyable for everyone, instead of just kids, so I guess that's a plus.

Also, I've been playing Age of Empires 2 recently. It's bloody brilliant!

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I just noticed all my blogs are about games and movies, and are layed out the same... like any of you care :p