I finished GTA: San Andreas late last night, after a few months of playing. Great story throughout, and a climactic ending. I'm also happy about the fact that, should I decide to play again, there's still 15% of the game to complete: several racing challenges, the quarry, unique jumps and a couple of girlfriends are the things I remember to have missed. There must be more. Plus of course, I can just drive, swim, and fly. Seriously, if you have the opportunity to play it, do so. Don't let this great game pass you by.

My rig is not a particularly modern one. Suffice it to say that it strains a bit when running Far Cry on high settings, and that the mean release date of my games is two or three years old. I use my computer to work and play, and since I have the disk space, I set it up in a novel way -at least for me. I have two XP installs on it, and Ubuntu Linux. Plus, other partitions are there for my music collection, or if I need to test other operating systems, such as Vista, Open Solaris, *BSD or the like. I study, in case you wondered, Software Engineering. The setup is a bit inefficient to update (I download some patches twice), but it allows me to keep separated games and work. One setup has Visual Studio, Eclipse, and many other tools I program with; the other is loaded with games. The main other advantages are that the Windows registries get less cluttered, and that defragmentation is faster. And also, that, should I ever decide to erase my games partition and reinstall, the work one would be unaffected. I think the extra work is acceptable.

The one good thing about Vista is that it introduced me to use the Sleep function. This was on my aunt's computer. When I got back to my own little rig, which has Ubuntu Linux and XP on it, I tried it, and it works perfectly. Yay! I had been aware of this innovation before, but the state on Linux was a bit doubtful, I'd heard, and since this isn't a notebook, the need for sleep wasn't great. I'm glad to report that it worked perfectly. I realise that this little post leads nicely into my computer's setup. This will be the subject of my next post.

I have a nice backlog of games and movies that I want to finish and watch before I start playing back old friends like, say, Diablo II. Let's see, here's the list of what will keep me entertained outside of exams: - Age of Mythology: my appetite for RTSs is currently not too great, but I'll get to it sooner or later. - Pro Evolution Soccer 6: I'm currently playing this, but I really want to stop button mashing and learn to play vg footie. - Thief - Deadly Shadows: A couple of missions into it, looks and feels great. The only drawback of stealth games is that now I'm playing stealth in all FPS, something that, for example, Far Cry doesn't afford well. - Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas: I'm stuck at the airplane school. I've got to rack up flying skills. It's, I hate to say, the first time the game feels like a chore. - Civilization IV: I got into the tutorial, and when I looked back at the watch, 5 hours had passed. Is this a great game, or what? - The Great Escape (Steve McQueen FTW!) - Taxi Driver - Nosferatu (the1979 Herzog remake with Kinski and Adjani) - Aguirre, Wrath of God - Shining - The Ages of Lulu All in all, I think it will be an interesting three months :)

Just completed Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. It was great playing, I enjoyed being stealthy, and using eyeshine to overcome guards. One common criticism is that the game is short, but since I paid little for it, and I took my time, I didn't notice that. I was enthralled by it. The one thing I didn't like were the loading times, but I suppose with more RAM that wouldn't have been such a problem.

I just finished Homeworld. Rarely I've been so immersed in a videogame. This was a truly beautiful creation.

I finished Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee today. The final level was tough, but the experience I got playing the rest of the game helped a lot. Abe got pulped by the meat saws many, many times, but in the end, I prevailed. It's been a great game, if a bit infuriating due to its save policy. On the other hand, if it did include a save system à la Max Payne, it would have no challenge at all. It would have to be redesigned from scratch to accomodate this design decision. Perhaps some areas were a bit too tough, but my biggest culprits were in general a couple of areas with a secret in them, so that if you died, you had to replay them and replay the secret area. Of course, since this was not actually required, I can't complain much. And I did manage to pass them, albeit with a few expletives too many. All in all, a great game with gorgeous graphics, delicious handling and almost the right difficulty, verging on the hard. I'm proud to have played it.

Prince of Persia - The two thrones taught me a lot in the areas of patience and skill. It was perhaps the first game I actually felt I was growing on as a player. After much practice, my skill with the gamepad improved, I knew how to move, what to do. A marked improvement from the previous button-masher I was. Nowadays, I know that in order to extract the best juice from a game, I have to be patient. Of course, some games are just plain too hard, but i tend not to buy them :) Skill and patience, I was saying. Certain levels, such as the final boss and especially the fight against the Axe and Sword brothers, I repeated many, many times. Still, the game is so well done I never despaired, never actually got frustrated. I just knew it was a simple matter of playing until I got better. What is, then, the game that has taught you most?

I finally bought this game last week, after much desiring to no avail, since it is sold out here in Italy. I actually got a used copy from an amazon seller. Fortunately, it's in very good condition. I have just done 7 levels, and my impression is "magnificent". The colors of the nebula in the "Gardens of Kadesh" level are fabulous, the way you control all the ships is intuitive, the 3D navigation is as simple as can be. It is a great game, totally deserving its rating of 9.0 here on gamespot. I found something really impressive in the third level, "Return to Kharak". The voice actor for fleet intelligence is superb, trying to be calm and disciplined but with a pang of deep sadness that shows. Some found the voice acting a bit too calm. I think it's supposed to be this way: apart from sergeants that scream at you, you don't expect army officers to lose their temper in war. Discipline has to be kept in the face of adversity, else it's useless. And I loved tearing the enemy ships to bits without losing mine thanks to good tactics and strategy. This is one of the first games where I really think before I send the warriors in, where careful positioning of my fleet really means something to me. Now, this is not a dismissal of other great RTSs, it's just that I'll always remember Homeworld as the game that taught me this lesson. Thanks, game.

Good day to you, o noble reader. May you find something of interest in my abode. I be Moránar, or Adriano, whichever you like best. My place of origin is of no import, and my current residence varies. I enjoy gaming, I enjoy it a great deal. You might have surmised that, otherwise why would I blog on this site of all sites? My favorite environment is currently the PC, but I dream of the joyous day in which I'll be able to afford a Wii and some games, and maybe a DS too. I have nothing against the other consoles per se, but the whole concept and orientation of Nintendo ("gaming for everyone") appeals to my very core. I've been gaming since I was a little boy, first on an MSX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX ), then on a SEGA Megadrive ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megadrive ) and then different PCs, from a very humble XT on which I played Out Run in a monochrome monitor to my current Athlon 64. I've now experienced almost 25 years of gaming, and they've been fantastic. The future looks even better. I've played the first Zelda and Megaman 2 on the NES, finished Sonic and Sonic 2 (I also got Super Sonic, whee!) on the Megadrive, I got to play Tie Fighter, the Monkey Island series, DOTT and Final Fantasy VII on my PCs. I'm currently a big fan of RPGs, adventure games and RTS. I mostly play solo, in part due to my natural shyness, and in part because I do not dare get sucked up in a MMORPG. I have courses to pass. Due to my lack of money, my computers have never been great rigs for gaming, so I tend to enjoy the very big games one or two years after they've come out. In the meantime, they also get cheaper, so I win twice: I pay less for them, and I know what's lived up to the hype. Right now, as you can see in my games list, I'm playing GTA San Andreas, Thief 3, PES 6 and Homeworld. Very varied gaming experiences, and great games all of them. I don't dismiss reading a walkthrough or game guide, in fact I'm the type that reads the manual in full before playing, and that usually has checked the wikipedia article before buying the game. I also follow a few gaming-related websites: penny-arcade, ctrlaltdel, gamespot. I buy game mags if they carry an interesting game, but not otherwise. My news are fetched from the intertubes, ripe and fresh. I use walkthroughs, as I was saying, to optimise my investment in a game: to get the secrets, and to know what I could be missing. Most of all, I'm a story-driven player. Or maybe a sucker for a good tale. If I can get my disbelief suspended, I'm glad I paid for the game. One last thing: I tend to abhor groupthink, so you'll rarely see me comment "you are absolutely right, kudos", because all that it means is mostly "congrats, you think as I do". I enjoy the challenge of being the devil's advocate, and try to avoid thinking of complots, payolas and shills when the easiest and most likely explanation lies elsewhere. I also strongly dislike seeing women treated as objects. I'd like to see more games that represent gals dressed functionally.