Well, here ends summer. But don't let that get you down! October has more than Hallowe'en in store: I am looking forward to Bayonetta and Tekken 6! It's going to be great!

With all the overweight people around, things are getting out of hand with the whole "blame game". It seems more prevalent in the west--particularly in the U.S.A., the birthplace of McDonald's restaurants. The United States of America seems to have the loudest voice in this regard and, yes, the largest blame-pointing finger. I'm not going to pick on any country, nor her people, though. This is for everyone. Since McDonald's is probably the largest and richest foodchain around, it seems that people feel it's okay to blame today's obesity crisis on her fast food.

I just want to point out that it is trifle to blame the enabling body for the problems of the consumer. It's not as though someone were standing on the corner, distributing sharp objects to young children. A restaurant--if you can call it that--is a legitimate business. Selling food, provided it falls within business and health regulations, is a perfectly acceptable form of commerce.

A little willpower and moderation on the consumers' behalf is really what is lacking. I say cut down on all the soda pop, fried potatoes, and nutritionally empty white bread and eat some honest-to-goodness FOOD! Whatever you decide to eat is up to you and you ought to be thankful you CAN choose what you eat--unlike the poor and the needy out there. But, whatever you choose to put on your plate, just shut up and eat!

Oh, and video games. Gotta stay on topic!

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning marketed and launched in Japan along with the North American release. Since the people at EA took the time to market it, launch it, and sell all the extras too (game-time cards, custom keyboards, etc.), one would think there would be an East Asia server ... or several. In fact there are quite a lot of "North America" servers and even a modest amount of "Oceana" servers (Australia and Southeast Asia). Gamers in Japan and Korea are instructed to use North American servers, however.

Now, I am not going to complain about lag ... I've got fibre-optic, as do most of my peers. There is no lag. I have a lovely speedy connection to the internet (can you say "light-speed"?) heh ...

No, my complaint--my completely valid complaint--is that the server down-time (for maintenance and updates and such) is from 8:00PM to 2:30AM on my local time! I can't even choose to play on the Oceana servers in the meantime, because their downtime is so similar anyhow (10:00PM to 2:30AM)!

I like the game so far, but every time they shut down their servers (for four or more hours at a time) it is during the "prime" gaming time for those of us in East Asia! It's only been out for about three weeks and this has happened several times too!

EA: Why don't you set up at least one server for us? You marketed and sold your game here (not even localised) yet you don't seem to want to support it at all after SELLING OUT every copy on the shelves! That's several thousand people here in Japan alone who play WAR, and we play on servers that do not take into account how much our timezone differs from those in North America.

Alternatively, you could choose to not shut down all servers at the same time (okay, the Oceana servers are shut down at different times than North American ones, but it is a negligable difference).

EA, you have only a small talent for war. Disappointing

Wow! I'm a "Rescue Ranger" now an' I didn't even know it! Thank you, GameSpot! It reminds me of the old Nintendo Famicon Chip 'n' Dale game by the same name ... heh ... now everyone knows how old I am! Eeep!