Hey guys and girls,

It's been a while since I've really posted a blog so I figured I would do one today. Nothing much has been going on really, it was my 21st not too long ago and that was pretty cool, I've been playing lots more Xbox 360 games and generally chilling out. I finished GTA IV to 100% which took me quite a while and now I'm playing a good deal of Colin McRae: DiRT which is pretty awesome.

So yeah, on another note I'm going to be spending most of my time over at GiantBomb.com, so if you want to keep up with me over there you can find me here. I'll still stick around on GameSpot and I'm not really leaving as such, but I probably won't be on the forums much (even though I'm not really anyway) anymore and I will probably continue my blog on GiantBomb.

It's been good meeting a lot of you guys and like I said I will still be here so take it easy out there.

Well, well, well here we find ourselves ranting wildly about who knows what to nobody in particular as usual.
Can't say that too much has happened lately really, but I do think that GameSpot is definitely on a downward slope, On The Spot has got a bit stale for me in weeks past. Ryan Mac is a great host but there's just not the level of comedy there was when Rich, Jeff and Ryan Davis were involved, but of course as I said before I will stick around here for the community and for some reviews.

Since I got my 360 Elite at christmas I haven't even touched my PS2 or played many PC games at all, which is quite impressive on the 360's part, I wasn't expecting to be sucked in so much, but here I am playing games like a crazy man. I've managed to rack up a Gamerscore of 7,500 points since christmas which I reckon is pretty good, and yeah, I have indeed found myself a slave to the wonders of points. It's nice to show people that you've played the crap out of certain games and I guess points are a way of showing that. I've got alot of live arcade games over the fast few weeks. I finished Puzzle Quest which I totally loved, and i've been playing alot of Rez HD (even though i've got it for the PS2) and that's a great game, highly recommended to anybody who cares about good games and games that try to raise the bar in new and interesting ways. A truly mythic game. And with the ability to have really, really creepy vibrating Rez orgies? Who could refuse.

I also managed to grab Halo 3 which is weird for me since I never really got into the Halo series like some of my friends did, I played the first nearly to the end on the PC and enjoyed it, but the universe just didn't click with me like it did with the Halo nuts out there. Regardless, I'm really enjoying Halo 3. I finished the campaign and went back for all the skulls and meta game scoring and whatnot after my initial Heroic playthrough. So much on offer to mess around with in that game, online games, forge, co-op, saved films... and they're all interconnected in wonderful ways. It's just a great package. I'm playing a hell of alot of Forza 2 at the moment as well. It was one of the games I got with my console initially and I didn't really properly delve into it, I just kind of played some arcade exhibitions and said to myself "I'll finish the arcade stuff first, then delve into the career mode". It took a good while, but after lots of arcade playing I finished all the exhibitions and time trials and right now i'm totally enjoying the career mode. I'm a big fan of Gran Turismo, and they're similar and different in alot of ways, but I think for me the racing model in Forza is vastly better. You definitely have to take into account your fellow drivers alot more, and use your opportunities to overtake and pass guys cleverly and cleanly. I do feel that there are some things that GT does better than Forza, but if you're into simulation racing you can't go wrong with either.

Anyways. That's my ranting over. I think i'm gonna get Burnout Paradise soon...
What are you guys out there playing? If you haven't played Bully when it came around on the PS2 definitely give it a look on the 360, there definitely appear to be some technical issues, but knowing the calibre of the game I'm pretty sure they will work the kinks out, and when they do it's a game definitely worth playing.

Take it easy out there.

P.S. If you hadn't heard yet, check out www.giantbomb.com. It's the new website from Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis and other such ex-GameSpotting legends. Support this website like you've never supported a website in your lives, people. I'm stoked for what it could mean in the future.

So I know there are a fair few people out there right now doing this too (or just done it) like Don and such and well, I just managed to finish Call of Duty 4 on Veteran and then finish Mile High too. Mile High must have taken me at least 15 tries, getting to the last two guys round the corner about 4 times and getting shot or running out of time, but I finally made it. Popped the hostage taker in the face and I just kinda dropped the controler in relief. Just need the 30 Intel achievement and that's all the achievements for CoD4!

How are you dudes out there faring with the Veteran campaigning? I'll be digging into some serious multiplayer now I think. I'm level 40, but I need to unlock more stuff!

Take it easy.

Howdy folks. Just a little notice to say that I haven't left, I originally intended to after my last blog post but I just couldn't deal with trying to make IGN or 1up my home, I had to stay here at GameSpot. The departure of Jeff sucked ass, but after listening to The Hotspot I really thought the guys did a great job of telling us concerned users as much as they could, and that was some comfort.

Anyways, all that silliness aside i'm glad to announce I just acquired my first next/current-gen console, an Xbox 360 Elite! Woo! I went out on boxing day and grabbed one from my local game store with Forza 2, Viva Pinata and Assassin's Creed. All great games in my opinion, and I should be getting a few more over the coming weeks. I'm still playing it on my bedroom standard definition TV though, and after seeing it in HD round friends houses and whatnot it's almost painful to play games in SD. I'm gonna try and get a reasonably priced HDTV sometime in 2008, but there's no guarantees.

Anyway, I hope all you guys out there are doing okay. I haven't been commenting on alot of blogs lately so my apologies for that. Take care, peoples.

Well as it seems to be more and more true, the departure of Mr Gerstmann has pretty much been confirmed, although the reasons for which have not. Jeff was pretty much the charisma behind GameSpot Live after the departure of Rich. He had some pretty big shoes to fill and he did his job admirably. Don't get me wrong, Ryan D, Ryan M, Brad, Aaron, Brian, Justin and all you guys behind the scenes who make GameSpot go are all fantastic, but ti was Jeff who held up the live side of things and got that charisma on camera.

Anyways, the alledged events being the case, I don't think i'll be around here anymore. For most of you this won't mean a whole lot, but for those of you guys out there who have posted on my blog and said hi occasionally (fishdalf, UpInFlames, the rest of you know who you are) I thank you dearly. I'm terminating my total access subscription and probably won't be here much anymore. I may still come back to check some things out, or just incase any amount of this mess can be undone.

Take care everyone

Hey all you gamespotters out there,

It's been a little while since my last blog so here I am again with more ramblings to melt your brains. I just got my import US copy of Manhunt 2 today which i'm pretty stoked. I bought SwapMagic 3.6 so I could play Imports and backups and so far i'm really pleased with it, although installing the little MagicKeys to get it to work was slightly hellish.

I bought Manhunt 2 for a few reasons, one because I enjoyed the last game and I really wanted to see how this one turned out, and secondly because no stupid-ass BBFC is telling me I cannot play a game. So this is a bit of a middle finger up from me to them in protest. Although that is kinda silly I did really just buy it to play it, and play it I shall.


I've also started to play a hell of alot more Okami which I bought ages ago. I'm pretty much right at the end of the game just running around collecting a few more stray beads and completing a bunch of sidequests and what not so that when I go to the end proper I can feel that i've experienced most of what the game has to offer. I've really loved every minute I have played of it. The dialog is fantastic, I can't help but love Ammy and i've even taken a shine to Issun's smart alecky wit. I'll probably play Okami again someday, simply because it is an amazing game. But even if I don't, it's definitely going to be one of the ones i'll always remember.

On a few more notes I did get The Orange Box, and I played the hell out of it. I completed Half Life 2: Episode 2 twice, and managed to get nearly all of the achievements, the only one I missed being the Neighbourhood Watch achievement. Screw that. I also played the hell out of Team Fortress 2 and Portal as i'm sure anyone else who got The Orange Box would. Awesome, awesome stuff. I'm probably going to play TF2 for quite a while to come, but I dunno if I will be going back to the others anytime soon. But still, a fantastic package and Valve are great guys for cramming that much stuff into one standard-priced retail game.

I've got alot of PC games to get this holidays. I still need to get Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War PC, but after that I think I can take a little break. Are you guys getting any game related goodness for christmas or perhaps just before/after? I'm really hoping to get a 360 Elite this christmas, but we'll see... we'll see.

Anyway i'm out for now. Going to play some Manhunt 2 and other such things.
Catch you later people.

Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4 PC demos have just become available and i've been playing alot of both, I think I can already safely say they are two games I should be getting this holidays. I also bought a good few new (well, second hand) games for my PS2. I grabbed The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King which I was actually nicely surprised by. I really enjoy it and i'm almost finished with it after me and my friend played through the campaign and some co-op fun was had. I got Red Faction and Deus Ex for PS2 aswell. I previously owned Red Faction on the PC when it originally was released, but I haven't had it for years and I figured that the graphics would be more palettable in the PS2's domain. Same goes for Deus Ex, I played a bit of it on the PC but never committed to it, but I should be storming through this version sometime very soon.

Also on a side note I wrote a new review for Fight Night Round 3 which is now up and I would love some constuctive criticism/feedback for. My writing still has a long way to go but i'm getting a bit better I think.

Gotta get The Orange Box this week... and then Gears when that comes to PC... so many games... I cannot possess them all

Anyways hope you guys are playing some awesome games. What are you people looking forward to that comes out before Christmas?

Hey GameSpot people,

So yeah, with all the hoohah surrounding Bioshock I grabbed the Tin edition for the PC. I've played a solid 20 hours of it now, I finished it once with the good ending (I rescued all of the Little Sisters) and it was a totally awesome experience. The twist at the end was gorgeously shocking and I genuinely didn't quite expect it. I gotta say though there are a good few bugs in it that need working out, I heard about the annoying stoppages on the X360 version but the PC has it's own set of problems. I for one have an issue with my 5.1 system where the center channel becomes distorted and it's pretty annoying but i'm sure it will get worked out with time.

Also for no real reason I bought the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Controller for the PS2 from Amazon.co.uk because they have reduced the price from like roughly £30 to £5. I think they realised that it was just a novely and nobody in their SANE MIND would pay £30 for a novelty controller that isn't really practical in any way, but for £5 I would reccomend it to anybody. Even if you're not planning on using it (which isn't too crazy because it's not completely practical and probably won't let you play any better) the stand it comes in is lovely and it makes an awesome ornament to show off on a shelf or next to your console. I also gabbed Final Fantasy XII because that had dropped in price (to £17) so that's now sitting on my shelf waiting to be played, I don't want to start it just yet because I need a big space to fully enjoy it. I know if I start playing it now i'll probably get sidetracked by other games i'm kinda playing at the moment and I won't be able to fully appreciate it. But I will get around to it.

Also someone magically noticed that I won a trivia game and I got me the emblem! If that was because somebody just happened to stumble upon my last blog post (which is pretty unlikely) then thankyou very much!

My holiday in Turkey was really ace, i've got some pictures that i'm going to upload to Photobucket so i'll post a link here when i've got them up. I was staying in Dalyan at a lovely villa just outside of the town. It was so damn hot over there, most of the time it was a pretty baking 30 degrees C but one day it got upto 48 degrees C in the sun and even in the shade it was a sweltering 38 degrees C, so I was super glad that there was air conditioning in the bedrooms of our apartment. I would definitely reccomend it as a place to go for anyone who wants to just take a break and kick back, it's a friendly place and there's loads to see and do.

Anyways, hope everyone out there is doing good. With the amount of cool games coming out soon everyone should have something to look forward to. Take care people.

Hey all,

just a quick update here. I recently upgraded my PC using my birthday money and I managed to get some decent hardware. My PC specs are now:

Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (Dual Core, 3.0Ghz, Socket AM2)

ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB PCI-E.

2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 6400 RAM.

Seagate 200GB HDD (IDE).

Seagate 300GB HDD (SATA).

So yeah, i've been boosting up my games a fair bit and enjoying the likes of Battlefield 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with pretty much maxed out settings and smooth performance. I grabbed The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay the other day, too. I'm really enjoying it but i'm a bit confused as I can't seem to find any Antialiasing options at all to smooth the game out a bit, but it's not a huge deal.

I also got a copy of Call of Juarez that came free with my processor which i've played a little bit of, but it hasn't really gripped me in any meaningful way. It's not a bad game, it's just nothing special at all. I haven't delved into the multiplayer yet though so I really can't make a fair judgement.

Also I am heading to Turkey this thursday for 2 weeks which should be pretty interesting. I haven't had a proper holiday in like 4 or 5 years or something dumb so it should be pretty damn awesome. I'm gonna take my camera so I should be bringing back some nice snaps and I might hotlink them to my next blog if anyone is interested. I'm nearly level 30 aswell which I suppose is some kind of milestone although I can't say I feel any sense of satisfaction about it... it just means i've been here a while now... which makes me feel a little bit sad I suppse but oh well.

Also on another geeky note I managed to come first in the On The Spot Trivia contest thingy last week with a score of 700. I didn't get any kind of reward though except the knowledge that I came first at something and nobody cares woop!

Anyways, hope you're all doing good.
Peace out.

Howdy people, hope you're all doing fine.
I've been on quite a buying rampage as of late. I bought Doom RPG for my mobile phone, bought LocoRoco and Me & My Katamari for the PSP, bought the original PlayStation port of Doom brand new offa eBay. I didn't realise you could still get factory wrapped original PS games. I was stoked. Anyways, I also finally got my hands on Okami and Fight Night Round 3, two games i've been wanting for a while now, and dude, they both rule.

I've been playing Okami for a solid 20 hours or so now and I love it, it definitely is a brilliant game and also a very beautiful one. I've been shooting up some fools in the original Doom on PS (whilst also detesting the password system, surely they could have used the PS memory card to save game progress).

I managed to catch all of the big three at E3 this year which was kinda nice i suppose, nothing special though really. Quite liked the look of Killzone 2 though, should be awesome to see more of that.

Anyway, enough of my blathering. Take care.

Greetings, all.

Nothing much has been going on lately, I delved into Psychonauts for a second time and had a good playthrough of that and finished it. I tried to be a completionist and go for as much 100% completion style stuff as I could, but man, that stuff gets kinda tedious. I've also been playing alot of the original Silent Hill which i'm playing to unlock the Hyper Blaster as well as the Katana. I've gotta admit, Harry Mason is one cubersome fool to control.

On a similar note, I bought a few game related DVDs recently in the form of Silent Hill the movie and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children both of which are kinda cool I suppose, although i'm still kinda stupified when I watch the "Making of" documentary on Silent Hill and how the director constantly claims that the game was "the bible" in constructing the film, and yet the dude still manages to break the plot admirably, but meh. At least they got the monsters and the atmosphere down pretty well. Advent Children is a weird one for me though, some of it comes across as ludicrously hammy and silly to me but I guess I have to deal with that, since I am a fan of the story and the Final Fantasy games as a whole, but it's a good film nonetheless.

I went on a little PS2 gaming spree the other day and bought Black, Tomb Raider Anniversary and Fight Night Round 3. The former two games arrived yesterday and i've been playing a fair whack of them both. Black seems quite a bit better than Jeff's review had me believe, but I guess I was never as hyped about the game much at all, really, and on top of that i've got a soft spot for console shooters, so I guess it all adds up. Tomb Raider Anniversary is pretty much the first time i've even gone near a Tomb Raider game since the original PlayStation days, so it's really refreshing to play this. I'm really enjoying it so far and it seems like it's gonna hold my interest throughout, so that should be a pretty sweet distraction.

In other news, I'm going to Glastonbury Festival next week from Tuesday right through to the following monday so that should be absolutely awesome. I'm going to take my digital camera and maaaayyybe my PSP? (I'm really not sure if I should, it's too shiny/expensive to take somewhere like that a part of me thinks) so I should be coming back with some pretty good festival snaps that I might show off.

Anyway, hope you people are having a good summer and playing games that don't suck.
Take care.

Hey everyone, 

Hope you're all doing good. This stupid British weather is finally starting to get warmer at last! (although it still rains just as much) and i've been gaming as much as I have other things. Quite alot has happened recently, I managed to pick up a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. which I totally love and wish I could play it more consistently as the bugs in the game are really really starting to annoy me now. The game crashes on me frequently and I can't seem to run it at any playable framerate with any kind of dynamic lighting, apparently the developers have acknowledged issues with ATI cards (I have an X1950 Pro) and are working to resolve them. I sure hope they do, and fast!

Aside from running about dodging anomalies and looting stashes, I picked up Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. I'm a huge fan of the series and I don't know many folks that play games who have not heard of the amazing C&C franchise. I started off on the Nod campaign and i'm now doing the second mission in australia. Of course, I love the game alot. It's the C&C I and many others have always enjoyed, they've kept the basic gameplay pretty much identical with a few handy updates here and there, and what's wrong with that?

 

Nothing, dammit!

On the hardware side of things, one of my good friends and I decided we would simultaneously (and impulsively, I might add) buy a suave 5.1 speaker system each, and we both bought the Creative Gigaworks G550W which i've got hooked up right now to my PC and man, I have no regrets! 
This is my first 5.1 setup and i'm really enjoying it, I don't think i've been missing out on loads without a surround setup, but hell, you can definitely hear the difference in games that support it well. I also managed to hook my Playstation 2 up to PC using a Digital I/O module utilising the Playstation 2's optical audio output, so I have PS2 noises coming through my new speakers 
The signal is stereo, and it's a shame I can't upmix the optical signal using CMSS (the upmixing method I use on my PC) but I can still upmix the signal using the Upmix mode that is built into the speakers, so meh. All is good!

 
Aside from  these things,  everything is pretty much normal. I  still need to get my hands on Okami and Final Fantasy VII, but I don't need them right this second, I've still got a good few games I really need to finish! 

 

Anyway, hope you're all okay! Enjoy the summer and don't spend too much time indoors playing games on nice days!
It's all about the balance, people!

Josh. 

Hello folks.

Firstly, the annoying crappy business.

I've been looking around after experiencing this alot and i've done a few things. I've been suffering from pretty much all of my Source games (Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, etc...) freezing with looping audio. This problem generally means I gotta force restart my computer as trying to blind terminate the game is near impossible. Apparently Valve are aware of this and are saying it's a hardware issue and not an engine issue, even though all of my other games work fine? Screw you, Valve. Sort it out. For the time being though, i've been around a few forums (like this one on GameSpot/GameFAQs) and found that Alt+Tabbing out of the game when the engine is loaded and then Alt+Tabbing back into the game seems to stop the freezing occuring for me.

Nothing much new to talk about really. I played through Shadowgrounds which was a pretty fun romp with a none existent story and lots of shooting alien dudes. And also, for this reason I am hereby giving Shadowgrounds an 8.8 for now, as I plan to write a review for it soon that has a little more foundation to it.

I also purchased Fable: The Lost Chapters for the PC as i've heard lots of good stuff about that game from a fair few people, and Peter Molyneux is cool dude, so yeah. Justification complete. Looking forward to playing that for the next few weeks I think. I also managed to scrape some money together for a new computer case, power supply unit and a 320GB SATA hard drive, and it's pretty sweet.

Anyway, hope you're all doing okay and enjoying some awesome games.

So. I'm in Big W the other day, a bigger version of Woolworths that sells lots of stupid crap and hardly anything really useful. They sell like.. loads of electrical appliances, TVs, consoles, games, dvds, cell phones and all that other crap. They also then sell like... household items like beds and furniture and candles? Man. This shop is dumb.
    Anyway, im looking around in there for a new cell phone when I come across a brand new copy of Shadowgrounds for £3. Now, i'm no mathemagician, but £3 is about 4/5 bucks. Shadowgrounds is nothing amazing but it's not a broken game either, so for £3 brand new?

I'll take it.

Greetings, GameSpot urchins.

My apologies for the misleading title. I speak not of the Playstation 3. I infact speak of my third Playstation 2 which I acquired just the other day. I've had a bulky silver PS2 for over the past 3 years now and it's done a great job, but just like the bulky black version before it, after about 3 years the lasers in my PS2s seem to just.... fail. It starts with DVD's skipping and then as it gets worse games start to skip, the laser will generally have trouble reading data and then the whole thing just flat out stops reading disks. Hooray.

Anyway, when my old PS2 suddenly decided to fail on me I was at the very end of the brilliant game God of War, and, well... I was a bit annoyed to say the least.

On the upside though my new PS2 is a sleek silver slimline and i'm pretty happy with it. Although not a question of if this console will conk out on me, more of when... I don't think i'll be replacing it with a PS2 of any kind... and I can't see myself affording a Playstation 3 anyday soon... so that's a worrying prospect, but screw it, i'll jump that hurdle when I come to it.

    Anyway, on the gaming side of things, I did finish God of War on normal which I totally enjoyed and that game is really awesome, and then I managed to do the challenges of the gods which were pretty damn challenging, I had a few problems with a few of them but it was mainly working out the best way to do the task rather than the actual execution, anyways I didn't have rage of the gods for the last challenge and man... that thing pissed me off . Nevermind.

I'm gonna "attempt" god mode sometime soon, so wish me luck and if any of you have completed god mode or got far in it, give me some hints, my combo and evading skills are getting much better but they could definitely use some fine tuning. In between God of War I reckon I'm gonna start to play Shadow Hearts 2: Covenant which I actually bought about a month ago but haven't actually played yet.

Hope you're all doing well.
Take care,
Josh.

I haven't posted a blog in a while so I thought i'd do one today!
Well, I hope you all had a great holiday season and got lots of nice things. I did end up getting a PSP with Killzone: Liberation, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Burnout Legends and Lumines. They are all great games in my opinion and i've had loads of fun with Killzone and Lumines so far as I managed to get 100% completion in Killzone and my top score on Lumines so far is around 49000, which isn't great but i'm still having lots of fun. I'm also quite far into Burnout and GTA too, i'm 20% into Vice City Stories so far  although it's going to take me a while to unlock everything in Burnout Legends.

Also, my old graphics card (Radeon X850 XT PE) died on me the other day and so I had to get a new one. I went with the X1950 Pro, and man. I wasn't disappointed. I've been enjoying PC games with some pretty nice graphics. I've got back into Battlefield 2 so i've been playing alot of that, aswell as installing Doom 3 and Doom 3: Ressurection of Evil which I haven't actually finished yet and i've had it for ages so i'm making it my duty to finish them both in a short space of time. ^_^

Anyway, hope you are all doing good.
Take care,
Josh.

Hello Gamespot peoples! (or those of you that read this at least)
I hope you're all doing okay, some bad things have happened lately that shouldn't happen full stop, nevermind so close to a time of the year when we should all be nice and everyone should be having fun. Anyway, this nastiness aside, I hope you guys are all having a good month so far and I hope you've got some good stuff planned for christmas I know I have.

After much deliberation and pondering I have now decided that I am going to get a PSP for christmas. I have a PS2 and no other consoles so some of you might see this as the move of a Sony fanboy, but I assure you that I (like many other self-respecting folk who play games) do not support any company to any serious degree. I have absolutely nothing against Nintendo or Microsoft, I just fancy a handheld and the PSP just seems nice to me, so I don't care what anybody says!

Also I have been playing a fair few games lately. I finally finished Urban Chaos: Riot Response and it was a pretty fun game, nothing new or amazing but a fun romp none the less. Seeing Havoc physics in a PS2 game is something new to me, and it was certainly satisfying. I also bought Canis Canem Edit (Bully), Resident Evil: Code Veronica X and Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition recently, aswell as Dark Crusade which I cannot avoid as i'm a Dawn of War fanatic.

Anyways, I hope you're all having a good time right now even if there's crappy happenings all around. Take care folks and have a good holiday season. I haven't been around the forums much and I've been commenting on your blogs even less so don't expect much from me right now, but i'll get round to it someday soon.

Byebye.

On monday I found out i'd won the Guitar Hero competition on GamespotUK which is kinda nuts as i've never really won anything before. I had a really hard time finding a buddy to come with me, and the actual party was on wednesday so I had two days to sort out travel to london and back.

Anyways, most of the people I'd asked to come with me to London either couldn't make it or just didn't want to go, but luckily my buddy Dan who lives in Leeds was up for it. We got the train down to london from leeds station and then got a taxi to the event.

There was free booze! Never have I seen such a wonderful sight... a table lay before us with glasses of red and white wine and buckets of ice-cooled Stella Artois layed behind it. It was great, we had a few drinks that is for sure.

Anyways, once the guys started getting up on stage and playing Guitar Hero II things were really awesome. I dunno who these two guys were but they did pretty well and this is a song I personally love...



After people had got up and had a go, the band actually came onstage and they were okay I guess, but soon after that I bumped into Gamespot UK's own Guy Cocker who me and Dan were chatting to for a good while about all sorts of stuff, and then as the whole place was clearing out who should appear but Tony Iommi (Guitarist for Black Sabbath) which was pretty awesome. Anyway, I've got some good pics to throw up which I will be sure to do shortly.e

So yeah, after all this time I finally bought Guitar Hero new from Amazon.co.uk (with the controller of course). Man, have I been missing out. After getting an Amplitude demo on my PS2 introduction disk thingy that Sony send you when you register your console online, my faith in the rhythm genre had been restored. Guitar Hero is awesome, I'm doing pretty good so far, I skipped Easy mode completely and finished on Medium in an a few hours, and i've almost finished hard mode, only a few songs to go, and I'm hammering expert, although one look at Bark At The Moon scared me alot and i'm gonna have to get some practice in to beat that fool.

Also, on a random side note, i'm staying at my buddies University dorm for a long weekend (3/4 days) and so far it's been awesome. I brought my computer and we managed to network my PC with his laptop so I am now technically stealing bandwidth. It feels good. This place is kinda nutty with the students everywhere throwing gravel in windows and generally being annoying at stupid hours in the morning. It's been a good night though, went out drinking with some cool Irish guys who are staying in the same halls as my buddy.

Anyways, I've blabbed enough now. Take care, folks.

I finished System shock 2 in about 13 hours on normal difficulty and I gotta say I was genuinely impressed. The game was fun to play throughout, the story was pretty decent and I really loved the music.
    I've now got my hands on Planescape: Torment and i've just been mooching around The Hive doing as many quests as I could. Doing pretty well so far and the game seems pretty cool. Lots of dialogue to wade through, but most of it is pretty interesting to read so that's a bonus.
    I'm gonna try to get through this game relatively quickly so I can finally start spending some more time on my PS2... which reminds me... I'm going to get Guitar Hero with the controller on thursday. I've put it off long enough. The time is at hand.

Goodbye and take care.