if you have been following my blogs at all over the last few months, i'm sure you have been aware that for a while i was having terrible computer problems. After taking it into the shop, i was informed that a stick of ram had become defective, and i got my computer back about two weeks ago, eager to delve into some gaming. This is just a recap of previous blogs.

Yesterday i was noticing some wierndess when using my comptuer; dragon age BSOD'd on me once, i was getting errors while web browsing; i was getting suspicious. Today, the errors and BSOD's increased in frequency, and started reminding me of the problems i was having before i took my computer to the shop. Ready to despair, i tried a few things like reinstalling drivers, etc. I was at a point where every time i turned on my computer, i would get a BSOD within 2 minutes of getting to the desktop.

Then i realized something - I have 4 1 gig sticks of ram in my computer. Two of them i bought last boxing day, and one of them is the one replaced by the shop when i took it in, and the other was one of the two sticks i put in when i built my computer a little over a year ago. It occured to me that if one of these sticks had died, the other might have as well. I turn off my computer, open the case, and pull out the stick of ram that is the pair to the one which caused me problems.

Tense and pessamistic, i boot my computer. No crash. I start Mirrors Edge (my latest game purchase) and play for 30 minutes. No crashing, freezing, problems of any kind! Now the final test - i start Dragon Age, and play for 20 minutes - no crashing, no problem!

so Ha i say, Ha, finally i was victorious in my ongoing battle against computer hardware.

Funny how with some games, you can play for 3 hours and write a comprehensive first impressions blog. With Dragon Age: Origins, after 3 hours i felt like i hadn't even scratched the surface of this behemoth of a Role Playing Game. I've now put in around 10 hours, and i feel that i have played enough to produce a good first impressions blog. In short, if your to lazy to read the rest of this, i love it, and i can't wait until i'm done with final exams so i can spend a good amount of time playing through it.

Dragon Age feels like a Bioware game through and through, and this is in no way shape or form a bad thing. Everything feels well thought out, and unlike most games, there are very few weaknesses from what i have seen. The dialogue is interesting and enjoyable, with clearly defined good-guy and bad-guy choices and everything in between. After playing Mass Effect, it seems a bit odd that your protagonist doesn't speak during dialogue scenes, but you get used to this fairly quickly and doesn't really detract form the game at all. The game is structured in a very similar way to Mass Effect; there is a fairly lengthy prologue in which the stage is set for the story and setting of the game, then you are launched into a huge world with a list of things you are supposed to do in no particular order. To move from place to place, you select a location on a world map, and you will go there, although your journey will be interrupted if you encounter something along the way (like evil bandits who want your shiny hat).

My biggest concern before i bought the game was the combat; i'm a fan of being able to directly control a characters attacks and so forth, but because i went in expecting the worst, i was pleasantly surprised. Combat is very involving, and at no time are you sitting back and watching your hero bash away at a bad guy. Your pausing the game, switching between characters, selecting special moves, downing health potions, and doing your damnedest to keep all party members alive and fighting rather than dead or sitting off to one side doing nothing at all. I've come to really enjoy the combat, to the point where i'm dissapointed when some of the smaller battles are over. I'm playing the game on Easy difficulty because i heard this was a tough game, and i'm glad i am, since most of the battles i win i feel like i just managed to scrape by. Rarely do i leave a battle with all party members alive.

The only real problem (which isn't really a problem) i could find with the game is that the gameworld isn't all that original, and seems to be very similar to J.R. Tolkien's(i think thats his name) Middle earth from Lord of the Rings. I love this aspect myself, i'm a huge fan of the LOTR trilogy, and happily created a Dwarf warrior whom i name Gimli after my favorite character. The Origin story was really great, and i look forwards to playing through different origin stories in subsequent playthroughs. Visually the game looks... fine. Nothing mindblowing, but the visuals work well with the setting and don't distract from the excellent gameplay (how many times did you get killed in Crysis because you were busy gawking at the beautiful sunset over the tropical ocean).

I could go on and on about Dragon age, i really could, this is easily my favorite game of 09 so far (barring unforeseen horriblness later in the game). I urge anyone who enjoys RPG's, or anyone remotely interested in trying RPG's to pick this game up. I would also recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed Mass Effect, since they play so similarly. Good job Bioware, another fantastic title to play and replay... and replay and replay.

I finally got the call earlier this week that my computer had been fixed and is ready to pick up. As i suspected, the ram was the culprit, luckily it was only one stick though. It didn't die, i just went rogue on me and started writing all over the place, corrupting basically anything and everything i tried to install. It has now been fixed, and since getting my computer back i have already installed Borderlands and transferred all my save games/profile from my other computer. It ran flawlessly, i'm really enjoying my new moniter, the contrast and colors are so much richer than with my old one, everything seems sharper as well.

I'm installing Dragon Age: Origins as i type this, i'm really pumped up to play it after all the praise it has received from critics and gamers alike. I really loved Mass Effect, and i'm excited to try a more traditional RPG by the same developer. I've decided once and for all that i am not going to be buying Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; it just doesn't look like enough of an improvement to warrent me spending $60 on it. I'm still really enjoying Borderlands (i'm now lvl 30, still on my first playthrough), and i'm sure Dragon Age: Origins will suck up a fair bit of my time. After that i'll probably get Arkham Asylum and Risen, but that won't be for a while.

My college semester is coming to an end, and i will have 3 or so weeks to do whatever i please; i'm hoping to get out skiing as much as possible since the mountains have been getting a lot of snow and since i live in Vancouver, i won't be able to get up much during January/February because of all the Olympics nonsense. While i hope to do a substantial amount of gaming over the holiday, i'm looking past that to the two weeks i get off from college during the Olympics. I'm not going to be able to get out much because of traffic and other such insanity, so i'm planning on becoming a hermit for the two-week period, leaving my house only for food and occasionally exercise.

My next blog will probably be either a Dragon Age first impressions blog, or a Review of Borderlands.

If you read my last blog, i'm sure your assuming that i have fixed my gaming computer. Sadly this is not the case; i spent a lot of time in the last week or so trying to fix it, and all i was able to determine was that it was defenitely a hardware problem. I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows, and i was still getting BSOD crashes. I took it into the shop today, i used to work for this particular computer shop so i should be able to get a discount.

To entertain myself in the mean time, i installed Borderlands on the 'family' computer; which i beefed up with my old nvidia 8600; its only a year or so old and has a AMD quad core cpu and 4 gigs of ram, so it can run Borderlands without to much trouble on med-high settings at 1650x1050. I've reached level 11 in the game so far, and have dabbled in singelplayer and online co-op. I'll start by talking about the singleplayer.

I wanted to become competent at the game before launching myself into the online co-op, so i played for a couple of hours just to familiarize myself with the gameplay and get some decent weapons to take online. While the story is obviously terrible, this is not the kind of game that needs a story; Borderlands is purely about the moment to moment gameplay, and if done right, these kinds of games can be far more gratifying than those which rely on a story and a script (like Bioshock). Borderlands succeeds at creating excellent moment to moment gameplay; the guns look and feel great, they feel just like they should when you fire them, and the unpredictability of which gun you will use next is fantastic. All the different weapons feel so good that i have no preference for one type of weapon over another; i'm just as comfortable staying back and sniping as i am going in close with a shot gun. This is an achievement few games have achieved in the past, and the excellent gunplay alone makes this game worth playing. After indulging in the game for a number of hours, i felt a bit tired of it, and thought, 'well, maybe it isn't that good after all. Maybe it will be overly repetative.' coming home two hours later, i could't wait to start playing again. It is the unpredictability of Borderlands that makes it so addictive, and this is in no way shape or form a bad thing.

It is no secret that Borderlands was designed with online-co-op in mind. I am not usually a fan of co-op type games (never cared for Left 4 Dead), but the co-op component of Borderlands appealed to me, so i thought i'd give it a go. After a few failed attempts at connecting to a host, i finally got into a game where i was the lowest level character. I was level 9, while the other 3 were levels 11, 15, and 20. The lvl 15 player dropped soon after i entered, but i still had a blast playing with the other two fellows. They were pretty good about not just running off on their own searching for loot; instead we set off on a quest to kill something. We encountered a incredibly tough foe soon enough; a 'badass bruiser,' it was level 22, so none of us could kill it at all easily. We quickly found that the only the lvl 20 player could do any real damage against this thing, so we adopted a effective team stragety after a few tries; me and the lvl 11 player would distract this huge bugger, we would keep our distance and pick away at it with our weaker weapons while the lvl 20 player snuck up behind it and threw grenades and blasted it with his shotgun. When either me or the lvl 11 player got down to the 'last wind' thing, the other would revive him. We managed to perpetuate this until we killed the brute, and it was very satisfying indeed. After this the lvl 11 player left and a few lvl20 + players joined, at which point i became useless and left the game.

But if that brief encounter was a sign of things to come, i look forward to playing the game more in the near future, unlocking new and interesting weapons, and taking on tough foes. Finally, a mmo style co-op game i can appreciate and enjoy.

Well, great. Its the peak of the gaming season, loads of excellent titles are flooding the shelves, and i was ready...

until my computer decided to crap out on me. I'm to tired to go into the details, but lets just say i'm unsure of what the problem is, and whatever it is, its preventing me from gaming. I'm sure it will involve me spending a large amount of money at some point.

For those who are interested, here is a link to my topic on the PC Game/Hardware forums where i describe what the problem is:http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27088630&tag=topics;title

So basically, i'm being forced to put down all of my gaming until i have the time and money to fix my computer, which will likely not be until the middle of december.

Except for Dues Ex, which thankfully i have have installed on my laptop.

Also, changed my Avatar/Sig - Hunter S. Thompson all the way.

All i can say, until next time, is Ugh, Bah, and Bugger.

This game is awsomeness at its best, give it a go if your on the ropes

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/redfactioniii/player_review.html?id=688571

In other news, i'm still playing Deus Ex, and have picked up playing Resident Evil 5 again, as clunky and unintuitive as it may be. The Last Stand DLC for Dawn of War II turned out to be amazing, i've played around 50 games so far and hope to continue playing it. Go Go Relic!

I'm going to be buying Dragon Age for sure, it looks amazing, but i'm really on the fence about Borderlands. It looks really fun, but i'm not sure if i have the time to be playing that and Dragon age. I've got a friend who is interested in Borderlands, so i think i'm going to buy it, but i'm still unsure. Any comments on the matter by those who have played it would be appreciated.

My next blog will either be a first impressions of Dragon Age, A first impressions of Borderlands, or a review of Deus Ex. No idea which.

I wrote the review using a word processor for the first time, so it should be a bit more coherent than most of my reviews

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/gearsofwar/player_review.html?id=686580

In other news i'm almost done Red Faction: Guerrilla and my next blog will likely be a review of this game. I also picked up Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, and while i like it i'm putting it on hold until i finish some of the games i have on my plate. I'm hoping to have chewed through most of my current gaming in time for Dragon Age, which looks promising. I also plan on getting Risen at some point, and i will be playing the new Dawn of War II Last Stand mode. Dammit, there just isn't enough time to game these days, i'll have to play catch-up during the winter break.

NFS: shift turned out to be a dud, and while i'm still going to continue with Red Faction: Guerrilla, its starting to get a lot harder and will require more time and effort; i'm putting it to the side for the time being. I picked up Resident Evil 5 (the first resident evil game i've ever played) and i'll talk about that. I didn't plan on playing Dues Ex, but during a forum debate the game came up as being highly reccomended. Its a game i've been wanting to play for a while but haven't had the chance to get around to, luckily the difficult task of finding the game was totally avoided when a kind user, who shall remain nameless i guess, gifted me the game through steam. I've had the chance to play both games enough to generate first impressions.

Deus Ex: Without a doubt this is a fine example of what a proper action/RPG can be at its best. At first i had trouble getting into the game due to its dated visuals, but after playing a bit i started really enjoying myself. Deus Ex really allows you to choose how to handle different situations; so far its been possible to approach almost any situation using either stealth or action, both of which the game pulls off expertly. The stealth is a lot like that in early Splinter Cell games, with electronic gadgets, computer hacking and lock picking a neccesity. The shooting works well to, although it is highly tactical and clearly not aimed at the run and gun crowd.

What really sets Deus Ex apart, for me anyways, is the insane attention to detail, and the way almost all of your actions affect how other characters view you and think of you. This became immidiatly apparent when during my first visit to the UNATCO (the company you work for in the game) headquarters. I was wandering around when, for no real reason, i went into the womens washroom. There was a lady inside to scolded me, and i left promptly. Later on, after the briefing for the next mission, the guy giving me the instructions said something along the lines of "oh, and stay out of the womens washroom; it emberasses UNATCO more than it does you." This just blew me away. Who knew that such a seemingly insignificant action would have any consequence whatsoever?

Finding flaws in this game so far has been rather difficult, and other than one oddity i don't think i could find any fault in the game without nitpicking to an extreme. The only problem i've had is that sometimes during combat, when you have hit a enemy AI soldier once without killing him, he will often simply drop his weapon and run around like a chicken with its head cut off. It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does it usually ends in me giving chase with crowbar in hand, causing for some rather comical sequences of events. This is in no way shape or form gamebreaking, but it does break the tension the game so regularly builds during stealth sequences. I look forwards to playing this game more in the coming weeks.

Resident Evil 5: I know many will have trouble believing that i've never played a Resident Evil game before, but i simply haven't. Until now, no game in the series has really interested me much. Resi. 5 look promising though, so i thought i'd give it a go. I spent the first 10 minutes of gameplay hating the game for its clunky controls and slow movement/turn speed, but soon i realized that these mechanics are no different than those in Dead Space, and i quickly got used to them. After settling in, i started enjoying things a bit more, and while the game is obviously flawed (the inventory system is so bad it hurts, Sheva is not a very effective teamate most of the time when controlled by AI), its still a fun experience. So far there have been some really tense moments, and i always feel relieved when i pop the last zombie head in sight open. The lighting and character models are rather impressive, but the textures are often very muddy and lack detail. It runs great though, so its hard to complain. I'd give Resi. 5 a thumbs up from what i've seen; it feels like a solid and generally entertaining action adventure game with survival horror elements thrown in.

In other game related news, i started playing Gears of War again, and am almost finished the campaign. I hope to have a review up within the next couple of weeks.

The two games i got first of my list compiled in my last blog are Need for Speed: Shift and Red Faction Guerrilla. I decided upon these two because I currently don't have a lot of time for gaming, and both those games are well suited to short chunks of playing; in Shift, you can jump in for a couple races, in Red Faction, you can do a mission or some side missions. Both fit the bill quite well, and i am pleased with both games, although neither are mind blowing (which is what i expected; i'm saving my high hopes for Arkham Asylum which is next on my list).

First i will talk about Need for Speed: Shift. I don't play a lot of driving games, but i enjoy the odd one, the last two being GRID and Burnout: Paradise. I felt the need (for speed) once again recently, and Shift seemed like my best bet (although I was sorely dissapointed to heard that Dirt 2 was delayed for the PC). I've had the chance to play Shift for around 4 or so hours so far, and have been enjoying the game for the most part. It is similar to GRID in some ways, although i prefer the driving mechanics in GRID. Shift's driving physics seem a bit skittish, you never seem to turn the car; instead it seem to skid around corners unless you slow to a crawl, which is ill advised while in the middle of a race. Where Shift does out do GRID is in the car collection and custamization, which is lots of fun and not apparant at all in either of the racing titles i mentioned earlier. The system of progression through tears works well, and the driver A.I. is pretty good; they make mistakes which is a nice in that it makes races unpredictable enough to keep adrenaline flowing. It looks pretty good, comparable to GRID, although the lighting effects seem a bit lacking. So far i'd give Shift an 8/10.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is a game within a genre i have considerably more expertise than that of the racing scene. Volition once again shows up Rockstar games in making a game that is fun while challenging, unlike the exascerbating GTA IV, which while miles ahead of Volition games in technology and story telling, lacks notably in the fun department. Guerrilla seems a lot like Saints Row 2 on mars, but with more serious and straightforward gameplay. Guerrilla is fun, well deseigned, and the destruction is fantastic. The story is weak, as are the graphics, but this can be forgiven due to fantastic desctruction, gunplay, and surprisingly intelligent enemy A.I. Its a great game to screw around in, and is just perfect for my current gaming needs. From what i've seen i'd also give it an 8/10.

Its been a while since my last blog, and for good reason. I'm not bored with gamespot, but with videogames in general, not as an entertainment form, but because of a serious lack of good titles in the last few months. Gears got old fast, and i've been sustaining myself on The Witcher, which i recently reinstalled and gotten further in (now in the middle of act III), and Dawn of War II's multiplayer (one hell of a game, 5 months of heavy playing and i still love it).

This should all change september 15, at which point PC gaming will have a glorious day. Batman: Arkham Asylum (which you console users have already had a chance to play), Need for Speed: Shift and Resident Evil 5. These titles may seem like old new to many of you, but i'm exclusivley a pc gamer and have not had a chance to play any of them (save the pc demo for Arkham Asylum, which was fantastic). Those games should easily sustain me into the christmas rush of great titles, so the future of gaming for me is looking pretty bright. my only concern is finding time to play all of these great titles.

On another note, i've finally found a gamespot union which interests me, the Film Appreciation Union is really fantastic, lots of familiar names within the ranks, and generally very mature and interesting discussions.

EDIT: oooh, i just learned that Red Faction Geurilla is also coming out on the 15th. i've got my work cut out for me.

I know i'm a bit late for the party, and i'm playing the game a couple of years after its release, but i still wanted to try it. I got it when it first came out for windows, but it didn't work on my pc. Finally a couple of days ago I saw that they had it on sale at futureshop and decided to buy it. To be honest, i expected the game to be really bad and overhyped, and while I would defeniley consider the game overhyped, its far from bad. Its a very solid shooter with impressive visuals and i'm happy that I bought it. I'm only a few levels in, but i'll share my opinions of the game so far, even though i'm sure everyone here has played the game already and formulated there own opinions.

The Good: Great visuals, although i am getting tired of the Unreal Engine 3, this game can hardly be blamed for that since it was the first game to use the engine when it came out. The facial animations are particularly impressive, the textures are also very good, i'm glad i waited to buy it since now my pc can run the game on max settings with AA without breaking a sweat.

- gunplay, the guns feel great, the kick and spray feel just right. I've only been able to try a few different weapons (the pistol, burst machine gun and the chainsaw machine gun + grenade) but they all feel fantastic.

- difficulty - hardcore mode (fancy talk for medium/regular) is just perfect, you cant run and gun, you need to use your head to outflank enemies and such, your health/enemies health is just perfect to create a fun yet challenging experience.

- Cover system - defenitley a quality cover system, the fact that you can press a movement key and launch into a move which will get you to the next peice of cover is great, it really makes the battles fun and frantic.

The Bad: not a lot to say, i cant comment on the story yet as i've just started but it seems relativley non existant so far, i wish the levels were less linear, but they map open up later on in the game, and I wish your teamates did't have to rely on you alone to heal them, I mean honestly, why cant they heal each other?

Overall i'm really enjoying the game, as I said i'm not sure it deserves the praise it receives from some, it does feel like it was deseigned with consoles in mind, but the port is one of high quality, and i look forwards to finishing the game in the coming weeks.

About a month ago i was on the off-topic forums reading over a topic about some guy who wanted a bunch of movie suggestions. One bloke, i forget who, had posted a rather comprehensive list of movies, many of which i had seen and loved. The #1 movie on this list was called Unforgiven, I looked it up on IMDB, and discovered it was a Clint Eastwood film, in fact it was considered to be his best. I had never seen a 'real' western at this point (the closest thing being 3:10 to Yuma), so i didn't really know what to excpect, but decided to give the movie a watch anyways. I really liked the movie, it had some interesting elements to it, and the gravity put on killing was a refreshing change from the mindless slaughter that can so often be found in action movies these days.

I enjoyed the movie so much that the next day I went out and rented The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which is widley toted to be one of the greatest films of all time. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed the movie, even though it was made in 1966 the special effects were great, the acting fansastic (didn't know Clint acted in this one), the cinematography spectacular, but what really sealed the deal was the music. I've heard the theme music so many times, and now i know where it comes from. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is going to enter my top 10 for sure.

I also bought Call of Juares: Bound in Blood when it came out, i never played the first one, but BiB looked promising. At first I didn't really liked it, I played through half of the first mission, left the game for three days, played up to half way through the second mission, and left the game for a week. Finally today I started getting into the game, and am now really enjoying it. I'm already planning on playing it twice, once as Thomas, and once as McKaw (i'm not sure if thats spelled correctly). I'll probably get the first Call of Juarez game as well, i'm sure its dirt cheap by now.

I'm now on the lookout for more good westerns to watch, the director of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has some others that look interesting, namely Once upon a Time in the West. If any of you know of any good westerns, i'd appreciate some reccomendations.

I'm not to fond of this review, i was tired when i wrote it. Great game though, my favorite online game of 09' so far

ok, google chrome is being an ass, and not letting me copy the link to the review, so you'll have to to it the old fasioned way. click on profile home, scroll down to the bottom, and click on the review. sorry for the inconvinience.

I decided to ignore the sleugh of warnings about the messy release of the latest edition of the United States Armies most creative recuitment tool, America's Army 3, and give it a download. I mean, after all, it is free. The difficulties began when I had trouble making an account. Fifth try is the charm it seeems, and I am in! Now, to get past all this training and delve into the sweet online play that the AA series is known for. Before I even load up the first training mission, I quit the game and force Anti Alaising through Nhancer, to get rid of those ugly jaggies. It seems to have worked, so I start up the first training level. Its an obstacle course, i manage to get through it, but am surprised that there is no HUD and no instructions on which key to press to perform various actions.

Next up is the shooting range mission, which is surprisingly difficult. I manage to Qualify, barely, on my thrid try. Then, disaster strikes. I'm sent back to the main menu, and all my training progress is deleted. Balls. Discouredged, I quit the game and go back to my old friend Dawn of War II (which i will be reviewing soon). Later on, i try the training again, and manage to get past the first two training missions, this time the first training saves, but not the second. Oh well, at least i'm making progress. The next time i play I manage to get through the shooting range and advanced weapons training in one fell swoop, although my heavy machine gun dissapears at one point, but, they both save.

But after this is my greatest challenge yet. Medical training, where i have to pay attention. I go through the practice Prodecures, but keep getting stuck at one that I cant seem to finish. I try a few times, and eventually give up and go for help on the forums. Its the Anti Alaising, it removes the HUD! I guess i'll have to live with the jaggies. I manage to get through medical training after a few tries, and the advanced course on my second try. It all saves, i'm happy.

Now its time to jump online for the meat of the game; the fun part. Instantly after joining a server i am sent back to the main menu. Same story for a few others, then success! i'm in. Dear god, the lag is horrendous. I glitch about for about 30 seconds then get shot up. For those of you that don't know, the gameplay is about the same as counter strike, where if you die, you have to wait for the round to finish. Discouredged, i quit. I try again later, and this server is much better, but 3 rounds in, when i'm finaly getting the hand of things, my gun dissapears. Great. Next round, i take cover behind a hay bale only to find i cant move, shoot, or turn in any direction. I manage to kill myself with a grenade. So far, things arent looking very good (and my blog is looking longer than i anticipated).

The next day, i give the game a try, and have an absolute blast. Three hours of uninterupted play, and i'm getting really good. My team is very good, several of us have mics, and were are coordinating attacks and winning rounds. The healing mechanic is excellent, i never though the medical training would actually come in handy, but it really does. My best moment comes on the pipeline map, where i hang back a bit from my team, go to the right of an enemy building and see a door open and gun come out, he's camping, i throw a grenade in and get a kill. I join my squad in the basement of the main building, and hear gunfire up ahead. I find most of my squad dead or wounded, I heal and revive those I can and manage to pop an enemy in the skull as he tryies to limp away. My squad goes of to the left, while me and another guy go to the right, we know of a secret way to get to the objective. We climb up a ladder into the rafters of the building, sneak along, i look down and see an enemy hucking grenades at my squadmates who are still in the basement. I taake him down, and keep moving, drop down from the rafters right above the objecive, and no one is there. I secure it, and we win the match. Damn that was fun.

So if you have a PC, and are looking for a glitchy but really excellent online shooter, check out America's Army 3.

I got Dawn of War II when it first came out for the multiplayer, but ended up getting totally engrossed in the campaign mode. eventually i lost interest and forgot about the game. When i reinstalled XP, i was bored of the games i had been playing, and was snooping about for something else i could install, and remembered Dawn of War II. I installed it, and have been playing the multiplayer steadily ever since. Its fun, but also very hard as many of the players are very experienced. This can work for and against you, if you have one or two of these experienced players on your side it really helps, but if your on a team with other new comers to the game and the opponents are all of high level, you are totally screwed. I'be played about 15 games so far and have only won 4, and only about 4 or 5 others have been close. The rest have been total sh*t shows where me and my team get trounced.

When you do have a good team, the game is very, very fun. Battles can last for very long periods of time and become incredibly intense. Later on, when some of the bigger and more powerful units show up on the battlefield things can get really hectic. I just played a game where my team was losing badly, and all three off the enemy teams had gathered around our base. my team talked amongst ourselves, and managed to coordinate a double ion cannon strike, which totally decimated the enemy army, we then went on to win the game. I don't think i've had this much fun with a multiplayer rts since World in Conflict two years ago.

I'm also looking to buy the newly released Prototype, which looks very promising indeed. I've heard multiple reports that the PC version is very well optimized and looks better than the console version, so i'm looking forwards to getting my hands on it, its been a while since i've played a good action game. The idea of being a totally overpowered beast appeals to me, i'm probably going to get the game on saturday (tommorow), i'll blog about how it is after i've had a chance to play if for a while. I'm hoping to continue playing Dawn of War II because it seems like the type of game where you have to play it constantly to get good, which is my goal. I've already improved a lot since i started, but i have a lot to improve on. I'm currently unemployed, but am sitting on a huge pile of money, and have no major expenses in the near future, so i hope to get a fair bit of gaming done and catch up on some sleep in the next month before I start looking for work again.

I'm really pissed off right now. In my last blog i explained how my hard drive had died. Today i went out and bought a new one, installed it into my system, booted, set the bios to boot off that hard drive first, then i restarted. I placed the XP cd into the cd drive, but it still told me to place a bootable device into the computer. I tried taking out the disc and putting it in again, still no luck. I go back to the bios, and notice that my CD drive is not being recognozed, neither is my DVD drive. I open up the computer, and see that the IDE cable has become detatched from the motherboard adapter. I try to plug it back in, but the right side wont go in. I try with another IDE cable, same problem, its the adapter for sure. I take a closer look, the prong on the far right side has been pushed back. I spend about 30-40 minutes grappling with it to try and get the prong back in place, but no luck.

So because a single prong has become slightly bent, i cannot use my gaming computer at all until i get this fixed, or go out and buy a SATA DVD or CD drive. this is the stupidest problem i have ever had by far.

EDIT: After much cursing and the use of a dry wall screw, i managed to repair the bent prong. xp is installing now. woot.

god dammit, you should all be glad gamespot enforces language cencorship otherwise i'd be spewing forth a stream of language so foul it would offend people of all races and beleifs. After going through a huge overhaul of my system, having to buy new hardware and spend many days recovering data, my new hardrive, not even two months old, had failed. Words cannot describe how annoyed i am. I dont have time for this nonsense. This is almost enough to make me give up on self built and maintained computers; i never had so many and so frequent problems with my good old 2004 dell desktop. All the money i saved building my own system has been long since squandered on repairs and replacement parts.

What really agitates me is that the series of hard drives i bought was known to have some issues with corruption, I found this out shortley after buying it, and i was sent to a website where i could check to see if my particular hard drive was affected with this problem. I jumped through the required hoops, and was informed that the hard drive was problem free. Then, one and a half months later, i start having issues with slow startup into windows. Not virus related. I manage to fix the problem using system restore, but it occurs a second time, i fix it using system restore, it occurs a third time, system restore doesn't work. All of the sudden, my sound stops working. I try an xp repair install, and boom, hard drive failure. First and last time I buy a hard drive from seagate.

i don't usually blob about stuff as trivial as this, but i actually put more than 30 seconds into making this one. its basically the covers of my favorite movies out there, except for no country for old men, even though that film is in my top five the cover art is not particularly inspired. other than that it goes from left to right, fear and loathing being number 1, and there will be blood #6. no country would be inbetween A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space odyssey had i included it.

For all my gaming years, i've put singleplayer gaming above multiplayer. but other than cryostasis, 2009 has been a crappy year for singleplayer pc games. i've dabbled in multiplayer gaming, but the only two games which had me hooked for any amount of time have been Call of Duty 4 and and World in Conflict (which i loved, but i lost the bloody cd key). Over the last couple of weeks, i've pulled out some of the mp games i have but never got into/played, + some new ones.

The main one i've been playing is BF; heroes, but the game has lost its charm, and i've found myself playing it less and less. Playing this game did remind me of Team Fortress 2, which while i do own i never really played much, because there is no real sense of progression. Well, valve fixed that problem, and now all the characters can be leveled/upgraded, which makes TF2 the main game i've been playing.

I've also dipped back into the multiplayer of Far Cry 2, which i have always enjoyed, but have been torn away from for various reaons. There are some excellent custom maps now, and most servers have strict rules about which weapons can be used, and while the matchmaking system is silly, its bearable; the leveling/upgrading system makes all the hassle worth it. I've been busy with school work, but when i have been gaming, those are the games i've been playing, except for a bit of Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, which while excellent, is not a mainstay fps. My only trouble is with TF2, the gameplay is very fun, and i want to get more into it, but i'm being held back by spys. I like to play as a heavy, i'm pretty good, but i've been having a lot of trouble keeping alive because of backstabbing spies. I spy check to an extreme, but still they manage to flank and stab me in the back time and time again; 9/10 deaths will be at the hands of a backstab from a spy. I know heavy's are spy magnets, but its my favorite class, i've tried them all. so if anyone has any tips about how to keep spies from my ass, they would be more than welcome.

here is my review of GTAIV

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/grandtheftauto4/player_review.html?id=657569&tag=all-about;review1

Also, i tried reinstalling Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, i didn't get into it much the first time i played it because it kept on crashing, but with my now clean PC the game runs great. I must say i'm very impressed with what i've seen so far, it feels very authentic and the gunplay is much better than the first BIA game. i'm thinking it BIA:HH will easily be my favorite WWII themed game of 2008. if you havent played it, and enjoy tactical FPS's, i urge you to give it a try.