A recent strip from the much loved and highly popular PennyArcade really says it how it is regarding the recent conferences from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony from this years E3. Link!

As for the rest of E3 it opened my eyes that as a single platform gamer, PC in my case, you really do limit yourself to a smaller gaming experience than if you branch out to multiple platforms or consoles. While i'm still of the opinion that PC gaming has the better perks (free DLC, mods, graphics etc) than consoles it really lacks the social aspect that consoles do. Many times during the live shows users in the chat were organising gaming nights and such. This just doesn't happen with PC gaming in general. The only example of a social or community feature available for all PC gamers is STEAM but again you can only play with others using games available on STEAM.

My birthday is towards the end of August and i'm contimplating that perhaps its time i ventured back into console gaming, the last console i owned was an N64 so its been awhile. I'm not saying i'd give up PC gaming but there is no denying that consoles, the 360 being an example, are getting more titles released earlier than the PC is. A good example is Fable 2 and the Force Unleashed which at the moment are console only with no word about a future PC release date. Then there is the fact that console gaming is cheaper too and i can certainly agree with that. As my recent PC shopping experience has shown me you need a small fortune to really get a decent PC for gaming. And its a constantly evolving platform where what was the best one month soon gets replaced with a better version. Plus the fact that PC games are getting more and more system demanding you need a decent PC to make them run well.

While its an undisputable fact that games on the PC look better than their console counterparts you can atleast live in the knowledge playing it on a console will mean its looking the best it can. Without worrying about whether you can run the game on low, medium, high or a mixture of settings to get a balance between decent performance and visuals. Its a common annoyance with PC games that many now are system demanding but dont make up for it with the gameplay, Bioshock being an example. It looks great with both the setting and atmosphere being awesome but the gameplay was mediocre at best. The same with Crysis for me, it looked good even on a 7900GS and it performed well but the gameplay just didn't amaze me like it has for so many.

Other than E3 i've really not been up to anything at all. As tamsj04 picked up in the chat during the live shows where a few of my comments were full of adult inuendo, sorry for that tams. Things between the girlfriend and me haven't been the best, infact in some areas non existant, which has been annoying. What with it being summer and her taking part in both golf and swimming plus the two of us working we really haven't seen much of each other. And considering i work late hours or split shifts we really are like ships passing through the night at times. Then of course when we do get time together it just turns into bickering or snapping at each other over the smallest of things which sparks big arguments. One such argument involved a Tom and Jerry mug going across the kitchen, i loved that mug. Been like this for months now and its starting to get on my nerves. I've never complained about her busy personal schedule, i understand sports like golf and swimming require constant training or practice.

But it seems at times i'm the only one making the sacrafices to my personal time lol. Gaming is my hobby and my second passion and i gladly pass it up to spend time with her but it just seems if i ask her to do the same its like i'm asking for the world to revolve around me. A balance is needed i think and soon or i think i may just snap her golf clubs....

Hope everyone enjoyed E3, was a pleasure chatting to the Room 0 folks. Hopefully one day i may be able to take part in this sunday driving and late night UNO sessions everyone was talking about!

As the title says i've reduced the number of users i track here on Gamespot so i can keep track of more peoples blogs that i'm genuinely interested in. If you were removed and usually comment on my blogs then i apologise, just let me know and i'll track you again. There really was just so many it became hard to remember who was who lol.

I have to admit that it isn't as easy to stop tracking people as it is to start. I'm still seeing people classed as "watched users" in my contacts tab when i've clicked to stop tracking them, somewhat annoying it hasn't updated yet. So hopefully my profile will update tomorrow and i can keep track of peoples blogs better. But these glitches aside i hope to now be able to actually see more blogs posted, by users i'm interested in tracking, update more often and create a solid little community of blogs for me to browse and comment on.

See you all in Room 0 for the next Live Show!

Soooooo.....

I'm sitting here with a cup of tea and a ciggie in one hand and its 4:58am, can't seem to sleep and its daylight outside. What better excuse than to blog, hopefully by the time i finish this i'll feel the need to head to sleep if for no other reason than some cuddles with the girlfriend.

Suppose i should recap on my last blog about how the PC shopping has gone. Well its gone quite well and i think i've pretty much narrowed down the parts i'll buy all i need to do is figure out which case to get. Popular opinion points to the Antec900 for its great ventiliation however i hear its noisy which is a little annoying if true, but possibly an annoyance i could live with. Probably going to buy all the parts closer to my birthday, August 25th, so i've got some time to save up the extra cash and maybe splash out on a new monitor.

Went to see Wanted starring Angelina Jolie and James McaAvoy and i'll be honest the only good thing about that film was the 1 or 2 seconds you got to see Angelina's bare bum on the big screen. Yes i'm shallow but considering the rest of the film it really was the only memorable scene. Think the next film on the "must see" list is WALL-E which looks as if it'll be quite good, visually i have to say it looks very good even for a Pixar film. Heres to hoping they make some Team Fortress 2 film perhaps?

I haven't really been playing many games other than Age of Conan, level 51 now, and the game still has me hooked. Its got such a great atmosphere to it, the dark and more mature orientated setting really keeps me interested. I just hope FunCom get their thumb out and start fixing some of the more serious bugs that i've begun to notice as i advance further into the game.

Can't say theres many games coming out on the PC soon that i intend to buy either which is a little disheartening. Makes me keep second guessing whether i should buy a new PC or not until i remember just how much of a headache it is to try and play more modern games on this machine.

Been following two console only games quite a bit recently, Too Human and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which i wish were coming out on the PC aswell. They look really good and Too Human especially has me peaked for its more sci-fi and fantasy mix on norse mythology. I guess i have E3 to look forward to and Valve hopefully giving some more information about Left4Dead but still there seems to be a bit of a dull patch in terms of PC releases recently.

I've also got to get reading everyones blogs that i've missed. It seems that some users on Gamespot that i'm tracking and who are tracking me don't seem to have their newest blogs coming up on the "Tracked Blogs" tab. Its become really annoying as when a user posts a new blog i either miss it or take forever to reply because i only stumble upon it by chance as i check their page. It also makes me look rude if someone comments on my blog and i dont comment back on their new blog aswell.

Well i've finished my cup of tea so i'm going to end this bloghere. Probably post a new one in a few days regarding just Age of Conan as i feel it deserves a little blog time from me .

Well i went to go see the Incredible Hulk today and thats where this blog title came from. In a rather comical scene where Bruce Banner is being threatened by some thugs he tries to tell them not to make him angry in spanish, atleast i think it was spanish, but ends up getting his words and meanings mixed up lol. The film itself was pretty good and a lot better than the previous Hulk movie directed by Ang Lee. Visually the Hulk himself looks closer to the comics and i liked that. The story itself is sort of carries on from where the previous film left off, Banner is on the run from the US army and General "Thunderbolt" Ross is still chasing after him.

I wont go into too much detail because some of you may not have seen the film yet or heard/seen any information about the trailers and plot so i'll not spoil it for you. That being said i feel the need to mention something that happens in the film that has strengthened my excitement for a specific film that definately looks like it will be made at some point in the future.

***SPOILER***

I also wanted to ask does anyone else find it weird that the adverts before trailers for films always seem to be for mobile phones or digital cameras? My girlfriend was the one who pointed it out to me when a T-Mobile advert played then another for O2 and a digital camera advert played followed by a random car advert of all things. We found it a bit strange they advertise this sort of thing in a cinema then play the reminder about piracy and keeping mobile phones turned off in the cinema after subjecting us to 10 minutes of adverts containing nothing but mobile phones and cameras lol.

We also mused that with every big 'blockbuster' film having a game adaptation made, why dont the marketing people include the games trailer to those adverts before the film shows. What better way to sell your game than to show the game trailer for say Iron Man before the film starts because at the end of the film you know every kid is going to ask their parents for the game. Hmm maybe i should apply for a job in a marketing agency and propose this idea....

And to end this blog i'd like to link you to my topic (here is the link) in the PC hardware boards. I've haven't had much help there so if some of you could be kind enough to take time out and post a reply there to help me out i'd be grateful. Really want to find out what parts would make a good PC so i have some idea on what to order. I was hoping to get a list of the parts i need and then order them in August for my birthday, that way i've got time to save up the cash if needed and i get a new PC for my brithday !

Diablo 3 has been announced, surprised? shocked? excited? or just don't care?

Personally i'm a mixture of happy and sad over the announcement. Happy because another Diablo game is going to be developed but sad because of that. A part of me hoped that the big announcement from Blizzard was going to be for an entirely new game.

Well finally after what felt like months, i think it was a week or so, i can now browse the internet again after being unable to see images or text load properly on any website. Being unable to view text or images on websites using the only PC available made it pretty hard to find a solution to the problem. To cut a long story short it turns out that the java and flash plugins weren't at fault like i first thought but rather it was another plugin that FireFox said was working fine, the Adblock plugin. It seems that when i updated from FFv2 to FFv3 there was some conflict with whatever version of Adblock i had at the time with FFv3. So Adblock was essentially blocking everything instead of the advertisements but FF was basically telling it not to which explains why i could sometimes load a webpage and view it fine while other times i got a big mess of text and images. But all is working perfectly fine now after borrowing a friends laptop and reading up on the problem.

I have to say all that time not being able to read pointless yet highly amusing articles on Wikipedia allowed me to get some serious gaming done. The issue i had with my character being banned from a server in Age of Conan was fixed in a suspicious manner, by that i mean no one said anything to me for 48 hours after i contacted support (still haven't had a reply to my email) but then suddenly my character was unbanned again. So now i'm a level 45 Guardian on the Ymir PvE server and i have to say i really am enjoying this game a lot. Like all new PC games that have been released recently it has bugs and issues that need fixing but FunCom have been really good at staying dedicated to the update schedule they laid out. So far every monday and thursday the servers go down and the game gets an update and when you look through what they've done you can really tell they listen to the community. Infact the only reason i'm writing this blog now is because the servers are down for an update for the next 5 or so hours.

The game itself is fun and the community in it is one of the best i've seen in an MMO. That being said it may just be the server i joined that has a good community, i've not created a character on a different server yet. Gameplay is fun and there is some real team/group orientated style to it with certain quests being too difficult for a single player to complete thus requiring them to find able bodied players and lay waste to some unspeakable evil. My only gripe about this sort of thing is it does require you to group up with others and that can sometimes turn into a Leeroy moment or sometimes you can spend a long time spamming to find a group. Having joined a PvE server i can't comment too much on the PvP but i can tell you that a big thing to look forward too, once FunCom sort out the lag issues, will be the PvP seige battles between guilds. From my understanding its basically guild vs guild with 90 or more players on the screen going at each other with catapults, cavalry, infantry etc. At the moment i've joined a fun little guild and we're in the middle of trying to build up our guild city so we can one day take part in this sort of thing.

Visually the game does look good even on my AMDx64 +4400, 7900GS with 2GB of Ram. But the FPS i get can be a killer both ingame to my character and to my PC itself. My PC just can't handle this game even on a mixture of low and medium settings at 1280x1024 resolution. The HD begins to scream in agony and the GFX card begins to fail loading textures at times which means i've gotta take a break, and this can happen after an hour or more playtime. So once again i'm looking to buy a new PC and once again i haven't a clue what to buy as the PC market is so huge and constantly changing that its difficult to keep track of whats going on. Not to mention that its pretty expensive to go out and buy an entire new PC from case to components these days. So any opinions on what to buy with a £800-£900 budget? I genuinely haven't got a clue what components and operating system is best to have at the moment. While i hate Vista i imagine its probably better to get it since more programs will begin to conform to it. But that being said when i last looked at the operating systems in PC world they had an entire shelf devoted to Vista and the huge number of variations of it that there are.

I may make a thread later today in the PC hardware boards and ask the folks there and just to add some insentive i'll even offer some guest invites to Day of Defeat Source. Its not much i know but its all i have that i think stays within the ToS for Gamespot.

Aswell as my new MMO addiction i did manage to get some time in to play TF2 and gain some Pyro achievements. So far i've got to Milestone 3 and unlocked all the new weapons for my favourite class in TF2 but there is still some achievements that i need to get. I have to say i really do like how Valve are adding achievements to a game that seems designed perfectly for them. I know there has been mixed opinions about adding what is essentially a console feature to what is thought of most as a PC game, even though it is on consoles. But i think the addition of these achievements is really good as the different classes have such variety to their playing styles that it can be fun to try out something new. Before the Medic achievements i hardly ever played as that class but i find myself now going for them whenever i can just because i find it a lot of fun to play them after playing them so long to gain the achievements. I just hope future online games pick up on this trend and beging to impliment it as online PC gaming is the perfect enviroment to have achievements.

I also came across my old copy of Neverwinter Nights the other day and decided to give it a go. It came out in 2002 and i played it solidly for 6 or 7 hours a day everyday nearlly for 4 years until eventually i just got bored and moved onto something new. But in the 6 years since it's release and the 2 years that i haven't played it i was surprised to find myself still enjoying its single player campaign. I even tried out the toolset to see could i remember how to build and create my own maps/levels for the game and it was rather fun to have a somewhat nostalgic moment with a game. Compared to NWN2 i have to say this game is still a better game than its predecessor, atleast to me it is.

Other than the headache of trying to buy a new PC i've been trying to find another job aswell. I currently work 2 days a week in my local pub, all day Friday and Saturday to those interested, and have 5 days where i'm doing nothing and not getting paid. So i've been trying, without much success, to find another job but there really isn't much going on in my area and not being able to drive is an absolute bugger at times. I've had a few offers to go into trades, electrician and joiner, but neither interest me and i haven't got any background in them plus there is the whole staying 4 years where i currently live to finish the apprenticeship. When all i want to do is move away from here and find a job, sorry for the cliche, in the city where a lot of my friends are. I'm just fed up living where i do at the moment, i guess i have feelings of wanderlust (google it) and want to go off somewhere different. The girlfriend and i really should have put serious effort into looking at some flats in Glasgow when i was down a few weeks ago.

Anyway i'd appreciate some hints, tips and general help on buying a new PC. I've looked around and all that i can really come up with at the moment is a case which you can find some information about if you click the links below. But if anyone has some better alternatives for a case then please do post them, i'm open to suggestions at the moment lol. Peace out Gamespotter's

Ebuyer product information page!

and

YouTube Video review!