Well I guess I finally caved, I got Rock Band. I wouldn't of bought it at that price but it had £30 knocked off and I had a lot of help covering the cost. I don't know if I can say the game would really be worth a full £180 if I'd paid by myself, but the instruments are all awesome to play and the soundtrack is as brilliant as you would expect it to be. I also love all those little new things about the game, from the fact that the bass is now more important, as it has a x6 multiplayer, to the insane big rock finishes at the end of certain songs. From what I've played it's a really great game and shouldn't be missed by those who liked Guitar Hero as long as there is a price drop.

Now it's time for a news item of my own invention. This might seem a bit crazy but bare with me. You may remember that some time ago I mentioned that despite all projects being accounted for, Bungie were taking on a suspicious number of new employees. It may now be that Bungie are creating a new nautically-based game, that's right Bungie and pirates (two of the greatest forces in the known world) may be joining together to create some kind of super game. Of course this may all be a load of rubbish but if you check Bungie's job page you'll see that under their 'pluses' for a generalist programmer and a senior graphics engineer is the point 'A love of combat on the high seas'. We've either got an awesome new game or a perplexing in-joke.

As you'll probably know Blizzard have been causing a stir this week. After posting an enigmatic picture on their site, this morning at their special event in Paris they showcased Diablo III as everyone and their dog is now aware. It's looking pretty cool and I don't think I've seen fans this wild about a game since Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Interestingly 55% of the people who voted at GameFAQs.com yesterday correctly predicted the announcement of the game this weekend. Although I do start to wonder about things when Blizzard's house band's 'I Am Murloc' is going to be introduced as a downloadable track for GH3.

Thanks for reading everyone, shoutouts to PJ24, Fishdalf, Neojedi, Zxv33 and Kingrich06 who all do the courtesy of commenting regularly. This week I'll leave you with this creative screenshot from Halo 3 as I ponder whether to rebuy SSBB or not. See you all.

-Gamer_152

Here we are, my 100th blog post. Well pretty much, there's a few technicalities what with editorials and videos 'n all. However I do have a new, functioning Xbox 360... Again. I've been playing Halo 3, Guitar Hero 3, GTA IV and a few other things. I've also bought the Isle of Wight track pack for GH3, well worth £4 in my opinion but then again I really like Guitar Hero. I still really want to buy Rock Band but £180, blah, blah, blah.

Unfortunately me and a lot of other gamers have had a rather unfortunate tragedy this week. When Freeloader for Nintendo Wii was first announced, Wii gamers rejoiced. I'm just one of many that used the tool for playing an import of Brawl but this week version 3.3 of the Wii firmware that all Wii consoles were updated with, prevented (whether intentionally or not) freeloader from working. I can understand why Nintendo may of done this (if it is intentional) but everyone is stuck with stupid release dates and a whole bunch of unplayable games now. On the other hand, the new update fixed a save exploit on Zelda, that's cool, right?

Although I didn't mention it last week Metal Gear Solid 4 was released on June 12th and secured its place with a 10. I gotta say the game looks awesome and I'm really happy for everyone who can play it and sorry for everyone who can't. However there was going to inevitably be an uproar from some people who don't quite share the same view. I know it's already been said about a thousand times that the fanboys are predictable, narrow-minded, idiots, but it's just nasty when the PS3 fanboys take a game that should make so many people and just rub it in the face of Wii and 360 owners that it's an exclusive. Thankfully the whole thing has died down a little on Gamespot but it's still really sad that some people think they have to do that.

Onto much happier news though, as the long-awaited demo of Spore was released this week. It seems I'll have to upgrade my graphics card before I can play (damn you pixelshader 2.0!) but it looks amazing, even if it is only a demo. I was also very surprised by how popular the demo was, I didn't think that many people were so mad about Spore, but 250,000 creatures were uploaded in the first 24 hours and it was even all over YouTube. A sure sign that Will Wright has done it again.

I hope everyone enjoys all their games no matter what they're playing. A special shoutout this week to CmdrMcNeil who has posted another very underrated video blog and will be shipping out this September. This week I'll leave you with this little video from way back in April. Happy gaming.

-Gamer_152

(Yawn) Being back at college is tiring, but I've still got my games to brighten things up. Oh, and upon trying to get my broken 360 exchanged last weekend, as I feared GAME were all sold out of preowned premiums so I've been waiting for them to get more in. The weirdest thing is my console seems to be making a bit of a recovery by itself. I've spent my time on my games this week playing Halo 3, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Animal Crossing: Wild World and Guitar Hero 3. I am having a small problem with my 360 that goes beyond the console itself though, and it seems that my 360 believes I didn't buy Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and that I need to buy the full game again. I'm assuming this happened when I last exchanged my 360 but it still makes little sense considering I still have the full version of Boom Boom Rocket to play.

In terms of demos this week, although I can't download any myself (damn Xbox!) thanks to a mate I have played the demo of Ninja Gaiden 2. I'm not quite sure what to say about it apart from that it definitely is Ninja Gaiden and like its predecessor feels very good to play with all its insane Ninja combos and random limb-severings. I've also seen the demo of Battlefield: Bad Company and man, it looks awesome! It really gives the sense of being in an actual war and with tanks, helicopters and air strikes all at your disposal it looks a really immersive experience.

In the news this week it seems that there's a strange situation where GTA IV, despite being part of one of the biggest gaming franchise and receiving stunning reviews is still not shifting more consoles. Granted that it's usually exclusives that shift the consoles most but come on, this is Grand Theft Auto! A report has also been published this week showing that red teams are more likely to win matches than blue teams in multiplayer game, it seems to make sense but most players seem to realise pretty colours are no substitute for proper skill. But it does help shed more light on why the Alliance can never beat the Horde in battlegrounds.

Thanks for reading everyone, this week I'll leave you with the first part of the side-splitting Halo 3 blooper reel. See you next week.

-Gamer_152

Well I really enjoyed playing GTA IV last weekend, then the pre-ownedness of my 360 kicked in. It's been giving me system errors, refusing to start, freezing up, overheating its own disc drive and even on one occasion gave me three red lights, yet continued working without fault as I played Guitar Hero 3. In fact the thing is so busted all I can play at the moment is Guitar Hero 3 and Halo 3.. It appears to like the number 3. So I'll have to take it back to GAME for a second exchange. This really makes me worry about what will happen after the one year warranty is up.

All this seems a bit depressing but at least we've all seen some good news this week, Jack Thompson looks like he's very much going to be banned from practicing law for the next 10 years. Of course Thomspon is looking to go out in traditional style, I thought this little snippet from the Gamespot article was absolutely hillarious: "After comparing Judge Tunis and the Florida Supreme Court to earthworms, deeming the proceedings a "Star Chamber kangaroo court," and invoking the horrors of the Nazi Third Reich, Thompson compared his plight at the disbarment hearings to the infamous 1991 confirmation of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas". Sometimes I can't get enough of Thompson, things won't be as funny when he's gone.

This week new footage of Duke Nukem Forever also unsurfaced! I'm not quite sure what to think, as if it isn't vaporware then a team of developers somewhere have presumably been getting paid every week for over 11 years without actually releasing their game. I am joking of course but by the looks of things it is true that the game is reaching its final stages of development and with 12 years of built up anticipation there's a lot of pressure on the developers of DNF for a really good game. It'll be interesting to see exactly what's in store, the developers being from the Doom age of the FPS and their last non-mobile and non-side-scrolling shooter being Duke Nukem Advance, which was released six years ago on the GBA. I'm pretty confident though, that the game will be at least appealing due to its sense of nostalgia, if nothing else.

Finally "gratzies" to Age of Conan which is starting to look a lot like the World of Warcraft of 2008 and already has 400,000 subscribers. I'd also like to say for anybody who enjoyed Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, watch the second episode of the new series Reconstruction, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Shoutout to PJ24, Neojedi, Edpeterson, Kingrich06, Jeb800e, Jimb0 (and his 'diary of an MMO newbie' blog) and some of my real-life friends who go by the names of Vampymonky, Fusionx449, Link0180, Paintbrush Gomo, PenBandit and BaldPigCool. I'll leave you all this stunning spectacle of Mongoose skill from Halo 3. See you all next week.

-Gamer_152

Another great week has rolled by and I've been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mass Effect, Halo 3, Maplestory and Grand Theft Auto IV. In fact I finished Mass Effect this morning, I really enjoyed the story towards the end and everything that made me like the game in the first place still makes it very enjoyable, in fact I was thinking of going for a second playthrough but I doubt I'll be able to keep my focus with all the other games I've got around. The only two problems I really had with the game were the distance between saves and although I understand that they're trying to keep the plot open to sequels I did feel a bit as though by the end of the game my great triumph over Saren hadn't actually achieved much in terms of the bigger picture. Much like I do with Bioshock, I hope Mass Effect's sequel can live up to the original.

And yes I also have Grand Theft Auto IV now and I'm a fair way into that. It's really great and yet I'm finding it a little hard to pinpoint exactly why I find the game so good. I still wouldn't give it a ten like Gamespot did though, but I find it's much harder to get people to agree on which games deserve 10/10 than, say 9/10. There are also still people who sadly can't quite seem to cope with the fact that Gamespot's review is just one opinion or that even though it did get 10/10, no game is (and never will be) perfect. Of course as I can't quite work out what makes the game so good, I can't figure out what is missing for me personally, but I have heard a number of people say that the online multiplayer (which I haven't tried yet) isn't very good and one of my friends says that the game begins to get a little repetitive after a while (but then again his tastes aren't always reflective of the mainstrem).

Nintendo also launched their new 'Nintendo Channel' in Europe yesterday. I've had a look and it's most certainly very pretty to look at and I can see why some people would enjoy it, Nintendo certainly still know what they're doing in terms of marketing. However with all the videos I want avaliable elsewhere online I probably won't be using the channel much myself. I'm also a little wary of buying any of the 'Wiiware' from the Wii shop channel. Developers have seen the Wii as a platform on which to make cheap cash and making games distributable online doesn't really help this problem. I can see the Wiiware becoming very similiar to Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade in terms of gme quality.

Thank you, one and all for reading this week and I'll leave you with the first episode of Rooster Teeth's new machinima Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction. See you all on your respective blogs.

-Gamer_152

Ah, it's been a good week off. I've played Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Halo 3, Animal Crossing: Wild World and Mass Effect. I've had Mass Effect for a week now (a friend is lending it to me) and I've been very impressed with the game. The gameplay is of course great, an excellent combination of third-person shooter and RPG which is not a very common genre, but the developers have done a very good job of it. I also knew that there was a lot of dialogue in this game but I could never of imaged this much, the hours after hours of voice acting that have been put into this game are amazing; I could face a situation, turn off, go back to the same situation with a completely different squad and all of a sudden it's a very different conversation from the one I was having before. I also love the environments and various races, which really seem to embody the imagination that's gone into Mass Effect and they have taken the possibilities of originality that come with a sci-fi game and made excellent use of them. Of course the game's not perfect but I've found it a magical and very refreshing experience.

I've also been hearing a lot this week about a certain rumor that Microsoft will be showcasing Halo 4 at E3 this year. The rumor of there being a Halo 4 is not a new one, it's seemed to exist from almost the moment Halo 3 was released, but the rumor seems to be mainly fueled by the fans who want it to be true. The ending to Halo 3 was something that was very conclusive, indeed it did leave the plot open to further development but it generally gave that feel that for now Bungie are done with the current trilogy. It's also worth taking into consideration that Halo Wars, Halo Chronicles, additional Halo 3 content and a Halo movie are all still in development and that even if there is a Halo 4 are Microsoft really going to want to add to the 'announced but in early development' list at this point in time? I'm not saying it's impossible a fourth installation of the main series to get it's announcement at E3 this year but I am very sceptical.

I am looking to make another video game purchase soon, so hopefully this time next week I'll have Grand Theft Auto IV. I'm deciding to put off buying Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii for now, I think I'll enjoy GTA IV more. Shoutout this week to Jeb800e, Distress Signal 4, Fishdalf, Jimb0, Kingrich 06 and PJ24. Thanks for reading and giving me all the feedback you have over the time I've been blogging (sorry if I've neglected to comment on any of your blogs). I'll leave you all with the latest episode in the Halo 3 series, Confirmed Kills and if I may ask one final question, did you find it better when it put links in my blog to the stuff I was talking about?

-Gamer_152