well guys in a couple of hours im off upto manchester, have a good xmas and all. bye bye and drink to the extreme.

They're Palin and McCain; Yes, Palin and McCain; One is a fossil; The other's inane; They're a pair of mavericks; They regret their VP pick; They're bailin; They're Palin and McCain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain.
Before the 4th is done; Their plan will be unfurled; With Joe the Plumber's son; They'll take over the world.
They're Palin and McCain; Yes, Palin and McCain; Their negative campaign; Is easy to explain. To prove their GOP worth; They'll overthrow the Earth; They're failin; They're Palin and McCain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain, Cain.

I think this little song sums up there campaign so far perfectly. Enjoy.

Well, as I very rarely if ever mention anything local to me I thought that just this once, I would. Right in the middle of Croydon town centre today, (although technically it's now yesturday (01.48AM as I write this)) a London Bus, a BMW, and a Tram were all involved in quite a big traffic accident where atleast 1 person died. So naturally hoping to see some carnage I went to go take a peak, and well the front of the Bus was crumpled quite badly, as can be seen in the link to the BBC local news link I shall quite handily provide below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7602748.stm

Well, after looking at the so called "enhancements" Gamespot has made to the site with regards to the profiles and the forums I noticed that with every thing else they added they forgot one button in particular.

I have since then dubbed it a magical "make the site better button" or a less dramatic name could be "Cla$$ic Gamespot", because I personally can't stand the new look and would much rather have the option for what I would like as the site skin. Does anyone else feel different or the same as this?

One last closing statement, is anyone at all surprised that after attempting to give the site an overhaul they have yet again managed to alienate those users who have chosen to be a part of a Union, and the Union systems still remain mostly broken, such as the Union ranks for instance. It doesn't seem like alot of work to me to fix a few lines of code here and there to make that part work properly to me, but then again I'm not an internet site making person so I could be completely wrong.

Ok so I got into the Red Alert 3 Beta, and I must say with the 4 multiplayer games that I played just now it is extremely good. I have only played the Soviet Faction and the Empire of the Rising Sun properly a when I did the Allies faction just a few minutes ago the game encountered a connection error and practically everyone was kicked from the game, but what I played of them they are good.

And this short blog entry here brings me on to another thing, is there anyone here who is'nt in the Red Alert 3 Beta that would like to be, as EA sent me 2 Beta install/download codes, I've used 1, and the other will be pretty useless to me, so whomever wants it and asks first, its theirs, I'l just forward the email I got sent to them.

Bye for now.

[Edit] And Brenden has the Beta...

Hey everyone, I thought I might as well let those of you that might wonder where I have disappeared to for a week know that on sunday I'm going up north to Manchester, to see all my extended family for the summer (and trust me there's alot of them). So this is just kind of a head's up to my soon to be disappearance. Have fun whiles I'm gone, and remember don't do anything I wouldnt do.

Well yesturday I had tuned in to Gamespots E3 coverage for 3 thing's. As far as I'm concerned, I only got 2 of them. Those 3 thing's I tuned in for were Spore, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, and Dawn of War II.

The coverage/interview with the Red Alert 3 team was very good, they had a 15 minute demonstration where they showed off the new faction, the Empire of the Rising Sun, their interesting build mechanics and some of their units that had previously not been seen. In my mind this was a good demonstration of the game, they had it there with them, they played it and while doing so they said what they were doing. Questions were sent in by the community and answered, although some of them to me seemed a bit pointless, like "kane?", well I could of answered that for you "No".

Then when Spore came on after the last hour slot overran I got to see more of a game I know that all my senses tell me I shouldn't like, yet somehow find pleasing. The coverage for this game was also very good as they explained in more detail than i had previously seen how the 5 different stages in the game works, and how after you have created a creature using the creature creator, you can skip the primordial ooze single celled organism and start straight away in the creature stage, rather than trying to develop a little microbe into something similiar to the creature you had made. They also went and showed you how you can begin to gain more territory the sneaky way, by pretending to be another tribes friend, and then clubbing them over the head when they are not looking. All the way through and towards the end i believe the people who were demonstrating Spore also answered questions from the community.

Now with the coverage for Dawn of War II after seeing, what in my mind was a very high standard of interviews it got very disappointing. For a start there was no game to demonstrate, which i think many fans had been hoping for, but im prepared to forgive that, if its not ready to be thrust into the public eye fair enough. Then my next grievance was how pitifully short it was, 5 whole minutes? wow GameSpot you really outdid yourselves. Next time get someone who actually has played a Dawn of War game to interview the guy. But for me the most annoying part was that the question submissions didn't seem to be working, so the interviewer decided to improvise and ask a few himself, his idea of a few questions was 1, singular, on it's lonesome. What made it worse was that it was a question anyone in the Dawn of War community could of answered. This probably wouldn't of bugged me if I hadnt spent time coming up with, what in my mind were 3 reasonable questions. The first was about possible system requirements, which the guy did answer, so that ones ok, the second was about the unit caps, and wether they would remain seperate for vehicles and infantry, or adopt the Company of Heroes-esque everything cap, and my last question was whether they would spend as much time doting upon the Space Marines as they have done in previous Dawn of War games, where they had the most unit customizations available, and the most units to choose from, the most leader units to choose from, and in my mind, the easiest way to bomb your opponent into submission by being able to drop bloody vehicles on there base.

Sorry for that, rant over, it just was really bugging me last night.

Ok well I haven't blogged in about a month, and I felt I had enough things to mention to fill maybe 2 or 3 lines. So then in no particular order;

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
After giving it some thought I decided that I would take the proverbial plunge into the world of MMO's and start off with one that has a genre that actually holds some interest for me, and isn't infact a bad rip off with a moronic fan base. And I went for W:AR because visually to me, it looks spectacular, and the company developing it had the good sense to include the Chaos army, as you cannot have a Warhammer based video game without the Legions of Chaos. So I went out with a friend about a week and a bit ago, and bought the Collectors Edition, which apart from coming with the game (with a few additional items, bonus quests and collector edition heads and such) also comes with a Graphic Novel of about 100 or so pages, written by one of my favourite Black Library novelists Graham Mcneill, a 200 odd page Art book filled with a various assortment of concept artwork, a metal Warhammer figure of the Orcish Warboss Grumlok, and the Goblin Shaman Gazbag. And for living in Europe I also get a mousemat, which obviously was what sold me on buying the Collectors Edition.

UK Games Day
Well this is the first time I've ever been to one of the Games Day events run by Games Workshop, but on all accounts it should be a good day out, albeit one that I need to get up very early for. There will be computers there with Dawn of War 2 for people to try out, along with the most recent build of W:AR to try, many of the Black Library novelists will be there, so I shall be taking all of my Warhammer books there to get them signed, Forgeworld will be there showing off there latest goodies, and other such Warhammer related things to.

College Finishing this week
Well after another tiring year of college this week is the week that my college closes its doors for the summer holidays, but until then i still have 2 1/2 assignments to finish, and an assignment that requires redoing, but that should all be doing fairly easily, and on the 3rd of july I shall be free to laze about to my hearts content.

Level 35
I dont really care about raising another level on Gamespot but its something to atleast mention so here it is, and I also believe i have been using this site for just over 2 years, god its been that long..

Well anyway guys until next time.

Ok so i was on the halo wars forum having a look around, and well all I can see is a bunch of people who cant tell the difference between a troll and an admirer of the game. It seems that a pc player showing genuine interest in this game is just harassed for being a troll if he makes a thread, or posts on an active thread to ask if anyone knows if this game will be ported to pcs, and a troll who insults the game, its developer and their mums.. Their excuse for classing someone who asks if the game is going over to pc as trolling is that "we get asked over and over again".. well boo f*cking hoo.. this is showing one where someone is saying that they wish that the game would get ported..

http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/strategy/halowars/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-43193047&pid=935835

And well this is just one that shows how pathetic these guys really are.

http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/strategy/halowars/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-43316906&pid=935835

This has just been bugging me as to how petty these guys really are and well needed to vent.

so that aaronmullans comment doesnt look odd i edited this after fixing my keyboards space bar and well he commented it while i was editting... ;)

Is it old? Yes. Is it outdated? Quite possibly. Is it still fun? Most definately. Well ever since October/November last year I've been playing Age of Empires II during the lessons in College where it doesnt really matter (Key Skills (of which even our lecturer admits its a filler lesson for the timetable to make up an hour or two) and occasionally Health and Safety).

Even though this game is so very old the reward of building your base well and crushing my classmates is still as great as say, Dawn of War or even Command and Conquer 3. And the fact that it will fit on a memory stick makes it just that bit sweeter. Well in Age of Empires I'm a cavalry man through and through, my friends all fear the sound of hooved legs on the ground, and the red blob appearing from the fog of war as my 120 strong army of Elite Cavalry Archers and my Hunnic Tarkans begin to rampage through their base, of which very rarely fails to defeat them, or at worst severely weakens them (for someone else to take advantage of).

What also makes Age of Empires a very rewarding game is the hard work you have to put into it to achieve victory, as you cannot rest on your laurels and hope to be ignored, because if your opponent has the player statistics up, it will give you away as the easy kill you are. You have to build a strong economy, and then use that to build up a strong army. What seperates this in my mind from allot of modern RTS is the multiple resources you must collect, and the number of buildings you must build, whereas in say Dawn of War you just build a plasma generator here and there, and capture a few strategic point's. Resource management is also more of an issue here than in many other games, as there is only a finite amount of stone and gold on the map, and if you waste it all on walls, you may be hampered in the castle age when you will want to build a few castles.

One thing that sticks in my mind from this game that was dropped in its sequel Age of Empires III was the sneaky tactic of building a castle right behind an enemies base and then launching a massive attack from it, if your opponent still hasnt realised your hiding there. This sneaky little trick was removed as you are unable to build to close to your enemies town centre.

So i guess this is my random take on an old Classic that in my eyes will never truly become obsolete even in the face of the myriad new games being developed.