Hey everyone!

Everyone's heard of the global financial crisis right, and how it's meant to strongly affect the wolds economy, and in turn, peoples jobs and products produced by companies? Well, I'm here to tell you today, that the global financial crisis is a good thing in some ways and that people are really over exaggerating the affect it is, or could have on the world's economy. First of all, the affect it's really having onthe world'seconomy. The worlds economy isn't doing as badly as governments are saying it is, most people are still getting on with their lives, and since governments are putting stimulus packages into the economy (Which in my opinion is a bit of a waste of money, considering all that really does is provide time for people to get back on their feet and then the wave of economic instability will his everyone again.) the global economy is slowly getting better, even if it's just one country at a time. Everyone was saying that the global financial crisis was a terrible thing for thestock market, well I'm here to tell you otherwise. Sure, the price of stocks have fallen drastically and that means low sale prices, but what else does that mean? Lowstock purchase costs! So instead of people complaining about the stock market's prices being too low when it comes to selling, hold onto your stocks and in fact, buy more whilst they'recheap! Because what happens when the global economy goes up again? You'll makea massive profitby selling your cheaply bought stocks! To me, this comes as common sense, but to others, this may be hard to understand because they're too worried about the global financial crisis to see how to take advantage of it. To that I say, put your worries aside and think logically about the situation that's at hand, and work out the best way for you to take advantage of it. When it comes to unemployment, all I can say to help people there is work to the very best of your abilities and do whatever it takes to keep your job, and if the chance arises, go for a promotion to fasten your foothold in your career and therefore lower your chance of getting sacked. As to other matters concerning the global financial crisis all I can say is use your money wisely, and maybe wait a while before you buy that classic car you've been saving up for.

Anyway, now to move to the title topic of my blog, why the global financial crisis is good for us gamers. As you probably already know, when we're in a global financial crisis, the price of products go up, but then demand decreases because less people have money to afford to buy whatever the product is because they too are in a global financial crisis. Now, this is bad for business because if companies sell less products, they have a better chance of going broke and this causes a loss of jobs, which increases the unemployment rate, which is just bad for the global employment in general because more people want jobs, than there are available jobs and this is really the heart of the global financial crisis. At this point, you may be asking yourself "But how does any of this help me as a gamer?", well the answer is simple, clever thinking. Gaming companies like Ubisoft are doing really intelligent things at the moment by reversing the heart of the global financial crisis and doing everything opposite to what the book would tell them to do. "What is this?" you may be asking yourself, well, instead of increasing the price of their games and gaming products, why not decrease the price of their products which therefore will open their sale availability to more people, which will increase sales over their competitors, which will then increasese profit. Now, since companies, gaming or not, want to be ahead of their competitors, they'll follow what companies like Ubisoft are doing, so that they can still compete with them, which is good for business because then more people will be buying their products because the prices are now at a level more people can afford, which means more sales, which means more profit. Now do you see? The price of games have and will decrease which means better deals for us gamers! Anyway, what do you guys think of the global financial crisis and its affect on gaming and gamers? Happy gaming!

Crunk_Dog.

Hey everyone!

This week, for 'My Song Of The Week' I've yet again chosen a song by The Cruel Sea, but it's not 'Better Get A Lawyer' like I chose last week. The song comes from their 'Over Easy' album and is easily one of the best tracks on the album, and in fact, is one of the best songs the band has produced. Anyway, the album 'Over Easy' is a great album, whether you listen to a calmer, but still good, song like 'Runnin', or an instrumental song like 'Daytona', it's still a fantastic album and the song 'Hard Times' is just a brilliant song, filled with great guitar work, well doen drum beats and fantastic lyrics. Actually, all the songs on 'Over Easy' have great guitar work and great drum beats, the lyrics provided by Tex Perkins are great as usual and have meaning, but without going overboard. Anyway, back to the song 'Hard Times'. 'Hard Times' is the third track on the album 'Over Easy' and is one of, if not, the best song on the album. The guitar is the first noise you hear on this song, playing a repetitive, yet effective rift. The repetitive rift is one of the main bits of the song, but if repetitive rifts put you off this song, don't worry, The Cruel Sea very rarely do this. Anyway, the guitar work is great and is really what makes this great song, fantastic.It's very effective and works fantastically with the rest of the song. The drum beats are good, without going into all that clashy stuff that some modern bands do, and just remain consistant and well done through the whole song, and definitely make this song better. The lyrics are good and don't go overboard, and also don't dominate over the instruments, which is a good thing. Tex Perkins does a great job with making catchy, yet meaningful lyrics, and you can see that he's a really talented man since he manages to do this in every song he provides vocals to. Anyway, overall the song is great, and it's a pity The Cruel Sea aren't around anymore because I'm sure they would've been great to see in concert. 'Hard Times' is really just one of those exceptional rock songs that you can listen to over and over again, without tiring of it and the overall quality of this song may be one of the reasons why. I highly recommend this song to all fans of rock, and if you haven't heard The Cruel Sea's music before I really recommend you do because they are just simply one of the greatest rock bands of all time. I'll rate it 8.8/10. Happy gaming!

Crunk_Dog.

Hey everyone!

Recently, I picked up Unreal Tournament 3 for the PC, and I've been playing it a bit lately and this is what I think. The graphics are great, they're probably the best you could hope for in such a game. The sound is alright, you end up with one of those computer voices though talking to you every few seconds in 'Capture The Flag' (Which you have to do in campaign mode.) about the flags being dropped or returned which is really annoying. The guns make alright sounds as well. But writing about the guns, that reminds me, there isn't really that great a choice. You've got a gravity hammer (Which is fairly useless in battle.), a pistol (Yeat again, fairly useless.), a bio-weapon (It's alright, but not that good.), a shock rifle (Which is alright if you know how to use it.), a mini-gun (Which is great.), a rocket launcher (Which is also great but it can make matches fairly 'spamy' with whoever has the best aim with a rocket launcher can pretty easily win.), a sniper rifle (Which is a great weapon and was made fantastically.) and some others that I can't remember (There's a sort of shotgun thing that fires bullets everywhere and can also make an explosion.). These weapons are alright but I would have liked to see a fair few more in this game, considering it's mainly about killing the opposing team. The AI is surprisingly good, but then again, that should be expected in this type of game. The maps are good butI would have liked to see at least one massive one for death-match and team deathmatch(Which there very well may be because I haven't played all the maps but out of the ones I've played so far, there hasn't been one.). Overall it's a pretty good game (Well, at least the bits that I've played so far.) but it's not so impressive that it immerses you in it (Like Assassin's Creed.). The best way to think of Unreal Tournament 3 is Gears Of War crossed with Star Wars Battlefront 2 (Minus the space battles.) exactly, and if you like the sound of that I recommend you try out or buy this game. But Unreal Tournament 3, even though it's a few years old now, just feels like it could have been worked on a bit more.I know that the matches are just meant to be fast paced, but maybe some kind of covert mode were you have to eliminate your enemies with sniper rifles would have been a good addition to this game and it probably would have attracted a wider audience too. Anyway, what do you guys think about Unreal Tournament 3? Happy gaming!

Crunk_Dog.