In my life, holidays = MMO games. Last year I spent my time on Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PSO:BB) and City of Heroes (CoH), but this year I've replaced CoH with Albatross18 ('Pangya' to its players). Think of a standard MMO template; Character customization, friends lists, guilds and a profile card to decorate. Add golf. Add manga visuals. Add a PLOT. Add a fantasy parallel universe and you're just about there. Put simply, this is an insane Korean idea that works. Give it a go and send me a Buddy Request (to 'Da Mainman') if you feel like it.

I've finally upgraded my graphics card to 256MB. Boo. Yah. Now games like CoH should stop lagging so much at minimum graphics quality.

Interestingly, I've never once paid for my CoH subscription; I've instead relied on the free account re-activations they deal out every half-year or so, plus a magazine's free trial of City of Villans (It reactivated the CoH account too). I stoped playing it because: A) My PC could barely keep up with the graphics, and B) I had to wait for 5 minutes at a time for new areas to load, while the rest of my team took 10 seconds to load the area. They would either finish the mission without me or look for another team.

Now that I've quadrupled my graphics card's power (I was on 64MB before) I could probably run the game, but Pangya has ensnared me with it's cute-but-hyper-compeditive-ism. I still can't get over how good the Wii version will (probably) be. Maybe I'll get to play an early build at the EIEF later this month.

If I can also produce a Flash movie and get good grades for my A-Levels, then this will be The Best Summer Ever™. Watch this space.