Greetings one and all. Straight to business, this week I've been playing Halo 3 and Spore but I eased off on them so I could spend the last few days getting some serious practice time in on Rock Band. Of course TGS, the Tokyo Game Show is currently on and it looks like there's some seriously cool stuff going on, RE5 is looking impressive while there are other aspects of the show which just come with it being set in Japan which are awesome in a bizarre way (e.g. the giant Norton Antivirus anime robot) and they're great to see. The show seems to be carrying a very different feel to E3 and I kinda like that.

Those of you who know me well may have guessed that my favourite feature so far of the show was Bungie's announcement of their new project, Halo 3: Recon. The trailer looked awesome, from the movement of all the characters there, to the awesome graphics and the continuation of the computer-themed SI perspective on things. Having an ODST as the protagonist really puts a new spin on things because whereas in the previous campaigns the world of Halo has been seen through the eyes of the UNSC's greatest hero and in Halo Wars allows control of the world from the perspective of a commander, Recon will give a look at the world from the view of a regular (well okay, almost regular) soldier. It'll be a very long time before we're all down at our local stores queueing expectantly, boxes in hand but with the Mythic Map Pack and Halo Wars coming out next year it seems Bungie are working harder than ever.

I didn't mention it last week but Bungie also have their new file share system alive and kicking and the ability for Bungie Pro members to render videos to a PC-playable format straight from Halo is the best thing that has come out of it in my opinion. If I had more awesome stuff on my file share I'd really be looking into getting Bungie Pro. Oh and anyone remember the Xbox LIVE update preparation from a while ago? Well it seems to have messed up Team Fortress 2 something fierce, it just seems glitchier than before; one of my friends even found a single leg on a character floating across a map, I'm still scratching my head wondering how a server update has done what it has done.

Thank you for reading again, I'm gonna get back to the bizarre goings on of TGS and maybe some more Rock Band, I'm having big trouble on the last set of the guitar tour on expert. This week I'll leave you with this altogether confusing trailer for Namco Bandai's Noby Noby Boy.

-Gamer_152

So what's up with me this week? I've been playing World of Warcraft, Rock Band, Spore and a little bit of Puzzle Pirates and Burnout Paradise. After a little rooting around I've also discovered pretty solid evidence to suggest that Rock Band 2 will hit Europe this November which in my mind is a fair release date considering how much the UK and Europe have been conned in the past.

Some big console news this week, firstly the Xbox 360 has seen a double in sales over here in Europe, but the Wii still sees even higher sales; I'm surprised that with all the financial problems recently people are buying so many consoles. A lot of you will also have seen the DSi, Nintendo's new handheld console for 2009 and I'm pretty excited, no where near as much as I was when I first saw the Nintendo DS but considering Nintendo's work with the Wii and DS I'm sure the camera and other features on the DSi will be put to very good use.

Things haven't been at their best for Microsoft this week though. After sending out a message saying that Xbox LIVE would be down on Monday to prepare for the new dashboard update, however many took this to mean that the dashboard update would be implemented on Monday and so when that didn't happen a few angry and confused users came out of the woodwork to voice their frustration. However it didn't stop there because after servers went back up EXP and Trueskill were not being awarded on most online games across LIVE, this went on for a few days and when the engineers believed they had finally fixed the problem users were met with even bigger EXP and trueskill issues and networking problems. All is now supposed to be fixed but I'm not completely convinced that everything is running 100%. All this has information I've found only through Bungie.net, I accept that networking problems like these can happen but Microsoft themselves didn't seem to bothered about alerting users of any problems.

Finally the inevitable add-on saga begins a bit sooner than I expected as Gamestop have a parts pack for Spore heading their way mid November. I kinda feel like getting it but for £10? I hope it'll be available cheaper via digital download or something like that. Finally thanks everyone, I'll leave you with IGN's 20 Wii games you should already own... Perhaps it's time for me to get buying for my Wii again.

-Gamer_152

As I did a few weeks ago I come to you today in the form of a Sunday blog post; Friday and Saturday I stayed round a mates house and well, I got very little sleep in a very large amount of time and although I felt fine yesterday I didn't want to come to you with a half-witted, brain-dead blog post, so please enjoy todays half-witted regular blog post. Before I start I'd like to make a small but notable comment, the way Gamespot squishes everyones blog posts together makes them look longer than they really are, it sucks... Just thought I'd throw that out there. This week I've played more Spore, Burnout Paradise, Halo 3 and a little bit of Rock Band.

This week was in fact the birthday week of Halo 3, the actual day falling on 25th September and I noticed that some found it a little lacking but I thought it was great. They're new teaser trailer looked awesome and although very cryptic gave us quite an insight into what's coming next (a new Halo 3 campaign experience), it's interesting seeing all the different theories coming out for what precisely the new project entails, there's been everything from seriously detailed analysis of the trailer to suggestion that despite the very blatant statements that it is for additional content to Halo 3 it is in fact for a new game and then there's my favourite, the Bungie.net user believing it was a trailer for a new Halo TV show. With the ODSTs strongly hinted at I believe this could be the rumoured darker, grittier Halo experience, although I don't think we're gonna see Bungie cloning GRAW or anything like that. Whatever it is it's good to see Bungie still making proper use of Halo 3 and giving us more content without an entirely new game.

Halo 3 version 1.2 was also released earlier this week and the update is pretty sweet. Personally I can't say I'm blown away but the new ranking system but it's a change and pretty nice to have, partly because it allows me to experience the whole working my way up through the ranks thing all over again but I still get to keep my original Lieutenant [Grade 3]. I really like the new achievements though, despite them giving out a fair number of points compared to other games the achievements look fun and encourage a wide range of playing styl*s, achievements can also been seen for the upcoming Mythic Map Pack. Hiding skulls on multiplayer maps? Now that's ingenuity, they'll be fun to find and I'm also looking forward to a 6 map DLC map pack.

But there's more brilliant news, Jack Thompson has been banned from practicing in Floridian courts. No longer shall time be wasted with half-assed, crack pot court cases which the U.S. media exploit to disrepute video games unfairly. I hate to bring down the mood at this point but although I didn't mention it last week I am more than a little annoyed with EA again as last year pandemonium ensued among Europeans who were to receive Rock Band long after America and once again we've been put second best with no release date at all set for Rock Band 2. I'm almost certainly gonna get RB2 and that new guitar but there's also a battle raging in my mind over whether to also get Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Thanks one and all for reading, especially Kingrich06 and PJ24, don't worry guys, it may not look like it but I am keeping up with your blogs. This week I'll leave you all with the ultimate gaming quiz (note: quiz may be less ultimate than name suggests). Keep it clean.

-Gamer_152