"A NEW blog post you say?! WHAAAAA -" Autumn edition.

Yes, I have a new blog post. It's been a long time coming, as I'm sure many of my die-hard blog-fans were eagerly awaiting what wonders I have been up to during my Summer months off from uni (all two of you). 
In fact, it's been so long my laptop has forgotten what my default text style and size is for my blogger account... (and ergo, so did I). BUT YES! Here goes: a new chapter in my blogging "career".
To start with, a picture of a cat: 

Now that that's out of the way, I'll update you on how I spent the majority of my summer - (If you'll refer back to my earlier blog post entitled: "Summer - Not all sugar and rainbows..." you'll know I endeavoured to accomplish an exhaustive list of non-stop summer activities - three in total...).

So, appropriately, I realised three things:

This is how I imagine I'd look in my superhero costume - 
saving lesser beings from campers. 

1) I am awesome at COD: Not even in a way that most teenage boys can show off to uninterested girlfriends - not least of all because I'm neither a teenager, nor do I have a girlfriend - but in a way that means I fight with a degree of honour and righteousness (like a modern day superhero, trolling Xbox Live... THAT'S what I am...). My good friend Sebalicious can attest to my superiority on COD - I have no need to prove my point via a one-sided blogpost. 

This is how I felt when it happened...
I also tried growing my hair out for the summer. 

2) Pianos break. I don't know how it happened, either through overuse or intense use - but two of my keys are broken; namely the G# and A an octave above middle C. Weirdly enough, it started with the F# and G a tone below, but mysteriously "spread" to the aforementioned keys. Like some weird... piano breaking virus. On the subject, the neighbours decided to launch an official complaint regarding my "excessive" piano playing. I didn't realise 8:00 on  a Saturday morning would be a problem, but these neighbours are in a league of their own. The word on the street (literally; from our curtain-twitching busy-bodied neighbour Karen) is that they do drugs and all have ASBO's... so I'm guessing they were hungover and/or high on that particular Saturday morning (or planning their role in the London riots) Ahhh good ole' St. Albans... :') 

This is how I was. 100% accurate, even down
to the bloodshot eyes and blue-tinted skin tone. 

3) Blogging over summer is surprisingly difficult. Not because I didn't have a particularly uneventful one, but it quickly became tiresome and contrived. Moreover, it feels like the stuff that happens to me when I get back to uni is more blogworthy than telling strangers on the internet how I just owned several other strangers on the internet, via the medium of COD. There's only so many times you can brag about your incomparable K/D ratio, or that you've just covered that new Rihanna song on piano. 

BUT - with a new year at uni ahead of me, I'm more than confident that I'll devote myself more fully to blogging. After all - It is my duty to keep strangers on the internet informed of the happenings in my life. FOR THAT IS MY TRUE PURPOSE! XboxMan - AWAY! 

The COD effect. I hate it.

Sadly, this is NOT the type of camping I'm talking about... 

Preach. 

This blog update features a very specific topic in mind. Whilst I have previously mentioned my adoration (bordering "obsession" some would say...) for video game, I must reference my fondness for one such particular brand of game:

CoD... *dun dun dun* o.O

It's prevalence amongst gamers today is second-to-none. Mentioning "CoD" to most people over the age of say... 30,  they would probably expect you to be talking about a species of fish. However, to many people under 30 (if we're talking about the key demographic of 18-30 year-old males), their reaction may vary from: mouth-frothing, increased heart-rate, profuse sweating and indeed... an urge to "eliminate the opposition." 


In fact, as previously mentioned in my "Summer - not all sugar and rainbows..." blog, I myself am a CoD fan. Black Ops was the game in question that I looked forward to as being an unashamedly enormous time-sink for my Summer holidays. However, the excitement soon wore off. The thrill of killing anonymous online Xbox Live users was short-lived. I realised that COD, as a franchise, manages to both encapsulate and frustrate it's audience - including myself - in equal measures.

I'm not an angry person, by nature... Playing CoD has given me a chance at self-reflection. I'm a much more terrible person than I thought... D: 

This is me in Hulk-Cat Hybrid form. 

I find myself having to take breaks from CoD (or rather... play it in intermittent bursts... the first one made it seem like my entire summer was devoted to CoD - which would only be half right...), for fear of developing some adverse side-effects - like turning green and feeling unexplained urges to "smash." (for the astute comic book fans, I was likening myself to the Hulk... :| but... whatever...) 


A "game" should be fun... it shouldn't have the ability to elicit any negativity. But maybe that's what make me more... bloodthirsty?! 

This makes me sick... It requires no skill...! D:

... bastard. 

When a game harbours elements that frustrate me, such as so-called "camping", (whereby a player sits in a corner of a room, using equipment such as a motion sensor, or claymore to defend themselves...), I feel like it's such an injustice. Like the whole ethos of CoD multiplayer has been made of mockery of.  Is there any justice in "camping?" (I talk about "justice" as if there's a higher power of CoD police who could deal with such players... sadly - there is not). 


I then realise something else... these campers don't care how annoyed I get. And indeed, if we were in real modern warfare, you would use whatever so-called "dirty" tactics you could to survive... 


Still... It doesn't annoy me any less. 

Summer - Not all sugar and rainbows...

This blog post centres around my plans and ideals of my forthcoming summer vacation.

I'll be honest - I likely have a somewhat "different" view of what most people would consider "fun." My interests span to:-

1. Playing video games... 8)
2. Playing piano. 
3. Blogging now, apparently.

All of these activities require me to not leave the house (unless there's some outdoor piano somewhere... or I took my laptop outside and blogged from there - but those are technicalities... -_- ) and also, coincidentally, can all be executed alone. Does this therefore mean that I'm "wasting" my summer holidays? Can you call me a "geek" for staying indoors and owning the masses on COD, or working on piano covers for my youtube account? You could... I suppose. But where others feel the need to be outside, "making the most" of our paltry British summer, I find myself more inclined to cut out the middle man. It's more in my nature to act like a hermit all year round, regardless of the weather. 

What exactly are the benefits of being outside? "Fresh air" you say? Fresh air is overrated... 

This cat is a metaphorical representation
of how I intend to spend the majority of my
summer... I can't wait... :'D

I should point out, when I say "hermit," I'm not exactly an unsociable person. In fact, quite the opposite. I like spending time with my friends, and undoubtedly have more fun playing co-op RPG's with them for days at a time... ahhh TOV... you will have been missed... :') It also means I won't be seeing my friends any less than I normally would... but most of the entertainment that can be had with them can be achieved inside - going outside is, more or less, superfluous when it comes to attaining optimum levels of... FUN. 

But I'm not going to go out of my way to do something I don't particularly enjoy with my free time, to do something more "socially acceptable..." Like... having WILD house parties, or crazy road trips to completely arbitrary seaside destinations... those things would only appeal to me if they were "Xbox House Parties..." or if the seaside destination in question had some form of arcade...(wow, I can sense the geekiness in my words just seeping out into the interweb... :| ) 

This is NOT my ideal summer... these kids may have learnt to defy gravity, but can they do a 
Britney Spears mash-up on piano, or get a flawless FFA match on COD? ... Point proven.
(also, the ones on the left and right look in pain...) 

I guess what I'm trying to say is - if you hear about my plans for summer and start judging how "lame" they may seem in comparison to yours... you needn't bother. If your "warped" view on summer involves frolicking through fields of flowers, with overhanging rainbows, and picnics under a tree with friends, (or, seemingly more appropriate for people of my age-band, messy nights out getting drunk...) then all the more power to you. 

I'm as excited for my summer holidays as you are, and they can't come quick enough... :D 

UK gaming... life isn't all fun and games...

This is an example of how young children are adversely affected by
video games. She's clearly been playing too much GTA.
 NEXT TIME CHECK THE AGE RATING! 

Being a gamer in the UK is comparable to erm... a really bad analogy. Yeah, I guess that works... (*phew*) ^^;

The basic run-down of the sitch is this - the gaming market, has made many leaps and bounds in recent years, from graphical and technological advancements, to the main-streaming of 3D technology (3DS) and full-motion body image capturing (Microsoft Kinect).
The UK games market in particular has also shown steady growth and popularization, in particular it's successes with the so-called "casual-gamer" (it's success in this sector can largely be attributed to the Wii and Kinect systems) - a categorical term given to gamers who do not necessarily invest as much time into video games as the more archetypal "hardcore" gamer, and would much rather play fun "party-esque" mini-game collections with their friends than extensive story-heavy FPS games for example. 


Being a gamer in the UK has several disadvantages though. Developers and publishers of games would often forgo the UK completely when it comes to regional distribution. I don't have the facilities (or enthusiasm) to make a flow diagram of sorts, but It would look somewhat like this:

North American Developed games - Released in North America (guaranteed) - Released in Japan (dependant on genre) - Released in Europe (Likely) 
Japanese developed games - Released in Japan (guaranteed) - Released in North America (Likely) - Released in Europe? (never certain... D:)

Even when a video games' European release is a certainty, the price we have to pay in delays (down to something called "localization..." o.O) is beyond a joke.

Take this most recent example. A game called "Tales of Graces" has been out in Japan since Dec. 09. A game whose EU appearance has only recently been confirmed for a release here (yayyy). There came a point after the second email (first by me, the second by my friend - I don't just randomly go around emailing game publishers on a regular basis... -_-) that was sent to a representative of Namco's that a thought occurred to me: "Should this really be the case? Should I really have to be asking for something that the rest of the world seems to acquire by default."

UK gamers do seem to have drawn the short straw (at least in geographical terms...) I don't want to turn this into some sort of rant... but my point still stands. ToG being released here is the glistening ray of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast for the UK gaming market...

OK, it's not that bad - I guess I just have too much passion... :|