... ITS THE COMPUTER THAT NEEDS FIXING, NOT WINDOWS! SO STOP SMOOCHING ME INTO BUYING VISTA, YOU ZIT-RIDDLED ASSHOLE! A VERY MERRY FUCKIN' CHRISTMAS TO YOU TOO!

*continues to grumble at the guy of the PC Repair Centre after my computer died for the 9th time, thanks to the incompetent actions of Sir Douchebag who swears that it still is Windows that causes these errors, even though all the error codes I collected together clearly prove him wrong.*

Does that title sound like something you'd rather see summed up like this: I have a new game, I like it, I still work at UPS, drink like crazy and have reached level 70 in World of Warcraft?

Well, too bad.

First of all, Resident Evil 5 Demo being restricted to Asian XBL users is a crime against human nature. After about a decade of "AMERICANS FIIIIRSSSTTT!" with release dates, this comes in like a bomb. ..... Yeah, I know, I suck. I try to care for the game, I try to care for the havoc that goes down on just about any RE5 board, I try to remain as patriotic and hatefull to anything else that isn't American. But I guess I just don't care for the game. Not for the demo, not for the entire series.

So, in a nutshell. Alot of people are trying that old trick by making a Hotmail e-mail address with your locale being Japan/China. And now boards slowly fill up "Pretending to be Japanese is a crime.". GameFaq's is a blast right now, go there ASAP.

Enough about the RE:5 demo craze for now. Christmas is coming up, and aside from some more food and the horrible George Michael 80's-song-reruns, there's nothing to it for me. What's X-mas to a pessimistic optimist? Snow, booze and TV specials. And the occasional Jehovah's Witness that people snowball in Central Park.

... I'll cut the crap and move on to the game I bought.
I bought Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts over Steam(who's service is a crock of bullshit, not even Microsoft's Support Centre is this bad). After about two days of messing about with Valve and THQ: I finally got it work, and it's worth it. Twenty bucks is what the expansion costed me, and I already had the original CoH for 5 dollar. So 25$ for one of the best RTS games ever made, not bad, eh?



(If you really want to know what the deal was with the Steam Support...

I tried to buy the game, my creditcard kept on getting rejected cause their service was out for half a day. Then, when I DID get to download it and install it - It asks me for a CD-key. I buy the thing Direct-2-Drive, and I'm asked for a CD-Key. Okay, next step was asking Valve on what I should do now. "Not our business, contact Relic or THQ.". Sure, I thought... E-mailed Relic, and got a response after five hours. The highlight of the entire thing... But their swift response got crushed by what they responded with - "For the CD-key, you have to be at Steam/Valve".

Back at Steam, I looked through the forums some more and came across a message posted by a Community Mod, saying I had to enter a special CD-key that would allow me to add Opposing Fronts to my original copy of CoH. A day later, after hopelessly trying to figure out where I needed to enter my new CD-key I finally could play the game. And I love it... British ARTILLERY FTW!)

In American terms, they go boom quite well.

Where all Americans gather around their family table, roast a bird, drink something and shoot the occasional Indian. Yeah, as you can tell... I ain't 100% American, so I didn't inherit two "traditional" American things: A load of history blabber, always followed up by "Black Friday" and... The only part of Thanksgiving I care for is the grub.

Infact, I think the latter one is about as American as it can get. Who gives a damn about history and how we westerners want to own all land on this planet when there's golden-roasted bird on the table? That's what I thought so.

Nontheless, a few things summed up in bullet-point fashion which we all joyfully nicked from a guy called ArtG. Someone's got to edit Wikipedia, they still swear that the bulletpoints were added with MS Notepad around a decade ago. ArtG made bulletpoints, like Jon Stewart made Mike Huckabee. Did I just drift off again?

• I finally completed Far Cry 2. And the ending really... Lemme put it this way. You walk somewhere, and the game literally ends. Strange finale... Even though the freelance butchering of nearly all the leaders was about time after having driven 1000+ miles according to the stats screen. I wasn't planning on driving to Kentucky from New York when I bought the game... Still I virtually did so.
• Also I completed both Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3. Left 4 Dead was a pain in the ass. They upped the difficulty a bit from the demo, making the game virtually impossible to complete with 2 people and 2 AI's on Advanced. Hell, Expert's gonna be a bitch. And I didn't really finish Fallout 3 as in reaching the credits, I was told it was better to... complete the side-quests and stuff before nailing the end. "Abrupt stop"-much.
• .... What the fuck is it with nearly all games having to end with "YOU DID IT! ... Now start over, fool."?
• The both of my computers have shit themselves inside out in the past five days, and now I'm typing this from my girlfriend's laptop. I hate these little keyboards.
• Did I ever mention that I'm dating someone? Oh yes... A New Jersey gal, very busy, great cook. <Insert U DONT HAZ IT line here>
• A Kingdom for Keflings is one weird game... Though, I somewhat like it. It's got something addicting to it.
• Also, the Far Cry 2 DLC. As much as I love the point-click-pwn-a-bitch crossbow, the silenced shotgun and the handcannon 12-guage PISTOLSLOT shotgun... 800PTS for 3 guns, 2 vehicles and 4 dumbass maps is what defines "A GODDAMN RIPOFF!" in any way.
• I'm off to get my bird at the ladyfriend's place. Yes, I'm completely taking the cooking part for granted. I can't even bake a single egg without making a towering inferno out of my apartment.

Short game.
But still epic and awesome 'til the very last minute.
... Still, only 45 minutes will be awesome per chapter.
And there's only four chapters.

The Village People is missing their biker, Bill = woot, Zoey is in the game for whatever reason and Louis + Smoker = RACISM!?!?! You pick dude/spunky girl, grab gun, kill zombies for 45 minutes. Repeat 4x.

The fact that you can play through the entire game in just 3 hours gets completely forgotten when playing Simon and Garfunkel on max. volume.

Volkswagen/10


There, take a note on that one reviewers.

After playing it for 25 hours total already... Time for some full impressions.

Considering the insane amount of time I stuffed into Oblivion, playing Fallout 3 feels no different. Which is good, but I gotta say that the "NPC schedule" stuff from Oblivion should've remained a bit... Minor this time around. It's a real fuckin' joy that the quest-giver NPC can literally walk all over D.C. So, with the quest starter of "Blood Ties", she can walk from one side of the map, all the way to the other at any given time. So either you're waiting for 3 in-game days for her ass to return, or you're just gonna ditch it.

Nontheless, I'm currently at level eight in the game. At neutral karma. Speaking of karma, as I was butchering a entire town from their folk, I reached level eight and got that Karma achievement for having good karma at that given level. As I checked that pip-boy thing, I was a "Neutral Karma: Mercenary". I wanted the rugged pip-boy achievement :'(.

Hell, want another achievement gag...? Remember how you could pick-pocket friendly NPC's in Oblivion and make them your personal luggage carriers? I tried to do that in Fallout 3. It worked! These Brotherhood of Steel that surround the G.N.R station now carry 1000 bottlecaps worth of my shit. BUT.

... Remember one of the early in-game previews, where the guy pickpocketed a fella' talking over the intercom and put a live grenade in his pocket? Yeah, that.

So, I was over packed with my crap that I wanted to sell once I got the hell out of there. I decided I'd pull that old trick from Oblivion and load some of these pretentious Brotherhood assholes up as my personal baggage-carriers. Mashing A to dump my stuff on his body, I probably must've put a grenade on his body. Cause not two seconds after I walked away from the scene... "*BOOM* Kill that sonuvabitch!" - "Achievement Unlocked: Psychotic Prankster".

And that's how I royally fucked myself over with the main storyline. As these Brotherhood guys play a viral role in the game some point later. Thus, forcing me to reload a recent save. Three levels earlier.

Eventually, thinking I learned from my mistakes. I went off to find a fella' by the name of Mr. Burke. He's that guy who wants to blow up the disabled nuke in Megaton. I thought I'd snitch on him and earn some easy money. But that plan went wrong as little Mr. Burke killed the major/police guy and swore vengeance on my ass. Eventually after having completed the main questlines in Megaton but the "Power of the Atom" which comes from him... I wanted to blow up Megaton afterall for points.

But snitching on him caused him to disappear from the world. I eventually walked all the way to Tenpenny Tower where his boss Tenpenny hangs out. Using my incredible "FUCK YOU LEMME IN!" charm, I made it to the roof. Just to find out that Mr. Burke has gone missing completely. As Sir. Tenpenny's senile mind only cares about shooting wandering people with a sniper rifle.

... Thus screwing any possibility ever completing "The Power of the Atom" on this save file.

But putting the "Lol u did it all wrong" stuff aside. Currently, my stats are focused on Sneak, Lockpicking, Small Guns and Repairing. And I found a new charm in the game: Pickpocketing people of their wealth, then placing a mine on the ground, slowly backing off and shooting the guy once. Instant win. But being focused on these four makes the other two (annoying) aspects of this game ever so... screwed.

Health, and radiation.

See, I gotta cough up 50 bottlecaps for one Stingpack. Which only heals me for 35HP each. Considering I take a good amount of damage over the time, I spend nearly all my money on these things. Hell, with 700 bottlecaps I can only fully heal myself twice. So, using the game's other manners to gain health... Food and water...

They "balanced" those things out too. So everytime I get a mere 10-30HP from eating food or drinking water, I get 5 points to that radiation meter-thing. Thus eventually screwing me again on having to spend 400 bottlecaps at a doc to heal me of my radiation.

Yeah... I'm nitpicking. I love the game.

Some other stuff:

• NXE is a big gimmick afterall. Can't say I dislike the sleek background and such, but I would've liked it if it was optional. Like I said before.
• NXE's also rather... complicated. Well, they put stuff all over the place, so it's somewhat difficult to get what you want quickly.
• NFS: Undercover... I love the NFS series so much that I even blindly bought NFS: Prostreet. But they're really going downhill. I loved Carbon and Most Wanted, how is it so difficult to blend those two together!? They fucked up again.
• About NXE... How in the hell do I change my theme? I can only select random pictures from the stuff I have on my USB or HDD. I want my Jets theme back.
• I'm on the fence on whether I should buy Left 4 Dead for the full price, or wait 'til it's about 30-40 bucks. I gotta say, I'm really hooked to the simplistic gameplay. But it's a bit on the short side. I really had it with spending 60 bucks on stuff I put away after 4 days.
• Far Cry 2... That game... I got a game breaking glitch at 73% in(Which many have), I really wanted to complete that game... But Ubisoft is pulling our legs here by patching the PC version and telling us console gamers to "avoid it" by just making 15 different saves. Not only do I have to start over from scratch: I risk on getting fucked over again.

Ahh.... Fallout 3 brings back memories to how I nearly gave up my life for Oblivion. And it's flaws... And seeing as I don't feel like writing my entire five hours of playtime down:

Good:

• Whores
• Snappy dialogue
• The level-up system from Oblivion is back
• The tutorial is well thought out.
• A huge map.
• The main storyline is huge, from what it looks like.
• Perks rock.
• The gunplay kicks-ass...
• ...But the accuracy of most of them makes me wanna rush in with a bat and hope for the best.

• You can tell that they tried to carefully handle the "cuss-words".
• The map is a tad-bit too big at times.
• Errand running ftl.
• The entire city of DC is connected by half-destroyed subway stations which you need to use in order to get from location to location. Bit of a turn off, knowing that 70% of the world is just... open.
• Alot of small, but noticable graphical glitches. Especially the one where the water meshes in Megaton get fucked up and block my vision.