GameLog 45

Guitar Hero III (10h) - Mat & nat came up for the baptism on Friday night, so we got stuck into GH. Scott and Greig joined in on Saturday to give it a good thrashing. Finally got past "Welcome to the jungle" and ploughed through a couple more sets to be only 1 song shy of "cliffs" on medium.

Spore Creature Creator (6h) - Took an eternity to get, and the full version only offered a couple more options to peak my interest. Cameron enjoyed it sso I'll probably be fiddling with it every now & then.

FM08 (2h) - Gateshead, Season 3, 8th BSP

FuryBand (2h) - VRBones LXXI, Level 18 Mutant Beorning Jedi

Metal Gear Solid 4 (1h) - Hard to find time when Sandy and Cameron aren't using the TV and I'm not interested in something else.

Battle of Tiles (1h) - Demo'd it a bit to others

Visit Spore.com

It's time for some critters!

Even tohugh I picked up the pre-order, the 17th rolls on and there's nothing released. Eventually the trial version is out, but still nothing on the full version.

Mucked around in the trial version last night for about 4 hours creating 4 totally different creatures. I showed Cameron tonight and he liked it enough to keep him occupied, but "TrackMania" was the real reason we went to the PC and eventually it won out.

Seeing no way to update the trial into the full fersion I uninstalled the trial to see if there was anything the EA downloader would do. Now instead of saying 'Play' it says "releasing in 3 hours". Looks like EA are heading the same way as steam with their downloader and are being tarred by the same ineptitude.

GameLog 44

Chaos League (9h) - Picked up a copy for $10 on the Monday to tie me over unitl Metal Gear Solid came out. Takes forever to play using action pauses, but it still has that Bloodbowl feel. Played through a couple of games. Slaughtered some dwarves 13-0.

Metal Gear Solid 4 (8h) - Finished the first act. Might redo to see if I can do it without killing anyone, possibly after going through once though. Tried the multiplayer and I couldn't believe how much stuff I had to go through to get into a game. It took about 1 & 1/2 hours to download patches, create accounts (with one of the most inane requirements on game name I've seen) and then find a server. Others playing must have had a keyboard as they were chatting quite regularly during the game, and there's no way known I'd suffer typing out a message using the controller. Quite frankly it was a really bad experience, much worse than I've seen on PC. If that is supposed to be the friendly console way then let me outta here. The game itself feels epic, and it's been a pretty interesting storyline so far.

Football Manager (6h) - Gateshead, Season 3, 8th BSP - We played poorly to get dumped out of the FA Trophy, but we're up to the 1/4 finals of the Setanta Shield. Playing much better in the league now and sitting in a firm mid-table position with only 8 points shy of playoffs. I had ruled out a serious challenge for the title once I saw how poorly we were going in the first couple of rounds, but we might just jag a couple more and be in with a shot. Cook finally broke an 18 hour goal drought so we now have 3 strikers I'm confident with. Clarke really doesn't have the stats to be playing as well as he does, but he's the crowd favourite and keeps banging them in. Once he gets a goal drought I'll probably permenantly bench him.

Guitar Hero III (4h) - Still can't get past "welcome to the Jungle" on medium. It's still fun playing through the easy tracks though. Only a few left that aren't 5 stars.

Battle of Tiles (3h) - Trying on "very hard" but I keep losing men to the group attacks. Got one save past the first boss, but lost my main lightning mage.

Spore creature creator

Spore is slowly getting closer, and GameSetwatch has a good article about the Maxis crowd and the imminent release of the creature creator next Tuesday. I like the sound of immediately embedding animation into blogs and YouTube vids. Sounds like a perfect launchpad for viral marketing.

GameLog 43

FM08 (4h) - Gateshead, season 3, 15th - Still in the FA trophy and Setanta Shield, but not travelling too well in the league. Uni assignments and the arrival of Rachael made the week fly by!

Battle of Tiles (5h) - Saw this indie game on GameSetWatch. Liked it enough to pick it up for a fiver.

Guitar Hero III (3h) - Andrew's nearly completed medium level. I'd rather rock out on easy ones.

GameLog 42

FM08 (8h) - Gateshead, season 3, 12th - A dozen games in and it's a so-so result so far. Even though the team is ranked well individually the bookies still have us behind most matches, and there are some teams who pay pro's over 2000 pounds a week. Seems like some of the difficulty further up the league is flowing down this way.

Guitar Hero III (5h) - Good for vegging out once home from work.

FuryBand (3h) - VRBones LXII, Level 21 Beorning Jedi Mutant - Talking to Ben made me pull this one out of the closet again. I've been trying to get enough into gauntlet mode to get full identify working. Still haven't made it to lvl 24. Keep dying to silly pack situations.

Cannot remove Mac created directory ending with space

Had a curly one at work today. A Mac user had created a directory stored onto the Windows 2003 fileserver with a space on the END. It first started appearing in the backup error reports stating the file didn't exist. When I finally got round to looking into it I found it was virtually impossible to remove from the server because the API must truncate the name. Couldn't delete through windows explorer, through DOS, through DOS as an 8.3 file, or brute forcing a delete on the whole directory.

Finally hopped onto a linux box and removed it with a simple "rm ._*" over a cifs share ...

GameLog 41

FM08 (10h) - Gateshead, season 2, Winners - Cruised to victory with no cup to distract me. The team is looking solid with most rated at Div1 level. The end of year fire sale helped me get 40% under wage budget for next year with some better coaches into the mix.

Another secret to raising cash for low league teams is to get in early to arrange friendlies with high ranked teams. Even in BSN I was able to get Sheffield Utd and other Championship teams to come for a friendly at our place so we can fleece their supporters. +100K in one month is enough to get you into the good books financially.

Guitar Hero III (4h) - It's pretty good filler between tea time and scrapheap challenge, or when cameron needs to be entertained. Played a little into medium mode, but keep returning to "Cliffs of dover" for that really good rockout feeling.

Bladestorm PS3 Demo (1h) - Tried it again to see if it was worth picking up. Didn't get very good reviews, but it looks pretty indepth for the unit advancement. Might be bargain bin material.

DJWheat drops GGL and EG

I was having a hunt for a likely PS3 title and found out the news that Epileptic Gaming had shut up shop when looking for a GTA IV review. Looking back it always seemed funny that DJWheat would do coverage for CGS while still in withh GGL, but I didn't think it would come to this. It does add even more credibility to the CGS that they can drag in talent like Marcus. I've been impressed at the stage production of CGS and it's the biggest threat to WCG of all the worldwide competition formulas.

Marcus also has a B'day close to mine ...

GameLog 40

FM08 (15h) - Gateshead, season 2, 1st BSN - Knocked out of the FA Trophy and Setanta Shield in 3 days. Pity, I was hoping for my first silverware this season. Powering on to the end of the season now with 5 points clear. Should be a shoe-in now that I'm out of all the cup distractions. Sold off Giles Coke for 60,000 to give me some bargaining money, but all my potential imports have vanished. Hope I don't rue the sale later on ...

Guitar Hero III (3h) - Cameron wants 'Guitar' time every now and then. He'll either back me up on his ukelele or jump on the drums. Sandy gave it a go too and went pretty well for a first-timer. Took a while to get it into lefty mode as the controller was registered as number 2, but Guitar Hero had it as Player 1. I gave it a go left-handed too when Sandy took a break and it was much easier with the screen flipped to the left.

Bit pissed that they have you playing in hell though. Wonder if it can be skipped...

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Demo (3h) - With the PS3 connected I finally created a PSN account and downloaded a heap of demos to see what else this thing is capable of. Dynasty warriors translated well to the Gundam world, but I still suffered handcramp from doing the same thing over and over and ov ..

Race Driver GRID PS3 demo (3h) - Incredibly difficult to get into, even with all the driving aids turned on. Once oyu're there its really rewarding though. Spent aaaages trying to get the drifting map right and the effort made the other types of games easier as they need less control. Really good map of San Fransisco too. Was good enough to remind me of my trip over there. Going from this to Formula One CE made me like GRID even more. Disappointing when I found out it wasn't released yet ...

Bladestorm PS3 Demo (2h) - Same type of game as Dynasty warriors, but with more emphasis on the units around you. I seemed to only use one button though. Looks a potential pickup due to the character advancement though.

Other PS3 Demos (4h) - Pulled down a whole heap of other demos. Virtua Tennis III, Tiger woods Golf, Everybody's golf, Rubadub, Sudoku, Formula One Championship Edition

GTA 4 (1h) - Procrastination mode made me pull this out when Sandy gave me some 'free time' to work on the teaching assignment due next week.

FuryBand (1h) - VRBones LXI - Moved from Dwarf Fortress to FuryBand for downtime at work.