Happy new year everyone! Wow, 2009 already. Seems like just yesterday we were celebrating the new millennium. How time flies when you’re having fun. Hope everyone had a fun night celebrating the new year. I know I did. Me and a couple of mates went out to the pubs, then later back to a friend’s house after the bells. Was great. The pub was absolutely packed and the atmosphere was great.

Worst point of the night: Paying a ridiculous £9 for a tika masala and chips from an absolute shit-hole of an Indian takeaway. Seriously, this place was awful. My best friend, who’s a cookery student and aims to become a chef pointed out countless things wrong as soon as we walked in. It was atrocious. And to then have the audacity to charge almost a tenner for a shit meal!

What’s worse, barely five minutes after I left with it, I dropped it. Wonderful. So I essentially paid £9 for two bits of chicken tika and some crappy chips. Hate how all the decent places were closed.

Oh well. shit happens. Role on the next year!

I also thought I’d come up with a few resolutions while I’m at it as well, even if they’ll almost certainly amount to nothing.

• Gain some weight. I am seriously underweight, but I don’t understand why. I eat so much it hardly seems comprehensible. I will put on some weight this year if it kills me.
• Lower my Hb_A1C. Being diabetic, my Hb_A1C (essentially my average blood-glucose level over a certain amount of time) needs to be monitored, and mine is a bit higher (hell, a lot higher) than what it should be. While this has no effect no, it can lead to problems later in life if it stays that way. So, I need to try and lower it.
• Go to University. Maybe. If I were to pass the HNC Computing course I’m doing now at college, I almost certainly would be able to get into University. But, I’m not entirely sure if I actually want to (yet, anyway. I definitely want to eventually), or what course to do exactly. So, I going to have to decide all that this year.
• Budget properly. Now that I have a job, the temptation to squander all my earnings on stuff like video games is massive. I need to keep it for things I actually need (college bus fares, clothes, etc).

Anyway, there we go. Fairly boring and pretty achievable. That’s all from me now, enjoy the new year!

Well, hello there! I’m back from Dundee. Well, I’ve actually been back since the 28th, but I’ve been too busy playing the Xbox 360 I bought to post an update here. But more on that in a bit.

Christmas was good. I didn’t get much in the way of presents, just money mostly (which contributed towards the aforementioned 360) and little things like socks, diabetic chocolate, etc. I haven’t gotten my presents from my parents yet, since my dad isn’t back from work until the 3rd, so we’ve decided to wait till then, since he’s missed Christmas and is going to miss Hogmany as well. But Christmas in Dundee was alright. Was good seeing all my family again, most of whom I hadn’t seen for close to a year. so, that was fun.

So yeah, I bough an Xbox 360. An Elite one. Aww yeah. It’s lovely… and black, so it matches my PS3 and my TV. I’ve only got four games at the moment though: Gears of War 2, Mirror’s Edge, LEGO Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda. I was supposed to get an extra controller with it as well, but the Gamestation store where I got it (In Glenrothes) was out of individual ones, so they had to give me a pack with a controller and the last two games I mentioned instead. So I got two games I wasn’t expecting to get, which is nice. Although, the controller is white, so it doesn’t match the console (or my other controller), which made me sad. Perhaps at some point, if I happen to have a shit-load of disposable money from work, I might buy a second black one.

So I’ve been playing it mostly since then. I’ve completed Gears of War 2. Last night, myself and a friend played through the majority of the campaign mode on co-op, which was much fun. We had previously done the same thing a few months back with Resistance on the PS3. Now I just need to play through it all again on the higher difficulties for the achievements. Shame I suck. The game is fantastic though. The graphics are sublime. Seriously, this thing could rival Metal Gear Solid 4 in terms of graphics quality. The story was alright too, even if I had no clue what was going on (I haven’t played the first game). Of course though, this all pales in comparison to the fact that your main weapon HAS A FUCKING CHAINSAW ON IT!

Seriously, killing enemies with your awesome chainsaw gun NEVER gets old. There’s nothing quite like seeing your character rip the chainsaw into an enemie’s chest, blood going everywhere, while your character just screams “AWWWWWW YEEEEAAAHHH!” It doesn’t get much better.

Mirror’s Edge, on the other hand, was a little less overwhelming. In fact, it’s a pretty mediocre game in my opinion. I haven’t completed the story, but I’m about 2 thirds of the way through (ish), and it doesn’t show any signs of getting much better. Not a lot is actually explained plot-wise, and the characters aren’t particularly likeable. Combine that with what could possibly be the most frustrating gameplay you have ever played, and you have yourself a rather poor game. It’s an interesting concept, and it’s always nice to see companies coming up with something original, but it’s just not been executed pretty well. The focus is on the whole free-running aspect, but the flow of your run is always broken by a miss-timed jump, send you off the top of a building to the pavement below, or desperately trying to find out how to get where you need to be. Often accompanied by 3 or 4 police officers pelting you with machine guns. I’ve surprised I’ve gotten as far through it as I have without throwing my controller through the TV screen.

As for the other two games, Kung Fu Panda is surprisingly good for a game based on a movie, since they almost always suck. It’s still not good enough to make me want to keep playing though, although that may be in part due to the fact I’ve seen the movie and already know the story. LEGO Indy is great though, I’m really getting into that. I loved the LEGO Star Wars games and this is just as much fun.

I’ve also signed up for Xbox Live as well, so if you have a 360 and want to add me as a friend, my gamertag is “leslij55″, minus the quotes, obviously. The only multiplayer game I have is Gears 2, but I’ll no doubt be getting a load more in the coming weeks. Call of Duty: World at War and Left 4 Dead are priorities.

Anyway, I’m off to go chainsaw my way through some more Locust.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Assuming the works right, this post should be posted at the right time. Since I’m away, I won’t be able to check.