One of the very few perks of the job! Having said that, I bet I throw it out within the week! It’s a bit erm large

The surprise hit of the past two weeks has been High School Musical 3: Senior Year Dance…..yes you read this right, High School Musical. It’s surprisingly good fun, reminds me a lot of Boom Boom Rocket. It’s a nice, fairly simple rhythm action game and it’s great fun. Obviously a rental not a purchase, but a decent rental at least. Seriously, give it a shot, you might be surprised. I know I was!

Work wise, I introduce you to my two newest pieces: The Rise of the iPhone and BattleForge Preview. Also I’ve had some brilliant news. On 13th February, I’m off to London for the day to a Resident Evil 5 press event. I’ll be seeing Resident Evil 5 a month before release (and hopefully might even get a go of it), as well as interviewing someone from Capcom about it, and be meeting various other people that are also at the event. Then I’ve got to write an article on it to be published for XboxGameZone a few days later. Pretty cool stuff Brilliant opportunity for me hopefully.

Site wise, you might have noticed the addition of a Twitter feed to the right of this entry. I’ve now become hooked on Twitter after having an account for ages and hardly ever using it. It’s good fun and does seem quite a good networking tool. Feel free to follow me if you wish. My username is Jenjea. Twitter was quite useful while I was away this past weekend. Sometimes it’s nice to stay connected and my iPhone does a great job at providing that. I could still quite easily access Facebook, Twitter and any website I wanted from my phone. It was especially handy on the train there and back. Little things like that remind me just how much technology has changed in recent years. Only a couple of years ago I wouldn’t expect to be able to do something like that.

While I was away in Exeter visiting my very talented friend Pheebs, we went to see Defiance, the latest Daniel Craig film. It was brilliant.

I’ll admit to being very shallow and initially being interested in it mostly because of Mr Craig but it really was an extraordinary film. It is about the unsung Jewish heroes, the Bielski brothers, who during the Second World War lived in the forest with many, many other Jewish people hiding from the Nazis. They managed to do this for a number of years despite great hardship yet after the war ended, they never got the recognition they deserved. The film seemed really well made, not as black and white as I expected it to be which made it feel more realistic and the acting by all the cast was superb. The only downside in terms of acting was Daniel Craig’s accent. He just couldn’t do a consistent accent, he was fine if he wasn’t shouting but as soon as he had to shout something, he just turned English again. Pity really as he’s normally a great actor. I’ve ordered the book on Amazon so it’ll be interesting to compare the memoirs to the film and see what the film missed out for the sake of brevity.

Talking of brevity, I’m going to bring this entry to a close. It’s getting late and I want to go read Darkly Dreaming Dexter.

A long overdue update from me, and as you can see quite a change in looks too!

I spent the first part of last week trying out Joomla and seeing if that would match my needs. It was brilliant as a CMS for showing off my reviews, but I just wasn’t happy with the blog element of it as well as a few other bits and pieces. Essentially, although fun to try out, it was just wrong for this site. Given me some much needed experience in it however.
Anyway, I then spent the second part of last week sorting out this new change as well as the change located at Halycopter Reviews. That part of the site still needs some serious work, I’m not happy with the skin and a few other things just don’t sit right with me.
However, I’m pretty happy with this part of the site, hence the update! Oh and as a side comment: Don’t mind the RSS feed for the Reviews site that shows not very recent reviews, it’s down to how I added them to the new site. Once I’ve added some new reviews, it’ll all balance out

Besides this, it’s been all go for me. I’ve been keeping myself to myself a bit as it’s not been a great week for me emotionally (probably why I stuck at Joomla for so long, nice distraction!) but I have had some good news. I have a job! I’m now working at Blockbuster at weekends, only evening work but hopefully it’ll be good for me as well as my bank balance. Also it means 10 free rentals a week and 20% discount off games and DVDs so not bad at all! I start Thursday.

Gaming wise, it’s been sequel fortnight for me! Meaning Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Mercenaries 2, oh and Force Unleashed.

I still haven’t 1ked Fable 2, been taking my time with it. It won’t take long now though, mostly finished my second playthrough, just need to get the Perfectionist achievement sorted and that’s pretty much it besides a couple of simple achievements I’ve not done yet. Despite everyone else trading it in, I can’t. Been looking forward to it for too long, so I just don’t think I’ll be able to bring myself to sell it.

Gears of War 2:
I went to the Midnight launch at my local Gamestation Thursday night. Sure, I paid over the odds than if I went to a supermarket but it was fun and different. Somehow never been to a midnight launch, so that needed rectifying anyway! I also picked up a Splatterhead model as I couldn’t resist at the time (I should never be allowed to spend money at midnight, all my inhibitions go!).

Don’t mind Sonic in the way :p I’d love to own more gaming figurines, damn lack of money.

Oh and for my final thought: Quantum of Solace = good but not as good as Casino Royale. However I’ll forgive Daniel Craig anything