The lads will tell you that I have been playing Donkey Kong Country non stop for the last 2 weeks trying to get 101%. In order to get 101% you have to complete all levels, all bosses and uncover all bonus levels. Finally, this morning, I achieved my goal. Check it out!!!

If you know us, you know that we love Guitar Hero and just over a week ago a new game called Rockband was released and was delivered straight in the loving arms of Gaffbhala. The game is exactly the same as the GH series only that RB comes with a mini drumkit and microphone enabling 4 people to play at the same time on drums, bass, guitar and vocals! A perfect game for me and my fellow housemates!

I’ve been playing it quite heavily over the past week or so and the other day I managed to complete the solo tour on the drums on hard mode. I sat my self down for a few hours every evening after work and ploughed my way through it.

My next step is to step it up a notch and try and complete it on expert difficulty Which should be fine for half of the songs but there are some pretty tough ones once you get into the tour! What I’m looking to though is that after I complete the drum solo tour I have the whole guitar tour to look forward to!

Since I was a kid I have always been into computer games. It all started with my Atari 2800, then onto the NES, Sega MegaDrive, SNES, N64, Xbox, and now Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, plus the odd bit of PC gaming along the way. Only during college I got a taste at some simple game design and programming and I have been meaning to get into it ever since. The picture on the right is a screen shot of a flash game I made in 4th year with Trish and another programmer plus two digital artists. The game was entitled ‘The Cloning’!

I have decided to get into game development as a hobby and what better way to start than try and get into Microsoft XNA. The nerdy rundown speil: “Microsoft XNA is a set of tools, complete with a managed runtime environment, provided by Microsoft, that facilitates computer game design, development, and management. XNA does this by freeing game designers from writing “repetitive boilerplate code”, and brings all aspects of game production into a single system.”

I’ll start by downloading the XNA development platform and I’ll try and look through some of the examples, tweaking around with some of the code. I have never programmed in .NET before so it might take me a while to get into it. But if its as simple as microsoft say it is I might be able to get my head around it. My housemate Ali also shares an interest in this so we’re going to try and combine both our efforts and design a game over the summer.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and I hope we’ll stick with it. Hopefully,we’ll have a simple game up and running that we can deploy on my Xbox 360 at the end of the summer

Let the nerding commence

I’ve been playing alot of GTA the past few days. And so have lot of other people! Every single person signed in to Xbox Live on my friends list has been either playing GTA or was set to away the past few days (well except for Mike who just plays COD4 all the time).

Tuesday 29th (Launch Day)

1pm - 2pm
Went to my mate Brian’s apartment for lunch and got to see GTA first hand for the very first time. Gave it a bash and was amazed by the level of detail and sheer scope of the game.

5pm - 3:30am
Left work early as I came in early. Got home at around 5pm and put the disc straight in as soon as I could turn off the gaff’s alarm. Played solidly hour after hour letting Ali have a tiny go here or there. I progressed through the single player and also gave multiplayer a bash with my homies of choice, Metonym, SenatorWilliams and Zyg0t3 (thats Paddy, Rhys and Damo to the non nerds). Damo and Paddy left multiplayer and it was just myself and Rhys. We went back to playing single player while leaving our headsets on so we could still talk to eachother! Then all of a sudden BANG! it was 3:30am! Felt a bit guilty about my sleep patterns so went to bed. All in all got off the couch about three or four times. Once to reheat lasagne and the others were toilet breaks.

Wednesday 30th

9am - 5pm
Could not stop thinking about playing GTA. It effected my work performance and the ability to program in PHP.

5:30pm - 9:30pm
Played solidly when I got home from work. Started with some multiplayer with Paddy, then onto single player. Gave Ali a go while I made some pasta. We called over to Paddy’s and said hello. We both agreed it was wierd seeing eachother in person as we’ve just been “gang banging” together the past few days (that sounds pretty dirty!). Paddy and Damo started a multiplayer session and we legged it home to join

11pm - 3am
Rushed home from Paddy’s and jumped into Free Roam mode for about an hour. The lads went to bed at around midnight so I carried on myself and progressed through the single player story. Managed to get quite far too, unlocked a new Island, went to a comedy club and watched a three minute Ricky Gervais comedy sketch! Ha! Stand up comedy in a video game, where else would you find something like that other than GTA!

Thats it for the moment! Going to rush straigh home from work and meet up with Rhys on the streets of Liberty City.

WOW! I own a copy of GTA IV! Fansastic! Its a pity I’m stuck in work for the next 8 hours with the game staring me in the face! I usually find it extremely difficult getting out of bed in the morning! But this morning was a completely different story! Jumped straight out of bed and legged it down to Gamestop in Dun Laoghaire in a matter of seconds! Got down there at around 07:50 and there was about 15 people in the queue outside the shop ahead of me, then at 8am they opened the doors to us and we walked in in an orderly fashion. One lad behind me in the queue didn’t have a copy pre-ordered and I overheard the shop guy telling them politely to go away!

So goodbye world. I’ll be working during the day and playing GTA IV during the night! If you need to contact me, buy an Xbox 360, a copy of GTA IV and you’ll find me online!

Some of you might know that I’m mental for the video games and one of the greatest games in the past 10 years is out tomorrow. The game of course is Grand Theft Auto: IV. Its the game that lets you steal cars, deal drugs, recieve entertainment from ladies of the night, assasinate, run over and beat up pedestrians, explore, and all other activities that result in severe mass destruction and chaos. I’ve been preparing for this game for the past few days and been looking forward to it for three years.

Yesterday I made a lasagne and divided it up into four portions and lashed them in the freezer. Also, I have about three chicken dishes in there too. One of which is made by Ali as I swaped one of my lasagne portions for his chicken saté dish.

I dont plan on cooking dinner for at least a week and perhaps next sunday I’ll make two big dinners to do me for the following week, that is if it doesnt impact my playing time.

I’ve just set up my pc in work with some nice wallpapers so that my colleagues in here know how mental I am for this game. Check it out on the right!

Gamestop will be opening early at 8am tomorrow morning to sell the game, so I’ll make my way down at around 7:30 or so incase there is a bit of a queue. Its a pity I havent taken tomorrow off work as I’ll have the copy of the game staring me in the face while I’m in work. I dont know how much sleep I’ll be getting over the next few weeks but it is definately worth it.

Is anyone else getting the game? If so let us know! We’re getting the Xbox 360 version so if you get that too share your gamertag with us so we can play online.

As Dan stated in a previous post, we’ve been playing Mario Kart on the wii a lot recently. Here’s a quick clip of me and Dan playing it and me taking it slightly too seriously.

On friday Wig bought Mario Mart Wii! Its so much fun! Its the latest game we’ve been playing in the house and its been on the telly non stop since wig got it! You basically control the kart by moving you hands like you would with any steering wheel! kinda like the way girls play car games, but this time moving the contoller around the place actually is useful!

So if you have a Wii and want to play with us online here’s our friend code!

Friend Code: 2320-6275-3732