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Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe gives the entire channel worth, though the horrible pink lettering in the corner deeply offends me.

That's an almost year-old article though, and I've heard nothing about it since. There aren't any quotes supporting the non-committal article either. I really liked the look of the Fable 2 run-throughs with Peter Molyneux. The co-op feature itself will only excite me if it's completely useable through Live, which it surely has to be to be remotely interesting. The rest of the game looks very attractive to me though, and the fact that you can buy any house and shop in the world a big improvement. It was inevitable that I'd buy the game anyway, but I'm slightly less cynical about the scope of the game than when Molyneux was hyping the dog as a great feature.

There are a couple of things that change immediately that make a difference - young players in 8.0.1 tend to peak incredibly early, around the age of 21-22, and then their stats are constant for ten years. At the other end of the scale, older players experience a ridiculous and abrupt drop in physical stats once they reach 31-32, rendering most of them completely useless. Combined with the strange reputation thing that causes AI managers to stick with older players regardless of their stats means you get some very strange team selections at club and international level.

You don't have to have the January transfers, it just adds a '8.0.2 Database' that you have the option of using when you create a new game.

I powered through Half-Life 2 after borrowing the Orange Box from a friend to play Team Fortress. I HATE it, I really do - passionately. It prompted more rage and stress in me than any non-shit game ever has with its ultra-linearity and lack of any kind of atmosphere. The endless single-solution puzzles and afterthought combat make the game seem like the physics toy that it is, the 3D version of some internet flash game or a terrible, terrible point-and-click adventure. If it felt like a goodpoint-and-click I'd enjoy it, but there's no satisfaction from solving any of the simple puzzles and no replay value as far as I can see. By making the entire game based around the inexplicable number of mechanical trials, any sense of the grander scheme of things, the struggle to save the human race, the race to rescue Eli Vance, whatever, is completely lost. Is the saviour of humanity really spending half an hour moving one board from behind to front, stepping onto it and repeating the process? Ugh, just one of the endless, tedious sections with no sense of reward. There were far too many instant death moments that reminded me of platform games and too many sections where I felt compelled to reload simply because I'd lost 35 health and couldn't be sure where the next health pack was coming from. The fact that the game features endless loading screens anyway adds to the stop-start nature of the game, but can be forgiven because of the pretty environments, but combined with the frequent instant-deaths and necessity to complete certain sections without flaw makes the flow of the game completely ruined. Everything about the game screams that it's a game and ruins any immersion or atmosphere, from the endless obstruction puzzles (featuring improbable artificial barriers) to the tired, tired dialogue ("I just wish I could share your confidence, Gordon...") Characters like Barney and Alyx have some kind of prescience that allows them to accompany you when they're needed to perform tasks that you'd be unable to do and then disappear during any extended combat encounter. Despite the fact that the game prides itself on some kind of realism when it comes to physics - using heavy objects to weigh down one end of a ramp - the very next moment you're unable to climb over a fence or stack of cars that a child could scale, or unable to break a window to advance. During the interminable sections where you're accompanied by other freedom fighters (particularly when fighting striders) I was literally screaming at the screen as the cretins blocked my path at every turn and led me to instant death - I'm firmly of the opinion that games need to allow you to kill non-essential companions if you want to. It doesn't matter if it makes the game harder, I should choose whether to face the challenge of over-stacked odds or face the challenge of dealing with useless mannequins who cavort around in close quarters and get in my way. If you're playing on Hard difficulty anyway the fucking morons are more likely to block you for the split-second that kills you than help you in any real way. Added to which, I needed the release of punishing the robotic, useless cunts. Even the characters in the game are completely lacking. Alyx, though very hot, has a bit of the slapper to her and there's no sense of any romance between her and Gordon to justify her over-acted flirting. Eli's relationship with Alyx consists of ridiculously familiar Worried Father/Headstrong Daughter with literally nothing else. Breen comes across as a staple 'intellectual' bad guy with nonsensical, clichéd and unexplained lines - 'you've destroyed so much, but can you say that you've created anything?' There's a total lack of G-Man, the best part of the first game and the promise of whom led me to keep playing. Aside from token speeches bookending the game and the usual fleeting glimpses in-game, he serves no storyline purpose which establishes him as nothing more than a plot device to explain the gap between the first and second games, which was incredibly disappointing. Argh, I need to stop even thinking about this game because it wasn't disappointing, it made me genuinely angry and I can't be arsed mulling over it any more. It pushed more of my buttons as well that I can't put any kind of objective spin on - like when FPS games put extended driving sections in. I HATE driving games, I don't want to spend an hour or more skidding around inside any kind of vehicle, it's not remotely my idea of fun and it's not what I expected from Half-Life. My friend told me that a large portion of Episode 1 is exactly the same and you only have the Gravity Gun, so I'm giving up on the entire series anyway. I haven't been as disappointed by any kind of entertainment since the third Matrix film.

We don't even have Channel 5 yet

Awesome, the Reader's Champion at the Daily Record newspaper in Scotland is going to do a story on the myriad ways Microsoft fucks over its customers with regard to the 360 and Xbox Live in particular. If you've got any issues or complaints that you want addressed, you can e-mail her at: readers_champion@aol.com or write to her at: Lesley Campbell, c/o Daily Record, One Central Quay, Glasgow G3 8DA. Apparently Microsoft can and do record any and all voice chat and correspondence over the Live service. I can understand that during games where abuse might need to be monitored, but they can record and store private voice messages as well. Imagine if a telephone company was doing the same, there'd be an outcry, and when it comes to private messages I can't see how Microsoft is anything other than a carrier that we've paid to convey messages.

Ah, OK, I remember when Rose and Bernard visited the healer in Australia he made mention of multiple locations of mystical power, or something similar. That must be what it's based on.

My fucking guitar's broken! About a third of the time when I try a downstroke it registers twice, making it impossible to play even the most basic of songs. I'm seriously regretting buying the guitar-less version now, three days of play and now it's useless. I'm fuming. Gonna have to be ebay, can't wait until Rock Band comes out to keep playing.

This is concerning references in spoiler tags above that I didn't understand: Spoiler: Click here to viewWhat are the 'Vile Vortices' and Orchid Station? Have they been brought up in the programme/mobisodes or are they pure spoilers?

Yeah, I was impressed by Lucas once again. Didn't watch all of the match, but saw him thump a couple of long passes with confidence and precision. It still doesn't feel like a complete Chelsea team until the Cup of Nations players return though, that's when the title race will get even more interesting - even with a draw today, it'd be foolish to think that Chelsea can't improve performances whilst United are seemingly in a dip and Arsenal are surely punching slightly above their weight still.

An another thing to add is that the NFL already has an uneven schedule of games, and a mechanism for adjusting for that in deciding who goes through to the playoffs. The Premiership doesn't have that, and any attempt to introduce a system like that (e.g. weighting points based on the league position of your opposition) purely to advance a blatant money-making scheme would never be supported by fans. That's another example of why the Premiership ISN'T the same as the NFL.

The game cheated first

Awesome, didn't even realise there were cheats. Cheers!

One thing with the team mentality settings like 'attacking/defending' is that they mean absolutely nothing if you have your players set to specific levels, rather than having them defaulting to the team setting. That's something I only realised in the last game after playing FM/CM since the very beginning, showing how little attention I pay to tactics The team tactics are nothing more than shortcuts allowing you to set the mentality of multiple players without having to go to each one individually and change them throughout the match. I find it really difficult to find more than two players that I want to have linked (wingbacks/wingers for example, I do,) so I've just saved two different tactics, one 'normal' and one 'attacking.'

Is there a way for me to get the co-op only songs available to play on my own? It's fucking frustrating to have to go online to play them, I thought completing them might at least unlock them for practice mode, but seems not.

Create a Private Game and get to the character select screen, then press the Guide button and go to your Friends section, highlight the person you want to invite and press 'X'.

I don't have a wireless guitar, but does it have a button on it like the controller to bind it to the console?

I actually don't even see the point in the suggestion that the top 5 teams have to be seeded, except that those teams view it as crucial that they be winning these foreign games to improve their image to the fans. It would seem a lot more sensible to do the reverse, and base the matches on the previous year's league standings, with 1st playing 4th and 2nd playing 3rd (or similar) and the bottom-half and promoted teams being jumbled up in the same fashion. That way, the matches are guaranteed to be significant for the overseas fans and still relatively fair in a league context - think of the SPL's split for the last 5 games. Each venue could have one top-half match and one bottom-half match to ensure that no region's getting a double-header of low-profile ties. I don't see how the staging of NFL/MLB games has anything to do with the Premiership's decision, there are different economics and cultures at work and it's ludicrous to be so simple as to say that what works for one organisation would work for another. It's as ridiculous as suggesting that salary caps/drafts/collegiate systems should be introduced simply because they exist elsewhere. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't be, but the simplistic argument that the NFL and Premiership should mirror each other is completely flawed.

I did call the OFT by the way, but couldn't speak to an actual person. I'm sending a letter to the Reader's Champion in the Record.

I already have 10 months I didn't want, the bastards.

Snot just shot out of my nose, you cunt!

Just ... all of Bioshock. I've never been so impressed with any game in my life. An amazing experience that lived up to my expectations from System Shock 2.