The Weblog Review

Yes I’m a gamer. So when I saw a site sub-titled: “3d accelerators, PC hardware, movies, music, books, games of all sorts, and things to do in san francisco..” I figured it would interest me, and for the most part it did.

Will’s site is entitled ‘What’s your game?’ The layout is uncluttered and simple, the blog is powered by Movable Type 2.63. Will is a writer for a Gaming magazine so that gives him clout with me. He offers a lot more than this sucks or this is soooo l33t!

Will offers some pretty insightful (and gamers-wanna-know insightful) reviews and comments on games. Here is one example on Rise of Nations:

‘The more I play this game, the more impressed with it I become. At the end of every real-time battle, in with all the other stats about technology and land controlled, is a section that tells you how you use the game. It tells how many formations you made and how many times you use them, how many hotkeys you press, how many clicks you make in the game field and in the UI. It’s extroidinarily cool, and I wish more games would give you those kinds of stats. A fighting game that saves profiles that tell you how many attacks to the head you take versus the number you dodge and other in-depth stats would be badass.’

Then later on the game game:

Rise of Nations is still a blast. I’m playing through my third Conquer the World campaign now, this time as the French. I figure if I can beat the game as the French on the Hard setting, I’m ready for online play. The turn-based Conquer the World section is good enough that it could be it’s own game. Hopefully, the Medieval: Total War people will tweak their turn-based game to be more Rise-like.

Will also has a few amusing personal entries, such this one about his party-hard-y neighbours:
4:00 PM Sunday: Dear Lord, will it never stop? What kind of maniacs leave the radio on for 30 hours? Are they doing some sort of unholy psychedelic drug in there and are just starting to come down? Did they die with the radio on? What’s wrong with them?. Heh. Who hasn’t been there?

Will talks about many, many games, some of the games mentioned : Planetside, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Everquest, Tribes, Rise of Nations, Super Mario Sunshine, GTA: Vice City, Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, Desert Combat .35, WaveRace: Blue Storm etc. etc!

A solid site for gamers. It is always great to read someone elses take on a game before you cough up your coin for games. (Especially in light of how expensive they are becoming!) I think ‘What’s your game’ will help sort the must-haves and the ‘forget-about-its’.What’s your game?

When it comes to video games, I’m old school Nintendo all the way – give me my Super Mario Brothers before they were in 3D and Duck Hunt where you always wanted to gun down that stupid hunting dog. I’ve played a small share of Playstation 2, and have heard the talk of all the cool features of the different new gaming units, and the great new perks of the latest and greatest games – that happens when you work for a major electronics retailer. But I couldn’t ever put together a weblog devoted strictly to video games.

“What’s your game?” comes to us from Will, and Will’s on top of things when it comes to video games. Probably the key factor in making people trust his opinion and continue to come back is that Will’s loves his video games. Clearly, they play a big part in Will’s free time, and who better to take video game advice and ideas from then someone like that?

Being someone that’s not right on top of the video game scene, I found myself sometimes clueless on various abbreviations that were used: IGI2 and PVP to name a couple. I wasn’t overly bothered by this, and instead just looked over the unknown acronyms and read what I did know. Hardcore gamers, or even those who play more than I do, will probably pick up on these right away and read them just as if they were every day language.

The layout of the site isn’t anything special. It’s a very slightly modified version of one of the standard Movable Type templates. With a site like this that’s main focus is video games and the liking, the layout doesn’t really matter. The text is readable and the colors are tolerable.

The creator of “What’s Your Game?” is Will. From the bottom of the main page, you learn some general information that even further “validates” his credibility of keeping a website such as this one. He’s a technical editor at Maximum PC magazine, where he keeps up “with the current happenings in 3D acceleration tech, games, operating systems, and networking gear”.

Will doesn’t go into great depth about the specifics of the various video games he plays, which cover PC games, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube, and basically any other type of game he can get his hands on. He just touches the main information, and gives his overall opinion of what he’s been playing as of late. He throws out a few of the pros and cons out into his overview of particular games, and other times you can tell just how good the game is by how much Will lets us know he’s playing it.

It might sound like this was the wrong type of a weblog for someone that’s not up on the latest in video games to review, or even to stop by and read, but that’s not true. Will is doing a fine job. He doesn’t expect all of his readers to be nearly obsessed with video games, but he does like telling those who are the finer points of the games he’s been playing. This weblog is definitely worth anyone’s time that has the slightest interest in video games.
What’s your game?

Dearie Me! I thoroughly enjoyed this blog. The standard blogger template is nothing to get excited about, to be sure. It is a very simple layout, with no pictures or links to get in the way of the entries. This blog is all about the writing. And what superb writing it is.

The blog is subtitled `Diary of a divorce’, and does focus at times on the author and his family situation. However, entry subjects range from noisy co-workers to…how should I say this…
snotlets in the loo (an entry that made me laugh out loud).

Another entry about childhood memories and fire extinguishers was well-crafted and highly entertaining. In fact, a good deal of the entries in this blog are entertaining. Some entries are heart-wrenching, though, and the author isn’t afraid to put his uncomfortably painful feelings into prose.

There is no `About’ page, and although entries are peppered with interesting tidbits about the author, I would like to see a section with a bit of a biography. A picture of the author or his children would be nice to see as well. It’s always interesting to put a face with someone’s words.

Bottom line: An engrossing, entertaining, well-written blog. I plan to bookmark it and return regularly.Dearie Me

The first thing you’ll notice upon entering this site is a sexy picture of an anime character with sassy shoes and a perfect body. Mmmmmmmm. But the anime girl isn’t the only eye-candy you’ll find here. The site layout is anything but boring, and there are plenty of good pictures to look at, including some of the blogger herself.

Billie, the teen author, started the site as a `Friendship site’, and it turned into a place for fans of the Dark Angel television series to visit, and finally, has become a blog. I could only find entries dated from March 10, 2003-current. Billie writes about what goes on in her life, and entries seem to cover the typical emotions of a teenager. She used to live in New Zealand, and is Chinese. I get the impression that she is currently living in Hong Kong, but blog entries don’t make her whereabouts entirely clear.

The blog part of this site is on the left, and you can scroll down to read all of the existing entries, and to see what her mood is and who she is talking and listening to. On the right just above the anime girl are links to her guestbook, a little `about’ page, her original home page, and her links page.

This is a neat-looking blog, but seems to be written more for a group of the author’s friends than random visitors. Of course, you can always check it out just to admire the anime girl if teen blogging is not your thing. Dark Angel

The first entry you read on a weblog determines whether you’ll read on or quickly jump to the sidebar for some random links to save you from imminent boredom. This was not the case in ‘Next-to-the Last Song’; a desirable weblog devised by a chap named Jason Killingworth. The first entry made me laugh inside.. I rarely do that when I read some blogs. His attempt at describing his feelings for waking up late for work using an elongated ‘metaphor’ is highly amusing and somewhat questions his sanity..

Following entries are consistently amusing, but not as deliberate as I’ve seen in some weblogs. The font size is a bit small but compliments the tidy & neutral layout. Checked an archive (discovered it to be in a completely different layout to the index), and indulged in some of the entries dating back to 2001. Many of them honest & equally delicious in substance and knowledge. The archives also appeared in a different window which, in a way, made it easier to navigate & physically separated the past from the present. However there weren’t any commenting capabilities on these pages. Its always the author’s discretion as to whether they feel it necessary to have commenting throughout their blog, but I personally feel that any opportunties for interactivity for your visitors should be taken.

I was hoping to discover the basics and background of Jason, but to my dismay, there were no leads, except for a few links to his published works elsewhere on the net; being a variety of enchanting (& obviously popular) prose. Not surprising, as his literary skills are intensely unique & satisfying.

Suggestions in hand, the main index image background should be the same colour as the page background.. I always find things like that somewhat unnerving. I also couldn’t find any archives for 2003. Was there a specific reason, or am I blind? Additionally, some more general information about the author would be truly appreciated. Although reading through the blog would illustrate a partially detailed picture, you need a starting block to fill in the simple gaps.Next-to-Last Song