...I've been making my blog posts over at Giant Bomb. You can check the ones out at this link, although they're pretty much relevent to that website at the moment. I may continue to just use Giant Bomb as my blog, as I have more freedom in editing (no errors) and can embed videos from external websites such as YouTube.

My strongest reason for not commenting in a lot of blogs here at GameSpot (I think comments used to take up like 45% of my post count) is because I cannot rely on the tracking system here. It doesn't show all blogs in my side panel, probably due to the amount of users I am tracking. There's no feeds anymore. Well, there is but they're just no longer working. GameSpot do need to fix RSS feeds for users' blogs as that is the way I track blogs. So, in the meantime, I may not even be able to notice you have posted a new blog.

Anyway, set aside blogs - that does not mean I am against GameSpot. I am still happy to contribute here (reviews, forums etc) and help keep things organised and appropiate in line with the Terms of Use. I shall continue to be a moderator here and help out along with the rest of the moderators and staff here. Just, if you're wondering why I am not blogging frequently, then it is because I am using Giant Bomb as my blog platform. GameSpot I am still using for various other reasons, as I have stated.

L is my newest profile to the Internetz and it was born today at GiantBomb (it exploded!). Why L? Well, I wanted to be different, lazy and didn't want to use the same username again. So, why not be original and use L? As you may know Luke is my first name.

Unfortunately, Luke was unavailable so I just took a few letters off. I wonder how many more single letters are available? It's a bit slow at the moment, so it may take a little longer to register. Thankfully, the registration form only has a few fields.

So, there you go - I am the guy called L at GiantBomb. You can access my profile at this address:

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/L/

Be sure to add me there and mention who you are!

EDIT: OK, it's taking a while to accept those requests. Bare with me!

Wow, what a trailer that was. Earlier, the first trailer for Watchmen debuted before The Dark Knight in theaters and later on where we pretty much love to be, the Internet. There's me thinking this is just another trailer that's supposedly amazing. I didn't watch right away but did in the end. The editing and placement of the music (The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning by The Smashing Pumpkins) are probably what made this spread across the hills of the web.

Watchmen, a gritty adaptation of Alan Moore's comic-book series, from director Zack Snyder (300), is to be released in 2009 by Warner Bros. The track played is absolutely fantastic - I have got it downloaded from 7digital. I'll let the trailer do the explaining...

WARNING: LINK TO PAGE CONTAINING EPIC TRAILER

Wow, I just watched Sony's E3 press conference and what an impressive show it was. From the opening right round to the finish - I was very happy with some of the announcements. They seemed to focus on the core players a lot, whilst not drifting too heavily into the casual market.

Going to have my full impressions up (along with the other conferences) in a later blog. Just wanted to express my super impressed brief thoughts on it. Now, I am going to make sure to watch GameSpot's own live coverage and then probably get away from my computer. So many hours on the website this evening I've been on.

E3 continues...

I'll give my thoughts on E3 another time. There were too many annoyances regarding today's conference. My thoughts on that will be revealed another time. Today, I wanted to tell you about how I got in contact with PEGI, a European ratings board that allows publishers to assign age ratings to their titles. Games that are rated below 12+ don't necessarily get checked right away by PEGI and are put on store shelves. These age ratings are determined by the publisher - not the board. Anything higher, usually would have to get checked by them before it hits shelves or passed onto another board (such as BBFC).

What this means is a video game rated by PEGI can go straight to the retail shelves without necessarily getting checked over other than the developer team. In rare cases, as outlined in my e-mail, the publisher can get the rating wrong. For my comparison, I am using GRID and Need for Speed ProStreet.

Now, the age ratings, in my opinion might as well be combined into one rating. I see very little difference between what sort of game should get a 3+ and 7+ here in Europe. It's not that I am worried about but the fact about how ProStreet is rated at a lower age rating than GRID. Both are racing titles, both contain crashes. Fair enough.

However, if you've ever played ProStreet, you would probably notice the sexual themes that are associated with it. A good example of this is when the camera, at the beginning of an event zooms in to certain areas of the female. I'm sure you know what I mean here. Yet, perfectly acceptable as a 3+. Sure, parents are the ones that should have the control but it doesn't help with titles have faulty ratings like this. Furthermore, the parental controls feel weak on a console because of the rating.

The e-mail reply from PEGI stated that they will be getting someone to test out ProStreet to see if it is suitable for re-rating and they said it was likely because some previous titles in the series have been rated higher due to similar content. Apparently, they'll keep me posted on what happens but it will be interesting to know if this goes any further.

E3 is here next week and GameSpot should have a lot of good coverage, I hope. I could have gone along to be apart of the audience for their shows but unfortunately I cannot make the necessary arrangements on getting there all the way from the United Kingdom. It would have been great to be there, though in person.

Instead, I'll be there virtually and try to catch the three main conferences from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. I love E3 but last year was kinda disappointing with the way it was changed. Hopefully, this year, I'll enjoy it a bit better. e3.gamespot.com is the place you'll need to be constantly at next week.

Wanted to mention something about the GameSpot statistics... I like the GameSpot website but it's really disappointing to see some of the statistics lately. Right now, it's a Friday night and there are only around 2,000 users signed in recently. This time around a year ago, there would probably be about 10,000 users signed in. Now, the figure seems to be at around 2,000 constantly.You can check the statistics on the main forums page.

Anyway, the last thing I wanted to mention is about a movie I have seen recently. Babel, a movie that only contains about one-third of the English language focuses on different families and how unlucky they can be. Somehow, things seem to connect together between the families. We learn how societies can be so different and how some would probably think "that is wrong." My favourite story was the one about the deaf and lonely Japanese girl. I really did feel the emotion from her performance. I also thought this was one of Brad Pitt's best performances; now one of my favourite movies.