Commander Leon shares his thoughts on the latest game industry-related developments; lets you know what he's been up to lately; and, of course, gives you insight on all the wonderful games he's been playing recently!

• 27Sep 07

  My beef with FIFA 08

  ...so we got screwed over with the team rosters again. Over 600 clubs, a grand total of 15,000 real-life players are featured in the game? Well, that's perfectly fine with me (and, to be honest, the single major reason why I've been looking forward so much to FIFA on the 360/PS3 this year). However, I clearly think it's about time EA get their act together and live up to their god-darn promises. You know, accuracy doesn't stop at the English Premiership. You see, EA, there actually are people outside the UK that expect up-to-date rosters for their favourite teams. I'm talking about Scandinavian folks, guys from the Benelux countries, and, of course, us Austrians (and probably even Germans, for that matter). Point in case is, I've been playing FIFA 08 today and went with my favourite club SK Rapid Vienna (Champions League participants in the 05-06 season and currently competing in the UEFA Cup) for my first match. Lo and behold, four out of eleven players in the starting lineup aren't even with the club any more! Even worse, they all left the side at the end of last year's season, i.e. in May! Almost half a year ago! How can you possibly claim that the rosters are up-to-date and unprecedently accurate when all you can come up with are but the squads for Europe's five biggest leagues? Makes me seriously doubt they'll live up to their promise of "updating the rosters 24/7".
  • Posted Sep 27, 2007 11:28 am PT
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• 2Dec 05

  The breathtaking story behind my newly-acquired 360!

  It's December 2nd, which means Microsoft's next-gen console has hit store shelves here in Europe. And it didn't stop at retail store shelves, no siree. Today, the 360 also has officially hit my very own living room. Hooray for Microsoft!

  Being a hardcore gamer for over a decade now, I had already preordered my premium bundle in mid-August at a well-known internet-only retailer (which shall remain undisclosed at this point) - just to receive an e-mail a mere 3 weeks ago claiming, "that there were more preorders than consoles available" (duh, what a surprise!), and that they couldn't give me any guarantee I'd receive my console before Christmas, let alone in 2005! I guess you can understand my irritation when I first read that e-mail. I mean, c'mon! Everyone and their grandparents knew that there'd be shortages of the 360, that's why I placed my order in August! And now you tell me straight to my face that some guy who had been living in some godforsaken cave somewhere in the Alps places his order in late November, and has the same chance of receiving a console on launch day as I? Hello?! Ever heard of "first come, first serve"?!
  Ah, to hell with it. It was amazon.at (the Austrian branch of the -as I've said before- well known internet retailer) who screwed me over. So thanks to this service announcement courtesy of... well, me -- y'all know where not to preorder the PS3 (and the Revolution, for that matter) next year.

  The fact that I cancelled my preorder the same day I received that e-mail turned out to be a wise choice in the end, though. Working for a major radio station here in Austria, me and a couple of colleagues were invited to Microsoft's grand kick-off party in one of Vienna's more prominent event locations last night. Cool thing was, they also had 150 systems (premium bundle, of course) for sale there. And since there were only around 200 people invited, it wasn't too hard to get my grubby hands on one of the systems. Plus, food and drinks were for free! Hooray for marketing budget-induced catering goodness!

  So, what's up in the coming days? Playing my 360 to death, of course. Having added Madden 06, Perfect Dark Zero, PGR 3 and Call of Duty 2 to my already large collection, there's some sweet time to be had in front of my brand-new Sony LCD HDTV...

  P.S.: The new banner on my profile page shows me in the probably most famous second-hand gaming shop in the world, "Super Potato" in Tokyo, Japan -- where I was lucky to spend the first ten days of November, as a holiday. Now, before you get me wrong: I didn't spend ten days at "Super Potato" (although I certainly wouldn't had minded!), I spent ten days in Tokyo. And it was awesome. I'll tell you more about that next time, so make sure to check back soon!

  • Posted Dec 2, 2005 11:05 am PT
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• 7Jan 05

  The recent couple of system upgrades, or...

  ...officially announcing the completion of my very own MONSTER RIG.

  I just bought the Razer Diamondback optical mouse (hey, it won GameSpot Hardware's "Best of 2004" controller award!) and finally replaced my old SoundBlaster Live 5.1 with the almighty Audigy 2 ZS.

  Take a quick look at my current system specs: AMD 64 3800+, ATI Radeon X800 Pro, 1 GB DDR RAM by Samsung, SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS, the whole thing running (surprisingly smooth) on WinXP Professional.

  Now kneel before my awe-inspiring rig and praise me

  The bad news: Having this powerful PC, why ever go back to consoles again...?

  Wishing you all the best for 2005,

  Commander Leon

  • Posted Jan 7, 2005 2:18 pm PT
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