One of the bigger games that was looking forward to in this mini-gaming season at the moment was the EA published Battlefield: Bad Company 2. After the largely disappointing blockbuster late last year that was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, i was looking forward to a game that actually respected the PC gaming community enough in order to at least continue with the previously taken-for-granted staple of having dedicated servers for online multiplayer.

However in the past I haven't exactly had great experiences with past EA published games, and also disappointingly, it has somewhat continued with this title. Simple bugs like having certain graphics settings not apply without having to manually change and reset resolutions were the most irritating. It's typical EA-type bugs, and you think it wouldn't kill them to do a decent job at QA since they are one of the biggest game publishers in the world with billions in revenue.

The single player is also somewhat short, and not that engaging. If I had to, i'd still probably rate MW2 as a better single-player game over BC2.

However probably the biggest compliment that i can give BC2 is that it has gotten me into playing an online multiplayer FPS combat game. I've previously avoided the genre, instead preferring other FPS titles for online play like Unreal Tournament and Team Fortress.

It seems like DICE (the developers) actually give half a toss about the PC gaming community, and recognise that it is a different and unique platform as opposed the consoles. Their support of dedicated servers and games of larger than 18 players is at least a basic acknowledgement of this (and they've jabbed Infinity Ward and Activision for MW2's lack of such a staple PC 'feature').

As a result, i never touched the MW2 multiplayer almost on principle, but also for many other reasons, BC2 offers a much greater multiplayer experience and is a far superior multiplayer game than MW2, even though the single-player doesn't quite match up.

I've been enjoying playing online for the past week or so, and whilst i don't think it'll quite match up to UT3's enjoyability in it's day, it is quite fun. However, bugs still plague this portion of the game too: you can't see server ping times unless you run the game as an administrator (i didn't know pinging was an administrative privilege ), and the in-squad voice chat is extremely unreliable.

The big final on the weekend ended up being a big let-down. It wasn't helped by Eliot having injured himself the day before and not really being able to play, nor the fact that we were the most generous we've been in front of our own goal for a very long time. The game ended 5-3, and pretty much at least 3 of their goals we gifted to them on a platter.

I scored two in the first half, and 'keeped for the second half. So in the end, it was a quite anti-climactic end to the last 6 years playing at that centre. Here's the final record of our grand-final appearances:
win-loss-win-loss-win-win--loss. Can't really complain, I ended up winning more than losing! So that's it for indoor, and it's going to be a bit strange not playing on Sundays.

Some geek news of the past day or so is the final release of Opera Mini 5, which is the awesome browser I use on my mobile phone. It's another great leap ahead for the browser, and comes very recommended from me for mobile-phone internet use.

Tonight we also took a slight detour on the way home to go toll-free through the newly opened Clem7 tunnel. It's a big feat for Brisbane, and currently it's the longest road tunnel in Australia. However, I don't really see us using it much at all. Other than the quite expensive $4.30 toll, we hardly go to destinations that the tunnel services.

It's been pretty much the consensus since the start of this indoor football season that it would be the last that we would play at the centre. I've been playing there for about 7 years now, so it's a little sad that it's coming to end.

However the bad refereeing (which ironically hasn't been too bad this season...) and the soaring costs means that we weren't going to continue on after this season.

So it is somewhat appropriate that we've had a largely successful final campaign to date. A week ago we finished the season's proper rounds in second position; the highest we've achieved since being promoted to division 3. On Sunday we played the semi-final against the same team that defeated us the week before, and won the game 2-1 when we only needed a draw.

So into the final we go, and it's only fitting that the last game at this indoor centre is a final. Even more fitting, it will be against the team that we've had so much history against. Yep, it's the team i also broke my foot playing against almost 5 years ago.

At least we don't have the pressure of 'the pattern' any more, after we broke that in the last final we played in over 18 months ago.

So the final stage is set. (<- see what I did there )

It's going to be an interesting day whatever happens, but here's hoping we go out with a bang.

It's been raining pretty much non-stop here in Brisbane for the past 4 days, and i'm loving the weather.

Ironically, during this weather I acquired and played through Heavy Rain on the PS3. The weather outside was supremely suitable for the game, and made playing it that much more of an experience.

To sum it up without spoiling: it was like watching a long movie in which you were in control of the events, the character choices, and the result. The game revolves investigating and experiencing the events surrounding the "Origami Killer" who kidnaps young boys who later turn up dead from drowning, with Origami in their hands.

It was really an intense experience. The characters you control could die as a result of your choices or lack of ability to do the conflict scenes, and that would be it. There are no 'lives', 'Continues', or 'Try Agains'. Once a character dies, they stay dead and the story adapts.

That basis made the whole experience a lot more pressurised, and really sold the whole thing for me.

Overall, it was a great experience, and because of all the choices, will have great re-playability down the road. Just browsing through some of the forums and reading about how the game played out and ended for other people, it was so completely different to mine.

Although they weren't perfect, the graphics were really good. At times I honestly forgot that I was watching a CGI game, which is probably one of the biggest compliments I can give the presentation and the story.

The voice-acting and the story at times could have been better, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as to detract from the whole experience. For me, this game is a must if you own a PS3.