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.

There's been lots happening around here lately.

I finished Bioshock 2 last weekend, and whilst it was a very polished and decent game, it just felt very lacking in the 'impact' department storyline-wise for me to really enjoy it. Not that I sort of blame them, but part of the premise of this game's storyline I find really hard to believe that you wouldn't have heard about it during the first game if the timeline is to be believed.

This week also saw our home NAS (a D-Link DNS-323) that I bought last year brick itself during a firmware update. I'm always appropriately careful when updating device firmware, and this is the first experience that I've had in bricking a device i didn't actually set out to purposefully do.

Luckily it is still well within the warranty period, so I returned it to Umart and they very nicely exchanged for a brand new one without me having to wait for the faulty one to be returned and analysed by D-Link.

Gaming continues with Aliens vs. Predator. So far it's been a little bit of a let down, mainly in terms of the control scheme for the marine. They've conveniently ignored the well-known convention for PC-based FPS games over the past 15 years, thinking that theirs is probably better. I'm not sure if this is a result of a half-assed console port, or insufficient user testing and QA, but it does make the game seem very amateurish. That said, I haven't yet played the Alien/Predator missions yet, so i'll reserve final judgement until then.

I've also picked up Heavy Rain today. It looks really good, I'm not sure whether to dive straight into this or to go through AvP first. Tough choices.

A Supreme Commander 2 demo was also released in the past few days. Whilst it looks great, for some reason they've drastically altered the resource handling and building actions of the game, which means that you need to have resources up-front before being able to build or queue building anything. Why on earth they've changed something as basic and fundamental as that is beyond me, and depressingly is seriously making me question whether to buy this game at all.

Work has also been frustrating this past week. We had an outbreak of the Conficker worm that has seen us spend a lot of the week fighting it. Today we're pretty sure we've totally eradicated it from the network.

Lot's of gaming to catch up on this weekend!

I flew back into Brisbane again last night after going to another office for work for a few days again. That's the last of the flying for the time-being, which i'm very glad of.

Ahead over the next couple of months is some really exciting gaming. The 'normal' gaming season of October - December at the end of last year was largely a let-down; the only noteworthy title I got during that period was Modern Warfare 2. Things are really looking up for the next month or so, as some highly anticipated titles for myself are approaching release.

To name a few, I've already bought Bioshock 2 this week (although i haven't had time to play it yet ), and Supreme Commander 2, Aliens vs. Predator, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are also going to be released soon.

One upcoming game that is really intriguing me at the moment is Heavy Rain, soon to be released on the PS3. The concept of an interactive 'movie' type of game looks really interesting.

So overall, it finally looks like some really good gaming ahead. It was predominantly a dryish year last year gaming-wise, and by the looks of the release schedule both soon and towards the end of the year, this one is shaping up very nicely indeed.

I got back from Sydney last night, I spent Wednesday through Friday down there for work. So that meant I spent most of the day of my birthday away from home. It's a first for me, and the day didn't turn out too well.

Other than not getting everything done for work that I wanted to, when I was walking to the train station from the office to go back to the airport it started bucketing down. Although I had an umbrella, that only kept my upper half dry. And carrying an overnight bag and a laptop bag didn't help.

Shoes and pants soggy, i eventually made it to the airport, and felt like getting a Maccas cheeseburger and an Oreo McFlurry to help dry off. That didn't turn out either, as despite people in the line before me getting ice-cream, the machine didn't want to pump out anymore for me. Downtrodden, went to the gate, and was informed there that the flight was running late. 45mins after the scheduled departure time we left.

So my birthday itself was pretty ordinary, but i'm going to make up for it this weekend.