Relocation

It is currently Sunday 20th September and this week things have been very different for me.  For a while now the plan had been that on September 20th I was gonna be moving half way across the country to finally start university and begin my work towards a bachelors degree in computer games programming. However the past week has been very hectic and I had all sorts of financial problems. Everything seemed to be going wrong and it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to start my course on time. This was some bad news but out of all of the chaos there was one small upside; with me getting to university late it seemed things were perfect for me to attend my local midnight launch of Halo 3: ODST. So I pre-ordered the game and was all prepared to get that little bit of experience with the Rookie and his lost squad before I headed off to university.

2 days ago I was contacting the university again about my financial situation as I’d had no reply from them in 2 days and wasn’t expecting an answer back any time soon. However I got an immediate response saying that emergency accommodation had been arranged for me and I was in an absolute panic about my impending 150 mile trip to start a life-changing four years. My family in a rush, we managed to collect together what we could and less than 24 hours later I was standing in the university reception filling out an accommodation booking form. I quickly ended up in the halls of residence, living on my own for the first time and I was feeling very lost in the world. I’ve acclimatised a little more since then but it’s still a very strange experience as people who have been in my position will surely know.

As far as games go I didn’t have time for much more than a few plays of Super Smash Bros. Brawl before I left and I don’t have a 360 or a Wii up here so I am restricted to DS and PC gaming but I have some enjoyable things I can play. The real bummer is that Halo 3: ODST comes out in 2 days and I’m going to have no way to start playing Bungie’s excellent-looking shooter. From what I have seen of the game the environments, graphics and characters look great and I like the new gameplay styles which push the player into being more careful and calculating about the way they take down their enemies. I have also seen the demo of Brutal Legend and I was excited about that game before but now I just can’t get over how well-styled the game is. The environments, cinematics, character animations and general world that Brutal Legend take place in seem enough reason alone to buy this game. It’s a bit unlikely I’ll have a 360 by Rocktober 13th but I sure hope I do.

Induction for my course starts at 9:30 tomorrow and hopefully it’ll be the start of something awesome. If anything especially interesting happens within the week I will report back, but in general over the new few years I hope to give the people reading this blog an idea of what it’s like to be a student studying video games programming in the UK.

All that remains is to say thanks for reading, thanks to the people around me who helped me get to university and I’ll leave you guys with the awesome intro to Brutal Legend .

-Gamer_152