I hope everyone Over There had a cosy and satisfying Thanksgiving - go crazy with the turkey sandwiches and shopping today, people! You really need to kick-start your economy, and what better way than to throw away thousands on DVDs, games, electronics, books, music, and kinky leather outfits? I'm just sayin', is all.

Someone below asked if I've tested Half-Life 2 yet: yes, I have. I've played through the intro twice - once at the office, once at home (where it ran perfectly smoothly on my Dell laptop in 1280 by 768; great engine) - but I'm going to leave it sitting on the shelf, together with Jak 3, until Christmas. I need to finish a couple of other games first, and then there are looming deadlines and tons of work to be done before I punch out for the holidays. I'm anxious to dig into it, however, and it looks stunning. The characters! The environments! The sound! I wouldn't want to be developing a first-person shooter right now, that's for sure. I've been told that the story isn't the best in the world, and that the game gets repetitive, but when it looks, plays, and feels this good - well, you can't really complain. I'll talk more about it in January, once I've had some quality time with the game.  ¶ 09:30