Halloween is one of my most favourite holidays. In fact, I think the only reason I don't love it quite as much as Christmas is because the UK still hasn't quite cottoned on to it, whereas we've always done Christmas pretty well. I've spent a bunch of Halloweens in America, where I can find whole houses decorated for the occasion, shops embracing cobwebs and plastic spiders and more parties and events than you can shake a spooky stick at. Over here, we're getting better, but we're not quite there yet. I want haunted houses, spooky mazes, themed parties and scary movie cinema marathons!

One thing that's made Halloween a little more awesome though, despite the lack of any 'real life' events, has been the way my favourite video games embrace it! Maybe I can't dress up and go to an awesome party, but my favourite characters can!

From 2010, League of Legends has enjoyed its own version of Halloween called 'The Harrowing'. Each year is different but they all typically feature special spooky new character and ward skins. One year, the whole main map was transformed into a spooky wonderland of cobwebs and pumpkins, where the health potions were candy corn and where mana came from encrusted apples. This year, as well as some new skins and icons, their 3-man map Twisted Treeline is now part of 'Hexakill', with an awesome new 6-v-6 game mode, and they've also created this gorgeous animated short to advertise the event:

I'm really new to GW2 but I'm really really enjoying it, and I'm so glad I decided to pick the game up just before Halloween! My buddy Luke has been playing for a while and he always said how much fun their Halloween events were, and he wasn't wrong! On launching the game, you're given a letter which opens up a whole crazy area of spooky fun! There are extra quests, games and events all themed around the arrival of the Mad King (and Halloween!), and you can even mine for candy corn!

Okay, so I've saved the best till last! It's no secret that TF2 is my favourite game of all time, so of course I love their Halloween offering every year! Entitled 'Scream Fortress', each year Valve goes all out to make it a truly awesome little event. Going since 2010, we're now in our sixth year of Halloween madness. 2009 was a simple affair, we were given some masks to wear and achievements to achieve. My personal favourite was 2010, which saw the Horseless, Headless Horsemann make an appearance as a 'boss' enemy we had to defeat ( as well as each other!) In 2011, continuing the boss theme, we had Monocoulous, and then we met Merasmus, who cast spells on us while we played and generally caused havocs during the game. Each event takes place on an awesome reskinned map for the occasion, and is usually accompanied by an amazing little comic to flesh out the whole thing. Last year, following the comic's plot,  Redmond and Blutarch, the brothers behind the RED and BLU teams (TF2 has a really complicated story, now!) bickered as ghosts around us, and this year, Mersasmus is back, with a creepy carnival and some awesome tricks, treats and spells (including a TF2 bumper car mode! I mean really?? LOVE it!)

TF2 is such a fun, silly game. It's the game we keep coming back to because it's just so much fun. What's awesome about the TF2 Halloween events is that they're not entirely limited to once a year. The special hats and costumes you get can be used every month when the full moon rises, which makes it even more fun collecting the weirdest, best costumes you can!


So, that's my plan over this Halloween! What about you guys? What do your favourite games do for the season? <3

Yesterday, I learned that Wireplay, a company that hosts servers for various games including Team Fortress 2, has closed down. I had no warning, and actually only found out when somebody messaged me asking what had happened to Vikings. CTF_Vikings was the reason I ever cared about Wireplay, and when I discovered that Wireplay had ceased operations, meaning that CTF_Vikings, a dumb map featuring two Viking ships with adjoining gangplanks, had also stopped existing, I was absolutely heartbroken. I still am, really. Writing this blog entry is hard.

For the past six years of my life, Vikings has been everything to me. It's the reason I started to really love TF2, where I found a community of people who would in time evolve to become real, genuine friends. Of course, it's also where I met Moose, who became something a little special in my life. It constantly hits me how unlikely our meeting was, how unlikely it was that he happened to be on the same server, at the same time, as me, Of the thousands of servers out there, somehow this guy in London enjoyed Vikings just as much as me, and returned there every day, just like me. Over the months, Vikings really did become my little social place, like the local pub I'd visit every evening, filled with regulars, and laughter, and silliness.

The regulars created a little 'group' (not a clan!) called the Pantheon of Awesome; the PoA. We were nothing special, a group of folks who had our own little Steam page, who met up on Vikings and, occasionally, other servers. People used to beg to join the PoA, like we had something they all wanted. It was absurd really, thinking back now. All we had was a community, and everyone who joined Vikings was a part of it, whether they were in the PoA or not.

Over time, I became a Wireplay admin. I'll admit, I only did it for Vikings. By then, we were regulars, every night, and knew the tricks and problems, and we knew the problem makers too. Vikings was a simple, crude and ugly map, with faults and problems a little polishing would have fixed easily. Admin work was necessary, we were called in daily - hourly sometimes - to kick or ban idiots. As of Wireplay closing, I was still an admin there. It was something that meant very much to me, because it meant I could take care of Vikings. There were a lot of admins before me, on Wireplay, and some of them were very regular and very involved in Vikings' maintenance, but I felt a special duty to the place for all it had given me.

At some point, a few years ago now, something happened to the servers. I don't know, or don't remember, the details exactly, but the servers broke and were offline for a very long time. Eventually, people moved on, away from Wireplay, or away from TF2 and gaming in general. A lot of the teenagers that once had limitless free time for gaming were now young adults with college and university to contend with. The PoA essentially dissolved, and when the servers finally came back online, they were unplayable, with constant rubber banding and lag that took its toll on the few returning players.

By the time Vikings became stable again, a lot of the older crowd had left, myself included. I still popped on from time to time, sentimentality and nostalgia the prime factor admittedly, but the lure of other games crept in. By now, a small group of PoA folk had moved on together. We had our own Teamspeak server, and took ourselves to other games; Minecraft, Terraria, League of Legends, Starbound. Occasionally, TF2 would sneak back in, and we'd find ourselves back on Vikings, slotting easily back into the rolls we'd always held - basement camp, cannon camp sniper, intel capper, battle medic - and I would admin when need be. It was important to me that the place stay friendly and populated.

I took it personally, really. This server, of all the servers, felt like home. I suppose that's why the closure is so hard for me. To me, this is like visiting my favourite pub, somewhere I frequented every evening, filled with familiar laughter and silliness and friendly faces, to find it torn down to nothing but rubble with no warning, and no notice. There are plenty of other servers, or pubs, or places to call 'home', but this one was the special one. This one mattered, and now this one is gone.

It sucks.

I know this is all daft and sentimental, emotional claptrap, that it's ridiculous to care so much about a game server. I know. But I genuinely can't bring myself to imagine where my life would be without Wireplay, and without Vikings. This January, Moose and I celebrate our fifth anniversary. He's the guy I'm planning my future with, who has shaped the past five years of my life into something utterly unrecognisable from the girl I was before TF2. The majority of friends I have now are people I know through him, or through Vikings itself. Hell, just next weekend I'm going up to London to hang out with our Swedish friend, Anthony, who's here for a week visiting. I met him around the same time as I met Moose, on TF2, in Vikings.

It's crazy. And sad, and empty, now, too. Moose says he wishes that we'd known, that we'd had some notice, so we could play on Vikings one last time and send it out with a bang. I suppose that might have been nice. I don't know if I could have done it, though. I can't imagine signing onto that server, knowing that it'd be the last time I ever did.

So, here's to Anthony, Fecker, Xharag, Saran, Wrath and Fillin, people I speak to every day of my life, who round off every night in Teamspeak with League of Legends or TF2 or Whatever Game We're Currently Into.

To Wunn, Alastor, Rick, Thug, Shas'la, Quinton, Bemon, Statick and Triki, who all still play with us when the mood strikes, who competed in ETF2L's highlanders with us, and who kicked my ass far more times than I'd like to say.

To Sean, Ryan, Abe, Freak, Kyanne, Kingsley, Nibbsy, Rexen, Madman, Pingu, Deva, Kalle, LSD, Lt. Smash (and assorted Smaller Smashes), Spud, Koto - and a bunch of others who all moved on far away from Vikings long ago, but who helped make it the place I remember with such fondness.

And to Moose. Who remains everything.

Goodbye, Wireplay. And goodbye, CTF_Vikings.

Story time! I'll warn you though, it's a love story, and not just about how much I love this silly, bloody game.

Team Fortress 2. It's an FPS (First Person Shooter) game on the PC. It's by Valve, aka the Steam Guys or the Half Life Guys or the Portal Guys and it's really, really good.

Growing up, I was never a PC gamer. I had consoles. I had - have - a lot of consoles. I grew up alternating between Sonic and Mario and never truly engaged in the ridiculous console wars of the 1990s. My first PC game of any merit was Sim City 2000, but the PC was always something for work or, later, the internet, and never really for gaming.

I confess, I hated PC gaming.

I hated the constant upgrades needed to stay relevant. I hated how difficult things were, back then, to run. I hated that you had to install things and change settings to suit your machine. Heck, even on the old Amstrad we had when I was super young, all you had to do was type "run disk" and bam!, you were gaming. PC gaming was a dumb chore and I just never really cared to look into it.

Until TF2.

Valve are an amazing company who go all out when they're pushing one of their games, and TF2 of course was no exception. They released videos introducing us to the characters in TF2, which were gorgeous, fully animated shorts. I stumbled across one for the Sniper, and let's just say I was in love!

I realised they'd released a few other videos for the characters, but I kept replaying this one over and over. The humour was perfect, the animation was just perfect and I was just absolutely hooked. I had to try out this game! It suddenly didn't matter that I'd never liked any FPS, or that it was a, ugh, PC game - I had to have it! So, that Christmas I had one thing and one thing only on my wish-list. A new PC. A computer capable of, I dunno, handling video games maybe?

Yep, on Christmas Day, I had purchased The Orange Box (the set of Valve games that TF2 was released with) and by mid afternoon I was downloading it. By Christmas evening, I was playing on an empty server with some friends who already owned it. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was in love.

TF2 became my go-to game. It was simple to pick up, as difficult as you wanted it to be and downright fun to be a part of. We explored the servers together and spent far too long on novelty maps like Balloon Race, Convoy and Mario Kart.

Eventually, we stumbled across a server on Wireplay called ctf_vikings, and sure enough the map lived up to its name. Two giant Viking ships formed most of the play area, with planks between the two of them, giant canons that launched you into the sky and a killer fish in the sea. It was dumb and kind of (very) ugly, but there was a community there of regulars who chatted across the teams and it became my nightly hangout - pretty soon I was as regular as any of 'em.

It's funny really, back then I was so unsure of myself with online gaming. I really didn't play games online so the community aspect was something new and exciting to me. I was happy to meet people and chat to everybody on Vikings by typing, but I was well aware of how dumb the internet can be to 'omg gurl gamers' and wanted to avoid that nonsense like the plague. I wanted people to become my friend because they liked me, for me, and not because I was a girl. For weeks, I was a regular on Vikings, helped form our "not a clan!", the PoA (Pantheon of Awesome), and got really friendly with a bunch of people there, but I never confessed I was a girl. I never lied or mislead anybody, it wasn't a purposeful thing. It just didn't come up, really, and I wasn't going to announce it unprovoked. It was, as far as I was concerned, irrelevant. These guys were my buddies. We killed each other and ate virtual sandwiches together. It was great.

Eventually, I was chatting to one of my American friends from Vikings and it just came up that I was maybe kinda actually sort of a girl, and he was absolutely gobsmacked. Gobsmacked, but otherwise unperturbed! I realised then that the reason I'd taken such a shine to the regulars on Vikings was because they, for the most part, actually weren't idiots. We were friends. Maybe only virtual ones who had a friendship formed out of murder and intel capping, sure, but friends nonetheless. The PoA was a Pantheon of Awesome, after all. I 'came out' to the server, that night, by using my voice for the very first time in mic chat. After the initial "a girl on the internet??" joking, everyone settled down and resumed bloody murder. It was perfect.

Vikings became my virtual hang out spot. It was the place I'd spend my evenings when I couldn't be with my IRL friends (most of whom played TF2 with me now, anyway!) Some evenings it really was more a virtual chat room than a shooting game, but it was always daft and fun. Vikings would be the place we'd go when the game had a fun new update, the place we'd try out new weapons and techniques. Sure, we'd go to other servers together, but Vikings was the place we all called 'home'.

And the reason TF2, and especially ctf_vikings, is especially special to me? Well, it's where I met the guy I'm kind of crazy about right now. Somewhen in early 2009, though I don't remember first noticing him, a guy called Cauldron Moose! joined the server. He was an old time regular, apparently, and tells me fondly that the first thing he ever heard me say was "Since when did this become a Sniper pissing contest?" - which is every bit as romantic and fitting as I'd like it to be.

We ended up playing together every night, just like all the regulars, really. When May Expo (London Comic Con) came around, I suggested that he and our other Vikings buddy Wrath should come along and check it out. I think I was cosplaying as the Sniper when Moose turned up, as you do at this sort of convention. The second I saw him, my heart did a little embarrassed flutter, but he was a fair bit younger than me and I was just being daft, so I brushed it off.

In August, we arranged a mini Vikings meetup when a Dutch player came along to London for a short holiday. Truth be told, I think he came over because he had a thing for me, but honestly by that point I only had eyes for Moose. By then, we were chatting every single night, texting each other and staying up until the birds started chirping. We met up again at Expo in October, and again I realised I was nuts about this guy. It was painful! It was this absolutely dumb, pointless infatuation, because there was no way this young, handsome guy would be interested in some older girl he met on TF2, right?

Wrong! Be still my beating heart, in January 2010 Moose suggested he should come visit me (after numerous hints on the subject!) so we arranged a day in Bath to hang out and I went there with my heart on my sleeve, forcing myself to treat this as 'just a friendly meetup' while desperately hoping it would be anything but.

I was terrified. To quote my old Livejournal entry on the subject:

Well, long story short, it was a date. We went to see Book of Eli (awful movie) and mooched around Bath and I spent the rest of the year feeling like the cat that got the cream.

Four and a half years on and we're still together, still rocking the long distance relationship sadly but still gaming together and enjoying each other's company every day. He's the guy I want my future with, someone I just want to share my life with. We've already made some killer memories together, and I aim for so many more, and it absolutely blows my mind that I'd not have even met him had it not been for TF2.

The PoA doesn't really exist anymore, but a bunch of us still hang out every night on Teamspeak, where we all play Wildstar or League of Legends or Minecraft or Starbound together.

And TF2, of course. The game has changed monumentally since I started playing it, with new game modes, weapons and ridiculous cosmetics that ruined the graphical theme goddamn it (rant for another time, man), but Vikings is still there, and we still play there from time to time.

To so many people, TF2 is just a daft 'hat simulator', a cartoony FPS that doesn't take itself seriously. It changed the world for me, though. It got me into online gaming, gave me some wonderful friends and introduced me to the love of my life.

Thanks, Valve! I owe ya <3

I've spoken a little before about Wildstar, the only MMO I've ever enjoyed. Tonight is the end of the Wildstar beta. The game goes live for real on June 3rd, but all our characters, gold and dreams get wiped tonight ready for the big launch next month.

In honour of this, I figured I'd do a little presentation of my current characters. May they be forever remembered!

Snowbelle was my first ever Wildstar character. Moose and I got beta access on Christmas eve, so it seemed only fitting that I create a magical Aurin imbued with the spirit of Christmas! The name 'Snowbelle' was surprisingly not taken, and the candy cane ears, little star earrings and spunky elf-like hair made her perfect. I made her an Esper (seemed magical enough) and an Explorer.

Taffy's my main character, currently level 30 as of the beta's end. He's an engineer/settler. His name has a dumb history. The only place I ever really roleplayed, years ago, was The Lion King MUCK, an old text based roleplay that was ridiculously popular. Considering, yes, it was a roleplay designed for The Lion King universe, it was really intense and really fun and I spent far too much time there! My main character back then was an old grizzled white/grey hyena, and I named him Tafauti because it apparently means 'different' or 'defect' in Swahili, and Taffy was white (such a  unique character!) It suited him well as the roleplay progressed, oddly enough, because he was lame in one leg and was finally accepted by a lion pride. Haha, I sound so cool typing all this out, right? but TLK Muck was kind of strict on that sort of thing (no dumb coloured animals, no friendships like Hyena/Lion without proper roleplay character development etc.) so the fact I achieved that was pretty cool! Anyway! Taffy is a Chua personification of that character. Grizzled, old veteran. Sadly Wildstar don't offer white Chua fur so this is as close as I could get.

I fell in love with Aurin designs and ended up making a bunch of them. I thought Sprightly was super pretty, but I never played her. Poor Sprightly.

Sundown is the prettiest Aurin! I think she was a stalker who again, like Sundown, I never played, but I think her design is the one I'm going to use for my Exile main when the game's released. I think she's absolutely gorgeous! I don't know if I'll play a stalker with her though. We'll see!

Back when only Moose, Luke and I had beta access, my buddy DC came over and wanted to mess around with the character creation and classes. I signed into Wildstar and told him he could play Sprightly or Sundown if he wanted, to get a feel for things, while I went and had a shower.

When I returned from my shower, DC was playing neither Sprightly nor Sundown. Instead, Snuffley existed.

We don't talk much of Snuffley.

I spent so long being in the closed beta for Wildstar, under a heavy NDA that I've attuned myself to not talking about it even though the NDA's been lifted! Wildstar's a game I've been interested in since I saw the very first trailers and teasers years ago. It's an MMO, which is a game genre I'm not actually a huge fan of, but I wanted to give it a go because the humour and art style was just so great!

Moose actually received a beta code on Christmas Eve, so by Christmas Day we were playing around on it. The two factions are Exiles ('good' guys) and Dominion ('bad' guys) - and as soon as I saw the Dominion videos, I was sold. They're classy, cultured and sophisticated. Which is, of course, why I play a Chua.

Chua are the Dominion's 'animal race'. They're sort of crazy chipmunk-hamster-chinchillas, with a penchant for explosions and murder. They're the shame of the Dominion, who keep them around for their engineering prowess, but I think they're just adorable and swell.

As I said, Wildstar is an MMO, but it has something I've not found in other MMOs; actual combat. This is the main reason I'm sold on it, to be honest, and why I'm giving it a real go despite having never enjoyed an MMO before. You don't just click a bad guy, apply a type of attack and wait. The combat is action-based. You dodge, double jump, sidestep and run around the enemies, apply stuns and knock-ups and skillshots while dancing around them. It's crazily mobile.

Sure, there are some grindy aspects to it. There's a lot of tasks that are 'collect 20 these' and 'kill 20 that's, but the graphic style, humour and additional gameplay aspects save it, I think. I've not played any high level stuff yet (my highest character is a level 25 Chua) but what I've seen so far, I love a lot. Also, you can have your own house. That you decorate yourself in any way you like, right down to the wallpaper and carpets. It's like The Sims, but with extra explosions.

Anyone else playing, or thinking of picking it up? The game's got a couple more closed beta days left, and then it's released officially on June 3rd! Can't wait!

Every year, I try to buy Moose something extra special for special occasions. Sadly, he's not very easy to buy for at all, because his biggest interest is gaming and he generally buys anything he really wants himself before I get a chance. He's also not a huge fan of 'stuff', so whenever he actually wants something, it's usually very cool or unusual, which is why I bought him a Diggle plushie last Christmas.

Our game at the moment is League of Legends, and merchandise is still pretty thin on the ground, despite it being the biggest online game in the world right now. For a start, Riot hasn't cashed in on the huge phenomenon that is the Poro. Poros are fluffy little balls with huge tongues that bounce around the Howling Abyss map. They're adorable and silly and why Riot haven't made official merchandise of them yet is anybody's question.

I've had my heart set on making him a Poro for ages. Ideally I wanted to make a life-sized cuddly one, but while sewing skills continue to allude me, I figured I'd go back to basics and buy some Sculpey. I haven't messed around with modelling in years. As a kid, I used to make clay dragons and unicorns all the time (thanks to my family's collection of Enchantica) but it's not something I've really thought much about recently.

I'm really happy with my little Poro! I sadly accidentally spoiled the surprise for Moose by flipping through my phone's gallery and showing him a photo before I'd given it to him, though. :( But now he sits pride of place on the PC tower, waiting patiently for a Poro Snax.

I'm so happy with how this first figure came out, I'm considering making some to sell online and at conventions. I'm not sure how well figures sell (as opposed to jewellery/charms) but it can't hurt to try! I might also try making some of Lulu's cupcakes, too...

GTA: Vice City probably wasn't my first 'life changing' game (that award goes to Sonic the Hedgehog, yes really!), but it remains one of the most important. Had TF2 not devoured my life, Vice City would probably be still up there, the most awesome and important game in my life. It took over my life. My passion for the 1980s was utterly inflamed thanks to this game, and when I wasn't playing it, I was living it. I devoured 1980s music, media, pop culture. A child of the 80s myself, it was always something I remembered fondly, and Vice City gave me that chance to embrace it. It wasn't about killing people, mowing down hookers and stealing their money (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't do that. Often.) It was about the world. It was about Vice City.

Heh, my mum came in as I was typing this, looked at the screenshot above, and said "oh man, that was one of your big games, wasn't it?"

And here's a little secret. I never completed it. Never came close. I never even tried to. I'd dick about with the storyline missions, play some little sidequests, sure, but my hours and hours of game time were spent in the most inane way possible (until Minecraft with its hours of dirt collecting became a testimony to our dedication as timewasters.)

I drove around. I drove along the beach, just waiting for sunrise or sunset, and I listened to the in-game radio stations. Sometimes I'd park the car, crank my television volume up, and turn my PS2 into the world's most convoluted radio. Sometimes I'd do that at night when I was in bed, instead of listening to whatever dull rubbish was playing on the real radio at the time, and fall asleep to the sounds of Lazlow or Fernando Martinez. A child of the 1980s I may well have been, but I cannot hear 'Broken Wings', '(I Just) Died In Your Arms' or 'I Ran' without being teleported back, not to my childhood, but to the streets of Vice City.

Funnily enough, it wasn't the sunny Florida beach setting I loved so much, though there was something absolutely breathtaking about the flare on the screen as the sun set or rose each day. It was the stormy moody weather I loved. Little droplets of rain would trickle down the screen - no other GTA game has captured it so perfectly (and GTA San Andreas' 'rain' effect was in my mind little more than a noise filter). The mist would come off the sea, the thundering clouds would roll across the sky, the rain somehow felt warm and tropical, and there, beside you, were the neon pinks and turquoise blues of an 1980s Miami in all its garish glory. I'm getting teary eyed just thinking about it. People sing the praises of the Final Fantasies and the Zeldas and the Shadows of the Colossi for the beauty of their worlds. To me, nothing was more beautiful in gaming history that that moment. Christ, nearly ten years on and nothing's even come close.

Years later, my friends and I were on a road trip to the world's worst picnic site, and on the way home it started to rain a thick, heavy, Summer rain. We turned down a random lane, and threw on a CD recording of VCPR, one of Vice City's two 'talk' stations. Driving home was one of those moments in life that, like driving those digital streets of Vice City, tend to stick with you through the years. I imagine that, come 2022 which, frighteningly, isn't very far away, I'll still feel that pang of nostalgia and contentment when I turn on the radio and hear '(I Just) Died in Your Arms' belting from the speakers. If I'm really lucky, it'll be late at night, with a sky thick with rain, when I do.