Q. What’s your Xbox Live Gamertag?

A. Haly x3h, feel free to add me if you want. Although a short message just to say hello is always welcome if you do :)

Q. How long have you been a member of XboxGameZone?

A. I'm very much a noob to the site having only joined last October!

Q. What’s your occupation?

A. I work for Blockbuster part time at the moment. I'm the person who wanders round your local Blockbuster checking that everything is neatly in place on the shelves while recommending DVDs and games to indecisive customers. Perks of the job, I get free rentals and erm...I don't have to get up early as I work evenings :p 

Q. What first introduced you to gaming?

A. When I was about 6, my parents bought me a Commodore 64 for Christmas. It came with a cartridge with Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun, International Soccer, Klax and Flimbo's Quest. From that moment on I was hooked. I played Flimbo's Quest in particular obsessively despite not being very good at it. Still amazing to think that at that age, I had the patience to wait for a game to load from a cassette (and it was never guaranteed to actually load correctly) when now I get annoyed if a game takes more than a few seconds to load up! I've still got around 400 games on the C64 all in the attic; I'll never get rid of them, far too many memories.

Q. What gamerzone do you play under, i.e. pro, recreation etc and why?

A. Pro I think *goes to check*, yep Pro. No particular reason really. It used to be recreation then when I hit about 50,000 in Gamerscore; I figured it wasn't really recreational anymore! As much as the zones seem like a good idea on paper, I've never really seen the point admittedly.

Q. You’re going to be lost on a desert Island, by some miracle you’ll have sufficient power supply to run your Xbox, but you can only take two games, what would they be and why??

A. Fallout 3, as then I might finally devote loads of time to it and eventually get into the game. Currently I just can't get into it enough to see what's so great about it, shocking I know! And then, hmm, tricky one, I'm conflicted between Football Manager 2008 and Call of Duty 4. I think I'll go with FM2008 for longevity's sake, it'd last me forever!

Q. What hobbies/ activities do you have outside of gaming?

A. I love writing, and I certainly write frequently. That is connected to gaming though as I particularly enjoy writing about games! I love going to the cinema, I go almost every Wednesday in fact. I've just recently started cooking 'proper' food and been really enjoying that, nice sense of satisfaction having made a nice meal, mostly from scratch :) Also dabble in web design and graphic design, but I tend to need a project to keep me interested with that!

Q. What’s your currently most anticipated game of the year?

A. If Tales of Vesperia ever gets a European release date, it'll be that. However I can't see it happening so it's Star Ocean: The Last Hope. I loved Star Ocean 2 on the Playstation 1 as well as Eternal Sonata on the 360 which is similar in terms of battle system, so this should be right up my street!

Q. With the BAFTA Game Awards coming up next month what would you like to see win the public vote??

A. What a year for gaming it's been! For me it has to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The single player story kept me gripped from beginning to end. It was short but sweet. To top it off, the multiplayer was sublime. Sessions of it reminded me of my old days of playing Counterstrike where I'd load it up first thing in the morning on the weekend then suddenly realise hours had passed me by and I'd forgotten to eat, had some terrific laughs with my friends playing it. Close second would be Left 4 Dead.

Q. Last but not least, care to share an embarrassing moment with the rest of us?

A. Hmm I've no doubt that there's been hundreds but my memories a bit of a blank at the moment! One funny but embarrassing moment though: When I was studying for my A Levels at college, one of my teachers was a close family friend. One Friday afternoon, he was messing around a bit while teaching us and as a joke threw a stress ball at me. Unfortunately for him (and me) I was drinking from a bottle of mineral water at the time. The stress ball coming at me made me laugh/jump in alarm/whatever and I started choking on the water I was drinking. Because it was so funny I couldn't stop choking. It probably didn't actually go on for that long but I remember seeing everyone around me starting to look rather worried, including the teacher/family friend who looked very worried! Eventually I recovered and by that point everyone looked very worried and the teacher/family friend looked terrified! Probably something that you have to be there for but it was extremely funny in hindsight and I felt suitably embarrassed as choking on water is not really the most graceful thing you can do in a room full of people!