The new cooked Gamers website is live at http://cookedgamers.net. The look is mostly stable. I'm adding more features by the week. Watch out for new CPL videos from synide (once he gets finished encoding them).

Thanks goodness I installed a spam filter on cookedgamers.net when I had the chance. I have to admit I haven't touched the backed of that site in quite a while. After doing some upgrades to the Drupal-powered site and preparing it for a relaunch, I noticed that I had a lot of comment spam in my database. Nearly 60,000 pieces of spam.

So, I went into my SQL database and ran

delete from comments where status = '1'

which resulted in:

Deleted rows: 56779 (Query took 4.2604 sec)

The cG.net comments database table went from being 85MB to 320KB in filesize after the deletion and optimization.

Kids: do not give out your Xfire username to strangers for the following may happen to you. (Warning: Long read, bad grammar skills, and some laughs.)

By the way, stay tuned for more funny chats with this guy...

Reports from cookedgamers.net.

roo0 is playing tonight in the CAL 1v1 Quake 4 playoffs. You can watch him play at TSNCentral.com: http://www.tsncentral.com/display/3077

Good luck, roo0.

UPDATE: roo0 wins 2 out of 3. GG! Watch the match here: http://www.tsncentral.com/ondemand/020306672597/

Halo 2 will not be played at the World Cyber Games Tournament in 2006. Instead, Project Gotham Racing 3 and Dead Or Alive 4 will be played on the XBOX 360 console. Is Halo 2 too old now that XBOX 360 titles are being played competitively? Are next-gen XBOX Live features, like Gotham TV, belittling Halo 2? Are sponsors more willing to back a slick looking next-gen game than an original XBOX title?

2006 WCG tournament games:

StarCraft: Brood War (PC)
Warcraft: Frozen Throne (PC)
Half-Life: Counter-Strike 1.6 (PC)
Warhammer 40,000: Winter Assault (PC)
FIFA Soccer 06(PC)
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (PC)
Dead or Alive 4 (Xbox 360)
Project Gotham Racing 3 (Xbox 360)

HALO2PC.org is a HALO2 PC Gaming Community. If you are interested in being a part of such a community, please visit HALO2PC.org.

Microsoft have released a list of original XBOX titles that will be playable on the XBOX360. The full list can be found below.

Note: A software emulator is required for each original Xbox game you play on your Xbox 360™ console. Please check back for more details as we approach the launch date.

Airforce Delta Storm
Alias
Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction
All Star Baseball 2003
Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding
Army Men: Sarge's War
Atari Anthology
ATV Quad Power Racing 2
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance II

Frankie at Bungie has just confirmed that HALO and HALO 2 will run in 720p widescreen resolution on the XBOX360. All you do is insert the disk and play. The XBOX360 will do the rest. Sweet! Read below for the juicy details. As I stated in another post earlier, HALO and HALO2 will not be getting a software upgrade. The hardware that runs the software, though, obviously is getting a major upgrade.

To clarify, the "new" version of Halo or Halo 2 is simply the disk you have already. Pop it into your 360 and it'll load up just like before. You will have to log into Xbox Live to enable Halo 2's online functions, but both games will work immediately.

The cooked Gamers (cookedgamers.net) have signed Ronnie "roo0" Rost, the talented FPS gamer, to their Quake 4 roster. roo0 was known as one of the most dominate players in competative HALO PC and will be representing the cooked Gamers in various Quake 4 leagues and tournaments, including the CPL and CAL.

You can follow roo0's Quake 4 1-v-1 matches here:

cG CAL 1-v-1: http://www.caleague.com/?division=q4o&page=teams&teamid=72396