I just thought I would make it official and write in my final blog for Gamespot, I'm not really doing this as a farwell to anyone but rather just to confirm for myself that this will be the last time I blog or visit Gamespot on a regular basis.

I have enjoyed my time here and have met some great and intelligent people, unfortunatly however the past few months some of you may have noticed my participation level on this site has dropped significantly. This has to do with a number of things, one of the biggest things is the downfall in the Gamespot community tournaments which I enjoyed participating in, the lackluster reviews, late reporting of gaming news and just the sheer quality of the website with the changes. On a personal level my workload is ever increasing and my priorities have shifted away from blogging and activly participating on a community forums such as gamespot.

So that's it really, maybe I'll be back some day but for now I bid Gamepot farwell!

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Before I get started on the main purpose of this blog, I hope everyone has been enjoying their holidays and got what they wished for! My holidays have been fairly quiet this year but I have just been enjoying the time off and have been doing some catching up on video games I havn't been able to get into during school. On another note I believe my exams went fairly well and am just awaiting my final grades.

Since the end of 2008, I thought I would list of the games I am anticipating for 2009 (however they are not confirmed for 2009). So here we go!

Number 7 - Duke Nukem Forever:

The game, that just might never come out; Duke Nukem Forever is a game that is becoming more of a running joke then an anticipated game and is the only reason it even made my list. I hope the game will come out just so I don't have to hear more rumours or see lame art in the media anymore. I don't think the game will be very good when it is released as they are obviously having difficulties producing it to date. Although I wish 3D Realms the best of luck for 2009.

Number 5 - Starcraft 2

I am not a huge RTS fan, but the original Starcraft was a blast for me when I was younger and I hope the newest entry into the series will be no exception.However Blizzard has mention time and time again they won't give a release date until its ready and hopefully that date will be some time in 2009!

Number 5 - Final Fantasy XIII

Gamespot has the game at TBA 2009, but I am not sure it will be out this year but will hope regardless. The only FF games I have played was IV for the DS and I have not beat it. But since the cows have claimered about this game since the first days of the PS3 I will take their word on it and wait patiently for this game in 2009.

Number 4 -Bioshock 2

Some said Bioshock 1 was the best game of 2007 and this is hard to argue. With a teaser video for the game coming with the release of the original for PS3 we can only wonder when we can get our greedy hands on the sequal.

Number 3 - Diablo 3

I spent a large portion of my spare time in the summer playing Diablo 2 after the announcment of Diablo 3 and cannot wait for Diablo 3 to his stores. With Blizzard though they never release anything until they are ready like I said for Starcraft 2. Regardless I hope Blizzard will be kind enough to release this game for all those anticipating this awesome dungeon crawler like myself!

Number 2 - Alan Wake

Oh Alan Wake, when will you "wake" up on my Xbox 360 console? Microsoft mentiond you when releasing the 360 and then you disapeared. Microsoft has mentioned some suprises this year at E3 in 2009 and I hope to see you there with a Chrstmas time release date!

Number 1 - Mass Effect 2

Arguably the best RPG of 2007 could be back to play in 2009 in the form of a sequal, is it likely? Maybe not with Bioware hard at work on a KOTOR MMORPG and Dragon Age Origins on their plate already for 2009 but I can hope! I loved the first game and put more hours then I want to admit into the game.

What games are you hoping make it to a store near you this year?

Happy New Year to everyone and don't worry CJ the Emma Watson post will be coming soon....

Even though I SHOULD be studying for my economics final tomorrow I thought I would take a break to make this post. As some of you may know CJ (aka carljohnson3456) has what I believe to be an obsession with the lesser Ellen Page. I am here to argue against CJ and anyone else who things Ellen Page is so great and that Emma Watson is the TRUE super cute movie actress.

Emma Watson

-Emma Watson is 18 years old and was born in France, who doesn't love a cute european girl?

- She plays the leading female role Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movie series, one of my favorite characters and favorite series!

- Did I mention she is super cute?

Ellen Page

-She's not european, so no sexy accent

- She does not have a role in Harry Potter and is therefore inferior

-If she is so great why does she have a bag over her head in that picture?

All and all I think it's fairly obvious to everyone now that Emma Watson is by far the superior actress, much cuter and more suitable to be my or anyones hollywood crush.

Emma Watson 1, Ellen Page 0

Well lets face it folks, I havn't been around very much and when I am around it is usualy just to blog. I don't really partake in the forums anymore nor do I care much for Gamespot's reviews (prefer metacritic or gametrailers) and their late news postings (kotaku, joystiq or anyone always reports the news before Gamespot.)

 So I am considering closing up shop here for awhile and moving my blog to www.xanga.com/chris_difranco. I just made an account over theire and it seems like a nice blogging community. I havn't actually made any posts yet, put I plan to over the next couple of weeks.

Now don't fret yet folks, I havn't jumped the gun on anything yet I am just giving you all a heads up. Regardless, expect me not to be very active in the near future just because of my final exams approaching. 

 I hope all you American readers had a great Thanksgiving and didn't spend to much time in hectic Black Friday shopping centers....

As I mentioned in my previous blog I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the NXE preview program's third wave of participants. After having the NXE at my disposale I wil touch on a few of the thins I did like, didn't like and mention the things I havn't been able to use yet.

Pros

 - Install feature is fairly quick (5-8 minutes for a 5GB install), definetly improves loading times and silences the DVD drive! (This is probably my favorite feature so far).

- Avaters are slick and easy to make and offer a good amount of custimization, hopefully MS can incorporate more customization and continuously add new features to the avatar system with future updates.

-Guide button is fantastic, you can do absolutly anything throuh your guide button and never have to use the dashboard interface if you don't want to.

-Dashboard and guide load times seem alot quicker and smotther.

 

Cons

- Dashboard seems a little tricky to maneuver at least for now until I get a better understanding of where everything is. To summarize, looks nice but seems to have a steep learning curve.

- Themes are horrible, the semi spherecauses huge problems for the thems and cuts off most of the imae leaving only the top of the image viewable. Hopefully previous themes will be edited or new themes will solve this problem.

- To many sound effects, I think they added them to make the console more appealing to casual users, but is very unecessary.

 

Features I havn't used

-NETFLIX, unfortunatley since I live in Canada there is no Netflix option for me to test out.

- Parties, since no one else I know is in the preview I have been unable to test out the new party system, however I do have high hopes for the feature.

 

Feel free to ask any other questions about the NXE (if you have any) I will try to answer them to the best of my knowledge!

A week or two ago, Microsoft opened up a program for applicantants to get their hands on the NXE, 2 weeks ago the first wave got it, last week the 2nd wave got it and tomorrow the 3rd wave (including me get it.

I guess I should be excited that I will get into the preview program for NXE before millions of others get to view it, but with only 5 or 6 days before it actually releases I;m not quite sure what the point is, other then maybe giving MS a chance to test it some more.

Regardless I do look forward to making my avatar and installing some of my games and looking around and getting a feel for the new dashboard. I will post my impressions this weekend if anyone is interested they can check it out!

After completing the Gears of War 2 campaign over the weekend I was in love. I rated the game a 10 on Gamespot, something I have never done for another game and then immediatly moved on to multiplayer. This is where the problems begin...

While the campaign was executed flawlessly with a much more interesting story line then the first and some crazy boss fights, it truely was bigger, better and more badass. But the multiplayer has some major issues that need to be resolved. Some of you may not agree with me here but maybe this is because Im just old school Gears and played the original up until 2's release.

So here are my issues with the game that I will just list off in point form:

 

- Matchmaking is very poor, takes to long to connect to a game and when your done that game it kicks yo back out to the main multiplayer menue.

-Impossibe to quit a game you are in, there is no quit game option the only way you can get out is to hit your guide button and boot yourself to the dashboard. So if you gotta get off or the game is laggy tough luck without getting out of the game entierly.

 -To much lag, I have been in a few games now that are way to laggy, Im not sure if this is the games fault or the person who is "hosting's" fault but regardless this is not fun especially when you quit (by going to dashboard) and rank down,...

=Lancer is overpowered and glitchy. I've been noticing a large change from the old game from shotgun combat to lancer combat. Maybe this isn't a bad thing but it does hurt people like me who used to rely on the shotgun heavily. But not between the ease of being able to chainsaw someone when you get in their face makes me sick. Countless times I have shot people with a shotgun in front of me and yet they are unaffected and chainsaw me still. I also think the push back from the lancer is overpowered as the shotfun or pistol don't seem to be able to produce the same effects of slowing down players.

-SMOKE GRENADES, I don't understand why epic thought it would be a good idea to make smoke grendades so powerful. Yes they where pretty useless in the first game, but now they are way to powerfull. I don't understand why these warriors go all rag doll when they get hit by a smoke grenade, that is not the effect of a smoke grenade at all. They shouuld have blurred players visions or something but not inbilitate the palyer from moving...

 That's all for now I guess, I was able to write this all while waiting to find a match and now I have found one....

See you on LIVE!

Well folks, its 9AM here and in about 3 hours i will be finished my second last midterm of the semester and have a chance to take some long awaited quality time with Gears of War 2. I can't wait to go write some stupid html code and answer dumb questions about the history of the internet so I can come home, bust out my A40 Headset and drop my Gears of War 2 disc into my 360.

I figure I'm going to marathon through the campaign on normal difficulty to flush out the plot so some jacka$$ on a forum, blog or LIVE spoils it for me (which I think someone already did but Im not gonna say what or go find out if its true....).

How many of you have Gears of War 2 and are playing it? If so what do you think of it so far? Also after I finish the campaign I will definetly be looking for some people to play on LIVE multiplayer (horde or VS) so hit me up on LIVE!

Gamertag = Apollo CJD

This it folks, the week SW users have been building up to all year, arguably Sony's biggest release of the holiday (Resistance 2) vs. Microsoft's highly anticipated and definitly their biggist game of the holiday and the year (Gears of War 2). Who will win the review war? But more importantly which of the two will win your heart this week?

For me it is Marcus Fenix and company, I have been anticipating this games since I finished the the original and loved every bit of it. Gears of War is the reason I purchased an Xbox 360 and I cannot wait to get my hands on this game Thursday night!

So what about you?

I just wanted to take this time to apoligize for my lack of involvment on the forums and in peoples blogs over the past week or two and for the next upcoming weeks. I am currently in crunch time at school and have been very busy with my studies and the few games I have had time to play.

I'll still try to post on some of your blogs and post one or two blogs (aside from my NFL one).

Hope everyone had a good halloween!