I've decided that i quite enjoy writing lists. So here is another one, but maybe a little bit less structured than my now famous 'Best Games of 2008'....

Gears of War....

I don't understand it. I'm gradually developing an appetite for violent shooty type games after a pretty long period of PS2 based RPGs and generally 'happy' games (that sounds strange doesn't it?). I can now appreciate why stabbing a camper and disappearing like a ninja is one of the best feelings that a man can have without taking drugs but i still don't understand why Gears of War is so popular. I'm not going to take the snobby approach and say that it's too.... gah i don't know the word... too... stupid (i was hoping for something more Oscar Wilde-esque, but stupid will do).

I've only had an XBox for around a year now and I immediately bought the games that appealed to my senses when stood in Gamestation with money to burn... I bought Dead Rising (sated my need for some Zombie killing fun inbetween Zombie killing on Timesplitters and the time before Left4Dead), i bought Pro Evo because i foolishly hoped that it would still be good (it wasn't) and i picked up Blue Dragon because of the FF connection. After such a hattrick of mediocre games i started to look into the reviews of games a little more carefully instead of being coaxed into buying things simply because they had exciting looking boxes (well dead rising did, the other two were pretty basic). None of my friends owned XBoxes at the time of myself buying one so i had very little to direct me in my choices (like the littlest hobo i had drifted from one console to another but i had never sniffed around Bill Gates' erm... gate (strange analogy...)) so therefore, for at least a month or two i was lost.

And then i started noticing Gears of War everywhere, it's like that feeling when you hear a new word or phrase for the first time and then you hear and read it everywhere; you suddenly wonder how you have been so blinkered and immediately have to know more. So i bought Gears of War. And i played it up until the bit, very early on, when you have to fill the big-evil-monster-burrow-hole-things by throwing a grenade into it... I died a few times, felt a bit stressed, died a few more times and then gave up. And that was that, until i started at a new job and everybody there (well, not everybody) seemed to be obsessed by Gears of War 2. So i went to a friends house and played on it, died a few times, felt a bit stressed and confused, died a few more times and then went home. So my conclusion from that experience that Gears of War 2 confuses me more than Gears of War, primarily my confusion being 'why is it so popular?'.

The MGMTs....

I don't understand them. They're not very good are they? Come on... I'd go as far as to say that they are awful. I'm sick of online shops recommending the album to me whenever i go onto their sites simply because i once bought an album that someone else bought who so happens to have had the misfortune of buying the album. I haven't heard their album, so that is why i have not entitled this section 'MGMT's album called....blah' I have however seen them live; they supported someone else and i genuinely wanted to like them (as i do with most support bands, with the exception of one band called Mo*Ho*Bi*Sho*Pi, i hated them immediately, they wore visers on stage and played like Nirvana without the tunes) but they where seriously bad, many people in strange clothing and bad haircuts at the gig clearly disagreed with me and were having a great time... and good for them... not for me though thanks... When i think of the youth of today (my god, i am old!) i don't think of 'chavs' running around beating up pensioners, i don't think of strange sallow faces lingering in doorways smoking bad dope and sporting even worse t-shirts... no, i think of the last time i followed my girlfriend into Topshop and observed a fluorescent hell of stick thin, androgenous...beings... i'll never understand them and i don't think i mind any more, but these day-glo and zany fashionistas listen to things like MGMT and they dance!!! My god do they dance... It's enough to make a man embrace corduroy and musicians with sturdy and solid names like Crosby, Stills and Nash!!!

So yeah, i don't understand MGMT.

Fable

I don't understand Fable. Despite being engrossed in my Playstation 2 at the time i knew that Fable was The Game of the moment and i always planned to get into it at some point. So i bought Fable (alongside Braid) as soon as i got onto XBox live, i then freed up my weekend (the girlfriend went to topshop alone) and dived into what turned out to be a pretty shallow pool. A puddle as it where. I know that i was four years late at the party but i still expected something about it to grab me but i found it completely charmless. I'd wanted to complete the game before i considered buying Fable 2 but i think it will stay on my 360 hard drive forever, uncompleted and goading me for not seeing what so many others did, damn you Fable.