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Final Verdict Lite: Runaway - Dream of the Turtle (PC)

+ Awesome cartoon graphics feels just right for the genre.

+ Draws alot of inspiration from Lucas Arts and Monkey Island 3.

+ Beautiful animations and cutscenes.

+ Sometimes funny and entertaining puzzles.

+ Lots of love for a dead genre, and they should have creds for trying to revive it.

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- The Humor is nowhere to be found. They try but its so stiff and boring

- Borrows to MUCH from Monkey Island 3. Sometimes it feels like a complete and shameless ripoff

- Characters are boring and uninteresting.

- Dialogues are boring and uninteresting

- Story is boring and uninteresting

- Voiceactors are down right terrible, especially for the maincharacter

- Puzzles are more often than not extremely hard to figure out without a guide, yes even worse than the old classics.

- Music couldnt have been worse. The game starts up with some kind of Boyband BSB yucky pop-song and goes from there. The relaxed and supergood music from Lucas Arts old masterpieces are nowhere to be found

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Do not let yourself be fooled by the Monkey Island 3-like pictures and like me, buy the game just for nostalgiareasons. You will be utterly dissapointed when you realize its more of a MI3 ripoff without soul than a resurrection of the genre.

Score: 5.5

Final Verdict: God of War (ps2)

Note about my Final Verdicts. They are not meant to be reviews on how you play the game and what its all about. My verdicts always assumes that you know what the game is all about. I always recommend reading GameSpots reviews before reading my own verdicts. Im not here to tell you how to play a game. Im just telling you whats good and whats bad about a game you already know. In this case you can find GameSpots review here

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+ The usage of Greek mythology. A VERY fine usage of the greek mythology, using all of its myths. beasts, bosses, gods and lore to create something that stands out from the crowd and feels fresh. There may have been games using this mythology before but not as good as this game. And trust me when I say that this is no Hercules, Disney version. This is the real deal...

+ Brutality. This game takes the greek mythology and tells it as realistic as possible. If everthing about the greek gods were true this is how it would have been. Dark, gritty, bloody and naked. This games isnt afraid to throw in the things needed. Heres loads and loads of blod & gore and quite alot of nudity, foul mouthing and general cruelty, and not once does it feel misplaced. It fits perfecly with the game and its damn nice to see !

+ The action gameplay. Its fluid, cool and fun hack n slash action packed with combos, cool moves and special abilities versus brutal, fearsome and awesome enemies. Theres also this kind of minigames packed into the action that makes Kratos pull off these awesome stunts on big enemies. Its often narrowed down to either pressing the right buttons in a buttonsequence or moving the left analog stick in a certain motion. Bossfights are to few but still awesome !

+ Kratos! The man ! One of the hardest, most disturbed and broken down anti-heroes you will ever play in a videogame. The story of Kratos is told with precision and fantastic cutscenes and it explains the history and destiny of a man that sold his soul to the God of War. He´s plagued by nightmares and bad memories, he has killed countless people in the most brutal manner and he cares for noone and nothing. You will come to love this horrible man. You will want to slay the God Of War so bad when you are nearing the end of the game!

+ The presentation - The artdirection and design. The game´s levels and monsters have a clear greek, kind of cartoonish or "history book" look and feel to them, but with a nice dark twist. The game looks really good, despite of its jagged edges, low texture resolution and few animations because its art is so good. - The music. The music is fantasticly epic !

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- The cinematic camera used can sometimes make platforming elements hard to complete and it also prevents you to see where you are going if you need to backtrack for a bit. I prefer a straight up 3rd person camera over this super cinematic one.

- The controls can feel a bit "edgy". reacting to quick and to much. The double jump feauture feels pretty..wierd. As it is now you pretty much have to double jump wherever you want to go. If you single jump you wont even get over the smallest of gap or up on the lowest of ledges. If you have to double jump EVERYWHERE you might as weel convert it into one long jump. Together with the camera and the edgy controls its also easy to jump to far or to short when doublejumping.

- Some of the platforming elements could have been left out and replaced with more action. When you have to take a break from slaughtering to balance on thin wooden planks with rotating saws for 10 minutes and falling to your death over and over its just frustrating.

- Some puzzles are so frustrating. They might be smart but sometimes they are to smart and it stops the flow of the game. The game would have been even better if the pacing of the game wasnt stopped as much as it is now. Most puzzles are just fine, dont get me wrong, but some puzzles stops the game for to long and gives you to much of a headache.

- The difficulty on a couple of specific battles and platforming sequences are super super hard. Waay to hard for my taste. I think I can say The end of the "temple" and the Path of Hades without spoiling anything for anyone.

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Final Score: 8.4

A unique setting and excellent presentation. Fresh action and a very memorable maincharacter who has a very deep and engaging background. Some things hinder the slow of the gameplay but this is a mature actiontitle you must play if you are looking for one on the ps2 and are old enough to appriciate its adult theme.

The missing verdict...Bugged browser !

I just wrote a Final Verdict for WoW - The Burning Crusade but the browser bugged out on me when I was finished and erased the whole thing. It was a fairly long verdict and I dont have the energy to write it all again. Grrrr... Final score was 9.3. Now i´ll just settle with rating it..argh. extremely annoying. I wrote alot about new content and about blizzard in general and it just got erased...

The blog inactivity.

The inactivity lately is of course due to The Burning Crusade. My mage is now lvl 67 and my Blood Elf paladin is soon lvl 30 and i plan to get both of them to lvl 70 in the coming months so I guess you could say that this inactivity will kind of continue for a while longer. World of Warcraft has that effect on other games, you just dont play them as much since its very time consuming to play this kind of MMORPG seriously. On top of this another friend started a character on my server and we are planning a to start a guild and all that. So my beloved Xbox 360 is actually just standing there and it probably will for a while longer.

Its not ALL about WoW and work tho. I actually borrowed God of War for the ps2 from a friend so I´m currently giving that a runthrough in anticipation for the sequel wich will proabably be even more awesome. I also Pre-ordered Final Fantasy XII yesterday. Its due out on the 23rd of February so im looking at some serious Ps2 quality time on the side of WoW in the nearest future.

I´m also playing these games I bought for my DS a while back, meaning Phoenix Wright - AA and Yoshis Island DS. Tho the only time im playing DS when im not traveling somewhere is in bed before I go to sleep. But im still playing through them, its only taking some time. Expect Final Verdicts of PW-AA and YI-DS in the coming month. In other gaming related news I checked out Lunar Knights on the lastest ep. of On The Spot. It seems awesome. I cant find it up for Preordering on any of the Swedish webstores yet tho so It seems like I have to wait with that for a while longer. I dont even know when its due to come out.

Anyways, just thought I´d let you know I´m alive but im playing World of Warcraft pretty hardcore. Also I just got off a hard week at work so. Until next time ! *Greg Kasavin style goodbye*

Final Verdict: Lost Planet - Extreme Condition (x360)

Note about my Final Verdicts. They are not meant to be reviews on how you play the game and what its all about. My verdicts always assumes that you know what the game is all about. I always recommend reading GameSpots reviews before reading my own verdicts. Im not here to tell you how to play a game. Im just telling you whats good and whats bad about a game you already know. In this case you can find GameSpots review here

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+ Fantastic oldschool gameplay. Like the lovechild of Probotector and Doom mixed with some heavy duty mech action and 3rd person shooting. You blast your way through tons and tons of enemies, never letting go of the shoot button and dodging everything that comes at you. Then you finish off with a boss that has 1 or several really obvious weak spots while the clock (your thermal energy) is ticking down. Its really like an old Sidescrolling shooter but in a really beautiful package and I love it !

+ Bosses! They are huge, they are cool, they are challenging and they are a great load of fun. It will be hard for the year 2007 to beat these bosses when we are voting for the years best. They are both huge Akrid and evil mechs and they all have specific tactics to take them down.

+ Mechs! Not nearly enough games have mechs these days. These cool sci.-fi constructions, when made good, like in this game, are so much fun and so cool to look at

+ The game is stunningly beautiful. When Inafune was working with Dead Rising he said he wanted to create something beautiful in contrast to Dead Risings gritty atmosphere and made this huge Snow planet wirh shimmering snow, snowy mountainpeaks in the sunset and huge inside industrial locales. He made "beautiful" looking maincharacters and created miracles with the same engine that was used for DR. The graphics are really well designed and it all looks amazing. Motionfilters and smoke in particular. The environments looks stunning when youre looking at them and the characters feel very alive. It cannot compete with Gears of War on a pure technical standpoint but LP still holds it own thanks to how its all put together and designed.

+ Great environments. A continuation of the previous point. Big snowy fields, mountaintops, volcanic caverns, industrial complexes, Akrid caves, hives and more. They are all really stunning to look at and fight in.

+ The great combination of very japanese Mech gameplay and 3rd person action shooting. Some levels are you in a mech, in a dark industrial building versus security systems and dozens of other mechs and in other levels you are alone on foot on a big snow plain versus a giant worm and snowpirates. LP has a great sense of contrast and it mixes it all together really well.

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- The story dosent deliver at all. Its a catastrophy. All of the cutscenes feels so very very unimportant. It feels like they dont touch on the important things of the story and the conflict at hand at all. The relations between the maincharacters feels extremely pale. There were great potention for really great relations in the story but they go to waste. The cutscenes are poorly directed and not nearly as cool as those in Dead Rising. The characters could have been waay more fleshed out and they could have solved the story in much better ways than they did, now it just felt boring.

- The game is shorter than a drunken dwarf. It is pretty much over before it starts. Now this is a pure run and gun shooter so its not as bad as you might think and you can play it all over again on another difficulty and have just as much as you had on your first time through but its still a VERY short game. If you have problems with short games you might want to stay far away from this one. This one lets you shoot like a madman for a couple of hours and then it stops.

- The game can be very exhausting to play for longer periods of time. This game requires your full attention since every second rockets, bullets and giant bugs will be flying at you from all directions. The moment you let your guard down you are dead. This results in a very exhausting game to play. I never played the game more than 45 min or so in one sitting because after 1 stage my head was pretty much spinning.

- Sometimes clunky and clumsy mechcontrols. I cant help but feel that the mechcontrols could have been smoother on many of the mechtypes. Now some of them are nearly impossible to control. The scooter is the worst example.

- To much smoke. On some occastions there are so much explosions close to you character that you cant see a thing. Nothing, zero, nada and its REALLY annoying.

- The action is really great, but thats it. There is nothing more to get from this game. If you get tired of the action (and the multiplayer of course) there is nothing. No puzzles, no slower portions of the game, no good cutscenes, no change in the pacing at all. this game is pretty much a bomb that explodes and then its over.

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Final Score: 8.2

A very solid actiongame with extremely fun bosses set in very beautiful environments. Its extremely oldschool. Something that suits some better than others but I think its just great that a developers such as Capcom have the courage to go down that road. It has its flaws but its a superold concept made with so much style that you hardly even notice those flaws. The potential of this game however is not used to its fullest at all.

Final Verdict: Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess (GC) - Long version !

Note about my Final Verdicts. They are not meant to be reviews on how you play the game and what its all about. My verdicts always assumes that you know what the game is all about. I always recommend reading GameSpots reviews before reading my own verdicts. Im not here to tell you how to play a game. Im just telling you whats good and whats bad about a game you already know. In this case you can find GameSpots review here

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+ The best Zeldastory ever. Its darker, grittier and more mature and in the end its one of the most beautiful stories ever in a game. Zelda has been good before storywise but never even close to this. Heartachingly beautiful and very very epic ! The first time I entered the twilight I got an Ico meets Silent Hill feel. The contrast to this is the vast fields, mountains and deserts of Hyrule on Horseback. The story of the Twili people and the mysterious Midna is something that will stick as a very fond gaming memory. But most of all this title have more feelings and depth than previous ones.

+ The artistical design of the game is just stunning. The game is seriously crippled from a technical standpoint since its playing on a GameCube in 2007 but from a purely artistical point of view this game shines far more than anything else that came out in 2006. Everything from enviromental to architectual to characterdesign is unique and top notch and feels just right for a Zeldagame.

+ The Twilight and the normal world. Probably the best concept in a Zeldagame since A Link to the past where a similar concept were used. But not to this extent and not as good as TP. The gamemechanics that you are forced to use when in the Twilight is fresh and thrilling.

+ The direction of the cutscenes. The cutscenes are extremly well directed. Cameraangles, facial expressions and very well chosen locations and settings makes alot of the scenes so very beautiful, sad, scary and/or epic. The characters have no voices but so much feelings still come through.

+ The characters. A continuation of the previous point. All of the main characters are very well designed and they show so much emotion even tho they dont have nearly as many polygons as characters in an Xbox 360 title and no speech, they all have distinct personalities.

+ Midna. The best sidekick in any game for years and the best sidekick in a Zeldagame ever. She puts all of Links previous pathetic fairies to shame. She really steals the show even from Princess Zelda in this game (or does she?). The story of Midna and her fate throughout the game is nothing short of beautiful ( i will continue to use that word alot here). Shes a very important part of the story and you will come to love her in many different ways before the adventure is over.

+ The bosses. A very very important part of a Zelda game. They truly delivers and they are more epic than ever (another word i will use alot). Many of them will have you thinking of Shadow of the Colossus for the ps2. The small hero versus the giant colossus that has a weak spot somewhere on his body. There are some small and very up close and personal bosses to tho wich are just as good.

+ The overall Zelda soul. Yes. Its still very much a Zelda game and it still feels like a Zelda game. Ive played ALOT of Zelda growing up and this game has that special Zelda feel.

+ The music. Its very dated technically, just like the graphics but just like the graphics its also artistically superior to the competition. There´s so much feeling and soul to the music. Alot of it will remind you of old Zeldatunes but there are no straight up rip offs from previous titles until the credits. The amount of nostalgia in the music is just right.

+ The final battle and the ending(s) (dont turn off the console until ALL of the credits have rolled). Here i go again. BEAUTIFUL. Touching, EPIC and so cool. The final moments of this game are something I will put down as one of the best final bosses and one of the best endings ever. The game keeps building up to this huge crescendo and you are just hoping it will deliver. Well it does !

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- No widescreen support. This is the main reason you want to play the Wii version. The lack of this on the gamecube forces me to play this gorgeous game in either 4:3 format or an extremely stretched out 16:9 format that looks awful. The 4:3 format created burn ins on my LCD TV, making stripes where the 4:3 format ends so the 16:9 was what i decided to play on in the end but since theres no support for it i played with a stretched out link so wide he looked like a Goron. Its really a shame with a game such as this.

- Some parts of the presentation feels stuck in the past. The GameCube puts out alot of restrictions. The technical bit of this game suffers because of the system. no voices, no "real" music just these old gamecube samplings, jagged edges, blurry textures, blocky environment, awful looking trees and not very sharp textures at all. If this was the FIRST game on the GC this would not have been a problem but the year is now 2007 and im playing Gears of War on my X360. TP sometimes feels plain out DATED !

- I can feel the same way about the overall Zeldaconcept. The Temples ! I have actually never felt quite comfortable to be completely cut off from the gameworld to solve puzzles for 2 or more hours in a row. Each time I enter another temple I feel somewhere deep inside that Nintendo should try to take Zelda in another direction where the "temples" are more integrated into the gameworld and are more seamless and less frustrating. Tho somewhere I also feel that as a true Zeldafan this is what Zelda is all about and it shouldnt be changed.

- Some really frustrating bits in various Temples. The temples are sometimes just plain frustration and some of them takes alot of willpower and guides to get through. Most puzzles are smart and fun but some are so stupid. Make sure you are prepared for all the temples before you pick this title up. Dont expect Nintendo to have cut down on the temples just because they grew the story. If you are a more hardcore Zeldafan than me (and thats pretty hardcore) you might not notice this at all tho.

- The integration of various upgrades. A part of Zelda have always been to upgrade your clothes, quiver, bags, bottles and stuff like this. This have been really nicely intergrated into the story in previous titles and the items have actually helped you. This time around you can pretty much make your way through the whole game without bothering to pick up anything at all. 1 bottle is enough, you dont really ever need a bigger moneypouch, you will never use more than the standard amount of arrows and you will never blow so many things up at once that you need a bigger bomb bag. The motivation to find stuff like this dosent really exist. The motivation to get deeper into the story of way bigger than the one to get another Heartcontainer, partly because you will easily beat the game with just the hearts you get from bosses.

- The same goes for Epona, your horse. When youre well into the adventure you will just portal to where you want to go so Epona is just usable in a few big battles in the story really..

- The camera and controls. I dont know if anyone has ever complained about this but I actually think that the camera is downright awful sometimes and the controls can be very unprecise. Sometimes its hard to really do what you want because you cant really target it or the camera is way out of synch with how you want it to be. The controls in Zelda has pretty much been the same since Ocarina of Time and its about bloody time they upgraded them.

- How much does the game really live on previous sucesses? Sometimes I cant help but feel that the game wouldnt be as touching and engaging if it wasnt for the whole nostalgiafactor. Link, Zelda and Hyrule are things that have been with me growing up and as such the Nostalgia plays a big part of the game´s deep soul. If this was the first game in the Series I actually dont think it would engage me as much as it actually does. It kind of requires that you recognize places, names, story elements and certain sounds to really get you going. Sometimes I also think that they copy Ocarina of Time a bit much just because that game was so well recieved.

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Final Score: 9.0

Its the best version of the Zeldastory ever but its biggest strenght is also its biggest weakness. Its still Zelda, nothing more, nothing less.Ths series stopped evolving with Ocaring Of Time. The fact that its outdated and released at at time where Next Gen is the way to go keeps it from being the best Zeldagame ever. If you put that aside however and accept it for what it is, a Zelda-adventure, its a masterpiece with a touching story and it is a very long Actionadventure filled with lots of feeling ! The thing is that it has so much to live up to that you are trying to find faults.

Bye bye social life (and other games)..

New Game: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC)

Ye i decided to pick up Burning Crusade. Now i have 10 more levels to gain.. WoW have the effect to completely render other games uninteresting so I really shouldnt be playing it but..well. I am a pretty hardcore WoW player so I wont get any sleep before my character is lvl 70 with OK gear. Im not so hardcore that I have to have THE best gear but I want to be able to hold my own in PvP.

Played it alot yeasterday, it was a mess. Sooo many people at the same spots at the same time. Horde and Alliance in one big mess of players everywhere. All grinding and questing. To solve this tho, Blizzard had increased the spawnrate of mobs on these spots. This turned out pretty bad. You didnt even have time to kill 1 mob before he spawned again in the spot you were killing him in resulting in you, running, with 10 mobs behind you. World Server went down a fair amount of time and the lag was pretty much unplayable all evening. Despite all this I managed to get somewhere around 400k XP on my first day. Thats good enough for me, thats about how hardcore I am. Im not like those people who got to 63 on 1 day...naaah, not me. I want to eat and sleep.

Anyway. I should get to 61 today. 9 more to go. I also started a Blood Elf Paladin of course.  Dont know how much I will be playing on it before 70 on my mage tho. The server is Frostwhisper (EU-PvP). The name is Kryptikk. Undead Mage. See you in Outland.

Final Verdict: Super Princess Peach (DS)

Note about my Final Verdicts. They are not meant to be reviews on how you play the game and what its all about. My verdicts always assumes that you know what the game is all about. I always recommend reading GameSpots reviews before reading my own verdicts. Im not here to tell you how to play a game. Im just telling you whats good and whats bad about a game you already know. In this case you can find GameSpots review here

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+ Nice twist in the oh so intriguing Super Mario story. The Mario brothers gets kidnapped and the PRINCESS gets to save them. Actually feels really fresh, believe it or not. If you are a big fan of Super Mario you will also appriciate it.

+ New gameplay elements and some grenremixing into the Super Mario platform formula. The basics are the same. Its a platform game and you progress through such levels in various themes ranging from grassland to winterland to the deep forests. This time around tho, they have brought in some cool RPG elements. 1-You have heartcontainers. No more eating mushrooms and getting bigger and taking 2 hits to die (or 1 if no mushroom has been eaten). You start out with 3 heart containers and you can buy more at a shop in between levels. 2 - You have a mana meter and abilities to go with it. Peach has 4 abilities. Happiness, that makes her fly or conjure cyclones. Anger, that sets her on fire and burns things as well as making her really heavy. Sadness, that makes her cry rivers of water and run really fast and lastly you have another kind of happiness that regenerates health for mana.

+ New gameplay elements continued : These abilites are used very nicely to create depth to the otherwise standard platform levels. Often to help you find hidden Toads that are spread across the levels. The Shop is also a nice addition. Instead of collecting coins for 1up´s. You collect them to actually buy stuff. Lots of stuff. Everything from hearts to a longer Vibe(read: Mana)meter to fun puzzles and minigames that can be played on the side of the main Adventure. Peach can also learn NEW abilites like flying with her umbrella and smashing enemies for coins. All of this comes together to create a deeper and different mario-platformer.

+ This game will last for a long time. In addition to completing the main adventure (that is pretty long) you can go back to make sure you have found all of the toads on all of the levels. You can also go back to find puzzlepieces and stagemusic that can be played in a musicplayer. You can also go grind more money to buy more puzzles, music and even fun minigames starring the Toads. Then when you finally have all of the puzzles and minigames I bet you can have fun with those for a while longer. Good lastingvalue !

+ Nice graphical design. As usual when it comes to The Mushroom Kingdom its all cozy with warm and vivid colors. Clouds have happy faces and all of the colours of the rainbow are frequently used. And it always works. The backgrounds in particular are extra nice this time. The enemies also have alot more detail to them.

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- The levels starts to feel pretty uninspired and repetative after a while. The overall level design are nowher near the greater titles in the Super Mario universe. When you´re closing in on the end you start to feel like you are playing the same levels over and over but with different "skins" on them.

- The gameplay isnt as fun as the standard Mario gameplay. The princess can smash enemies, fly with her umbrella, cry, spin, catch on fire and regenerate health but when it all comes around I rather just jump on enemies with Mario. Somehow i started to lose interest in continuing playing and it all just started to feel like a grind for getting Toads.

- Overall the game is to easy for its own good. Since Peach can do sooo many things and since there is no way you can get Game Over the challenge lies more in finding stuff and getting money rather than completing the levels. If the levels would have been more challenging and more fun to begin with this grind might have felt more motivated.

- The missing "Mario feel". I dont know why, maybe its because they have changed so much but somehow i never feel like im playing a Mariogame. I feel like im playing a game made by some 3rd party developer rather than Nintendo themselves. Theres something missing for the right "Mario feel" to be there.

- The Music. The music isnt nearly as catchy as it usually is when it comes to a Mario title. Its sometimes down right annoying to listen to. Its nothing you want to hear MORE of in the included musicplayer, thats for sure !

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Final Score: 7.6

Its a fresh wind to the Mario universe and it has alot of things to do for the dedicated but it lacks the finesse, the Nintendomagic and the creativity to get to play with the big boys. It sure is a solid product with a fantastic design to it but the motivation drops as you play it. If you have a child that want to play a DS platformer, this might be just the thing for you !

I feel truly sad.. Goodbye Greg Kasavin =(

First reaction: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Wow. truly some of the most tragic news I have heard for years. Gregs personality is of the sort that you really WANT to listen to him for 8 hours. I will truly miss the gamingmarathons. I will also miss Gregs fantastic personality and way to talk about games that really makes you understand and makes you want to hear more. Greg does this more than anyone else on Gamespot. I will also miss his indepth and cunning reviews of games. I have great respect for Greg Kasavin and I will feel deeply sad for a great while that he is leaving. Greg has inspired me in more ways than anyone can imagine and he is a person I wish I knew in real life. His face will surely be missed.

Gamespot should release his gaming marathons in full lenght for download as a memorial. So that we can see Greg caught up in a good game one last time.
Good luck Greg, I will preorder the game you will be working on as soon as i know what it is.
"Hi and welcome to gamespots 8 hour marathon of..." Words that represent some of my most dear memories on GameSpot !