Only 10 days 'til Christmas (another week of college and thenit's the holidays)and I've got some killer presents lined up this year but I hope there isn't too much domestic trouble, last year my Mum stormed out of the housebecause my ungreatful b*****d of a brother kept moaning that I got everything he wanted. Oh and after one week of deprevation (subscription ran out) he's gone back to playing more World of Warcraft so once again if I don't read your blogs y'know why. The good news is that he will be getting Guitar Hero 3 for the Xbox 360 soon (I'll have to chip in a little as well) and I'm really psyched about that, I even had a dream where I was playing Guitar Hero ('cause I'm sad like that).

My wireless internet is also back and with all the excitement I finally caved and bought a year of Xbox Live gold and I don't regret it. I'd also advise anyone who has Xbox Live gold to download the Halo: Combat Evolved themes and gamer pictures, it's free and they look pretty good. For anyone who has Boom Boom Rocket you can get the new rock pack for free, it adds 5 songs to the game and they're great fun to play. Also it's a 800MB+ download but the demo of Burnout Paradise is now avaliable and it's pure fun, you can even do online multiplayer in the demo and I spent all of last night playing it with my mate, really worth a look.. Did I mention it's free? Anywho I've also played a little World of Warcraft and strangely enough Animal Crossing: Wild World. Also I'm thinking of getting Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command for the DS, the reception wasn't too great on the PSP version but this seems to be mainly because they were trying to make a turn-based strategy game with only basic controls, not a problem that should come out on the DS.

Oh and in case it passed you by I'm pleased to say the full version of Manhunt 2 has been passed by the courts and will be hitting the shelves in the U.S. Reggie Fils-Aime (current president of Nintendo)also make a speech recently and says that he is not withholding Wiis for the companies benefit and that he actually wants more Wiis on the shelves (damn rumours) and even hinted there may be some kind of voice chat features on the Wii and that it's just the matter of getting the right peripheral (no problem for a company like Nintendo, right?). Anyway thanks once again for reading, I've just gotta say that before you leave Jeff as a matter of the past you must see this compilation of old-school moments by Vikingwwu. Anyway farewell for another week...

-Gamer_152

Well it's all simmering down now and Gamespot's got through the storm with little real damage. Many said they could no leave early on because they had grown too accustomed to Gamespot and its users and many who took dramatic leave saying 'goodbye forever' were quickly delivered back into the Gamespot community realising that they just really had nothing and no one on the other sites and it's great to see Gamespots community so strong. The problems lie in the ignorant and annoying which plague the site (ever read some of the player reviews lately) who have been completely turning against the site and yet continue to use it regularly; Jeff arguments have spilled over into boards where they don't belong and Gamespot has been left hundreds of hate comments. One thing I've said to people claiming to 'support Jeff' is that turning against his old site is not what Jeff would want and if they really did support him they would have listened to the facts (which funnily enough come nicely bundled in a 1 hour, 1 minute podcast) and know that Jeff is rather upset about the actions of these people and that the site staff knew no more than we do. CNET really handled this badly but even when Gamespot tried to be helpful, answering the questions surrounding the matter all they got was further bashing and people jumping to conclusions that it's all lies and despite CNET taking care over the firing of Jeff himself, that they have now gone to the trouble of organising some mass conspiracy against us.

Anyway what've I been doing? Um, Pokemon Diamond, Puzzle Pirates and Super Mario Galaxy mainly, all great games. I was tempted to buy Guitar Hero III but it's been a tricky decision. The game is a lot of money and I could of got it for the 360 but it would of probably been more expensive (£75)and they did announce all 3 Guitar Heroes would be out on Wii. However they promised these 3 titles before the end of the fiscal year and this is looking very unlikely and it's also been discovered that GH3 currently only plays on mono sound for the Wii and Activision are working on it. Well I say Activision but should it be Actiblizzard? I really have high hopes for the new developer, they've been great seperate and I think together they could develop something amazing. More news? Okay. Delaware, U.S is finally doing something about kids getting games underage and have launched an ad campaign, Nintendo have layed out their European launch lineup for Q1 2008 and have also announced that due to the Wii shortages all UK Wii ads are now being replaced with DS ads (as of yesterday), Bungie currently say they have no new plans to make any games for any console other than the 360 (interesting to see how the Microsft break-away is affecting them) and preliminaries are now open to get us all ready for the Best of 2007.

Anyway now for a couple of (new) personal problems, firstly my wireless internet has been out for a week but I don't really wanna pay £40 for a new router and even if I do I have to be careful with what's compatable with my 360 and then there's my bigger problem. There's this guy who keeps coming round my house, he thinks he is my friend but he scares away my other friends and he's annoying as hell to me. I didn't mind the initial excruciating 6 hour visit but then he came the next day and then he came both days next weekend and the Monday and now he's coming round this weekend and I just can't take his guy, I've dropped serious hints to him (in the form of everything up to the actual words 'maybe you should GO HOME!') and we even had a big argument but nothing keeps this guy away, what do I do! Anyway I think I'll get as much gaming in as I can before he finds me, if he does I might just hang out at a mates house. Apart from that my Super Mario Galaxy review is up (thanks for fixing my anti-paragraphing glitch Gamespot) and I may have something else to post during the week. Thanks for dealing with everything here, I know it's been a long blog and please feel free to comment and I'll be back next week :) .

-Gamer_152

Well it's the first of December and if I can get my mind past the whole terrible events of the Jeff thing I'll tell you what I've been up to. Let's see I've been playing a bit more of Half Life 2 and replaying some Portal, I've also been playing a little Super Mario Galaxy and I've written a review that should hopefully be posted up here Wednesday and it's still one of the most awesome games I've ever played. I've also been playing Pokemon Diamond, Puzzle Pirates and a new game which I've been surprisingly impressed with, Bang Howdy.

There's also been some interesting news this week, Nintendo have managed to shift 1 million consoles in one week and that's under the claim they have Wii shortages, they never cease to amaze. Rockstar have returned to court for the third time to appeal to get the uncensored version of Manhunt 2 on the shelves and I thought some really good points about the game were raised there but if anyone spoiled it for them it was theRockstar representative himself, Robertson, at first I was angry at his ignorance but now he just seems funny. Anyway in other newsthe Hitman movie has scored a surprising $21M at the box office, one report says video games and other forms of media pose a 'public health threat' (can you say seriously flawed study) and to balance out production costs Metal Gear Solid 4 will need to sell 1M copies on its first day (so about 1 in 6 people who own a PS3 will have to buy it).

Anyway here comes the bit that was just plain inevitable, the Jeff Gerstmann section. The debate over the subject is far from over and I think it's very important to hear what everyone has to say and what actually becomes of this whole thing before we make our minds up on what to do. Still that hasn't stopped most, I can fullyunderstand unsubscribing and writing pages of angry text to Gamespot but many seem to be on a mass Exodus away from the site, I don't know where they think they're going because IGN and Gametrailersaren't exactly the be all and end all and after IGNand Gametrailerseverything breaks down into something much less mainstream. But I think it can be agreed that the firing of Jeff does not mean the death of Gamespot, live shows and reviews will now be lacking quite a bit of character but Gerstmann was one of many staff and the site will still retain it's high quality in its official publications and will always be a great site if its community sticks together.At the point we're at I suppose this is just another industry decision and we knowof all the ruthless events of the gaming world, we didn't care when all those Nintendo exec.s were sacked,few people even noticed when Greg Kasavin left the staffbut this time I guess it just hit closer to home.Once again we'll miss you Jeff but you will remain unforgotten.

Update: It's what so many have been praying for. Jeff is back on the net with his own website, sporting the tagline 'Jeff Gerstmann is not dead'. Jeff is providing readers with a regular blog of gaming thoughts and fantastic weirdness.

Update: CNET and Gamespot have since responded to the Jeff Gerstmann situation and Gamespot have produced an hour-long Hotspot podcast on the situation and the feelings and experiences of the staff.

So it was long day at college, I return home, cold, tired, hungry and expecting to see the warm, welcoming embrace of the latest gaming news I see an entire gaming community collapsing in front of my eyes. My first thought is absolute panic, alarm bells are ringing in my head as I reel through piece after piece of blog entries and editorials expressing outrage at Gamespot or trying to reason with hundreds of angry subscribers.

I won't go any further right now in case you don't know what I'm talking about. Basically rumors began brewing today after the massive amount of Eidos advertising on the site for Kane & Lynch was removed and a video review of the game by Jeff Gerstmann was pulled. Apparently after deciding that Jeff's review of Kane & Lynch scored the game too low (6.0- Fair) Eidos became angry with CNET and pressured them to remove Jeff from staff. Although a certain number are now unaware of this at 7:12 AM EST the rumor stopped being a rumor as Gerstmann confirmed that he'd been fired but could not discuss the legal reasons why.

This is truely a horrible set of circumstances, Jeff was a great gamer, a friendly guy and ridiculously funny which altogether made him undoubtedly Gamespots favourite editor and although Jeff seems to be optimistic about the whole thing, this is one of the sadest days on Gamespot for so many of us. I'd just like to say that we should not jump to any major conclusions we have no information about and that this is the work of those higher up in CNET and should not be directly connected with the Gamespot staff. I wish Jeff the best of luck in whatever he's going to do and wish Gamespot the best of luck with all these quiters, subscription cancellers and angry users. Thanks for all the excellent work you did at Gamespot Jeff, we'll all remember you.

Main Source: Joystiq.com

Other Sources with Rumors: Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Forumopolis

Editorials on the Subject: The Big "News", "Maybe This Was All A Misunderstanding?", CorruptSpot?, In Gamespot I Trust No More, Gerstmann in Retro-Perspective, Jeff Gerstmann, As A Fellow Critic, Gerstmann Controversy (Part 1), What It Comes Down To, Here We Go Again, Trigames.NET Podcast Episode 73- Jeff Gerstmann (Requires 58.8MB mp3 download), A Lament For What Has Been Lost, Know Thine Enemy, Ok Gamespot. I Will Stay Here In The Trenches With You.

Today developers Nintendo and Ubisoft announced the release of an alternate version of the Nintendo DS game Jam Sessions.

According to its creators the game promises to include of your favourite conserves from Strawberry to Peach & Apricot, however there is a current rumour that the developers of the new Jam Sessions are facing a lawsuit over one particular flavour they did not have proper rights for. Despite the rumoured case it has been officially announced that the game will be released on January 18th in America, January 20th (2010) in Europe and the announcement of the hold-back of the game will be on January 6th. More updates on the game shall be added as they are discovered.

-Written by Gamer_152

Well another week of various random events in my life but I'll try to focus on the games. My brother is unfortunately still addicted to World of Warcraft, nothings really changed since my last update on him, he still spends every avaliable moment of his free time on there. Sorry if I've not been keeping up with your blogs, I can't get to the computer because my broth- well y'know.

I've been playing more of the Orange Box, I've got better at Team Fortress 2 and it's been as fun as ever playing that but I've also been going back to Portal. Even after completing the whole thing I still find myself craving more Portal, it's such asleek, coolgame and I now have a strange and disturbing longing for one of those plush companion cubes. Last night I snuck of and played a little Half-Life 2 as well, I know I said I wouldn't but... Anyway some of you may remember last blog I said I'd be getting Super Mario Galaxy soon, well I got it hours after I wrote that blog and I can honestly say it's another breathtaking masterpiece from Miyamoto. It's virtually the perfect game, it has an exact balance of old and new, some of the best graphics and soundin any Wii game and it's just packed with pure fun, you have to play a game like that to really get a sense of how good it is. I've been playing a few other things on the side and a little Pokemon Diamond (got a level 100 Palkia with lustrous orb today, no kidding) 'cause that's always a great game. No plans to buy anything new before Christmas yet but we'll wait and see, oh and speaking of waiting and seeing, the Playstation Phone? :?

Anyway I'll see you on Wednesday night when I'll be posting a little something extra, thanks for reading as always and I'll leave you with this picture of perfect unison.

Well another week gone past and I'm thankful for the good, angry with the bad (why so much bad all of a sudden?). Anyway my bro bought Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved on Sunday so I now have a full version of that on my hard drive. My friend Mirco lent me yet another game, The Orange Box but since I might be getting it for Christmas I'm saving up the Half-Life 2 games until then and only playing Portal and Team Fortress 2. I've completed Portal and the game was every bit as good as I expected it to be and maybe even a little more, absolutely loved it and Team Fortress 2 is a great game too, it's strange how in the heat of battle all the cartooniness becomes almost normal. I'm returning Oblivion to him soon, but I'm not too sad about that, I didn't get amazingly far into the game.

I'm gonna pick up Super Mario Galaxy very soon, the game still looks brilliant and I really gotta have it, I even watched Gamespots gameplay marathon (I was 'Phil from Great Britain' who asked the question about the star bits :P) and still wanted more. There are lots of games I wanna get but that's jumped to the top of my list and I still really feel like a Nintendo fan at heart, even with my new console. I was also intrigued by the new Mii Contest Channel, it is surprisingly fun trying to create the ultimate Mii for the contest of browsing through the Miis of clever celebrities on the internet but there's one thing Nintendo needs to get on top of immediately. People have been exploiting the Mii channel and creating Miis that appear to have certain items on their heads (you'll know what I mean if you checked the top 50 Miis recently). This is about as family-friendly as a console gets and Nintendo need to do something immediately, even if it's adding an awkwardly placed grey button with the words 'report to moderators' on it (not realistically going to happen), it really is sick.

Lastly just a few friend-related things. Firstly I have a friend (whose name shall remain confidential) who works at the local Morrsions (don't know if you have them in America) and the supermarket has taken to selling a few video games and got their mits on Super Mario Galaxy, all employees were allowed to reserve a copy but my mate and possibly other employees at the store all got a copy of the game one day early! For-shame Morrisons. Thanks to Fishdalf and Mars188 who commented on my last blog and thanks for advice Mars but over in the UK we have GAME and sometimes local supermarkets will stock a small number of games and that's pretty much it, although we do seem to have less stock problems (excluding Wii... Poor Ninty). Also a shoutout to zxv33 who has had more than her fair share of hell working at Gamestop and Renegadez187 who was banned for who knows what reason, he posted revealing pictures of anime girls but that was within his own blog and Gamespot never seemed to complain, but he got suspended for a week when he made a sexual reference in one of his blogs and then a day or two later 'GAME OVER, This user has been banned' so who knows what's up, anyway to Renegadez and all those great games!

-Gamer_152

WARNING: Very long blog, for shorter read skip paragraph 3.

Okay, unlike last week this week hasn't been as superb but it's still been alright I guess. I'm having to be very careful with my money what with my Xbox Live and World of Warcraft subscriptions to pay but I have bought Boom Boom Rocket to keep me occupied and I know it's a bit of a shallow game but I'm finding it quite addictive. The next game I really want though is Super Mario Galaxy which looks even better than I expected (and I had very high hopes), it was called 'The best Mario adventure since Mario 64' and that makes it a game I MUST have. Of course enthralment with games can go a little too far, I had an old friend whos life was literaly consumed by MMOs and all he did all day was sit at home playing while me and my friends were all at school but the really disturbing thing is now it's happening to my little brother. He's spent nearly every last hour of his free time for the past few weeks either playing World of Warcraft, talking about World of Warcraft or reading about World of Warcraft. He's had addictions before but this is definately the worst and it seems to stem from him becoming involved with a creepy group of delinquents and Warcraft addicts, I mean they seem to be nice people but they live in a very alienating, strange world of their own. I'd try to help but he never listens to me and one of my parents is always too busy while the other is just a little too kind to him.

I also want to tell you a story that I forgot to tell you last week, it happened when I was going into GAME, the day I bought my wireless adaptor. Now there are two GAMEs in my my local shopping centre (Lakeside) so I decided to walk into the upstairs store and browse some of the 360 games when I seea man, what wasmost likelyhis wife and his son. So theybowl their wayup to the shelves next to me, tracksuits, buzzcuts and all but I think 'No Phil, though shalt not judge on appearances'. So they start chatting away excitedly and I happen to overhear them, well heck, the entire store probably overheard them. Now ignorance about ratings is one thing but all this guy was doing was picking the games with the most violent looking covers off the shelves and showing them to his son, 'na I already 'ave Bioshock', 'Ah no, that looks like a ***** game' and so on the conversation goes until his Dad picks up Dead Rising and another game (I think it was Forza 2) and they eventually decide 'Yeah, let's get the zombie game'. As if this wasn't annoying enough the guy then continued to loudly voice his opinions about every game he went past on his way to the check out, I got so annoyed I had to walk out and go to the downstairs game as the guy strode past a shelf of Nintendo games shouting 'waste o' money!'. I was angrier than I'd been in a very long time, the guy was unbelivable, if I was talking about anybody else it might seem arrogant but I am so glad I am not that guy!

Anyway the whole thing with the editorials has got a bit mad and it all depends of how much homework I get and how long I can keep my brother off the PC. But just so I don't end on a low note let me leave you with this little gem I found hidden on the World of Warcraft European site: 'The Aperture guild are organising a series of points based, outdoor PvP events. Each rounds last one month and you and your faction will earn points by completing various tasks and battles that come along under the month. Each week there will be one major battle arranged by me and my guild and hopefully other battles aswell around outlands and Azeroth. The winning faction is the one that gets the most points at the end of the round. We of course assure you that there will be cake at the end! '

-One Angry 152

Well it's been a very long week. Not in a bad way, in a good way. Although I have been getting truthfully ridiculous amounts of homework from college but that's off topic. Anyway you'll never guess what I picked up for about £50, the Xbox 360 wireless adaptor. It seems a bit of a pricy purchase but I figure it'll be a good investment in the long run and I've also got quite a bit of enjoyment out of Halo 2 online and the various arcade demos although I don't think I'll actually be spending any cash on the marketplace, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is the closest thing on there to a game I'm interested in but there's Galaxies coming out on Wii and DS in a month or so.

As for full games themselves like I say I've been enjoying Halo 2 online even though I'm only Rank 6 (I really don't wanna have to give that game back right now) and I eased off of World of Warcraft long enough to get a bit of Oblivion and Guild Wars in and even a little of Pokemon Diamond. I'm also loving the look of Super Smash Bros. Brawl more and more, the new stage creator looks like a great feature, I can't understand anyone who won't love that. Also after a fewdays of hell we got through another period of Gamespot glitches (probably the worst yet) but they're all fixed now so thank you Gamespot.

Strangely enough apart from that I haven't got much to say. Thank you again to an ever-growing number of blog readers and a special thanks to all those who comment (shout-out to: Fishdalf, Mars188, zxv33 and PJ24). If you want me to add your gamertag on Xbox Live just ask (same applies for Gamespot tracking,Wii numbers and friend codes in any DS games I have). Finally you may remember a while ago I said something about a fourth editorial in the works, well it's been scraped as it just wasn;t up to scratch and will be replaced with another editorial only this one's a little complex and I;m more than a little busy right now. Anyway I'll be reading all your blogs and comments and see you all next time.

-Gamer_152

Happy Halloween everbody! A day where we prepare to remember all the souls that have passed on from this world. Of course this can only be done by consuming glutonous amounts of candy and participating in a practice (dressing as dead people andthreateningneighboursfor food) that on any other day of the year would get you hung, drawn and quartered. Anyway, here's my token holiday blog post and tonight I'm going to be a pirate (although I do not limit my practice of dressing up as a pirate and walking around in public to this one day of the year). Remember to trick or treat responsibly kids, no vandalism or fires (please no more!!!) and stay out of the bad neighbourhoods ("There's a reason we Don't go to Ravenholm").Anyway what costumes are you allwearing? (if any) and what special games are you playing tonight? (if any).

-Gamer_152

P.S Thank you to those who posted on my last blog, particularly Mars who left quite a pair of comments :) .