Yep, another week without a 360, GAME still haven't called me to say there are any in but I'm gonna check again today. I've unfortunately spent most of the past week sick though so I've had to take a few days of college and haven't played too may video games. I have played Super Smash Bros. Brawl (big surprise) and as far as I can recall 42 All-Time Classics and Puzzle Pirates. I'm really missing my 360 but the past 5 weeks of SSBB have been good. I'm still kind of lost on what game I should buy next though, oh and I tried to buy Sid Meier's Pirates but for some reason the credit card was declined.

Of course the huge deal this week as you all know is GTAIV, something that's definitely gonna go down in Gamespot history. Even if you take Gamespot's 10/10 as one opinion (which it should be taken as) you can't deny that it's also got phenominal reviews from many other publications, something like this hasn't been seen in a long time ad it's great to see so many people having such a great time with the game. Of course things are never quite as simple as "game scores a 10 = everyones happy". There are numerous reports of the game freezing up during play on both the PS3 and 360 versions, there have been advertising problems, the Mothers Against Drunk Driving are campaigning against the game despite it actually discouraging drink driving, people have actually been violently attacked over the games launch (and the guys in London thought Halo 3 would be trouble) and the fanboys are holding some kind of freakin' riot in the forum of just about every video gaming site.

The only other serious news this week is the various companies dropping out of E3 this year: Activision/Vivendi, NCSoft, Foundation 9 just for starters. I guess we won't be getting news on Guild Wars 2 any time soon. Still I am pleased to hear that Muse are getting more content on GH3, if only I could play GH3 right now. Not so pleased about Gamespots recent review that only gave Dawn of War: Soulstorm 6.5 but I'll probably end up buying it... Eventually.

Anyway I hope you've all had a good week. Sorry if this edition of my blog hasn't been so good, I'm still getting over the plague or whatever I've caught. Shoutout to Fishdalf, Nodham, Kindrich06, Zxv33 and PJ24, thanks to all of you for reading my blog. This week I'll leave you with this Human Recreation of Snake.

-Gamer_152

Another week without a 360, GAME say they'll call me when they get one in but last time they said they'd call me it wasn't overly successful. However I have been round my mate Ricks and played the legendary map pack on Halo 3 and it's great work again from Bungie in my opinion. Anyway it's also been a week on Animal Crossing, Puzzle Pirates and most prominently Super Smash Bros. Brawl (which is still an awesome game). I've also been debating in my head over whether to buy Wii Fit or Mario Kart Wii but I think I'll wait until Gamespot have reviewed both of them and see how they weigh up. I've also been putting off my purchase of a new DS for quite some time even though I really need one as my current DS has both external damage and a very short battery life.

As some of you will know, this week Nintendo announced that there will be no price drops on either of their consoles within 2008. If you can sift through the fanboys, the criticisms and the people saying "I have a Wii and DS so why should I care" the reaction seems to range from "well Nintendo don't need a price drop so this isn't that surprising" to "Wow, they really need to bring out a price drop". I think overall everyone wants a price drop of course but I think most people who are looking to buy a console can afford the Nintendo Wii or DS and this can be taken as another example of people forgetting that they are talking about a company and companies are there to make money, not grant wishes. Although Microsoft have been outputting tremendous sales Nintendo have been showcasing better ones and I doubt that Microsoft will jeopardise Nintendo's financial position within the year.

On a lighter note though there's going to be a demo of the Spore creature editor in June and I'm pretty psyched, I know it won't quenche my thirst for Spore right up until the release of the full game but it should be fun and ensure that there are a number of quirky creatures available for download by the time the full game comes out. Criterion games are also going to be adding motorcycles to Burnout Paradise and I gotta admit I feel a little weird about it, it doesn't really feel like the Paradise I've known with motorcycles in the mix but hopefully Criterion know what they're doing.

Thanks again for reading, a shoutout Kingrich06, Zxv33 and Fishdalf. I'll leave you with Darkspire Film's No Scope Was Involved... I never did buy Sid Meier's Pirates did I?

-Gamer_152

Okay so my Xbox was ready to go, I took it down to GAME and... They had no preowned 360s for me to exchange it for so I guess I'll be spending this week without the legendary map pack. I've just been playing Audiosurf, Animal Crossing and of course Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Despite all the good things I've heard about Mario Kart Wii I'm still feeling reluctant to pick up the game, however I think I might pick up Sid Meier's Pirates soon because, well, I never bought that game and I can get it for like £7.

Now there's a little something I've come across which I think everyone on the site needs to see. It turns out that the man who fired Jeff Gerstmann (John Larson) has himself been fired from his job as VP of games at CNET. Of course considering CNET are removing 119 other employees at the same time they might just be looking for someone to pin the blame on but it's somewhat reassuring to hear Gamespot themselves say that John Larson was "a suit ... who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things".

Another thing I feel obliged to mention is only a small thing at this point, but Gamespot did say in a recent unrelated report that Shigeru Miyamoto "reiterated his desire to make another entry in the Pikmin series". I've been thinking about the idea of a Pikmin 3 for some time and with a reasonably fresh console to play it on, the introduction of Pikmin to the Wii in SSBB and the wishes of Mr. Miyamoto, the idea that there will be a third installment in the series really doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Thanks once again for reading and I'd like to give a shoutout to PJ24, Kingrich06, Yo-gan, Edpeterson, Zxv33 and especially Fishdalf who is going through a very difficult time at the moment. I'll leave you with Baron Soosdon's The Device Has Been Modified. Keep on gaming.

-Gamer_152

Well another awesome week of Brawl, that game completely rocks. And I've also strangely enough found myself replaying Ocarina of Time and watching a lot of Halo machinima. On which note I'm pretty hyped for the Halo 3 legendary map pack, but I really dunno when I'm gonna get my 360 fixed, that memory card my bro was supposed to be borrowing from his mate so I can download my gamertag and trade in my old 360? Well my bro can't be bothered to get off his backside, he's just been playing an MMO for hours on end for the past week. Gaming is still great without the 360 but now and then I'll get these little twinges to play Halo or Guitar Hero.

But now onto the rant that no blog can do without: The European release of Rock Band. I was infuriated as month after month passed and we still received no release date but as soon as I saw that £180 price tag I lost all interest in purchasing it. I mean I thought the price of GH3 was a little steep but this is ridiculous. Even if you try to justify the £130 instrument bundle the game itself is still £50, a price that I've only ever seen at my local GAME on PS3 titles and why they chose to ship the game separately from the instrument bundle is beyond me. I'm considering it a serious possibility that EA and Harmonix already have a price drop planned. I'm also a little annoyed with GameFAQs who (although I don't remember receiving any notification) seem to have moderated me for using the words 'stupid' and 'idiot' on a Gamespot board although as I only opened my GameFAQs forum account a few days ago there's no real way to tell precisely what happened.

I might get Mario Kart Wii soon as well but there's so many pretty, shiny things to buy and since I'm returning to college soon I won't have as much free time anyway. I'd just like to also take this opportunity to say that I hope I don't come over as too pessimistic in my blogs, I'm a happy fella really :) . Anyway shoutout to PJ24, KingRich06 (only just noticed his name rhymes), Fishdalf and Yo-gan. This week I'll leave you with the satirically outstanding It's a Wonderful LIVE (WARNING: Contains some explicit language). Peace out.

-One happy Gamer_152

It's hard to believe that the holiday is already half over but it's been great so far. I was a little too busy to take my 360 in for an exchange at GAME and when I was going to I realised that if I didn't download my gamertags to a memory card I could risk losing data if I tried to retrieve them on a new Xbox so now I'm just waiting for my brother to get a memory card one of his mates said he could borrow. But y'know what? I just don't care my 360's not working because on Tuesday Super Smash Bros. Brawl finally arrived in the mail.

Over the hours that I played it the game really grew on me and now I love it just like I did Melee, there really hasn't been a game this good on the Wii since Super Mario Galaxy, in short it's freakin' awesome and was well worth the import and buying freeloader. Anyway I've also been playing a little Animal Crossing, Dawn of War and I also have Audiosurf on my PC now which is also worth getting for the price it's at.

But on the topic of news this week it's not been too bad considering the backlash we could of had from the Byron report and indeed the Telegraph did print some serious rubbish concerning it, in fact the article bordered on the kind of stuff you might expect from Jack Thompson (I'll try to stop mentioning him, but it's difficult). But Byron still stood up and said that video games do get a bad press, however the findings of that report still don't seem to be going anywhere, when one game developer actually said that if it is shown people in the UK don't understand the rating system (or more likely don't take into account the full implications of why a game is rated how it is) then they need to be educated on it, Byron simply said that was a matter for the industry and not the government so despite the great report and all the money that has been put into it all we'll really have is a new ratings board still pumping out age ratings nobody thinks about. Y'know I bet there are tons of gamers on the internet who have more of an idea about what really needs to be done with video game censorship than the government do.

Shoutout to Edpeterson, PJ24, KingRich06, Fishdalf and Neojedi and this week I'll leave you with possible the most awesome April Fool's Joke in the history of mankind. Happy gaming!

-Gamer_152

This blog is a tribute to Brad Shoemaker.

Well it's finally the Easter holidays and it's great to have some time off, I even got my wireless internet connection working at a usable level by my 360 decided to make things interesting. The disc drive on my 360 just died over a period of a few days and now the only game it doesn't recognise as unreadable is GH3 which will play for about 5 minutes before the drive bums out, I guess that's just another thing for me to get fixed. But as far as my Wii goes things are great, I've ordered Freeloder and a US copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and I doubt I'll miss my 360 quite as much once I'm in possession of both of those (still waiting for Brawl to arrive in the mail). So this week I've just been playing Puzzle Pirates, Animal Crossing, Advance Wars, The Orange Box and Guitar Hero 3.

On the subject of new this week I'd like to say a bit about the Byron report though, in case you haven't heard this was the six-months-in-the-making report on the affects of the internet and video games that was to be presented to the government. As I expected the media was quite over-reactionary on the subject but I have read some of the report myself. Overall it's quite a good report and did not contain the kind of bias I expected it might. But I have a problem with the conclusions of this report. The suggested action just doesn't seem to fit in with the findings; for one thing it was made very clear throughout the report that there just hasn't been enough research into certain areas to come to proper conclusions about certain aspects of the effects of video games on children and for another thing the research that was personally carried out for the report showed that parents felt that as each child was so different a single ratings system couldn't possibly cater for all the different children in the country. None the less it seems that the idea to tweak the ratings system and combine two boards will somehow solve all of this.

Lastly I'd just like to say the Halo 3 Legendary map pack is looking awesome and at this point I'm really liking the look of Blackout particularly and I hope my 360 will be fixed in time for me to get back to Halo for those. Well thanks again for reading, keep on gaming and I'll leave you with this elaborate suicide from Halo 3.

-Gamer_152

Thanks for tuning in for another week of my blog. I'm still loving my new monitor and strangely over the last two days I've not played many games at all (I know, spooky) but I suppose I have a lot of work to do for college. However since last Sunday I have played more of the Orange Box, Bioshock, Burnout Paradise, Guitar Hero 3, Pokemon Diamond and Jam Sessions. I also guess I'm good to get Brawl and Freeloader now, it seems to be working fine for my friend PJ24 and there has been no patching to prevent it (although I did start getting a little worried when my console began glowing blue yesterday, but that turned out just to be an update for Wiiware). My 360 and my router still haven't come to meet in a happy partnership yet but I'll get occassional periods where there will inexplicably be no problems.

I am a little ticked off this week with a group I didn't expect to be. The environmental-conservation group Greenpeace have done some really good work in their time but their 3-month report of the most and least environmentally friendly companies has once again come and Nintendo are still scoring around the 0 mark on a 0-10 scale, way below any other company. Upon closer inspection though this seems to simply be because of a lack of information e.g. If Nintendo don't say they recycle plastics then Greenpeace just assume they don't recycle plastics. Now I'm not saying that as a company Nintendo don't have a responsibility to make their position on environmental issues clear but I think Greenpeace takes the majority of the blame on this one, portraying Nintendo in such a negative light because they haven't got the information they need.

In even worse news this week though, another of the old-school editors is leaving Gamespot, this time it's Brad Shoemaker, in fact after the last editor left I believe I heard someone say 'all we have left now is Brad', but it seems he's packing his bags and hitting the road too, so goodbye to another great editor. In better news this week though The Sims 3 site is up and it's looking like a pretty good game, as some of you will know I love Will Wright's work but this latest title doesn't quite look like it'll make the amazing leap that The Sims 2 did from The Sims, of course we can't tell everything at this stage but my optimism of seeing a revolutionary way of playing The Sims was slightly broken when I looking at what appears to be at this point a Sims 2.5 (although don't get me wrong, it still looks good), oh well I'll guess we'll see more of what the game has to offer over time.

Thanks to everyone for reading this week, I'll leave you with The Ballad of Black Mesa. Peace out.

-Gamer_152

Sorry for such a late blog (although I doubt anyone stayed up all Saturday night at their computers waiting for Gamer_152's Saturday blog :P ) but my old LCD monitor finally decided to give up the ghost on Friday night, after almost 6 years of frequent use displaying hour after hour of nerdy websites and MMORPGs. Anyway I have a new HP, 19", 1440 by 900 monitor and it's beautiful, if only all problems were as easy to fix *cough*router*cough*. As you might of figured out this week I've been playing a lot of Burnout Paradise and that's still really awesome although I did get a little worried when my brother began to get so obsessed with the game that if he spent an hour or so of time off the game he'd begin to complain. I've also been playing more Pokemon, Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode One. Although it's been quite hectic this weekend, it almost seems like I haven't actually had a proper weekend but I get Thurday and Friday off of college so it all balances out.

I also picked up Guiness World Records 2008: Gamers Edition today and it's a pretty sweet book, I'd advise almost anyone who's interested in it to buy it, although I should warn you that the book is not purely records (as I expected), it sort of deviates off, giving a fair bit of information about the games themselves and there is more in there about the records set by the games than actual players, but none the less a great book. I've also had a bit of a think and decided that I won't be able to live with myself if I don't get Freeloader and Super Smash Bros. Brawl soon, so I'll order that this week on the assumption Nintendo won't patch the Wii to prevent it.

In closing this week I'd like to say that I'm absolutely amazed at the new official score of 97% of Through the Fire and the Flames on GH3 and even more amazed at the BBFC's decision to finally let Manhunt 2 be released in the UK (isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?). Shoutout to Bozanimal, Kingrich06, Mars188, Fishdalf, Neojedi, Zxv33 and PJ24. Sorry I didn't answer your questions a couple of weeks back Fishdalf, but better late than never; I'm missing too many Pokemon to list in Pokemon Diamond but let's just say that it doesn't help that I haven't got Fire Red or Leaf Green and on GH3 I'm stuck on every song in the 7th set on hard mode. Thanks to everyone for reading and I'll leave you with the short but sweet Half Life in 60 seconds.

- Gamer_152

No More Heroes is out! Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm is out! Army of Two is out! And Super Smash Bros. Brawl is out... in 3 freakin' months! With the reviews that game has been getting it sounds like it lived up to even my monumental expectations and it's making getting the freeloader tool even more enticing but I'm gonna have to sit it out for a while and see if Nintendo do release the dreaded 'anti-region free' patch. Oh and that router that was giving me grief? It's more or less working now (I'm not even sure if it is or isn't compatible any more) although the connection isn't great.

Now what have I been playing this week? Well I've tried the demo for Triggerheart Excelia and if there's only 5 more levels of that in the full game it's way too short. I also tried the demo for n+ and that was okay. But as for full games I finally finished Halo 3 on legendary, played through some more of GH3, played a little Puzzle Pirates, worked my way through another few sections of Bioshock and become even more obsessed with Pokemon Diamond (seen: 311, captured: 232). My brother also bought us Marble Blast Ultra (for some reason) this week but more importantly while I was still pondering what to buy he picked up Burnout Paradise. I've gotta say the soundtrack, the presentation, the amount of content and the plain open-endedness of the game is absolutely awesome; it's a really exciting game to play and I don't think I've ever had this much fun with a driving game before.

Now I'd just like to talk about what I found to be the most interesting piece of news on the site this week. A study has been conducted this says over 50% of males have played an avatar of the opposite sex in an MMO and the same applies for 60% of females. Interesting because these statistics are shocking? No, interesting because the study was so amazingly flawed, with only 119 participants. The real knowledge from this study comes from what some participants and quite a few Gamespot users said, it is actually more benficial gameplay-wise to play a female character as people tend to act nicer to you.. I wonder if there's any difference depending on what in-game race you are.

Anyway I'll leave you now as I did last week with another jab at Jack Thompson who is now apparently a 'mass shooting expert'. You may have already seen this but it's enthralling to see how far he actually gets into his rant before he blames the whole thing on video games (roughly 7 seconds). I'd like to see the day a 27 year old tries to gun down his school mates with a Wii zapper. Anyway the new episode of Pure Pwnage will be coming out tonight so I'll be watching that and shoutout to PJ24, Mars188, Neojedi, Arc (who gave me a free Chikorita) and Fishdalf who celebrates his brthday today. Peace out!

-Gamer_152

Well I've been through more hell with my router. After picking up the elusive USB-ethernet adapter I needed from Maplins on Wednesday, I went through the hell of trying to set up my wireless network and it can now connect to my 360, but if I so much as decide to turn my 360 off it no longer registers the DNS next time I try to connect and I have to set up the whole network all over again. My signal for the network still isn't too good though, but there's nothing I can do about the neighbours connection interfering with mine really and at least it's working with my DS and Wii. I have checked the Xbox site to see if my router is compatible and it's not on the list but then again few routers are. Once again I'm unsure what to do next, but I think I might just return it to PC World and get a Linksys or something similar.

But it's not all doom and gloom, I've only got 1 more legendary mission to do in Halo 3 before I'm done, I've caught over 200 pokemon in Pokemon Diamond (I even had a dream where I found a vending machine in the game which would dispense any pokemon I wanted), I'm seriously stuck on GH3's hard mode and that's about it.

Now be afraid, be very afraid of mega exclamation marks as I go on a rant. It probably comes as no surprise to you that I love the Wii; it's a great console and a marvel from an industry point of view (now once again outselling the PS3 4/1 in Japan) but I have a serious bone to pick with Nintendo and all developers concerned in the making of a certain popular fighting game. While I'm happy for all of you out in the US that it will be simply be a few days until the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, us here in Europe have to wait an additional 3 months for the release of this game! This is not the first time something like this has happened, everywhere outside of the US and Japan often pulls the short straw when it comes to release dates but considering the already staggering delays for this game and the demand for the title, this is ridiculous! You may have already heard of codejunkies magical device, the freeloader, giving you region-free Wii without affecting your warranty and I fear this may get a lot of business from Nintendo's hold-back decision, but then again it's by no means outside the realms of possibility that they'll just release a patch rendering the software useless. I love your games and your consoles Nintendo but this is probably one of my angriest moments with you!

Anyway now I think I'm just going to count down the time until the new episode of Pure Pwnage and continue pondering over whether to buy Burnout Paraidse or No More Heroes (or whether to just blow the money on a better router). I'd like to give a shoutout to everyone who has read and commented on my blog but also to AJMarra, a Gamespot user who strangely just claimed to have revelation yesterday saying that video games were wasting his life and left the site; good luck to your AJ where ever your going. Finally I'll leave you all with Pure Pwnage's excellent "tribute" to Jack Thompson. Thanks for reading!

-Gamer_152