Well, much has changed since then as well. One unfortunate thing seemed to happen, and that was that the Halo Union seemed to go under. That union has done so well for so long and I'm proud, but it seems everybody has given up on it, and it may be time to move on. It partially is attributed to lack of news, and thus lack to talk about. Plus the whole union aspect of Gamespot is dieing anyways, although I still believe the forums here are some of the strongest on the interwebz. I love System Wars especially, even if you know you will probably never convince anyone to see things as you do, it's always great getting into a good, well thought out argument.

The 360 has treated me well. My newest one has held up for a while, and though I may not game as much as I used to, I find the quality of my gaming experiences have improved. I try to understand stories more, and think out my approaches. I use more strategy rather than run and gun. It has come to the point where my roomate says I overemphasize situations, and that things are much simpler than I allow them to be, but what fun is not thinking about your plan of attack. My most recent game is The Orange Box, and for 20 bucks, this is a steal. 5 games in one? Check. Legendary games in that very box? Check. All PC gamers talk about is Half Life, so I figured I had to try it. It is very good, I must say, though I really don't see why it is considered to be such a good game. The physics and stuff are great, but it seems to get really boring at times. I haven't beaten it yet, so I hope it only gets better as I play on. I also beat Portal, and that was very fun, albeit a little easier than I thought it would be. People were making it out to be a little hard, but whatever, I enjoyed the 3 hours it took to beat it. I haven't played much Team Fortress 2, and the little I did play seemed real hard, but I've heard great things about it and will give it another shot, whenever that will come.

I've also played Left 4 Dead, another Valve game, and that was pretty good, and very underrated. Not many talk about it, but multiplayer is great, and it's very different from your normal FPS. You can be zombies, which is by far the coolest thing I've done in a shooter in a long time, and I actually enjoy being the zombies more than the humans, its that fun. The only thing is the campaign is very limited, both single and co-op, and that just does not justify dropping 60 bucks. I will definitely be picking this up when the price drops.

As you may have noticed, or probably not, I less inclined to pay the full price on video games anymore. Blame it on the recession, or the slight drop in interest of video games, but I just can't really justify spending 60 dollars on a video game. Even Halo Wars, which I hear is pretty good. And I'm like the ultimate Halo fanboy. I just couldn't bring myself to buy it and have told myself to wait until a price drop of at least 20 dollars before trying to get it. Yes, that means I have to wait for the Mythic Map Pack, which I want really bad, but I can wait. Speaking of Halo, my skill has dropped tremendously. I went from being a very good Halo player, with levels in the upper 30's for the MLG playlist (which is by far the hardest), to getting scraped by lower levels guys, like 30s-40s. Its embarassing, and I hate being bad at Halo. I'd sacrifice my skill at every game just to be good at Halo. That's how much I love it. And so it sucks sucking. But hey, that's what I get for not playing as much, and not having Xbox Live at college.

Since I am purchasing games a lot less, I've been planning on going back to games I haven't finished and trying to beat them. On my list to beat are Bioshock, Oblivion, Kameo, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Call of Duty: World at War, KOTOR II and GTA IV. I'm probably going to start with Oblivion, get that out of the way, and move on to KOTOR II, because KOTOR was one of my favorite games of all time. Plus those are all quality games that everyone should beat, so why not?

I'm going to give some recommendations. Play Fallout 3, instant classic right there, way better than Oblivion. Get Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, the multiplayer is amazing and underrated. And buy Banjo-Kazooie on the arcade. I haven't yet but I will. I mean that's one of the greatest games of all time, and for 15 bucks thats a great deal.

So as I continue my gaming and my college life, I wish you all the best of luck with your lives, and I hope you all continue to live happy days and achieve your goals. I have a few that I would love to achieve and am striving for. I want to get better grades so that I can transfer to UMASS: Amherst. I want to get in shape and play football for my current college next season. I want to figure out my major, one that I will be good at and happy with. And I want to improve my relationship with my family, which hasn't been so good, where we seem to always fight, and for no good reason. Remember to never forget what you are ultimately striving for, reach for the stars. Because the sky is the limit, and don't you ever forget that.