It is amazing how disturbing it can be to see a world you thought you knew so well unearthed, and just beneath the surface is ugly, sickening corruption. I had never thought I'd ever feel that way about the games industry, and yet here I am.

For articles pertaining to the dismissal of Gamespot's Site Director, Mr. Jeff Gerstmann, click here.

I really liked Jeff and his reviews, personally. But whether or not you enjoyed his writing has absolutely nothing to do with it. Jeff always, always wrote with a sense of honesty. He was always true to his experience with the game and never bowed down to external (and unfounded) expectations of a game. Kane and Lynch's review was no exception - he wasn't pleased with the game, and so it got a 6.0 / 10, meaning 'fair' on the Gamespot system.

Of course, the outcome was anything but fair. In exchange for doing his job as an objective writer and giving an honest evaluation of the game based on his experience with it, Jeff Gerstmann was fired.

Mr. Gerstmann (as well as Mr. Kasavin, who left the site by choice in January of this year) were the two people who convinced me that reviewing games was something worth pursuing, either professionally or purely for personal enjoyment. But the reason I wanted to pursue critical writing like product reviews was because it helps people choose something that will entertain them.

Escapism is not so very bad. Games have helped me through lots of difficult times in my life - it used to feel weird to say that, but it's the truth. What happens when the place you go for entertainment turns out to be just as corrupt as the rest of life, though?

It's hard not to feel pretty lousy about this. It doesn't matter if you knew Jeff's work or even if you play video games. No matter what lens you view it through, this is a sad time for journalism.

I'm going to stick around a while, if only to see if any more closure is reached on this situation. After all's said and done with the whole ordeal though, it seems only right to leave Gamespot. To support honest members of the industry like Jeff, and to support integrity in a line of work that is very susceptible to corruption.

Every single member of the Gamespot editorial team is a fantastic writer and a strong voice in games journalism. I wish them all the best and, hopefully, a job in the future with a stronger company who will take better care of them than CNet and Gamespot.

I've been coming to Gamespot.com for the last six years, and it has been one of my only sources of gaming news. I've read thousands of reviews and written a couple dozen of my own, too. I've watched hundreds of hours of videos. But ultimately, it's about the hobby, and there is an undeniable feeling that Gamespot is no longer looking out for the people who matter.

The slow departure of many Gamespot editors over the past year or two has been a strange but natural change for the site. But, this is a change that is most unnatural. And it feels wrong to stay. Thank you to the people who have read my thoughts in this blog, who have read my reviews, to the Community Contributions Union for helping me with my writing, and thank you to the Gamespot of old.

Goodbye, and all the best! I hope to see some of you on other sites all around the internet.

- Adam Schedler (September_Grey).

...I come back to this blog. How is everyone? I'll be sure to catch up on everybody's reviews as quickly as I can.

I've been focusing on school a lot lately, trying to maintain an A average in my final high school semester so I'll have a good chance of getting into University and all that sort of thing. It's been a tough month, full of studying and - of course - my fair share of personal setbacks as well.

Hopefully things will slow down for a while after mid-terms and I can lurk around Gamespot more often - until then, I suppose there will be updates spaced farther apart like this one.

First up, I finished and played some Halo 3 online; rad. Very rad. Although I appreciated the campaign more, the fact that any shooter intrigued me to play a fair amount of online is worth a look. I've also spent some time with Skate, which is fun and infuriating all at once. The game requires a level of precision that, frankly, the control scheme does not always afford. Skateboarding fans will love it though.

Finally, I picked up The Orange Box on release day and plowed through Portal, Episode Two and got in some time with Team Fortress 2 as well. Definitely one of my favourite games this year, and perhaps one of the most thoughtful and quality compilations ever. Portal is a real mind-bender, and it's very, very funny; and Episode Two provides the best Half-Life experience in the history of the series, as well as a heartbreaking, emotional cliffhanger ending that genuinely shocked me.

Reviews of The Orange Box and Halo 3 should be coming soon, as well as a Killer 7 review.

Until next time, farewell and all the best.

- September_Grey

Here's the review -- overall I had a pretty good time playing through Rocks the 80s, today, and I think it's definitely got a little bit of legs to it; Winger is so awesome. Go download "Seventeen" right now. Or Oingo Boingo's stuff.

Also in the category of games that are short is Heavenly Sword. Wow. I'm really enjoying this game, far more than the reviews I have read would indicate. A review of that will probably come soon, since it's apparantly quite short-lived.

But I must be off for now, to start a Powerpoint presentation on native land claims. Ah, Powerpoint -- the lifeblood of high school.

I'm into my second week of school now, and things are actually going pretty good. A few people who said they were leaving for new endeavours changed their minds and came back to high school. As life often proves, you're not alone in anything.

But man is it a busy year! Lots of homework, lots of catching up with friends, and lots of extra curriculars to check out in the near future. Needless to say, I've been pretty busy; there just hasn't been enough time to do more than dabble in a couple of games.

I've played a fair amount of Track and Field and Boom Boom Rocket for Xbox Live Arcade, so I think I might review those soon. I haven't had near enough time with Warhawk to put together final thoughts on it. I played a lot of the Skate demo (I believe the retail version is out today); I hope I get the time to really get into that one. The 'flickit' controls are awesome, and makes it different enough so that skateboarding fans could really pick up both it and Tony Hawk and have two good, amicably different experiences.

I also played through the demo of Folklore for PS3. I haven't heard a lot of people talking about this one; it's an action-adventure where, after beating on enemies, you need to jerk the Sixaxis upward to rip out their soul and absorb it. Then you can use those souls as attacks against other, stronger monsters. It's all done up in a cool, warped storybook sort of design, and it looks poised to be yet another fantastic PS3 game coming up this year. If you own that system, be sure to check out the demo or the full game (coming in October, if memory serves).

Stranglehold has been getting a little attention too, although it's a little tough to play that game in long stretches. It's fun, but my God is it mindless; aside from a couple special sequences, you won't even need to worry about taking cover or conserving ammo. Just run out into the open, firing like a crazy person. Don't get me wrong, that has its charm; but sadly, Stranglehold doesn't seem to have the legs I hoped it would have. Certainly not an appropriate holdover for my beloved Max Payne series.

After a few Live Arcade reviews, hopefully I'll have time to sit down with games like Skate, Heavenly Sword, MySims (this game looks so rad), and Halo 3 and give you all some impressions or reviews. Until next time, the best to you all,

September_Grey.

I'm just about to enter an extra semester of high school I signed up for to take a few more courses and - hopefully - get 80% or better in them so I have better marks to submit to Universities. If you're like me and decided to do an extra semester - or a 'victory lap,' as it's affectionately known - you probably have some mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, I'm happy that I resisted the pressure of school councillors and the status quo, slowing down and making sure I am completely prepared for University before I go. I also appreciate the extra time I have to improve my study habits and work ethic before I get pushed into post-secondary education and, I presume, a job where I'll be working for at least 20 hours a week to have some money while I go to school.

However, the fact that I only signed up for one semester puts me in a very uncomfortable middle ground, socially. Many of my friends will be moving on to college or university, and while I wish them the absolute best in their pursuits, it's very unlikely that I'll be seeing them much anymore. Some of my friends, like me, have decided to stay in high school just a bit longer, but all of them have signed up for a full extra year - two semesters, in other words. So while they'll be graduating and getting the next chapter of their lives started next summer, I'll be done with high school in January of 2008. This puts me squarely in the middle of just about anyone my age that I know of, and besides a select few, I imagine I'll sort of drift into obscurity with them.

Sad, but true. Everyone tells you that you sort of fall out with many people you know from high school, but the really surprising thing for me was how fast it actually happens. When twelfth grade ended for me back in June, the people who knew they were off to University in the fall seemed to have amnesia; two weeks into summer vacation, nearly every single one was acting like high school never happened.

It's been a very sad couple of months, as I imagine it is for anyone at this point in their life. But of course, it's in these moments, where life has forced you to sever many of your ties of comfort, that you have the opportunity to reinvent yourself.

So, in an effort to come to terms with a huge chapter in my life closing and a big, lumbering, vague, scary, and potentially invigorating one starting, I've decided to start a creative writing project, the first I've conceptualized in over a year; a collection of essays, photos, short stories and poems about what I consider to be a typical Ontario experience. The tentative title is A Warm Place (taken from the Nine Inch Nails album, The Downward Spiral). I haven't really decided the motif or overarching theme yet, aside from the love-hate relationship one has with a hometown; but I feel that this project will allow me to focus and develop all of my racing thoughts and feelings about where I come from and where I would like to go. I like to think of it as a tangible symbol of closure.

Once it gets off the ground, I'll definitely post some samples or perhaps a PDF version of the collection for people who would like to see it. It'll be hard emotionally to work through this project, but I am very excited to start it and let people start seeing my creative writing again.

I have also started a document that will catalogue the seventy-five reviews I posted on Gamespot as of the end of this month. Again, this will help me sort out the that was then, this is now sort of pathos that seems to dominate my thoughts lately. And besides, I've been itching to go back and tweak a lot of my old reviews and see how I've improved over the past year.

It felt good to write this. I'm a sloppy thinker, and I always feel better when the chaos can be set to order on a page of a word processor. And even though many aspects of my life will be pulled out from under me whether I like it or not, I take solace in the fact that some things remain mercifully constant; a few best friends, my writing, video games, and the support and debate I can find here at Gamespot.

Thank you for reading, and until next time I've been,

Adam Schedler, September_Grey

P.S. - Reviews of Space Giraffe and Warhawk coming over the next week.

The Toronto Sun had an opening in its video game section while its editor, Steve Tilley, went on vacation. The idea was to write a short blurb - 150 words or less - about your favourite game of all-time. I'm not a huge fan of the Sun, but I decided to enter anyway. They sent you a free game if your submission made the cut, at any rate. So I wrote my submission about Final Fantasy VIII. That's actually not my favourite game; it just seemed right to write about it at the time.

Anywho, I made it in! Unfortunately, my prize was the unfortunate Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer for PS3. They just randomly picked games off of the editor's desk and sent them out to the entry winners. But, a brand-new sealed game is what was promised, and they delivered. Maybe I'll play it a bit later.

To celebrate, I went out and bought the retail version of Warhawk, with the bluetooth headset, for 40 bucks before my local Best Buy realized their mistake in pricing and changed it to 59.99. Or maybe they really meant to have it that cheap. At any rate, it is now mine! Impressions later.

I also picked up a 37" Sharp Aquos (720p/1080i version - no 1080p on this model). Impressions on it right now: way rad. Outstanding picture on every game, DVD, and BluRay I tested it with. If you're looking for a new TV, this is a great choice, regardless of size.

Gamespot's evil HTML errors that aren't really there prevent me from posting the pics that were SUPPOSED to compliment this post, but maybe it'll smarten up later and let me post. Or maybe I'll throw together a video so I can show you the Aquos and some Warhawk in action!

Until then, though, peace y'all.

I present you all with a short poem I wrote about Two Worlds. Here goes:

.

You Cannot Stay Converged in Duality For Long

by Adam Schedler

*****

Muddy and choppy

This world is

Indistinct and flat-out bammer

What's this

I am seeing?

Is that a cool blur effect

Or is that my migraine from its

horrific framerate?

*****

Blue Dragon, on the other hand, is OK. Nothing spectacular, but I'm not insulted by it, either. Keven VanOrd's excellent review for Gamespot says it all; it's just kinda there.

Hey, at least it's not Two Worlds. *shudder*

Finally, my text review of Bioshock is complete. It may go without saying, but,

Simply put, you have to play this game.

My review for Bioshock (360) will be up tomorrow, on Saturday. I finished the game on Thursday like I had planned, but the text review has become an unwieldly beast - I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being a good 3'000 words. As such, I need a bit more time to re-structure and edit it. Look for it tomorrow, if you're interested.

And yes, it is still as awesome as it was when I started. A fantastic game.

Yep, way rad.

Review coming Friday!