I'm not personally a Christian but I wish a happy Christmas and holidays to all who are celebrating or are just relaxing after an exhausting autumn/fall of school like me!!! My team Liverpool are unbelievably still top of the Premier League by just one point so I've got no complaints there. I should be getting FIFA 09 and COD World at War soon but unfortunetly I don't know when. I'll keep everyone updated as I go along but I have not got as much time to post as I would have liked!

By the way does anyone know when the Playstation Home Service launches? Just wanted to know...

I've been playing public matchmaking on Gears 2 for a couple of weeks now and I've seen loads of things that sorely need to be fixed. I just hope that Cliff Bleszinski reads my blog! LOL!

Here we go:

1. Incredibly overpowered chainsaw which seems to suck you in from a couple of metres away and dosen't seem to stop revving when you shoot at it with the shotgun from an angle.

2. Matchmaking which joins you up with players from Austrailia, Japan e.g which in effect results in EXTREMELY laggy games. Please Epic make a region filter!!!

3. When you get knocked over by a smoke grenade, it takes around 10 seconds to get back up which is enough time for a noob to run halfway across the map and stand over you with his chainsaw revved. I don't mind being stunned, in fact it's cool but please don't let us be stunned for so long!

You might think that I'm a moaning, groaning sod with no life but it's extremely annoying when you have way more skill then the guy you're facing but still lose because of lag when you know you just shot him in the face with the shotty but got sucked in by the saw!!!!!!!!

In my next blog however, I'll have all of the great changes I love about Gears 2!

Well, I've just been playing around with the new experience for a few days now (since Wednesday) and have seen enough of the different features and designs to form a decent opinion. I personally love the new features such as the ability to install to hardrive which finally gets rid of the jet engine type noise which the disc reader made!

And also the new party system which allows me to keep a coversation going with up to seven friends no matter what we're doing as well as the more clearer my xbox channel. Unfortunetly, because I live in the UK I can't use the netflix service so I can't really comment on that but I have had a couple of dashboard freezes/crashes now and again but it's nothing really to complain about because it only happens very occasionally to me anyway.

I have mixed feelings about the new avatars which I think are a good idea but haven't been executed as I would have liked. They're still a bit much on the Nintendo Wii side for me! The new look Live Marketplace is great in my book and I'm looking forward to using it more in the future.

Overall Rating So Far: 7.5/10

The first Gears of War was superb in my opinion in my book. Sure the story wasn't very good, but the gritty graphics and addictive gameplay really made the game and the sequel keeps all of the elements that made the first game great even better. The story is more fleshed out now but still is a weak point in the game's otherwise seemingly flawless points.

The game starts to get quite interesting from Act 4 in my opinion but I won't spoil it for you if you haven't got the game yet (why haven't you!!!!???). But even then it was extremely predictable and I didn't get much of a shock from it.

It felt nice that Epic have managed to make the Locust look like a proper horde as supposed the little groups/pockets of enemies which you found in the first game. The ending is really ridiculous but made me laugh at the sheer sillyness of it The bottom line is if you liked the first game, you'll love the sequel!

Liverpool demonstrated their growing title credentials by ending Chelsea's incredible 86 game home game undefeated streak in the Premier League to go three points clear at the top of the table. Xabi Alonso's deflected 10th minute strike gave Liverpool victory and shattered Chelsea's streak which had lasted from February 2004 on home turf. It was a deserved triumph for Rafael Benitez's side achieved without star striker Fernando Torres and is the first defeat in Luiz Felipe Scolari's reign at Chelsea.

I am so happy because this performance is the kind of which I really needed to witness to show me that we had the belief and at the same time the technical ability to beat the rest of the top four on their patch without one of our so called "two man team" (Gerrard and Torres). I hope that we have the belief, confidence and strength in depth to last the whole season now and lift that title that we have had to wait for for nearly two decades!