This weekend marked the fourth anniversary of Island Gamers, the gaming community I co-founded for residents of the Isle of Wight, which is where I live. Over the last four years the community has grown to a userbase of almost 500 registered Isle of Wight gamers.

Only a handful of those gamers seem to get actively involved in the community, which is somewhat disappointing but then this is the internet we're talking about here.

So I was suprised to see so many new faces at this weekend's LAN. It's been over six months since we held our last gaming event - the longest we've ever waited between events. Going into the LAN, staff morale was low and we all had the feeling that this would be the last PC LAN, if not the last event ever that IG would be organising.

Thankfully, now we're out the other side we're all feeling much more positive. We managed to drum up almost 30 paying attendees, all of whom seemed to have enjoyed themselves immensely. We had a lot of positive feedback and a lot of questions about the next event. The next event that we thought we probably wouldn't be organising. So there you have it, IG is back from the dead and it makes me happy!

I thoroughly enjoyed the LAN. There was a shift in gaming toward consoles and there were quite a few attendees with both a PC and an XBox 360, myself included. I enjoyed my first ever LAN co-op Rainbow Six: Vegas game, which was a lot of fun even without a headset, which I stupidly left at home!

Going back to PC FPSes was strange. It's been maybe six months since I last properly played an FPS with a mouse and keyboard and the sensation I felt when jacking into my first game of UT2K4 this weekend was strange. It felt so wierd to be controlling with a mouse again, and took me a good few minutes to settle back into it. And you know what? It felt good. Really good. My biggest struggle with console gaming was the transition from mouse to thumbstick, and going back to PC again I realise why. It just feels so much better to shoot stuff with a mouse.

I pretty much sucked at UT for most of the LAN, though I did come second in the 1v1 tournament to the highly seasoned Dor1to, who's still in fine form. A pat on the back to Darkangelus though, who almost sent me out in the semis until I clawed my way back in the last 10 seconds to go for a draw and sudden death which I won by the skin of my teeth.

We had the local newspaper round for some photos, so it looks like we might be getting some free press again. The reporter looked most interested in the Wii, which took pride of place on the projector at the front of the hall. I think everyone had a go on it at some point, and it really did bring people together. I can see where Ninty's going with it now and I'm happy to say that the Wii has found its niche.

It was my Wii, by the way. It finally arrived two months after I renewed my pre-order. I've not had a whole lot of time to play with it, but Wii sports really is as fun as everyone says. I've barely dipped into Zelda, I spent 45 minutes trying to catch my first fish to get that damned cat to follow me, and I failed miserably. I must be doing something wrong.

I'm still waiting for Worms on XBLA. I played the very first iteration of the series on the Amiga and really got into it after Worms: Director's Cut on the A1200. I skipped the PC 2D worms, but did dip into Worms 3D a little. The XBLA version looks set to be straightforward 2D action, with great presentation and all the old-skool weapons that one would expect. I'm itching to spend my 1200 points and to get worming with my friends from IG.

Having said that, I'm getting a little frustrated with the infrequent Arcade updates. There are so many games we've all been hearing about that are due for release "anytime now", but with ony one Wednesday update per week, I'm left disappointed every time I see another 80s arcade game (which I could quite happily play on MAME illegally, thank you) or something equally silly like another expansion pack for Lumines. Then I wait another week only to be disappointed again. Ugh. More updates and faster QA please, Microsoft!

I think I've written enough for this update. If you couldn't tell, I'm quite excited about gaming right now, and this year is off to a great start!